In a gushing profile on Monday, Politico’s Hadas Gold touted: “At least 18 national media outlets have female reporters on the Clinton beat....No one can remember a political press corps this heavily female.” She proclaimed: “The change seems to be a combination of more women doing political reporting in general, and many more being drawn to Clinton's potentially historic candidacy.”

The last thing the press wants low-information voters to learn is that there has been far more interest in the contest for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination than there has been in the Democrats'.

That disparity has naturally carried over into the size of the audience watching the respective parties' debates. Despite months of buildup to the first left-side debate of the season and relentless hype all week long in the establishment press, last night's Democratic debate drew an audience of only 15.3 million compared to 25 million and 23 million in the first two Republican debates. Naturally, CNNMoney's morning email had no interest in communicating that disappointing (to the left) reality:

Did you know that the "The Gun Lobby Rewrote the Second Amendment"?

No, really. Even though not a single word contained in that amendment has changed in over 220 years, you should believe it because former Obama administration official Cass Sunstein said so at Bloomberg View on Wednesday.

Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro presides over a country which is falling apart thanks to the socialist policies of his government and that of his predecessor Hugo Chavez. The Economist describes the period since Chavez took over in 1998 as that of "authoritarian misrule" characterized by "by shortages of everything from poultry to pharmaceuticals, by inflation approaching 200% and by rampant corruption and crime."

It also cites the country's "dwindling cash reserves." Given the situation, the fact that a U.S.-based PR firm has recently and eagerly taken on the task of trying to make Maduro look good should be seen as appalling. But that hasn't been the case. The apparent silence of some of this PR firm's leftist clients arguably indicates that they tacitly support obvious oppression as long as the one engaging in it is a socialist. What little press coverage there has been of this firm's association with Maduro has been neutral to mildly laudatory.

The left's strategy for smearing Republicans and conservatives is, from all appearances, to "throw anything and everything out there, not matter how false or outrageous, and see what sticks."

A major reason why this strategy works is that the establishment press ignores bogus leftist smear attempts which should be utterly embarrassing, effectively eliminating the strategy's downside. Take Debbie Wasserman Schultz's Monday press release on 2016 GOP presidential candidate Marco Rubio's fundraiser at the home of Dallas businessman Harlan Crow.