Andrew Malcolm of McClatchy Newspapers ponders the predictability of today’s mainstream news media coverage.

Once upon a time, news in these United States was, well, new. And people wanted to know the latest happenings.

Now, however, much of the nation’s news and the people in it — even what they end up saying during these events — are pretty predictable.

That’s in large part because so many Americans have fallen into ruts of partisan thinking that aren’t really thinking at all, just safe recitations of talking points that require no listening or manners.

Take this impeachment business, please. Months before the 2016 election, Democrats and even a handful of GOP infidels were talking and organizing to defeat Donald Trump in the preposterous, unlikely event he became the Republican nominee. And then they shifted their focus to the even more absurd possibility that he somehow managed to usurp the Oval Office from its intended inhabitant, the woman who’s still sharing the bitterness over her defeat 167 weeks later.

Predictable too was the collusion among Capitol Democrats, their sympathizers within the FBI and Washington’s insular media, desperate to prove themselves right after being so wrong in campaign coverage and election forecasts. Trump campaign collusion with Russia was the initial cover story.

Totally predictable was the gullibility of individual DC media members in swallowing scores of fallacious tips from unidentified sources with anti-Trump agendas that were not identified for naive news consumers.

Quickly, the obstreperous new president’s M.O. became counter-punching most every allegation, even when his often over-the-top reactions only served to sustain the life of negative news for needless extra damaging days.