Election 2020: An Obit For Trump And The Woke Media

“I'll tell you what's wrong with it, my lad. 'E's dead, that's what's wrong with it!” — The Pet Shop, Monty Python

CNN’s Van Jones summed up the zeitgeist of the 2020 Election on Tuesday night  when he said that Joe Biden’s narrow win would not be enough to expunge his bile for POTUS45. Americans, he said, needed a crushing “moral victory” over the dread #OrangeManBad. Sadly for Jones, Trump was not hanged, drawn and quartered on the altar of Progressivism. Guess there’s no pleasing some people.

There will be many political obituaries written in the coming days. The first name on the List of Condolences will likely be Donald J. Trump. More telling will be another stunning obit-- the one for the political media class represented by revengers like Jones. Not content with beclowning themselves in 2016, missing Trump’s rise to the presidency, the legacy media spent four years transforming from cynical arbiters of political life to apologists for the Woke cult. 

Whether it was misleading/wrong polls or paranoid Russian conspiracies or gang-rape allegations against a SCOTUS nominee,Trump Derangement Syndrome  poisoned public discourse the past four years. But that’s what Joy Behar will do.

Hell, they gave away Pulitzer Prizes to the New York Times and Washington Post for a story that most now acknowledge is demonstrably false and seditious. Perhaps if one, just one, of these nose-stretchers had proved out-- as the Hunter Biden corruption material seems likely to do— there might be an ounce of respect for a job well done. But the gig is up with the Biden Bribe Burial by the imbedded media.  No one is buying anymore.

The Jonestown moralists have been joined in disfavour by the polling industry which somehow found a way to surpass its 2016 polling faceplant. Buoyant Biden results were fed with great fanfare to a public eager to know where the race was going. Trump, the Freddy Kruger goblin, was seen in these polls as trailing by double digits nationally and in some of the pivotal states. It was over and done.

In one psychedelic episode ABC News gave Biden a 17-point lead in Wisconsin just weeks ago (Biden’s edge will be less than a point.).  A sample of the rampant misinformation, @TomBevanRCP reported that “NYT/Siena, rated an A+ pollster by (website) 538, overestimated Biden's support by: “6+ in FL/ 4+ in NC/ Probably 6ish in MI when the count is in/10 ish in WI/ 10+ in IA/ 9+ in OH”. It wasn’t just a partisan issue, either. FOXNews was trumpeting Joe Biden’s lead over President Trump  as a 10-point advantage in early October (It’ll be about 2 points.). 

This is typical of the Shemp and Moe polling act: “@DKThomp Too early to be sure about the *exact* numbers here, but seems like state polls missed by 5 points, on avg, in 2016 by understating noncollege support for the GOP. Then a bunch of pollsters studied the issue and changed their methodologies for 2020 ... and whiffed by 7 points.”

One final bit of (deliberate?) misdirection: Maine senator Susan Collins, whose vote saved the Kavanaugh nomination,  was never seen as leading in any poll for re-election over there entire sweep of polls. She whipped Sara Gideon by nine points on Tuesday. But I’m sure it's just a coincidence.

Here in Canada, , @Polly_ASI had @JoeBiden going 372-166 in the electoral college, with Texas and Florida going blue (they didn’t and Biden didn’t even reach 300 votes). It culminated in Tuesday’s auto de fé between Trump and Biden for the hearts and souls of the two Americas that live next door but can’t stand each other anymore— a process that might stretch all week. 

In the public mind Big Media has given up on balanced and fair. They either couldn’t or wouldn’t find the Shy Trump vote in their polling. How these firms justify themselves in the future is a mystery. But you know they'll re-invent themselves under a different flag, especially under a Swampy Biden government. Denial is more than a river in Egypt for the consultant class.

“I do know as a factual matter,” said FOXNews anchor Tucker Carlson, “that the claim — and I think I’m quoting now — ‘our pre-election polls were really, really good,’ is just not true. And if that were true, then the New York Times wouldn’t have given Joe Biden a 70% chance this morning of winning Florida.

“Some polls were good. A lot were bad. And I know that the impulse, always, for everyone — me, you, I mean everybody — is self-justification, et cetera, but I mean we should be honest about — and I’m not specifically talking about Fox News, but the media more broadly — we should be honest about the times that we were wrong.”

Don’t hold your breath. Trump will have no one to blame but himself—and Covid-19— for this loss. There is a growing sentiment in country to defy the bien pensants of Silicon Valley and Hollywood as they talked about Supreme Court packing, adding new states, ending the filibuster and more. (Just look at the Senate and House elections.)  In other words, Trump had a winning hand to play. 

But, as his wont, he squandered his blessings until a final burst of presidential calm almost rescued the operation. Much of America was willing to give him a second term in contrast to Biden. They have clearly given up on the cable-news empires. He simply could not sustain the effort, to find the words to make that sale. Ironic, coming from one of the greatest salesmen of all time.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). The best-selling author of Cap In Hand is also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his next book Personal Account with Tony Comper will be available on BruceDowbigginBooks.ca this week.