…though we know the answer: Trump isn’t 50 points ahead in the Presidential race, and possibly not ahead at all, because…
- He has personally alienated so many voters by his manner, careless rhetoric and unapologetic conduct that they would vote for anyone but him, almost literally.
- He has been unethically sabotaged by the mainstream media for almost a decade, creating clinical Trump Derangement coast-to-coast, and
- He has been demonized by Democrats in totalitarian fashion, resulting in two near assassinations, a crippling partisan investigation based on a Hillary Clinton hit job; two partisan impeachments, and Big Lies that have been repeatedly refuted but that Democrats and the news media continue to promote.
- Unprecedented false casting as a looming proto-Hitler who will, if elected, end democracy.
And so it is that about 50% of the public will never support Donald Trump, despite a mostly successful first term, because the politics of personal destruction works, the Left is using every totalitarian tool at its disposal (especially a corrupt news media), and Trump is hardly a wartless candidate anyway.
Nonetheless, the exposure of the Harris candidacy (along with her ludicrous running mate, Tim Walz) as cynical, false and deliberately misleading this week has been mind-boggling, unprecedented in American political history. The most astounding part of it is that everyone knew that Harris had nothing to recommend in her as a potential POTUS, and yet the Axis of Unethical Conduct constructed a giant Jumbo (“Elephant? What elephant?”), convinced that they could lie, distract and cajole enough of the public to believe otherwise, because the Axis thinks the public is stupid.
In his essay, here, Roger Kimball reviews the catastrophic Harris campaign week neatly—the “60 Minutes” Harris-guarding scandal, Walz being Walz, the hilarious manly-men pro-Harris ad, which, it seems, is not a hoax after all, and Obama’s lecturing black men that Real Blacks Vote For Harris, which offended a significant number of African Americans.
This, however, I had not been sufficiently aware of before, as he writes,
Then there was a disastrous “town hall” meeting in which, again, multiple humiliations were assembled. First, some attentive scribe noticed that Harris was reading her replies off a teleprompter. Remember that was supposed to be an open forum in which Harris could connect with voters personally. But here she was, repeating scripted replies to pre-formulated questions.
And that was not the worst of it. A little digging revealed that the audience, too, was scripted. As one commentator noted, “Kamala Harris’s disastrous Univision town hall featured a ‘fake’ audience. 50% of the attendees were handpicked from across the country and flown to the town hall and were allowed to ask questions. The other 50% of the attendees were hired by an ‘audience-for-hire’ company and weren’t allowed to ask questions. The event was completely stage-directed and fake.”
An “audience-for-hire company”? Yep. I am not sure exactly which company team Harris employed, but it turns out that such initiatives are a booming business. Consider, for example, the company Crowds on Demand. Their website advertises “PROTESTS • RALLIES • ADVOCACY” and goes on to boast that
Whether your organization is lobbying to gain approval of a project, move forward a legislative initiative, bring additional pressure within complex litigation or trying to see swift and effective action in another way, we can set-up protests, rallies, demonstrations, alternatives to litigation or business disputes, coordinate phone-banking initiatives and even create non-profit organizations to advance your agenda.
I suspect that Democrats have frequent recourse to such companies. The Harris campaign, at any rate, is nearly 100% synthetic.
I would take issue with Kimball’s “nearly 100% synthetic.” The Harris-Walz ticket is 100% synthetic.
Today I indulged my perverse daily habit of tuning in to CNN , MSNBC and Fox News for exactly five minutes each day to see how the networks are spinning the news. CNN was instructive: some female ranting panelist I didn’t recognize was complaining that everyone is concentrating on whether Tim Walz was in Hong Kong during the Tienanmen Square protests rather than “the things that really matter to voters.” Her underlying assumption (of course, the rest of the panel agreed) was that voters don’t and shouldn’t care if their elected leaders are posturing phonies, hypocrites, habitual liars, puppets, empty suits, demented and consultant-manufactured personalities, as long as they promise things that they mostly can’t accomplish, know they can’t, and in many cases have no intention of even trying to accomplish them.
I am certain that most voters do care, and that [I know you’re getting tired of me evoking Honest Abe] the Democrats will fail in their effort to fool enough of the voters long enough to win next month. If they do, however, a lot of the blame will have to fall on Donald Trump himself.
Ethics Alarms 
And VP Harris’ interview on “The View” was pretty horrific as well.
I’m going out on a limb…well not much of a limb, but a limb nonetheless.
The media’s 1) editing of Harris’ appearances and “interviews”, its 2) taking much air time to explain away Harris’ incoherent, mindless babbling, and its 3) never-ending coverage of President Trump as either Hitler re-incarnated or the “Destroyer of Democracy” such that people want to take guns and kill him have cost him a lot.
How much?
If the media was honest and trustworthy…and all other things with Harris and Trump were equal, I would lay a Franklin on Trump having the vast majority of independent voters and most of the more traditional (conservative) Democrats. That might be worth 6-8 points in the polls. I would also bet his numbers among Black and Hispanic voters would be significantly better. Overall? The media’s dishonest reporting is not worth 50 points, but it could a be solid 10. Ten points is a blowout.
Just my thoughts while I consume/digest my lunch…
Stipulations:
Why would the LeftMSM undermine her if Harris would be the Lamb Chop that they wanted?
What would they gain by undermining her and getting Trump?
Has Trump made a deal?
Has the LeftDeepstate realized they f***** some s*** up all over the world and they need Trump to stabilize it quickly to provide some cover – bad cop/good cop style?
Just last night I asked my 16 year old son, if the MSM had not painted trump to be racist-evil-incarnate, what about him would be so bad? His facial expressions?
Trying to play the righteous politician does not win poll numbers but communicates weakness. How can Trump convey strength by taking the Romney high road when people want to see that he can fight back in the trenches?
If Trump is really not ahead by even 20pts, I find it hard to believe it is his fault any. Rather, the polls are fake and most people who vote Kamaliar are voting for the Demo trajectory, not a person. The same goes for most republicans, voting for policy/or party, not a person.
I may have mentioned this before, but in Bernard Goldberg’s book “Biased” about the culture under Dan Rather at CBS, he said there were no cabals meeting on how to distort the news. Their leftwing bias simply came from how they all saw the world, and being part of a coast city echo chamber. You could argue there’s more conscious collusion now than in the past, but that doesn’t mean every progressive with a platform is part of a well-oiled machine, or beholden to a master plan.
see Harris accused Trump of being chicken to debate her again and chicken to go on “60 Minutes.” Has she seen any of the reportage on what’s been going on at CBS lately? Does she really think Trump is stupid?
OB
Trump agreed to a debate on Fox weeks ago. It was Harris who declined.
i think these contradict each other. You can’t call it sabotage if Trump is doing it to himself and the media is just reporting on it.
DD
Wrong. The media didn’t just report what Trump did and said. it did and does spread false reports (like the Russian Collusion Hoax), rumors, gossip,hysteria and Big Lies. Why don’t you check the hundreds of posts here under “2016 Post Election Ethics Train Wreck” before you make a fool of yourself?
It was more than the media.
The federal law enforcement and intelligence establishments gave the illusion of credibility to these hoaxes.
https://ethicsalarms.com/2023/05/17/assorted-ethics-observations-on-the-durham-report-part-ii-the-substance/
Also, crimes were committed to further these propaganda campaigns.
Meh I don’t really agree with your analysis. The “mainstream media” (is that even thing anymore?) obviously tilts towards Democrats but their reporting on Trump is fairly accurate.
I also think you’re overstating how big of an impact the left-leaning media has on voting behavior.
I’ve read your Election Ethics Train Wreck, I disagree with your analysis. For instance, have you ever analyzed how big of an impact the right-wing media has on voting behavior? Or Trump’s falsehoods?
DD
That’s some… in-depth rebuttal. Rather than address specific claims by Jack, of which there are many if you’ve read through the tag he referenced, you just… disagree.
And then deflect and speak in generalities.
“I disagree” is not acceptable commentary here. You’re running out of chances to prove you are worthy. You’ve read all of the 2016 Post Election Ethics Train Wreck posts? You’re lying. It’s not a one day or even a one week task. Disagree with what, all of them? On what basis? What “right wing media”? There’s Fox news and websites, against ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, NPR, PBS, and CNN. What’s “fairly accurate”? The mainstream media bolstered by Big Tech withheld the Hunter Biden laptop story until after the election. I reported on how the New York Times overstated the pandemic data to frighten the public. Since the public can only vote on what it it knows or thinks it knows, how can you argue that burying stories, hyping others and flat-out biased reporting doesn’t have a major impact on voting?
Anyone lazy and naive enough to only follow right-wing media will of course be influenced (and misinformed), but Fox is the lone dissenter with a state-supporting media that is much larger and more pervasive—and state-supporting media is exactly what the Founders feared.
And finally: the news media slanting and manipulating the news and how it’s reported to support their own partisan preferences is just as unethical regardless of how “big of an impact” it has. If you haven’t absorbed that basic ethical analysis principle, then you haven’t been paying attention.
Again, much more of these vague “I disagree” comments and you will trigger the “Wasting our time” verdict. I’m not keeping score here—note that I don’t allow likes and dislikes. Provide substance, or be quiet.
Do you know anything about what actually impacts voting behavior?
I understand the mainstream media isn’t fair and is biased. But again, you’re overstating the importance of that.
And what’s the impact the right wing media has on voting behavior? Or the impact Trump has by constantly spreading falsehoods every day? It’s not zero.
And you don’t need to answer this, these are just something to think about…if the mainstream media is so powerful, how did Trump win? How is he neck to neck with Harris? How did you know how awful Hillary is? Your analysis doesn’t make any sense. Because most people aren’t swayed by the media in the first place.
These are the top 5 things that ACTUALLY impact voting behavior: party identity, current economic conditions, key issues, characteristics and charisma (see Trump), and demographics
All anyone has to do is watch one of Trump’s or Kamala’s speeches on YouTube to realize you should or shouldn’t vote for them.
Feel free to read this for more info;
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/12/9/469
DD
Denver Dave, while I’m not necessarily going to dispute your “top 5”, I am disappointed in your link. If you were intending that paper to support your “top 5,” it in itself is woefully inadequate.
The paper that DD links to is a survey of a large number of other papers on what influences voters. It describes a wide variety of factors that influence voters, breaking them down into three main categories: individual level factors (income, education, gender, age, political ideology, personality traits, emotional equality, climate change concerns, and healthcare experiences); socio-cultural factors (social identity, ethnicity and race, religion, media influence, and social networks); and political factors (party identification, candidate characteristics, policy positions, campaign strategies, and economic conditions). The one thing this paper does not do is rank these factors from most significant to least. Most factors are described as “significant” or “crucial”, but there are no numerical analyses, just references to other papers. The key conclusions the authors present is that a variety of factors influence voting, requiring a multidisciplinary approach “to understand the complexities of voting behavior.”
A key takeaway in this discussion, though, is whether or not media has an influence on elections, and this survey states, “Media influence plays a significant role in shaping individuals’ voting decisions. Research has consistently demonstrated the impact of media on political preferences and voting behavior.” Significant, again, is not a rank against other factors, but in statistical analysis significant denotes a non-negligible effect that cannot be attributed to randomness or noise. In other words, this survey continues to support what Jack has said about the problem with an unethical mainstream media, because the media (as your paper states) has a significant influence on how people vote. It doesn’t have to be more than a 1-2% sway for that to completely swing an election.
I would also point out that this survey also indicates that social networks like Facebook and Twitter also have a significant impact. This becomes the more problematic when you have news networks and social media conspiring together (as was reported by TIME magazine, on how a cabal of media, social media, and big tech “saved” the 2020 election from Trump) to suppress stories that are damaging to one candidate (such as the Hunter Biden laptop story) or are complimentary to the other (such as Trump’s Abraham Accords). Preliminary surveys after the 2020 election showed that a significant percentage of voters would have changed their votes had they known about those stores. Again, we are talking about a handful of percentage points, but the key is that is sufficient to swing an election.
You have all the makings of a great sciolist, DD. If you want to link to articles, make sure they actually say what you think they say.
True, the point of the paper is to point out there are many other things that influence voter behavior. That paper didn’t rank their importance though.
Here’s more. The wiki page is helpful too:
https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/web/pages/instructors/setups/voting.html
DD
Ryan does a nice job pointing out the weakness of you argument: if you’re going to appeal to authority, you should probably make sure the authority supports your position. Pro tip. Also:
1. Do you know anything about what actually impacts voting behavior? Oh, you’d be amazed what I know. And if you read even a portion of what I’ve written about Presidential history, you would discover that I have the background of having studied and analyzed the dynamics of every Presidential election since Andrew Jackson defeated John Adams.
2. Repeating the mantra about Trump’s falsehoods marks you as a hack. I went through the exercise of examining every “lie” in the Post data base. 75% per cent of Trump’s “lies” aren’t lies, and his pattern of lying is no more pronounced than those of the Clintons, Biden, Obama and Harris…all of whom have been caught in more substantive lies than Trump. No, I don’t regard saying X is the “best” when it isn’t is a substantive lie. Lying about what’s in your health care bill to fool the public into supporting it is….and is more destructive than hundreds of Trump’s alleged “daily lies” combined.
3. Trump won in 2016 because the news media did NOT bury Hillary Clinton’s deliberate violation of State Department rules and arguably laws with her “secret server” conduct and attempted cover-up. She was and is dislikable, and a lot of the media didn’t like her. They, like the Democrats, didn’t take Trump as a real threat to win, and when the did, it was so grotesque that a lot of independents, like me, decided that there was a problem. Note the the Train Wreck is called “The 2016 Election Ethics Train Wreck”? The news media didn’t go full throttle to “Get Trump” until he was elected.
4. For the record, those “TOP FIVE” are dubious: I would also add incumbent status and peer group pressure and prefences, as well a popular culture indoctrination, which has become worse by the decade (See late night TV and SNL.)
That paper was just showing how there are many other aspects that affect voter behavior.
It’s fairly well known that the three most influential factors affecting voter decisions in our presidential elections are party identification, economic conditions, and key issues.
Feel free to read this or the wiki page:
https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/web/pages/instructors/setups/voting.html
I’m not getting into a pissing contest with you about Trump’s falsehoods.
DD
I don’t do pissing contests. I prove my points, you just keep repeating what you’ve been programmed to believe. See, as an ethicist and a lawyer, I have to know what lies are. You obviously don’t. If you wanted to, you could learn something here.
This is one anecdotal piece of evidence I have to the contrary:
A good friend of ours – a very conservative elderly man in his mid-nineties – recently decided to, for one week, turn off all “conservative” media sources and listen to only those with a liberal bent.
A week later he reported back, “Wow, they almost made me hate President Trump. There wasn’t a single positive thing said or written about him in that week.”
The media is a powerful tool in this country. And it just dawned on me as I type this…the problem with them? CNN, CNBC…all the liberal media sites (maybe even Fox as well)?
They have all ceased to be media platforms and have morphed into social-media platforms. Just like on Facebook or MySpace (when it was a thing) or Twitter or any of them, you don’t to present what you don’t want others to see. You don’t have to present the truth. You can choose to dole out only the facts you want your viewers to have. You can make up facts about you whenever you want. You can set your narrative by the content you release. A few people might know you differently – the real you – but you simply block that information from getting anywhere near to what you publish.
That’s today’s media. They don’t present what they don’t want you to see. They choose to dole out facts they want their viewers to have. They make up facts whenever they want. They set the narrative by the content they release. And they block any information that deflects from the desired narrative.
Today’s media has nothing to do with truth and actual news. It’s just an extension of social media.
I’ve often labeled social media as “anti-social media,” and I think it’s more true, given what I’ve just discovered about the news media.
This is very telling.
https://mtracey.medium.com/the-most-predictable-election-fraud-backlash-ever-4187ba31d430
Of course what happened subsequently was that even years after Trump had safely taken power, the corporate media’s top luminaries continuously used the phrase “hacked the election” to describe the purported actions of Russia on behalf of Trump in 2016. Supermajorities of Democratic voters came to believe not just that Russia “interfered” in the election, but directly installed Trump into power by tampering with voting machines. Now, though, journalists who fostered these blinkered beliefs will feign incredulity that their conduct could have contributed to widespread “doubt” as to the “legitimacy” of that election. And they’ll be aghast at any suggestion that this was inevitably going to generate yet another crazed anti-legitimization initiative in 2020.
The left-wing media has a bigger audience largely due to gaining that audience due to their reputation of political neutrality (whether or not deserved in the past)
He has personally alienated so many voters by his manner, careless rhetoric and unapologetic conduct that they would vote for anyone but him, almost literally.
Whom has he alienated though?
https://ethicsalarms.com/2024/09/19/the-teamsters-saving-democracy-by-being-undemocratic/
The September telephone poll showed 58% of Teamsters members supporting Republican candidate Donald Trump, and 31% said they support Harris.
This is far more astonishing than too close to call. (Teamsters members overwhelmingly voted for FJB in 2020)
How is he gaining ground among solidly-Democratic constituencies if he is so alienating?