When you're this wrong, you have to face the facts
Ok…after two weeks I’m ready to write again.
I will not hide the fact that this elections totally surprised me. I jokingly said that I now know how Karl Rove felt in 2012 when he freaked out on FOX News with Megyn Kelly when FOX News called Ohio for Barrack Obama instead of Mitt Romney but I think it is much more.
In 2012, there were two competing governing ideologies but it was all within the rules of political theater to which we have become accustomed. No matter who won, we could move forward and look forward to 2016 to fight the battle again.
However, the 2016 election was nothing like I have ever experienced before. This was not just a debate on ideologies but a shift in rules of decorum, a division of peoples along race, religion and economics, and the brushing aside of facts about long settled arguments. There were no penalties for calling Mexicans rapists or GOP supporters deplorables. There was no political cost for wanting to ban Muslims from entering the United States or admitting that there were different rules for people with money than those with little of it. A political leader could claim that unemployment was 42% when the actual rate was under 5% or the FBI concurred with her public truthfulness about an email problem when in fact the FBI said no such thing.
So, for any of us who follow politics with a certain level of passion, we saw this race as a break from the political normal. It was a race to the bottom and whoever was disliked the most by the American public would lose.
Boy were we wrong!
The vast majority of the American public had other measures by which they were going to judge who would best represent them in government. Both parties had candidates speaking to those people’s very concerns. People of all ages, races and religions turned out in droves to support these candidates. They packed stadiums. They came up with clever hashtags that went viral. Surrounding these candidates were voters who wanted, shouted and protested with a passion that spoke volumes. In hindsight, it was obvious. Luckily for one party, that candidate went on to win the nomination. Unluckily for the other, the politics of the establishment prevailed.
So here is where I turn on the media. Donald Trump fed the sound-bite obsessed newsrooms so much fodder that they struggled to keep up. In fact, that was their initial criticism of their short-comings in this election; how could they fully cover the inaccuracies and outlandish statements coming from Donald Trump? But if you actually listened to a whole Donald Trump speech, he actually said specific things he wanted to change about Washington. Yes, he was light on specifics but he at least brought up the points that many, many voters cared about. And if you are one of those voters who wanted hear someone talking about your concerns, then what Donald Trump was saying underneath all the hype and insults was music to their ears. It was quite clear to them that Hillary Clinton was more of the same and Donald Trump was something entirely different. Most of the media missed that.
Fast forward to today, I find it hard to watch any of the political news shows because they continue to measure Donald Trump by their outdated yardsticks. He hasn’t even done anything yet but there is plenty of criticism about the team he is building around himself.
My question to the media is how can you sit by and morally judge Donald Trump and his team when you have been wrong about everything about this election to date?
And the funny thing is, the media keep talking to the same people who were wrong all along. Seriously, it’s funny. Some talking heads even start off their analysis by saying that they have been wrong about Trump every step of the way and then proceed to say why Trump is wrong now. That’s right, the guy who beat sixteen contenders for the Republican nomination and then went on to beat a billion dollar Democratic leader supported by all the establishment of their party and a good chunk of the opposing party should stop doing what he is doing and listen to them. No, it should be the other way around.
Here is what the media should do now. Give vacation to all the highly paid political analysts they employ and bring on Mr. and Ms. J. Public and ask them what their key concerns are then turn to the elected officials and ask them how congress will deliver what the people are asking. Stop listening to the chattering media class about what the American people want and ask the American people directly.
I have friends and family on both sides of this political debate. This election brought out the passion in many of them, some of it, not so eloquent…on both sides. But rhetoric aside, the Trump supporters are not enthusiastic about Donald Trump. They have fears about what he actually will do. Can really change the Washington agenda or will he simply get assimilated?
Donald Trump deserves a chance to work with his team just like Barack Obama did in 2008. That’s not to say that Democrats should be pansies when it comes to issues surrounding families and workers and civil rights but they should listen to the voters and make sure they help deliver the change that was promised.
Between now and January 20th, 2017, I will look for more news sources closer to the regular American Joe Blow and tune out my once daily feeding of cable news, (including FOX News). I will use this time to come up with a list of what promises Donald Trump must deliver upon in order to live up to the promises his voters heard and I didn’t.
