During the run-up to the vote for the Brexit and also for Trump\u2019s presidential victory it was consistently the case that all the establishment news sources declared emphatically that victory for the progressive position was a foregone conclusion. In fact, these pronouncements were almost always attended by snarky jibes at anyone who even hinted at an alternative outcome. And of course, the further to the moonbat-left you ventured, the more manic these pronouncements became. Especially memorable were the efforts by Stephen Colbert, Rachel Maddow and John Oliver.
\nAfter the elections, these same sources were a study in shock and astonishment. Immediately blame was cast at the polls. How could they have been so wrong? This was followed by the pollsters pointing to the closeness of the numbers for both sides and the accuracy the polls actually represented. And this brings us back to the current situation. Democrats want to know how the supreme confidence that the media outlets had in their sides\u2019 victories was so wrong.
\nSo the latest analysis that I read today was an article by pollster Nate Silver of FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, entitled \u201cThere Really Was A Liberal Media Bubble.\u201d In it he discovers that there really was echo-chamber on the media left. Shocking!
\nNow of course to normal people this sudden realization seems utterly comic. But from the point of view of his constituency it really is sort of a brave statement. They will attack him for claiming that there was any kind of error on the left. The acceptable answer is that \u201cthe Russians hacked the election.\u201d
\nWell anyway, Nate says that the problem was that the echo-chamber led the media to accept the beliefs of their own peers as representative of America in general. He lists the characteristics of a crowd that makes it representative of the larger population and shows why the media isn\u2019t a good population to use. They are:
\n1)\tDiversity of opinion.
\n2)\tIndependence.
\n3)\tDecentralization.
\n4)\t Aggregation.
\nAccording to Nate the media has aggregation but lack diversity, independence and decentralization. Very interesting. Regardless of how he\u2019s defining diversity of opinion, independence and decentralization I\u2019m pretty sure most of us don\u2019t have any trouble believing the media lack these things. So let\u2019s go along with this analysis. His point is that the inaccuracy of the media on these elections was unintended and correctable.
\nYeah, I think that\u2019s a bunch of bull.
\nI\u2019m pretty certain that a decision was made that painting the election as completely out of reach would demotivate enough Trump voters in the swing states to win the election for Hillary. Likewise, in England shaming and demotivating Brexit voters was a conscious ploy. I\u2019ll go further, I think it was also a desperate ploy. I think in both elections they knew it was slipping away from them but they kept up the best face they could in order to prevent a rout from occurring when their own voters realized that they weren\u2019t locked into victory. Apparently progressive morale is a more fragile commodity than the right-wing equivalent. Evidence for this is on display on You-Tube in the large number of post-election videos highlighting unhinged leftists wailing and gnashing their teeth convinced that the Trumpocalypse had engulfed the universe and would soon end it.
\nSo, there\u2019s my thesis. I guess someone could claim that really it was more like people whistling past the graveyard and just trying to encourage themselves by not allowing any worrisome speculation on unfortunate outcomes. I don\u2019t believe this. I think the combination of encouraging their own fragile partisans and dispiriting as many republican voters as possible was the tactic and the play.
\nAnd the test for this theory would be if Trump is able to deliver the results he ran on (the wall and deportation of illegal immigrants, reversing exportation of manufacturing jobs, restoring the middle-class) his reelection victory should be even more lopsided in the electoral college but more importantly, he will win in the popular vote too. Because as long as he keeps faith with his voters and doesn\u2019t allow the media to define his presidency, he\u2019ll prevent republican voters from losing heart and simultaneously he\u2019ll depress the hell out of the commies.
\nOh, and Nate Silver, he\u2019s full of it. He knows exactly where things stand. It\u2019s just a fig leaf.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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