The MSM Will Beat You to Your Knees, and Keep You There, Permanently, If You Let It
Let’s talk about my friend, Cameron. Cameron isn’t his real name. I call him Cameron, after the character from "Ferris Bueller’s Day Off." You know, this guy. Cameron is a good, conservative Republican. However, he is quite convinced that Donald Trump is DOOMED, DOOMED. And the rest of the GOP? They are DOOMED as well. Why? Because the MSM constantly and relentlessly tells him this is so.
All of us know Republicans like Cameron.
Cameron does not care for my optimism, however grounded in fact it is. As all 10 of my regular readers know, I believe that Donald Trump has the inside track to winning the 2024 election. I believe this, not because I am a constant Republican booster, or a believer that Trump is some sort of a perfect, godlike candidate. Instead, I know this because I understand politics, have both experience and education on the topic, know lots of (sometimes semi-useful) political historical facts, and have been trying to objectively assess Presidential races since 1988.
To sum up my case, first, l look at the RCP average – today, it has Kamala Harris up 1.9 percentage points. Second, I look at President Joe Biden’s job approval rating – still stuck in the low 40’s. Third, I pay attention to the state of the nation. As I have said, again and again, the economy is bad, especially inflation; the border is open and it has led to increasing crime; and the weakness of the Biden administration in foreign policy has resulted in chaos throughout the world, and has also led to antisemitic rioting in the U.S. None of this is a positive for the sitting vice president’s campaign.
Fourth, I recognize that Kamala Harris, like Donald Trump, is a flawed candidate. She is very left-wing on the issues, and sort of an empty suit. (Her ties to Biden, her left-wing record, and her status as an empty suit are why I suggested the Democrats choose Governor Newsom or another Democrat instead of her.) And we can see that her response to her left-wing record and lack of gravitas has been to (supposedly) repudiate her prior record, and to avoid interviews, where she might be confronted about that record. (This has been noticed by the public.)
Fifth, I remember recent political history about Trump, and I account for it, in my calculations. In 2016, and 2020, Donald Trump ran for President. Trump won the first race, but lost the second. But both times, the polling heavily underestimated him. Here is a handy chart, I created from this document:
Actual Results – Democrat Edge | Final Democrat average polling edge – Nate Silver | Miss | Final Democrat average polling edge - RCP | Miss | |
2016 Race | 2.1% | 3.9% | 1.8% | 3.2% | 1.1% |
2020 Race | 4.5% | 8.4% | 3.9% | 7.2% | 2.7% |
Based on what happened twice before, I assume a) that the RCP average is far more useful than Nate Silver’s average (so, can people stop obsessing about this hairless wonder?); and b) that in 2024, Trump will still be underestimated by some amount in the RCP.
Now, some observers claim that the pollsters have taken into account their error from the two earlier races, and are now producing polling results error-free. But there is no real evidence of this, and it is also strongly against human nature for us to believe that they have done so. After all, how credible is it that Democrat-leaning pollsters, who in most cases, absolutely hate Donald Trump – they believe their Party’s propaganda – would ever do anything that might not assist their own party, and ever give the Trump Devil any bragging rights?
In fact, I believe the polling itself demonstrates this bias. There are essentially two groupings of polls in the RCP. On the one hand is Atlas, Marist, Rasmussen, and Siena, etc., which show the race in a statistical dead heat. On the other hand, there are ABC News, Data for Progress, Morning Consult, etc., which show Harris ahead by quite a bit. These two groupings can’t both be right. Luckily, RCP offers the ability to compare track records, which shows that the former group has a better polling record. And which means the race is very close in the national polling.
This also makes more sense, logically, since the economy and other issues are so bad, and Trump does have an excellent record to run on in comparison to Harris’. So, I believe it is very likely that by including the latter group in its polling average, the RCP average will again produce some underestimation of Trump’s support.
Sixth, I remember that in both 2016 and 2020, Trump had a large electoral advantage, because he ran stronger in the battleground states than he did in the nation at large. In 2020, he lost the popular vote by a 51 percent to 47 percent (4-point) margin, but only barely lost the states in the electoral college. Specifically, Trump very narrowly lost AZ, GA, MI, PA, and WI. For this reason, I frequently state that Harris needs to be at least 3 percentage points up in the RCP average to have a good chance to win the electoral college. And indeed, when we look at the RCP averages for the states, we find that Trump does perform better in the battleground states than he does in the nation as a whole.
All this means that I strongly believe that Donald Trump has the heavy edge in the 2024 presidential race.
Cameron doesn’t like my logic, or my argument. He complains that Trump is undisciplined. (Very true, but priced in at this point.) He thought that the constant lawfare against Trump would greatly harm him. (It didn’t.) He thinks that the Trump campaign advertisements are not effective. (There is very little evidence of that. I have seen the Pennsylvania ads, and they attack Harris by tying her to Biden’s record, and bash her for her left-wing positions and embarrassing public statements.) He thinks Trump lost the (likely) sole debate. (I disagree – see my column.)
But when we debate, it quickly becomes clear that Cameron’s depression, leading to panic, is largely because he is too focused on listening to the conventional wisdom (CW) that is propounded by the mainstream media (MSM). This CW is always Democrat-favoring. For example, the MSM pushes certain polls over others. Rasmussen and Trafalgar are often discredited as “Republican biased,” while ABC News, Morning Consult, and Quinnipiac are depicted as totally objective. Meanwhile, Quinnipiac has Harris up 5 in Pennsylvania, a result simply not credible based on other polling, and based on statements made by the political professionals in both parties.
The MSM always wants the CW to reflect the idea that the Democrats are ahead, or – at the very least – extremely competitive, regardless of the truth of the matter. So, they provide people with plenty of “fake news” that might inspire hope with many Democrats and despair with many Republicans. And if a Republican is not knowledgeable about the true facts, and the MSM propaganda disguised as CW, they might begin to despair, or even panic. And if they panic, this could cause that Republican to counsel quick changes to the Trump campaign strategy and tactics, which could lead to strategic and tactical mistakes.
Like Cameron counsels now.
I think it is important to objectively focus on the real facts, and be cognizant of the biased “fake news” coming from the other side. In other words, don’t be like Cameron.
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