US election 2020: Donald Trump’s strong showing leave elites out in the cold

Donald Trump’s strong showing proves that the chattering classes still don’t get it.

Despite four years of Democrats and journalists whipping up a frenzy of disgust and disdain against Donald Trump, almost half of the country prefers his priorities over the Democrat alternative. Picture: AFP

The fact so many political players, academics, journalists, pollsters and commentators got the US election so wildly wrong highlights the schism in American society that helped drive Donald Trump to power in the first place.

The fact he has gone so close to winning shows the political/media class has failed to comprehend Trump’s lessons, remaining detached from mainstream values.

If there is a single legacy in Trump’s presidency — lower taxes, stronger borders, strength on China and a new dynamic in the Middle East would be in the mix — it is probably the way he has exposed this fault line. The Democrats and other left-of-centre parties in liberal democracies struggle to understand this, and the challenge for the Republicans beyond Trump is to find a more conventional posture and candidate without losing this focus (Nikki Haley looks a likely prospect for 2024).

It is wryly amusing for this US election result to play out just when a couple of embittered former Australian prime ministers, egged on by green-left media and publicly funded commentators, are pushing for a royal commission into News Corp in Australia. Because without News Corp media, perhaps no one in Australia, nor most voters in the US, would have been aware of the issues and reasons why Trump was always going to perform well in a battle that was bound to be close and was always likely to end in controversy and legal challenges around mail-in voting.

Most media have censored their coverage, failing to report the issues and episodes driving voting trends; hence they humiliated themselves with incorrect calls.

But you do not hear contrition. Instead they console and excuse each other by pointing at the ­pollsters and claiming everyone got it wrong.

But many did not get it wrong, and those who have reported and analysed the reality have long been shouted down in the public square. This is the cancel culture of media coverage and political ­debate.

When Trump became infected by coronavirus, I observed on television that this would likely help his political case on the virus and the ABC’s Jonathan Green tweeted this showed I inhabited a “bubble of delusion”. The left are not interested in debating viewpoints but denouncing them; when we see how Trump campaigned on COVID compared to Joe Biden, it is clear who might be deluded.

Early this week, after I reported there was surge for Trump — citing public opinion polls, political briefings and campaign tactics — Channel 10 political reporter (and The Weekend Australian columnist) Peter van Onselen referred to the issue on Twitter.

“Lots of so-called conservative commentators claiming there’s a late surge to Trump,” he tweeted.

“If wishing it makes it happen maybe they’re right. Haven’t seen any data to support the claims. I guess we’ll find out if they were right soon enough.”

This denial is self-perpetuating. There is much more to all this than media wars and a dose of “I told you so”. (Although, let us be frank, who doesn’t enjoy a bit of that?) This gulf in public debate, accentuated by social media, is the driver in our increasingly polarised politics — participants are yelling into their own echo chambers instead of a contested public square.

Still, there are two important points to make about van Onselen: his take demonstrates some of the plurality that exists in News Corp media; and he also recognised how, even if Biden takes the White House, the woke have failed.

“I wanted America to send a message to the world Trump was an aberration,” he tweeted, “its greatness therefore restored. The vile pig crushed. If Biden wins or loses now, that hasn’t happen(ed). So very sad … Like Rome it has ­fallen.”

It is most likely now that Biden will be inaugurated in January but he will have snuck into office in the most unconvincing way possible. Picture: AFP

We heard a similar confession on election night from author, activist, CNN commentator and former Obama staffer Van Jones. “I think a lot of Democrats are hurting tonight; I think there’s a lot of hurt out there. There’s a moral victory and there’s a political victory, they’re not the same thing,” Jones said. “They wanted a moral victory tonight — we wanted to see a repudiation of this direction for the country, and the fact that this is so close, it hurts.”

His analysis is correct but the interpretation the left usually draws from these realities is what leads them stray. They discern a result showing half the nation is racist, sexist or deplorable, eagerly clinging to a bigoted and divisive President.

Rather, this shows that whatever people think of Trump, his policy agenda resonates with a majority of the population in large swathes of the nation. We are talking about an unabashed focus on law and order, lower taxes, economic growth, cheap energy, opportunities for minorities, strong borders, bilateral foreign policy strength, and a pragmatic approach, rather than a lockdown focus on pandemic management.

This is hardly a divisive or repugnant agenda. These issues and trends have been largely ignored by dominant sections of the media and therefore the visible part of the political debate. But voters notice.

These observations are more important than just pointing out how the media keeps getting this wrong; the distortion of the political debate towards the green left shapes political outcomes, it drags left-of-centre parties off course.

Even if the Democrats rustle enough bags of mail-in votes to win the White House, they have seen their House majority reduced and they have failed to win the Senate. The Republicans have had a strong showing in trying times.

The mainstream media’s political analysis track record is appalling. They wrote Trump off in 2016; hyperventilated over the Russian collusion delusion (remember the ABC spent your money on a three-part series calling it The Story of the Century); declared the UK’s Brexit referendum would fail; insisted Bill Shorten would become prime minister; and now they have ­embarrassed themselves again, heralding a “blue wave” landslide for Joe Biden.

Instead, Trump has resonated in those parts of middle America where he needed to, and the Democrats have had to rely on their highly contentions mail-in strategy, using new electoral rules brought in months before the election to claw back victories in crucial battleground states, days after polling day. It is most likely now that Biden will be inaugurated in January but he will have snuck into office in the most unconvincing way possible.

Biden is a deeply unimpressive, if orthodox, candidate whose agenda has not been enthusiastically embraced (his campaign focused instead on demonising Trump). Despite four years of Democrats and journalists whipping up a frenzy of disgust and disdain against the President, almost half of the country prefers his priorities over the Democrat alternative, notwithstanding a historic pandemic challenge.

We can see more clearly now how Trump was done in by the pandemic. Not only did it destroy his economic revival, it revealed how his volatile rhetoric can have real world consequences, and it provided the impetus and cover for the Democrat’s decisive mail-in strategy.

Most importantly, the election has proved mainstream voters refuse to be led by the nose by the political and media establishment. They will make up their own minds according to their own values, thank you very much.

It is the inconsistency and hypocrisy that must make voters wince or laugh. Take, for example, the intense fact-checking focus on Trump that turns any quip or exaggeration into a “lie” and adds it to a running tally. We might well applaud such scrutiny, but it is not applied both sides of the aisle.

The same journalists who highlight Trump “lies” accept and repeat untruths from Biden who repeatedly claimed Trump banned all Muslim immigration and denounced fallen World War II soldiers as losers — an unsourced story, denied on the record by people who were there, including former security adviser and now Trump critic John Bolton.

Demonstrators protest the day after the election, calling for a fair vote count, near the US Capitol. Picture: AFP

They get away with this hypocrisy and jaundice because it is a closed shop — they do not call each other out. But those pesky voters see through it, so it can become self-defeating.

If the journalists who have repeatedly been so wrong were politicians, they would have been voted out time and again; if they were company directors, they would be answering to the shareholders and regulators; if they were bookies, they would be broke. But they carry on, refuse to learn, and blame voters instead.

This points to the core of their problem. They do not understand mainstream values because they consider themselves morally and intellectually superior to their fellow citizens.

Caught up in their own sanctimony, they are deaf and blind to the clues around them. They are insulated, talking and listening only to each other, impressing their colleagues in the political/media class, and preening among their own cohort while their audiences see right through them. White House correspondent for Fox News Radio Jon Decker correctly predicted a tight contest and told me afterwards why so many of his competitors got it wrong. “I think that they sort of follow each other on Twitter and they see what everybody else is saying,” he said, “and they think it is going to be a landslide as a result.”

The reason Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull are so fixated on News Corp is because across its vast array of publications and platforms, it employs hundreds of people who are in touch with their audiences. In publications like this, on Sky News, in The Daily Telegraph, New York Post and on Fox News, hypocrisy is exposed from either side, the immunity granted by most journalists to the green left is not observed, and the everyday concerns of working families are taken seriously.

If individuals or platforms have a particular standpoint, they are frank about it rather than offering a cynical facade of objectivity. It is an adult approach.

Rudd, Turnbull and their many media barrackers insist that their views must prevail on radical ­climate policies, grand spending programs, substantial changes to our constitutional arrangements or symbolic gestures on social issues. And they have so much disdain for mainstream voters that when such policies are rejected at the ballot box, they blame News Corp for polluting the minds of people they must presume to be malleable fools.

Instead of listening to voters, these people sneer at them. Instead of responding to their concerns, they want to shut down or nobble the media that gives voice to them. If there were to be a royal commission into media performance, it is clear which arms would fare worst on misinterpreting the world around them.

Armed by his direct digital media conduit to the American population, Trump has audaciously tackled the media, head on. This has both exposed media flaws and highlighted how difficult it is to take them on.