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So... How much of a role do you think the media played in Dump's victory?

Safe-Keeper

My avatar is not a Drumpf hat
Safe-Keeper
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So Dump won with a large enough margin that we can't blame petty little things like Biden calling them garbage (I know he didn't, but the Dump supporters thought he did, and that's what matters in the big picture). But I wonder how much of a role MSM coverage played.

Both in the US and here in Norway, it seems the media made a huge deal out of Democratic shortcomings, not the least of it Biden's health after that debate, while treating Dump and the GOP with kiddie gloves. I expected both the SCOTUS decision and especially Project 2025 to be major news, but no, hardly a mention, and then only in passing. Dump could be as incoherent as Biden during rallies or much worse --again, barely a mention, if any.

Now that Dump won by a landslide, is it time to ask ourselves how much of a role the biased media coverage played, and why the press chose to cover the election the way they did? Did they make the same mistake as in 2016, when they didnt' take Dump seriously until it was too late? Seems strange with polling hovering at around 50% for the longest time. It's especially baffling when it's media that demonstrably did not like or support Dump in the first place --yet they basically were on his side all the way until the election. People will say it was all about ratings, but I can't quite get that to make sense either.
 
Certain networks may "hate" him, but he's great for ratings. I followed his first term with a combination of mild amusement and puzzlement. This time it will be nothing but horror. I had hoped never to have to hear that name or see that smug ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ face again. Now I can only hope for "natural causes" or the 25th Amendment.
 
alfaniner said:
Now I can only hope for "natural causes" or the 25th Amendment.
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Nah. It's not just him, it's the whole GOP. If anything, JD Vance would probably be worse.
Also, I can imagine his handlers using him as a puppet, the way Cheney and Rumsfeld did with Bush back in the day. Or, heck, just tell him he can take time off and golf, watch TV, and eat hamberders, and they'll take care of all the boring work stuff.
 
It's not necessary to assign a percentage of the fault to The Media.
Fact is that the major networks have long ceased to be Journalists and instead decided to be Content Creators to deliver customers to advertisers.

There is great Media out there, but all the big Outlets are dangerous. self-serving idiots who all exist in a single bubble with no sense of or contact to reality.
 
Who knows ? We don't have a "control" election where the media behaved differently.

If I had to pick three policies (or more accurately slogans) that seem to have worked with voters they are:

"Controlling Immigration"
"Fixing the Economy"
"Protecting babies"

The media certainly has been important in spreading the message that immigration (both illegal and legal) is the cause of many of the US's ills. Enough people have been convinced that it's a problem that the Democrats are making worse. They also like the simplicity of the Republican message, even if there's no workable policies behind it

Regarding the economy, it doesn't matter that it's growing and that most people are better off, if they don't feel better off then they're going to blame the current government. The Republicans say they'll fix it and once again the lack of policies is a feature, not a bug

Finally there seems to be more people who will vote based on the single issue of banning abortion than there are to protect a woman's right to choose.
 
The Don said:
Who knows ? We don't have a "control" election where the media behaved differently.
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True. Conversely, we have past elections, but they fail as controls because the candidates and the media behaved differently. However, the word I keep hearing with respect to Donald Trump is "sanwashing." This is a new word to me this election. The media seems to have summarized Trump's completely bonkers statements and incoherent ramblings in a way that made them sound topical, reasonable, and—well—sane. Therefore the criticism against the media is that they abetted Trump's victory by cleaning up his performance rather than scrutinizing and challenging it.
 
The Don said:
"Controlling Immigration"
"Fixing the Economy"
"Protecting babies"
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The media also repeated their mistake from 2016 in that they didn't pick Dump's paper-thin excuses for policies apart. Harris was hounded for not having clear enough policies, but Dump got away with only silly slogans --and even sabotaging the causes he pretended to be campaigning on, such as when he stopped aid to the border twice, without anyone calling him out.
 
Safe-Keeper said:
The media also repeated their mistake from 2016 in that they didn't pick Dump's paper-thin excuses for policies apart. Harris was hounded for not having clear enough policies, but Dump got away with only silly slogans --and even sabotaging the causes he pretended to be campaigning on, such as when he stopped aid to the border twice, without anyone calling him out.
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People don't want policies, they're hard to understand, complicated and may not work.

Slogans are easy to understand and simple.
 
Trump is a media creation. He's good for ratings and clicks and views; the media trumpsplained and sanewashed his ditherings and here we are. Here's something from the media that's a little too little and a little too late.

A presidential campaign defined by personal hatreds, threats of political violence and two foiled assassination attempts ended on Tuesday in a mostly orderly election. No matter what the results ultimately show, Americans’ commitment to a fair and peaceful vote is a thumb in the eye to authoritarians both at home and abroad.

That’s about all the joy Democrats (and lovers of democracy) will find in yesterday’s election results. The fleeting optimism that washed over the party after Ann Selzer’s storied Iowa poll showed Kamala Harris unexpectedly leading Donald Trump by 3 points has crashed back to reality. In its place is the realization that democracy’s worst-case scenario is unfolding in real time.


Our democratic institutions are not ready for what comes next. Neither are the American people.

The Trump who will walk into the White House on Jan. 20 is a man steeped in unsettled vendettas, who came within a hair’s breadth of a string of federal felony convictions that he is now empowered to wipe away with a self-pardon — as if those offenses and so many others had never even happened. Trump will see his priorities as he has always seen them: party over country and self over all.
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A man with 34 felony convictions can’t win the presidency in a nation where trust in institutions is high. It’s only in a culture where the justice system has long since lost its legitimacy that a man with such a thick criminal record as Trump glides by relatively unremarked. That one man can so effortlessly game American institutions to his own benefit says as much about the decrepit state of America’s institutions as it does about the moral decrepitude of the crook.
Trump is now set to return to the White House, and he’s made no secret of his lofty goals for a second term: gutting the civil service, destroying the independence of the Justice Department and seeking political and legal revenge on his lengthy list of personal enemies. Judging by yesterday’s election returns, a majority of Americans are eager to see Trump do exactly that.

The former and future president now inherits a nation deeply weakened by his own toxic brand of politics. Our divided and exhausted nation will now need to fend off the constant extralegal whims of a president who is also, thanks to the Supreme Court, functionally immune from prosecution for any act he undertakes. If Trump’s first term was any indication, we won’t need to wait long for our next constitutional crisis.
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Right leaning media dominates social media, and Trump took advantage of that. No wonder his support among young men was high, let alone men in general. I think social media is great for fearmongering as well. About men's rights being taken away, an LGBT takeover, etc.

Honestly I preferred a male candidate for the Dems and they shouldn't have waited until summer to push Biden out.
 
I've seen some grumbling on TwiX about celebrities having pushed for a replacement for Biden. I honestly expect that Biden would have done much worse than Harris. But the change came far too late.
 
They pushed the idea that he was a brilliant business big brain. Even when they reported on his failed marriages and businesses, they still made sure he looked good. They let him put his name on a game show where he got to play "big successful businessman" for even more people. and they elevated him into politics several times, most notably when he was pushing the racist birther conspiracy. They still give every moronic stunt he pulls tons of free press. He's graded on a curve so it looks like he actually belongs on the same stage as his opponents.
 
It's laughable to suggest the legacy media was biased in favor of Trump; especially as it tried to remake Harris into this impeccable candidate after she had been called the worst vice-president in history.
 
They played a part but it is as Truasti says, laughable to say the media is biased for trump, except for FOX news and some podcasters. The old school media was not.
What they did do was be complicit in trying to cover up the fact that Biden was senile for more or less a year after the American public had figure it out. That set Harris and the Dems generally up for failure. There is no good answer she can give to the question, "When did you realize Biden should go?" Part of this is Biden and his teams fault, he said he'd go and he didn't but he should have before the primaries. That results in the Dems eventually nominate the person that dropped out of the 2020 race before the primaries even started.

The press also made a habit of taking Trumps generally already terrible statements out of context to make it seem like they were worse than they actually were. Making it seem like trump said Liz Cheney should be put in front of a firing squad, him saying there'd be a blood bath but not mentioning that he meant for US automakers, the good people on both sides but omitting he'd condemned the far right ralliers in the same speech. Folks just stopped listening or believing the media.

Don't get me wrong, the GOP nominated it and half the country voted for him. So, its not like the media or Dems are the primarily at fault. It's just they've spent 10 years trying to convince America he's basically Hitler and he's only gotten more popular. I suppose a lot of you think that means half of Americans would vote for Hitler too. I think that's as crazy as voting for Trump. Personally, I think you all should have been comparing him to Hugo Chavez not Hitler. I think its a more apt comparison, they were/are both populist authoritarian demagogues.
 
Trausti said:
It's laughable to suggest the legacy media was biased in favor of Trump; especially as it tried to remake Harris into this impeccable candidate
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Do you mean other than constantly banging the drum that she never spoke about policies and nonsense like that? Or other than holding her to an infinitely higher standard than the Orange Weakling?
Trausti said:
after she had been called the worst vice-president in history.
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by whom? At worst, she was ineffectual. Mainly because the office itself has just 2 official responsibilities. She performed one very well and never had to perform the other.

I can't imagine how that puts her job performance in the same league as say, Dick Cheney, Andrew Johnson, or Spiro Agnew
 
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