The democratic process of electing leaders tends to throw shocking surprises if news and information networks are cut off from the ground realities and the unsavory outcome of the electoral system comes as a rude awakening for many.
The results of the 2024 elections in the United States highlight a significant gap between the situation on the ground versus the information churned out by the mainstream liberal media along with the misplaced predictions by the political pundits.
Renowned as a political Nostradamus, American historian Allan Lichtman has correctly predicted the outcome of all the recent US presidential elections since 1984 barring two out of the 11 election cycles.
Lichtman, along with Russian geophysicist Vladimir Keilis-Borok, developed a prediction system in 1981 called The Keys to the White House. The system consists of “13 keys” or a checklist of 13 points that uses “True” and “False” as statements. Briefly put, if five or less statements are false, the nominee of the incumbent party emerges victorious, however, when six or more statements are false, the nominee of the challenger party takes the White House.
The Keys model turned out to be wrong in 2000, when Democratic party’s Al Gore lost, and George W. Bush of Republican party emerged a winner. To be fair to the Lichtman-Keilis-Borok model, the Al Gore-Bush episode continues to be contentious till date. So, one can let that one slide.
However, in 2024 the “Keys” model predicted victory for Kamala Harris. It seems the levers of the ground reality lock were so complicated that the keys failed to even touch the tip of levers – save moving them. Lichtman admitted through a social media post that he was wrong and will reconsider changing his “Keys”.
Let’s focus on the two elephants in the room – mainstream media and the Dems whose mascot is a donkey or jackass.
The objective news is dead when it comes to geo-politics. We live in the era of opinionated “news”. The 2024 US elections, Israel-Palestine conflict, Russia-Ukraine war or the civil strife in Sudan are a few examples where public seek information on traditional news media or digital/social media, but what the audience get is opinion.
Survey firm YouGov conducted a study about the most and least trusted news sources in the United States. In 2024, The Weather Channel emerged as the most trusted news source. Isn’t this a tight slap of reality check on the so-called mainstream news media.
Surveyed in May 2024, the Democrats’ level of trust was more than 50% in ABC (58%), The New York Times (53%), CNN (54%) and NBC (58%), while for Republicans the level of trust was ABC (-18%), The New York Times (-22%), CNN (-41%) and NBC (-23).
The Republicans’ level of trust was highest for Fox Business Channel (30%), followed by Fox News (28%) and Newsmax (21%), and for Democrats the level of trust was for Fox Business Channel (-21%), Fox News (-34%) and Newsmax (-18%).
Interestingly, Qatar-owned Aljazeera’s level of trust among Democrats is +8%, while for Republicans it is -29%. Almost 100-year-old American tabloid National Enquirer is neither trusted by Republicans (-48%) nor by Democrats (-37%), according to the YouGov survey.
Digital media has skewed public opinion powered by dumb algorithms that do not recognize or promote diversity of thought. However, the traditional news media – newspapers (print and digital) along with TV news networks – is no different. While media always projected owners’ ideology and political bend toward the right or the left, gradually the objectivity of news took a severe beating with news platforms becoming increasingly opinionated.
From podcast and TV news shows to old-school newspapers, the opinionated coverage has resulted in polarized public opinion where respect for difference of opinions is a cause of deep divisions rather than the celebration of diversity. Opinionated media is the root cause for these divisions.
What you are reading now is an opinion, however, it is categorized as one.
Going back to the Democrats party to understand the outcome of the US 2024 elections, the words of newly re-elected Vermont senator Bernie Sanders capture one of the reasons behind Dems biting the dust. In a statement, Sanders said that the [Trump’s] victory should come as no great surprise that Democratic Party, which abandoned working-class people, would find that the working -class has abandoned them.
“While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change,” he said, according to a statement. However, former House speaker and a powerful Democrat Nancy Pelosi defied Bernie’s view saying that she does “not respect” his remarks. It’s to be noted that Bernie Sanders is aligned with Democrat Party, but he is elected as an independent from Vermont state.
So, what went wrong? The Democratic Party, its allies and opposition along with poll analysts have laid out several reasons for the defeat of the Blues in media since November 7. One issue that has not been talked about a lot is the rift between Joe Biden’s White House team and Kamala Harris’s team – brewing since the second year of Biden’s presidency.
Party insiders blame the rift between the teams of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for the lackluster campaign and the abysmal defeat. The rifts became public on several occasions as recently as during election week.
Per the grapevine in the power corridors of Washington D.C., President Biden’s team started working toward re-election as early as mid-2021. As part of the re-election efforts, Biden’s team made a deliberate effort to keep Vice President Kamala Harris on the sidelines.
Despite Trump’s dominant personality as witnessed during his first term, Mike Pence was never away from the public eye. Vice President Pence was out there attending meetings, announcing initiatives and appearing in media, and was seen standing next to President Trump at all major events.
During Biden’s presidency, this was heard several times during public discourse: Where is Kamala? And when Biden dropped out of the race after the terrible first debate with Donald Trump in June 2024, Harris was announced as a replacement, of course, without going through the grilling process of the primaries. People wondered: Kamala Harris, who?
Despite several embarrassing incidents during Biden’s public appearance in the past four years, his team supported by Democrat Party heavyweights keep pushing Biden while sidelining Harris, but all changed after the presidential debate in June.
Democrats were generally tight-lipped, but star Democrat supporter and Hollywood star George Clooney wrote an essay in The New York Times asking President Joe Biden to stepdown from the re-election bid.
Referring to gala event in Los Angeles attended by Biden in June, Clooney wrote in July: “It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe ‘big F-ing deal’ Biden of 2010.” After Clooney’s essay, Biden health became a primetime topic and then everyone started questioning Biden’s age and his re-election big.
When Harris’s announcement came along, it was too little [her lack of performance as the VP and being always on the sidelines] and too late with just over 100 days left for campaigning.
In the coming months, the Democratic party needs to introspect and see how infighting among the teams of its top party members might have cost them the latest election. Given the attitude of Nancy Pelosi and her reaction to Bernie Sanders’ comment, it is highly unlikely that pragmatism would prevail over the inflated euphoria of liberal rationalism.
In coming days, expect further polarization of American people as liberal media will continue to treat Donald Trump as a pariah despite winning the popular vote.
The author is a senior journalist based in Toronto, Canada, and is also the Executive Editor and Chief Growth Strategy Officer of the UAE-headquartered content management and creation firm Special Edition.
The views and opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of TRENDS.
X: @AtiqueNaqvi