Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 09:30 pm
There were no clever headlines Wednesday morning from the nation’s media sources. There was only shock. It is a shock previously felt in the land that once called us their colonies. Now it is being felt here. And if Trump is having a hard time finding people willing to work for his administration, Americans are having a hard time with accepting their new leader.
CNN’s Brian Stelter tweeted Wednesday morning a quote that says quite a lot about what happened Election Day:
"Ladies and gentlemen, we have just had a #Brexit election" —@SteveDoocy
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) November 9, 2016
That the words are those of useful idiot Steve Doocy of Fox & Friends does not make them less true. (And knowing that Republicans like George F. Will are also having to come to grips with a Trump presidency isn’t much consolation).
Literally, everyone is in shock this morning. Hillary Clinton could not give her concession speech. Watching the pundits last night revealed their own growing dismay as state after state fell to Trump. No doubt many will feel like Bill Maher the other day, warning,
“It’s not f*cking funny. There is a slow-moving right-wing coup going on. Media, do your fucking job! Report on it!”
Certainly, there is nothing to laugh about this morning, and people will be scratching their heads for a long time trying to figure out what, precisely, went wrong. If the media didn’t do their job, as demanded, they did a job, and it is the American people who will pay.
Rob Reiner no doubt spoke for many of us on the left when he tweeted,
I was with Al Gore the night the Supreme Count took the presidency away from him. Never thought I could be more devastated. Until now.
— Rob Reiner (@robreiner) November 9, 2016
Conventional wisdom went out the window Tuesday night. NBC News’ Mark Murray tweeted,
Everything I thought I knew about presidential races ('00, '04, '08, '12) turned out to be incorrect. The polls. The parties. Turnout.
— Mark Murray (@mmurraypolitics) November 9, 2016
Trump tapped into something that resonated with the voters. Allegations of voter intimidation aside, he got a lot of votes. Democrats expected a Clinton landslide, and clearly, many media pundits did too. Trump’s own behavior in the closing days of the election suggested he too expected the worst.
Republicans will no doubt interpret this as a mandate; they claimed to have a mandate each time Obama won too, but the fact is, Hillary Clinton did not win it by a lot, but she won the popular vote, and as John Fugelsang quipped,
“Proud to live in a country where the majority of voters did reject racism, torture & grabbing women’s genitals without consent.#TrumpProtest.”
Well…there is that.
There is some irony to be found in the fact that Trump successfully sold himself as an agent of change, channeling the same message Obama ran on in 2008 while presenting a Democrat, Hillary Clinton, as the champion of the status quo, turning our entire political world on its head.
Newsweek’s Kurt Eichenwald made a good point about the election results this morning, highlighting the fact that the Republicans are now on the hot seat:
No more blame-gaming by GOP. If economy comes roaring back, Trump was right. If we hit a global recession, he's wrong. No blaming Obama.
— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) November 9, 2016
Obviously, the reaction of the Dow Jones to Trump’s victory is not a good sign that the world’s markets have any faith in Donald Trump’s economic policies. But he won, and now we get to find out if our worst fears will be realized, and wonder just how this worst of outcomes could have come to pass.
And yes, we’re looking at you, corporate-owned mainstream media.
Photo: Twitter
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