"An Indictment Of The Political Information Complex"

We're going to read a lot about X and the demise of legacy media. Justifiable. Here are some of the additional reasons why I believe Trump won re-election.

I had actually planned a different post for the end of my Heretic Speculator “hiatus” than the one you’re about to read. Things change. Recognizing that there will be no shortage of hot takes, tantrums, and told-ya-so’s, I wanted to put something together in light of President Trump’s landslide victory yesterday. On August 16th, I called “peak Kamala” via Polymarket betting odds when her futures were trading at 53 cents (53% implied probability of victory):

This turned out to be the best market call that I’ve ever had that resulted in no monetary gain personally. Harris odds immediately headed lower and briefly hit 51% again in September. But that was the closest she ever got to 53% and the drip down commenced shortly after:

Obviously, President Donald J. Trump won last night. Which was an outcome I hadn’t doubted for a moment - provided he didn’t get shot again. Why the confidence? Am I some raging MAGA Trump fanatic? No. I voted for Gary Johnson in 2016 and Jo Jorgensen in 2020. I’m what can best be described as a ‘small L libertarian.’ And this election went almost exactly as I expected it would from Trump winning in a landslide right down to Sherrod Brown losing to Bernie Moreno. My super power?

The only real edge that I had was living my life through the perspective of a mid-to-late 30’s male in rust belt America. That, and I understand the media business quite well. The latter of which we’ll dive into in a moment.

Earlier this year my libertarian ‘spidey senses’ signaled to me that not only was there virtually no chance Chase Oliver would sniff Gary Johnson’s 4.5 million national votes in 2016, but that the majority of those Gary Johnson voters were probably going Trump. There were 135 million votes cast in 2016. Johnson and Jill Stein scored 6 million of them combined. The votes aren’t totally counted yet for 2024, but here is what we know with a couple states still unofficial:

Google, 9:30p 11/6/24

Trump has nearly 10 million more votes than he had in 2016. Harris has about two million more votes than Clinton in 2016. Jill Stein has less than half of what she had in 2016. And Chase Oliver has about a tenth of what Gary Johnson took down 8 years ago. Oliver did so badly that he actually generated less votes than Robert Kennedy Jr - a candidate who dropped out two months ago and backed Trump. The takeaway? Voters who are independent from the duopoly came out for the Orange Boogeyman in a big way.

We can say what we want about Trump. Bombastic? Yes. Does he say things that aren’t true? Of course. Policy-wise, he’s a flawed candidate in numerous ways. But he won for several reasons; not the least of which was that Harris was a deeply atrocious candidate who ran a stunningly bad campaign.

Blue Weakness

The reason I knew that Harris would lose back in August was because I knew she would eventually have to start opening her mouth. At a certain point, even friendly media organizations would demand one on one time with her and out of pure competition with one another. The more she had to communicate without a script, the worse it would ultimately get. Despite the late-cycle efforts to hide her inconsistencies and filter out word salads, Harris has been a dubious wager since she was anointed chosen donkey a few months ago.

She was soundly rejected by voters during the 2020 primary. Her biggest cited reason at the time of her campaign suspension in December 2019 was a lack of resources. However, there was likely a deeper problem underpinning her inability to raise funding back then and I suspect it will feel familiar as it’s still an issue for her today; nobody knew what Kamala Harris truly stood for during her 2020 run. Per NPR on December 3rd, 2019:

Amid a crowded field filled with both moderate and progressive candidates, Harris struggled to carve out her own policy lane. She shifted positions several times on a defining issue for Democrats: health care. Harris initially backed the total elimination of private health insurance, only to later roll out a health care plan that allowed private plans as long as they met government standards.

Election betting odds.com: 2020 Dem Nomination Odds

The day before her campaign ended in 2020, Harris had a 1.3% probability of winning the nomination according to ElectionBettingOdds.com. She was slightly behind Amy Klobuchar and trailed both Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren to a significant degree. So even before she dropped out in 2020, Harris was trailing established women with clear policy positions. And here’s the real truth; lack of funding didn’t end Harris’ campaign in 2020. Tulsi Gabbard (also a woman) did when she eviscerated Harris’ incarceration record on the debate stage in July 2019.

Watch this video from late July 2019 and then look at Harris’ probability trend immediately following the debate. It ended her run. Harris’ reputation for locking people up was almost certainly one of the reasons why Black and Latino men didn’t show up for her at the ballot boxes yesterday. It’s not because of misogyny. It’s because she unnecessarily imprisoned people for smoking weed and then laughed about doing it herself. But the larger point is any notion that Harris was rejected in 2024 purely for being a woman is lazy cope.

She was rejected in 2024 for the same reason she was rejected in 2020 - she stinks as a POTUS candidate. That and she is generally viewed by the thinking populace as glaringly inauthentic. Which brings us to how badly her campaign was managed. Her team had several months to fix her image issue but instead chose to make her entire campaign about simply not being Donald Trump. This is not a winning strategy when you’re battling the perception that things were better under Trump when judging by housing affordability, grocery prices, and full time job growth.

Harris attempted to run as the ‘change’ candidate yet couldn’t muster a single thing she would have done differently from Biden in an appearance on The View. She refused to travel to Austin, TX to do the Joe Rogan podcast after Trump and Vance had both made the voyage yet she found the time to do Saturday Night Live to appeal to a smaller audience that she almost certainly had already won. Then with the election just days away, the out-of-context Puerto Rico garbage joke was a ‘Hail Mary’ pass that turned out to be a ‘pick-six’ the other way.

Her team chose kid gloves over getting her hands dirty, damn-near literally. Trump engaged with workers and customers at a McDonald’s. Then he drove a garbage truck in a sanitation worker vest. Each of which were direct shots at Harris campaign talking points. And her campaign made all of these mistakes in spite of a legacy media apparatus that was excessively forgiving to her but not to him. 60 Minutes intentionally edited one of her interview answers in an attempt to make her look less incompetent. Both the CBS and ABC debates were clear 3 on 1 affairs.

Legacy Networks Can’t Be Saved

All of this was absolutely obvious to anyone willing to view this election cycle through the perspective of someone different than a straight party blue voter. Which gets us to the media angle in all of this. Once again, the apparatus known as the ‘legacy media’ has gotten it repeatedly wrong on polling and what voters want. The media did not help Harris by focusing so much time and attention on abortion.

Judging by the political ads from the blue team that I personally saw and the amount of time dedicated to the issue during presidential debates, one would deduce women’s reproductive rights were the most important issue for the entire populace. Yet according to summer Pew data, abortion wasn’t even a top 5 issue for all voters:

It’s the economy, stupid

Given that, I think it's tough to argue that it was a big enough issue for non-Democrats to move the needle by itself. And in the states where it is coming to a vote following the overturning of Roe v Wade, it is largely being protected - even in red states. Ohio voted to protect abortion access through an amendment last year. Additional red states followed that yesterday:

Right-leaning and independent voters in Missouri and Montana just went for both Donald Trump and abortion right protection. The same will likely be true for Nevada and Arizona. Even Florida came less than 3 points away from the 60% threshold yesterday and can conceivably get something passed in the next election.

What makes the abortion-related hyperbolic reaction to the Trump win even more ridiculous is that he’s repeatedly said he’s not touching it and wants to leave it to the states. Yet, there are actual adult women who seem to believe they’re going to be forced to cover themselves in public and become subservient to their husbands in the bedroom as a result of the election yesterday.

Almost as ridiculous, is the recently manufactured drama involving daughter of Satan, Liz Cheney. Perpetuated by shameless people like Margaret Brennan at CBS News, a seemingly straightforward comment about war-hawks fighting their own battles rather than sending off other people to die was taken out of context by Face The Nation on Sunday. This is what Trump said in reference to Cheney’s desire for war:

Let’s put her there with a rifle with nine barrels shooting at her, okay? Let’s see how she feels about it.

Brennan, and several additional media outlets, framed this as though Trump was advocating for violence or threats against Liz Cheney. This is just a recent example of a tactic that networks like CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, and MSNBC have been utilizing against him for years. But this strategy no longer works. People have simply had enough.

The biggest reason Harris had no shot last night was because most of America is tired of being belittled and lied to by institutions, academics, and elitist propagandists - each of which were the entities that insisted her upon the populace to the detriment of their own trustworthiness.

“An indictment of the political information complex” - Scott Jennings, CNN

‘Political information complex.’ Chef’s kiss. But with respect to this terrific take by Scott Jennings, it falls on deaf ears. This wildly out of touch media apparatus is ignorant of American sentiment by choice, not by accident. Political games, manufacturing outrage, and hiding the real stories have been par for the course in the past. But this feels like the worst I can recall seeing.

It’s why former President Barack Obama repeated the Snopes-debunked “very fine people” hoax on the campaign trail recently. It’s why globally-affluent American women on the internet are now caps-lock shrieking into their child-labor-powered iPhones about rights and Handsmaid’s Tale doom fantasies.

How To Heal A Nation

And it’s why it took literally hours for every major media outlet to call a spade a spade when THEY TRIED… TO F***ING… KILL THIS MAN over the summer.

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That is why Kamala Harris lost yesterday.

Because she was a bad candidate, who ran a bad campaign, and who was protected the entire time by a group of dishonest corporate elites who hate you and I regardless of gender, skin color, or anything else that they like to pretend matters. They lie, cheat, and think we’re all stupid. But we’re not.

The choices were a person who couldn’t handle 25 minutes with Brett Biaer or a guy who got up and yelled “fight” after getting grazed by a bullet to the head. You really thought this was going to be close?

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Now for those of you who weren’t here in November 2021, this is critically important: you have the power to end this.

CNN makes more money from cable/satellite subscription fees than it does from advertising. Meaning, if you simply have the ability to watch CNN, you’re indirectly paying to keep the network alive even if you don’t view a single second of the network. The same is true for MSNBC and even FOX News for that matter. Here’s another prediction; if you’re expecting the legacy media outlets to look in the mirror after yesterday and adjust the strategy, it’s not going to happen. These networks have to die. I wish it wasn’t so, but it has to be this way.

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It feels good to be back.