Wednesday, November 09, 2016

Pollsters, Pundits Had Anti-Trump Agenda



All across the American media pollsters and pundits are gazing at their navels and wailing about why Donald Trump was elected president of the United States when everything they did for more than a year was geared to preventing exactly that outcome.

What did we do wrong? What did we miss? Why did the voting public not believe our polls and commentaries in sufficient numbers to make Hillary Clinton president? Woe is us; we are going to have to convene panels and study groups and committees to examine our polling methods to make sure this never happens again.

This is merely a continuation of the rubbish these people were spewing ever since 2015 when they ignited a firestorm of opposition to Trump by claiming that any other GOP candidate would do better against Clinton than he would. But what so many either ignored, or didn't understand, was that Trump also ignited a firestorm of anti-establishment fervor that was sufficient to overcome all the odds and send him to the White House.

Yet today, even some allegedly conservative national outlets are decrying the leftist bias of the "main stream media" as if it is anyone else but them. While the more astute of the pollsters were issuing mea culpas and promising to do better the next time, and others were simply ignoring their failures or trying to look the other way, the simple fact of the matter is that they can prevent a similar failure the next time by just doing their jobs.

What was missing from this presidential election was the application of professional standards, as poll after poll succumbed either to their own biases or pressure from the leftist media to make sure that their numbers consistently put Clinton above, beyond and out of Trump's reach.

I became suspicious of the 'polls' when they also began to show that President Obama's favorability ratings were climbing above fifty percent. This despite domestic discord, a continually weak economy, jobs numbers that were never good and often relied on part-time and seasonal swings to appear even anemically improved, repeated terrorist attacks on our own soil, and an all-out war against the police.

So I started looking into the methodology of the polls and what I found was that they were nearly universally slanted to the Democrats. In poll after poll by either national or local media outlets, often coupled with colleges or universities, the pollsters surveyed a preponderance of Democrats, well in excess of their actual percentage in the electorate, while sampling smaller numbers of Republicans and virtually ignoring independents.

But except for occasional outliers, independent voters dominate the electoral landscape, so their absence in appropriate percentages from the bulk of the polls rendered the results virtually meaningless. The 'polls' were in fact surveys, because they contacted people by random, with no means of ascertaining whether those being interviewed were who they said they were, either by personal identity or political preferences.

I wrote about this several times prior to the election and concluded that Trump would win. I am not taking a victory lap here because I wasn't involved in the election, but I am pointing out that it is possible to delve into the methodology of this propaganda and ascertain whether it is accurate or a blatant attempt to sway public opinion.

In one of the most laughable of the polls, released just before Election Day, FOX News gave Hillary Clinton a lead of 4 percent over Trump, and identified respondents' political persuasion by asking them not how they were registered, but did they think of themselves as Republicans or Democrats. WHAT?? Both major parties were over-sampled in this poll while independents barely broke double digits.

There is a straightforward, far more accurate way to do a real POLL of political beliefs and I learned it at class given by a veteran political strategist nearly two decades ago. Start with the fact that every state has lists of registered voters by name, address and party registration, or lack of it in the case of independents.

The parties have further breakdowns on how many times each respondent has voted. If you want 'likely voters' you contact people who have voted in four out the last four elections of the same type – presidential elections, gubernatorial elections, congressional elections or local municipal elections.

Then you contact sufficient numbers of each party or independents to reflect their actual percentages in the area you are polling. For a more accurate result you should get a total of at least 1,000 respondents.

But the media didn't do that. Their polls were abominations and clearly intended to drive more people to the Democrat candidate while making the Republican appear to be struggling with a minimal base. Fortunately for Trump the public doesn't trust the media.

Nonetheless, these 'polls' were reported as fact when in reality they were fantasy. The upshot of what we now see as an all-out effort to usurp the electoral process is that dozens if not hundreds of reporters, editors, producers, columnists and pundits for America's major news organizations have squandered their reputations, their rapport with the public, and most important the trust of their viewers and readers.

Restoring that trust may be extraordinarily difficult if not impossible. It's only two years until the next national election. Better get started.
Monday, November 07, 2016

Frenetic Media Pulls Out All Stops to Stop Trump



The American media, across the spectrum, in all forms, has never been so unreliable, so biased, so propagandized and untruthful as in the past 18 months of presidential campaign coverage.

Regardless of whether we are reading establishment newspapers and magazines, viewing television news outlets, cable and network, or listening to talk radio, we have been inundated with lie after lie, all of which were intended to maintain the establishment grip on Washington, D.C., and the political bureaucracy.

The basis for this not-so-astounding claim on my part is the overwhelming use of surveys loosely defined as "polls" which drove every single news cycle regardless of the nature of true news that far too often was relegated to secondary status. Even when a major event did occur, such as the terrorist attack on a gay club in Orlando, Florida, the media ultimately got around to what it would mean in the polls.

If you want to know when the media is lying to you – aside from newscasters moving their lips - you simply have to look for any segment that starts with the words "according to recent polls." If you like you can substitute "just released" or "brand new" or words of that nature for 'recent.'

Before a single candidate announced for the presidency, the media and the major political parties had already decided that Democrat Hillary Clinton would face Jeb Bush, who would vanquish his Republican primary opponents with aplomb. After a hard-fought campaign Bush would be ever-so-closely edged out by the woman who would be the first female president of the US.
Hillary Clinton

And the media already had the polls to prove it! But far too often, those "polls" did not include a representative sampling of Republican, Democrat and Independent voters in the percentages by which they were registered in the area where the sample was taken, much less those who could be relied upon to vote. In fact, many of the early polls didn't even ascertain whether the respondents were registered voters, and often included a random sampling of several hundred "adults."

In other words, they were meaningless. Yet the polls drove the news and the intent was that the news then would drive the polls.

Two things stepped in the way; the campaigns of Vermont Independent Senator Bernie Sanders, who ran as a Democrat alternative to Clinton, and Republican Donald Trump who ran as an alternative to the establishment. After a well-run campaign in which the media undermined him at every opportunity, in coordination with the Democrat National Committee, and hurt him as much by the issues it didn't cover as those it did, Sanders went down to pre-ordained defeat, with Clinton the anointed successor to Barack Obama.

Then to the horror of his one-time supporters Sanders found the sudden wealth to purchase a third home, a $600,000 mansion, and instantly became a Clinton supporter. In fact, as the campaign progressed, Sanders had his nose so far up Clinton's rectum that he morphed into a political caricature of Pinocchio, pausing only to beg of Clinton, "Tell me another lie, tell me another lie!"

But Trump, who was under fire from the first question he fielded in the first primary debate, turned the tables on virtually everyone, including the media and the political establishment which for the purposes of this article means that unholy conglomerate of D.C.-centrist insiders and self-anointed "elitists" from both major parties. He bested 16 other primary opponents, many of whom had so little support that they weren't even allowed on the same stage with him.
Donald J. Trump

Trump had enough money to fund his own campaign without having his legs cut out from under him by biased news reports that are intended to stop the flow of donor cash that for other candidates funds the campaign ads that are the life blood of the media. And Trump, unlike any of his predecessors going back to Dwight Eisenhower, showed that not only did he not need the ads, he also had the personal toughness to withstand the unrelenting, usually false assaults on him by the media and its stooges, props and sycophants.

So here we are on the cusp of the 2016 presidential election with the media universally proclaiming the race is a "dead heat" with Hillary Clinton just a few points ahead of Trump, but within the "margin of error." Bull. I have reviewed the methodology of virtually every poll done in every "battleground" state where the decision supposedly will really be made – because according to the media mantra, every voter in every non-battleground state is so predictable that they really don’t need to pay attention to them on Nov. 8. These polls say she will eke out a narrow victory, just as planned at the outset.

Really? I've got news for you. Many so-called predictable "blue" states are in the media's list of Clinton guaranteed electoral votes only because they are using the same bogus polling methodology in the final days that they were using months ago. And these polls still are over-sampling Democrats while under-sampling Republicans and Independents, usually by double digits.

Yet even with the deck stacked in that manner Trump is close, tied, or within the "margin of error," which tells me that the media is trying, right up to the last minute, to keep the election within a razor-thin margin that would preempt large-scale calls for recounts and investigations of voter fraud. "Oh, so close. Sorry guys. But you did give it a good try." And an anti-establishment candidate will never be heard from again in our lifetimes.

More to the point, people writing about or broadcasting these lies know exactly what they are doing but keep telling us with a straight face that a majority of American voters still prefer a candidate who some are saying committed treason, to a capable businessman who sometimes makes thin-skinned people feel uncomfortable.

Before every news organization and college looking for extra income started doing "polls" there were two major polling organizations in the US; the Gallup Poll and the Harris Poll. Interestingly, neither of these organizations does polling on presidential races, although they will poll issues surrounding those races.

One reason why is the incredible unpredictability of the electorate, and to do an accurate poll of political preferences you have to get the names and contact information for people who actually are registered to vote, and usually do, an expensive and time-consuming endeavor. You have to have their party affiliation or lack of it, and the frequency with which they go to the polls in similar elections going back at least 4 cycles to have any chance at accuracy.

And even then you can be blindsided because, as is the case this year, millions of people registered to vote in the Republican primaries and you can see from the turnout at his events that they are there for Trump. But they aren't on the lists of people who have voted in similar elections so they don't get polled; although that really wouldn't matter since the media model is to get sufficient responses to verify its pre-selected outcome, not to find out what people are really thinking.

So they 'poll' a few or several hundred people, get the response they wanted, then claim to know exactly where the race stands, within a supposedly acceptable margin of error. Want to know what the The Harris Poll thinks of margins of error? Check this out.

The Harris Poll avoids the words “margin of error” as they are misleading. All that can be calculated are different possible sampling errors with different probabilities for pure, unweighted, random samples with 100% response rates. These are only theoretical because no published polls come close to this ideal.

Also, Gallup samples generally are at least 1,000 respondents and sometimes much larger. Only rarely do they go into the 500-1000 range, but many media polls routinely sample less than 500 alleged voters, and then claim to know the mood of the country.

So I don't look for a Hillary Clinton victory on Tuesday because even though she has plenty of supporters who are willing to look past her personal history, her husband's history, her foundation's activities, her support for so many anti-American positions on myriad issues, and her abject failures as a public official, there are far more Americans who have had it with her and the political establishment.

Thus, barring a massive outbreak of voter fraud, which is possible, I admit, I believe the real polls put Trump over the top. And if that prediction comes true I hope one of his first acts is to put the so-called media, those pusillanimous purveyors of lies, divisiveness and hatred on notice that they will be the last people in town to get a heads up on anything, whether it be breaking international news or a brief on the D.C. Zoning Commission's upcoming decision on an application to build a dog house.
Wednesday, November 02, 2016

We Wanted A Street Fighter; We Got Our Wish!



Several times over the past decade I have derided the gentlemanly manner in which Republican candidates have approached campaigning, whether it is on a local, state or national level.

I see politics as a blood sport, not a gentlemanly – or ladylike – contest, whether the candidates are running for president or alternate for a municipal commission. I understand human nature and at some level in all of our psyches we want to win, regardless of how "nice" we try to be in public.

But the Republican Party for some time now has been enforcing a "nice guy" mantra where GOP candidates are to refrain from taking off the gloves and smacking the daylights out of their opponents, regardless of how vicious that opponent may be. Somewhere along the line the general public was supposed to attach itself to the anti-bullying point of view that has made total wimps out of generations of school kids who are blindsided by reality when they get out in the working world and don't know how to defend themselves.

The nice guy approach didn't work and I am not the only person who feels this way. In fact I was reminded of some of my earlier columns recently when conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh brought the subject up on his show. Limbaugh made the point that out here in the real world some of us had been calling for street fighters and brawlers and now we have it.

For instance, when John McCain was getting slapped around by Barack Obama in 2008 I decried his Marquis de Queensbury approach writing about it here.

Four years later, I wrote about it here when Mitt Romney was facing off against Obama in 2012.

Unfortunately my predictions came true in both races and when all was said and done the GOP "nice guys" were down on the pavement, crying about their opponent being "unfair," while Obama and his cronies were dancing over them singing "I won, I won, I won," and taking the country right down the proverbial drain.

In both cases the GOP candidates put up a clean and "gentlemanly" fight, and in both cases they got their asses kicked. In Romney's case, he lost because Republicans didn't come out to vote for him, even though Obama amassed about 4 million fewer votes in 2012 than he had in his 2008 victory over McCain.

Donald J. Trump
Then came Donald J. Trump. He let the world and the political establishment know from the very start that he wasn't playing games and he would not fight clean or even fair. He started out his first debate telling Rand Paul that he didn't even belong on the same stage and that was one of gentlest things he said in the primary season.

He spent the next several months kicking his opponents, numbering 16 at the beginning, off the stage, one by one. In the end, he stood alone, victorious, ready to take on Democrat Hillary Clinton and her behind-the-scene partners, establishment Republicans who are outraged that the rank-and-file haven't toed the party line and selected their fair-haired candidate, as well as the entirety of the US media establishment.

Throughout the primaries there was not one television network or major print news outlet that covered his campaign fairly or accurately. Even before he vanquished his last Republican primary opponent, the media was trumpeting alleged "polls" that showed he would be far behind Hillary Clinton if she was successful in stealing the Democrat nomination.

From the beginning the media – through use of their fake polls – attempted to direct the primary voters to their preferred candidates – Clinton and Jeb Bush – and from the beginning Republican and Independent voters told the media and the establishment to pound sand and voted overwhelmingly for Trump. It has since been proven that those "polls" were as bogus as the current crop of garbage that form the core for any print article or electronic segment.

Trump, for his part, led his supporters from the front, telling the unified media and GOP establishment lackeys that he wasn't taking their crap, wasn't knuckling under to their threats and attacks and was going to do his own campaign, his way. And here we are, a week from the election with even the bogus pollsters cracking and reporting that the race is "tightening," and that in many states Trump is even ahead.

What a pant load, Trump has been ahead all along.

Trump got to this point by sticking steadfastly to the street fighters' credo, that of continuing the fight and never backing down, even when you get hit hard, even when you get bloodied, even when you get knocked down. Whatever the other side throws at you, you take it, shake it off and keep fighting.

Because to a true street fighter, the only real loss comes from backing down, wimping out, begging for mercy when you still had fight left in you.

Trump has of course been bloodied, what with the combined forces of the media, the Democrats, and the so-called "elitist" Republican establishment aligned against him and launching coordinated assaults against his candidacy. But each time he came back swinging, and therein lies the 'secret' to his overwhelming popularity.

He didn't wimp out, he took the shots and even on the rare occasions when he was rocked, he came right back. Joe Biden can talk all he wants about being a bad ass but he can only dream of possessing a fraction of Trump's true toughness.

In less than a week most Americans will go to the polls and it will surprise no one if Trump comes out the victor. The Clinton machine is still trying to find something, anything, that will halt the Trump juggernaut, but time is preciously short and they have shot all their ammo.

The elitists called for Trump to step down in early October when a putrid little media ass kisser who secretly taped Trump making some unflattering comments more than a decade ago, released the tape to the Clinton campaign. He did it in the summer, but Clinton held on to it and used it for her "October surprise."

However, the real surprise came when Trump stood up, apologized for his past indiscretion and kept right on swinging. And his popularity grew.

The total lack of understanding of the real nature of the beast was never more apparent than the drivel emanating from GOP establishment types who believed Trump would meekly step down. That is what they would have done, but that's also why wimps of that nature never actually run for anything because their precious little feelings would get hurt in the first moments of the engagement, and they'd run home crying, jump into bed and pull the covers over their head until the monsters went away.

But Trump? He hung tough and sure enough, the media was finally forced to confront the fact that their attacks only made Trump stronger.

Now, Hillary Clinton is backed into a corner, taking massive shot after massive shot. Her legs are buckling, her supporters are trying to help her by attacking Trump from outside the ring, and yet, every day she sags a bit closer to the deck. I seriously doubt that she has the wherewithal to find some kind of inner strength to mount one last successful counterattack.

Should Trump win it all next Tuesday, and I believe he will, there is one thing his enemies should remember. Street fighters will fight all alone if necessary, because that is what street fighters do.

But they also remember who backed them up and who stood against them when the fight was on. Trump will make good on his promises to reunite America in an atmosphere of greatness. But at the same time, he won't forget the candy asses who stabbed him in the back from the day he declared his candidacy to this very moment.

Frankly, I wouldn't want to be in their shoes.

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