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.