Many Americans and people around the world are shocked and stunned by Donald Trump’s victory. People are going through the classic stages of grief – Denial, Anger, Bargaining (“can we turn over the electoral system?”) and Depression. Not many have the reached the final stage of Acceptance. Peaceful and violent protests have been erupting all over America. This is the reaction of people who never saw it coming. Why? The mainstream media never told them the truth: Trump’s populist message had a real appeal and Hillary Clinton was a deeply flawed, Establishment candidate. As Trump himself warned many times, it was Brexit++.
Rigged Polls Created a False Certainty
Almost every major poll showed Clinton winning, often by landslide margins. In the month before the election, 70 polls On RealClearPolitics.com showed Clinton leading, while only 2 showed Trump ahead.
Some polls, such as ABC/Washington Post, Reuters and Monmouth had preposterous claims. For example, the ABC poll from Oct 25 had Clinton winning by 6 points; and she was also winning college-educated white women by whopping 33 points (63-30)! Whoa, college-educated white women love Hillary Clinton! Well, on election day, Hillary won the same demographic by merely 6 points.
Similarly, a YouGov/Economist poll, on the day before the election, showed Trump winning men by only 5 points. Reality? Trump won men by 12 points.
Huffington Post claimed on Nov 7 that the probability for a Clinton win was 98%!
These were not innocent mistakes. These polls were deliberately rigged by using samples loaded with Democrats, women, minorities and other demographics that are more likely to support Hillary. The YouGov poll, for instance, had 41% Democrats and 27% Republicans, giving Hillary an automatic advantage of 14 points. On election day, the breakdown was 37% Democrats -33% Republicans. So they over-sampled Democrats by 4 points and under-sampled Republicans by 6 points. Of course, Clinton will look fabulous in such a poll.
Similarly, a Reuters poll used a sample with 60% women, when in reality, only 52% of the voters were women.
There were also many articles and pseudo-polls that raised the hopes of Clinton supporters by talking about flipping the traditionally red states of Georgia, Texas, Arizona and Utah.
Such rigged polling is an example of “manufactured consent.” Polls are very powerful in influencing public opinion. People want to be on the winning or popular side of an issue, so by constantly saying X is a popular person/product/view, the elites can change the attitude. It’s propaganda 101.
There was one poll that Trump fans loved – the LA Times/USC poll. This one showed Trump leading most of the time. The mainstream media attacked the poll viciously, and eventually Real Clear Politics dropped that poll from their website. Never mind that the same poll was the most accurate predictor in the 2012 election as well.
Other rigged polls at the state level assured everyone that Hillary Clinton had a “blue wall” that guaranteed her a victory. This was the so-called firewall of the rust belt – Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Trump won all those three states. Obviously, building a wall is not Hillary’s forte.
Shy Trump Voters
Since the mainstream media constantly attacked Trump as a racist and a sexist, many Trump supporters simply lied to the pollsters and perhaps to their friends. These shy voters had real concerns about jobs, economy and health insurance. When they went to Trump rallies or watched his speeches online, they heard him talk about NAFTA, WTO, vanishing jobs, stagnant wages, burdensome Obamacare, rising crimes, drug problems etc., while the elite corporate media would spend the next two days making fun of a single gaffe he made in his speech. No wonder only 13% of Republicans trust the mainstream media.
Hillary Had No Compelling Message
2016 is the year of change and the Democrats brought in an ultimate insider who had no vision and promised more of the same. Hillary’s speeches were always short and scripted, followed by “For more information, go to my website.” Really? She couldn’t sell girl scout cookies with that kind of sales skills.
When the only way to defeat Bernie Sanders was rigging the primaries and having an agreement with him not to attack her on certain topics, Clinton’s campaign should have felt the rumblings of a political earthquake.
Hillary’s slogans were “Stronger Together” and “I’m With Her.” The first one is bland and the second one is egotistical. While Trump wanted to make America great again, Hillary wanted to make the Clintons great again.
For the “most qualified candidate ever to run for the office,” her two strongest arguments were “I am a woman” and “Trump is deplorable.” Sometimes she used a third argument: “If you vote for Trump, you are deplorable.” Not the best way to win the hearts of voters.
Hillary Clinton was so uninspiring that 46% of women voters rejected her. Worse, 49% of college-educated white women said, “No thanks.”
Corporatist Democrats and the Rust Belt
The Democratic party has lost its way and became a corporate hack. It’s only plan to win elections is to play the “political correctness” card and attack opponents as racists and sexists. Obama and Hillary championed TPP while the corporate media pretended it’s all good. Hillary, of course, switched her public position on TPP while Wikileaks shows her own advisers were confused about what her real position is. On this matter, Bill Clinton had the right instinct and tried to urge Hillary’s campaign to formulate a message for the white working class. Instead, Hillary’s campaign strategies involved ridiculous events that used Hollywood and sports celebrities to win votes in Ohio and Michigan. Eventually, voters decided that they would rather go with politically incorrect Trump who promised to bring back American jobs.
Childish attacks on Trump
Rather than addressing Trump’s argument on illegal immigration and trade deals, Hillary’s team decided to partner with the media and endlessly attack Trump with petty and exaggerated claims. The list is long, but here are two examples: Trump did not make fun of the disabled reporter and he certainly did not call all Mexicans rapists. Any objective person could see the truth, but these sensational claims worked great inside the ideological bubble. On Twitter, Clinton’s team would come up with sarcastic hashtags every few days and indulged in childish attacks with repeated themes of Trump and his supporters being stupid. Apparently insulting and bullying others is a standard political strategy to win votes.
Wikileaks
Wikileaks certainly showed how corrupt and influential the Clinton team was. A shocking number of journalists and TV anchors are in Clinton’s pockets and essentially act as her PR team. Hillary got her debate questions in advance, journalists sent their articles to Hillary’s staff for pre-approval, anchors such as Wolf Blitzer had their interview questions written by Clinton’s team and so on. There were also many other revelations such as Hillary admitting that ISIS is funded by Saudi Arabia/Qatar, and Bill Clinton getting $1 million for his birthday from Qatar. Think about those two facts for a moment. The corrupt corporate media ignored or played it all down. If they had truly focused on the Wikileaks scandal, Hillary would have lost by a much bigger margin.
Ignoring Trump’s Appeal
Any neutral person could see that Trump fans were passionate. He could summon 10,000 people to his rally on a two-day notice, with a single tweet. His speeches on YouTube were watched by hundreds of thousands of people. His Facebook profile was full of devoted people thanking him and praying for him. Millions of small individual donors gave him $100 million in the month of October.
How about Hillary? She held small rallies, usually with about 300 people, gave boring speeches for twenty minutes, and talked to fawning press who threw softball questions. Her book on Amazon, Stronger Together, was a big flop and her Facebook profile was full of negative comments from Trump supporters. There were hardly any Hillary supporters who could articulate her policies. In the final week of the campaign, Trump was holding four or five rallies a day, while Clinton stuck to just one or two. She just wanted to be crowned and didn’t want to work for it.
Conclusion
Hillary Clinton’s team was arrogant and ignored all these signs. After all, they had $1.5 billion of special interest’s money to buy plenty of TV ads to influence public opinion; prestigious media outlets such as The New York Times and Washington Post relentlessly demonized Trump; and the rigged polls guaranteed her triumph. Hillary had the entire Establishment class behind her – Wall Street, global corporations, foreign governments, oligarchs, ex-Presidents, Neocons, the military-industrial complex, pollsters, pundits, Hollywood and the influential corporate media. What could go wrong? Everything. Welcome to Brexit++.
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