It stated:
For the record, Donald Trump was not my choice as the next occupant of the White House and, like so many millions, I was shocked to learn of his victory. After some reflection, however, I now believe that we should not have been so surprised by it, and that we would not have been so surprised had we not put so much trust in our liberal media. It seems that virtually every poll, every prediction, every forecast published by this self-appointed elite group assured us that Hillary Clinton had the election virtually nailed down, the only question being how much of a rout it was going to be.
In its nearly obsessive desire to see a Democrat in the White House, a woman in the White House and a continuation of the policies of the current occupant, this group completely failed to read the actual mood of our electorate. They failed to recognize that people were fed up with being ignored and forgotten by the administration of the last eight years. They failed to see the Democratic Party's loss of control of the House and then of the Senate during the latter part of the Obama presidency as a repudiation of the direction in which he tried to go. They failed to understand that even with a candidate as flawed as Donald Trump, it was time for a seismic change. These failures may have very well, in fact, contributed heavily to Clinton's defeat.
If the media is truly going to provide a valuable service to its reading or listening public, it must find a way to provide honest and complete information - information based on reality rather than prejudice. It must put its own preferences aside (except in designated opinion pieces) and refrain from making predictions, especially those which may actually influence voter decisions.
My response: Another explanation
In response to Mr. Landry's November 15 Letter entitled "Election shouldn't have been a surprise" while I agree with the substance of some of it, the so called "liberal" media he sites is often not that liberal. One cannot paint them, I think, with a huge brush. Even some more conservative media touted her victory and conservative commentators were predicting the need for a massive Republican reformation after her win. Moreover, our nation is flush with conservative airwaves featuring often the angry and mean rhetoric of its commentators. Many if not most of the pollsters used scientific statistical analysis as the yardstick of prediction. I aver most were not "biased" but let the mathematics of their polls be their guide. Statistics, however, no matter how mathematically precise, do not always give a clear and correct picture of the results. Romney's defeat in 2012, I think, is proof of that. Most, including the conservative Karl Rove and the which-way-the-wind-is-blowing Fox News commentator Dick Morris, could not believe their eyes when they went on a tour of the Fox News election department and saw that Obama had, indeed, won defying predictions.
Trump waged a volcanic campaign, complete with much profanity and vituperative derogatory comments against even members of his own Party. This was unheard of in prior campaigns. The vile commentary disparaging minorities the Republican Party said it needed to win and even disparaging the military heroics of the "captured" John McCain as well as a much discussed (and disgusting) indictment of small hands tantamount to sexual penile prowess seemed unthinkable that the American electorate would actually vote for the mendacious and profanity-laced rudeness of Trump.
The crudity of the Trump campaign sadly mirrors that into which our nation has morphed. How it got that way, it seems to me, would better explain the Trumpian anger turned into votes. Our language, our sometimes unfathomable crimes we commit against each other, the violence we see in media and the loosening of cultural mores allowed Trump's campaign conduct to occur and it served as a conduit to capture a plethora of votes. I am sad that this is so and, admittedly, I am inclined and fall prey to anger invective as well.
The goodness of a nation should be measured by how well we treat one another not by how loud screams of anger and hate emerge from our voice. Trump's talent, if he has any, was that he knew how to unleash a violent charisma no one else neither in the primaries nor in the general election knew how to ape. That this nation fell for this huge con is a sadness with which the entire nation will have to live or die and that this unfit-for-the-presidency-carnival-barker snowed such a large part of the electoral college electorate (but failed to get what will be a Hillary Clinton 2 million popular vote Trumpain trounce) is academically staggering and it is sad very mind numbingly sad!
