Jiving juggernaut: US media polling and commentary underestimated Trump’s strength again in this election. — ©2024 The New York Times Company
THE more things change, the more the blinkered Western media remains the same.
This does nothing for their purported integrity or their pretensions to impartiality. Exhibit A: US mainstream media reporting and commentary on their presidential election.
On the surface, it might seem that they know their own national electoral process best. They certainly should, but they don’t seem to want to.
In the 2016 election, media polling and commentary underestimated Donald Trump’s strength. They did it again this month, even when Trump won more convincingly than before.
This is evidently professional incompetence, but its habitual consistency suggests something more ingrained. Congenital partiality towards Democratic Party candidates helps explain it.
US mainstream media are notoriously pro-Democrat, with few exceptions. This abandonment of professional impartiality is customary to the point of being obligatory.
That routinely means padding the prospects of Democratic Party candidates, which implies underrating Republican contenders. Part of the deal highlights the presumed virtues of Democrats and the supposed inadequacies of Republicans.
The situation is amplified with a candidate like Trump whose persona inspires intense likes and dislikes. Undervaluing his campaign amounts to defiantly snubbing his prospects to get at a campaign which the media have long caricatured.
Looking rationally at the two campaigns, however, exposes the inadequacies of many pundits.
When Joe Biden was running, his memory lapses were troubling but he was a familiar veteran of the US political establishment whose prospects had not exceeded Trump’s. Could a virtually unknown Kamala Harris do so much better to win?
Once Biden’s incapacity proved too obvious, his Vice-President was selected as replacement. The choice of Harris was more political correctness than protocol – she was a woman and a minority, so the Democratic Party could not be seen to deny her this historic opportunity.
The party’s problem was that she was a weak candidate, mounted an ineffective campaign, and faced a formidable Trump juggernaut. Trump not only retained his supporters newly energised by attempted assassinations on him, but had also won endorsements from sections of the black, Muslim, and Arab American communities.
The mainstream media’s problem lay in neglecting these realities. Some Trump supporters might have been shy about stating their allegiance in opinion polls, but that was not a major factor.
The presumed gloom now said to await the United States and the world in Trump 2.0 has little basis. Such flawed punditry lies in projecting predictable readings of an unpredictable President-elect.
Many commentators automatically assume US-China relations would worsen. But that downward spiral has largely been Biden’s work, and no more than ancient history to Trump.
Another US media deficit is failure to understand Trump’s character and thinking – a serious lack with someone so self-aware.
A Trump signature style is rejecting policy leftovers from a predecessor, particularly an unimpressive predecessor with underwhelmingly failed policies. Practically all of Biden’s anti-China policies have failed and even backfired.
Another Trump characteristic is abandoning a policy with zero prospect of success in favour of a new deal. Today this relates to a range of Chinese goods from semiconductors to electric vehicles (EVs).
After threatening higher tariffs on fully imported (CBU, ie complete built up) Chinese EVs, Trump invited their companies to operate in the United States employing American workers. This stark choice makes their obvious preference clear.
Another US media neglect is to ignore the fact that Trump has a new team with a fresher, more progressive outlook on issues that have also moved on. Predicting doom for Trump 2.0 based on Trump 1.0 is simply to be out of date.
A year after raising tariffs on Chinese goods, Trump in 2019 offered Beijing a deal to help balance trade. Phase One signed in January 2020, effective from February, required China to buy at least US$200bil (RM881bil) of US goods in two years.
Since the election was due in November with no guarantee Trump would win, China lacked confidence in the agreement. The Covid-19 shutdown also slowed China’s efforts to fulfil the terms.
After Biden won in 2020, Phase One seemed irrelevant. The new administration had its own policies and priorities, moving further against Beijing and killing China’s remaining interest in fulfilling Phase One.
As soon as Trump claimed re-election victory last week, he referred to the agreement, insisting that China honour it – and confidently predicting that it will. This new window offers Beijing a valuable opportunity to help end the trade war.
On Ukraine, Trump has pledged to end the war “within 24 hours” even before he takes office in January. That would be a long day, but it is clear enough that ending the war and the Gaza genocide take precedence.
Trump’s energy levels far exceed Biden’s and his aspirations are relatively stratospheric, but he is unburdened by the petty political correctness of what has been. Such a fresh break is now urgently needed on the trade and war fronts.
US news media still need to deliver more credibly, the more so when that remains an unlikely prospect.
Bunn Nagara is director and senior Fellow of the BRI (Belt and Road Initiative) Caucus for Asia-Pacific, and honorary Fellow of the Perak Academy. The views expressed here are solely his own.
