Calling The Race To The White House

"And now, after a long night of counting, it's clear that we're winning enough states to reach [the] 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency."

"I'm not here to declare that we've won. But I am here to report that when the count is finished we believe we will be the winners."

"Every vote must be counted. No one's going to take our democracy away from us, not now, not ever."

Former Vice-President Joe Biden

 

"We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election."

"This is a major fraud on our nation. We want the law to be used in a proper manner. So we'll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court."

"We want all voting to stop."

President Donald Trump 

"We wanted to see a repudiation of this direction for the country."

"And the fact that it's this close, it hurts. It just hurts."

Democratic strategist, CNN commentator Van Jones

 

Despite the polls, the confident pre-election predictions that a Democratic sweep was assured, a near-repeat of the 2016 election has roiled its successor in 2020. The man that liberals, progressives, foreign diplomats, the press corps in the U.S. and abroad loathed for his uncouth personality and mercurial decision-making, his casual dismissal of global partnerships, and his openly transparent sharing of the presidency with family members, somehow has retained the loyalty of millions of American voters.

There would be no Democratic landslide on November 3 because over 65 million people think of their president as the best alternative available to them in a roster of socialist has-beens. A bare quarter of respondents to exit polls stated they judged candidates on personality traits, the state of the economy rating much higher in their opinion, a far more important issue than the pandemic, as well. The Democratic wins in the states that cast their ballots for Biden were less than overwhelming in numbers.

 

The response to online polling by Survey Monkey with the question why Americans approved of Trump, elicited responses such that the president had kept his promises, he put America first, he attempted to get things done, and above all, he reversed the Obama years. He was also able to attract more ethnic minorities to his vote than any other Republican presidential candidate in a generation, appealing to Americans feeling alienated by left-wing progressive politics.

 

Although Joe Biden continually hammered away at Trump's handling of the coronavirus, 35 percent of voters felt more involved in the economy, followed by racial equality (20 percent), the pandemic (17 percent) and crime and safety (11 percent), according to exit polls. When asked what was more important in voting in a leader, only 27 percent of voters considered personality, while 73 percent chose the candidate's position on the issues.

 

And then there was the dashing of Democratic hopes that minority groups would vote in dependable blocs. Hispanic Americans contributed to Trump taking the 29 Electoral College votes in Florida through major gains in the Miami area where Joe Biden's tally was unexpectedly poor.  "The Cuban community in Miami has been through a communist regime. We believe in law and order, we believe in family values and we believe in freedom. That's what President Trump offers", explained Marti Mees, Cuban immigrant, Republican activist.

2020 saw an unprecedented turnout across the entire U.S. with estimates from exit polls seeing averages between 60 and 80 percent turnouts from state to state. Young voters, defined between the ages of 18 and 29, made up a double digit share of the total of ballots cast, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning & Engagement. "Nearly half of all eligible young people cast ballots in the most critical election races in the country", a CIRCLE analysis concluded.

 

"It's always hard to figure out how much differences in political behaviour due to age are because of something generational ... or whether it is something that is really a life cycle thing", commented Peter Loewen, a professor at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, but little doubt exists that Biden benefited from a high share of the youth vote; 62 percent for Biden, 33 percent for Trump. Trump's support was clustered in older voters landing in the 30-to-44-age cluster where 57 percent voted Republican. In the age demographic 45 and up, 51 percent voted Republican.

 

The Pew Research Center found in its regular, multination poll early in the year, that confidence in the U.S. president had diminished to a dismal 17 percent in countries considered friendly to the United States, the lowest any U.S. president has rated since the surveys began several decades earlier. In a select group of 13 countries Trump received a lower rating than China's President Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, President of Russia.

"Certainly it's not the blowout that we expected, or that some people expected and what the polls foretold", political scientist Matt Dallek at George Washington University -- an expert on American conservatism -- observed, crediting in part the manner in which Trump's 2020 campaign was organized. "Trump has really been masterful at tapping into the idea that the other side is this left-wing socialist enemy that is going to destroy American culture. He's really tapped into this alternative media universe -- Fox News, Breitbart, Daily Caller -- and created an alternate reality that is fed by these media."

Democratic presidential candidate former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden speaks Thursday, Nov. 5, 2020, in Wilmington, Del. Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., stands at left. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Judge, Jury and Executioner

Joe Biden  Reuters

"I said, I'm telling you, you're not getting the billion dollars. I said, you're not getting the billion, I'm going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours."

"I looked at them and said: I'm leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you're not getting the money."

"Well, son of a bitch [laughing], he got fired."

Former U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden 

Social media platforms have become powerful influences well beyond their importance as a site where people can exchange opinions and post notices. They have taken the place of the office water cooler, the small-press regional newsletter, the daily gossip column, and hard news disseminator. And have become as influential as any big-city newspaper of reputation and renown or network television empire. They rate high in the public social gossip anchorage of casual society but they have also over the years challenged reputable news media as a venue for active, not passive participation in popularizing news content and populist political opinion.

They flex their media muscles as purveyors of news and influencers appealing to their large followings and channeling their own political sympathies for greatest effect, while punishing in subtle ways those using their platforms as a loudspeaker for their own, media-unapproved ideologies and preferences and political-right-spectrum allegiances. They convey 'fake' news without a blush. Plump for candidates for high political office whose politics they approve, and try to 'silence' views that run counter to their own. They don't take criticism with equanimity as deserved for veering off neutrality as a social media platform.

The Trump campaign posted a screenshot as evidence that Kayleigh McEnany's account was locked  Getty Images

 

The evidence is not hard to find; the detested President Donald Trump's off-hand and off-kilter remarks on Twitter come with reality-check warnings. The White House communications officer representing the president of the United States has been banned on Twitter. In the upcoming presidential election set for early November, the Democratic candidate is given preference, the Republican short shrift. Both Twitter and Facebook which take the giant's share of social media popularity and usage have taken it upon themselves to act as political mentors to their following, pointing them in the 'right' direction.

Even people within the international community-users of the platforms who detest Mr. Trump are -- or should be -- dumbfounded at the activist role embraced by the social media rulers of note. When the New York Post reported that "a massive trove of data recovered from a laptop computer" left at a repair shop and then forgotten, revealed that the son of the former vice-president of the United States and current Democratic candidate for president on November 3 had or was in pursuit of lucrative associations with Ukrainian and Chinese companies it immediately became news to be suppressed by Facebook and Twitter.

The use and abuse of political influence at the elite executive level for personal gain? Who cares? There's an election to be won. And not by the detestable Trump. That's the new news, evidence of corruption in the Biden family. Yes, it's old news, actually, but news never given the attention it deserved, as when Joe Biden gave his own proud public account when he used his status as vice-president to force the government of Ukraine to fire its chief prosecutor on the threat of withholding a U.S. aid grant to Ukraine.

 

Joe Biden and son Hunter. According to the New York Post, emails from a recovered laptop indicate the younger Biden had or wash pursuing multiple lucrative arrangements with companies in Ukraine and China. Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

 

The Ukraine's chief prosecutor was engaged in an anti-corruption campaign, a campaign that the current president of Ukraine promised during his own pre-election speeches. The recovered laptop held emails that validated what was already suspected; Hunter Biden introducing a top Burisma executive to his father. Burisma, Ukrainian energy company, was facing a criminal investigation, the very company that Hunter Biden was involved with, and was lucratively on contract with for his 'services'. In a talk to the Council on Foreign Relations, seen on YouTube, Joe Biden boasted of his successful threat to have the chief prosecutor fired and the investigation and his son's implication buried.

Any attempts by Facebook and Twitter users to post those findings courtesy of the New York Post were censored. But it wasn't only the social media giants who censored that new information on gross interference in other governments, on insider trading on family influence, on acquiring lucrative contracts in exchange for the inside-ear on U.S. policy and connections, but the greater U.S. news media for whom the revelations were an instant no-story yawn. Censorship, suppression of a kind normally associated with corrupt, totalitarian governments which 'own' national news media.

The accuracy of the New York Post's revelations has been validated. The story details, however, were acquired through the active intervention of Rudolph Guiliano who when he was mayor of New York during the 9/11 atrocity was a hugely respected public figure, but now that he represents Donald J. Trump, a caricature in many respects who has managed to lead the U.S. in unexpected ways but has never succeeded in rehabilitating himself other than as a crude egotist, cannot be viewed as a purveyor of truth and thus the story was fated to be entombed.

Perhaps the real issue is that it doesn't really matter beyond the arrogant impudence of the news media ignoring an important story to shield a favoured political candidate running for high office, because the public which should be alerted so they are fully apprised before casting their vote, really has a feeble choice in any event. Either the bombastic, clumsy current president returns for a second term in office, or a feeble-minded, lying, corrupt ex-vice-president is returned as president of the great United States of America.

"Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey — the CEOs of Facebook and Twitter — are being ordered to Capitol Hill to answer for their companies’ censorship of The Post’s expose on the Biden family’s foreign business dealings in Ukraine and China."

"'Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans on Thursday authorized subpoenas for the execs after accusing them of engaging in “suppression and/or censorship; of The Post’s reporting."

The New York Post

Twitter blocked users from posting links to the New York Post article critical of Joe Biden, an unprecedented step against a major publication. Photograph: Denis Charlet/AFP/Getty Images