Trump the Survivor Still in the Game

With the election less than two weeks away, all the mainstream media coverage is starting to amalgamate into one giant “Dewey Defeats Truman” headline.

If you don’t know the story, New York Gov. Thomas E. Dewey was a sure thing to win the 1948 election. According to Chicago Tribune reporter, Tim Jones, “The polls and the pundits left no room for doubt: Dewey was going to defeat President Harry S. Truman. And the Tribune would be the first to report it.” So they did. And they affixed to the front page of their paper one of the most famous headlines in American history, “Dewey Defeats Truman.” Of course, Truman won 303 electoral votes and won the popular vote by 4.5 percentage points while Dewey’s most memorable legacy is being part of a an epic headline fail.

She’s the Wall Street funded candidate promising to get “dark money” out of politics, stand up to Wall Street, and stop the TPP. Electing Hillary to do all that is like putting Dracula in charge of a blood drive.

The picture of smiley Truman triumphantly posing with the headline serves as a great reminder that American elections aren’t decided by polls or pundits but by voters.

The mainstream media’s election coverage has always possessed a Liberal bias, but in 2016, they seem to have tossed away the pretension of objectivity. Seriously, an illegal immigrant attempted to assassinate Donald Trump at one of his rallies, and it made fewer headlines than when Trump pretended to say the “F” word. They don’t want to cover the election; they’d rather measure Hillary Clinton’s head for the crown-maker and decide what type of gems should be encrusted atop her scepter. But here’s three reasons why — despite their confidence in a Clinton victory — we should go ahead and have the election anyway:

1) The Healthcare Hindenburg is Crashing
The Affordable Care Act is one of the great misnomers of all time. Obamacare is a disaster. It’s the legislative equivalent of an Elizabethan tragedy. Ezekiel Emmanuel is the playwright, Jonathan Gruber is the clown, the American middle class is the tragic hero and Nancy Pelosi is the person who talks you into buying tickets and going to see it just so you can say, “this is way too long, and most of it doesn’t make sense.”

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According to Obama’s very own Department of Health and Human Services, Obamacare premiums — which were already middle class wallet-emptiers — are about to go up 59 percent in Minnesota, 40 percent in North Carolina, 53 percent in Pennsylvania, and 116 percent in Arizona! And they aren’t just going up in swing states. Higher premiums are coming soon to a city near you, premiums on average nationwide are set to increase between 22 and 25 percent.

2) Trump v. Clinton Could be the Next Brexit, or the Next 2014, or the Next 2012
Trump is trending upward in state and national polls. The latest Fox News poll released Wednesday has him down just 3 points. Reuters has him down 4. LA Times/USC has him up 1. IBD/TIPP has him down 1. Rasmussen has him down 1. Clinton’s lead is trending downward in Florida, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Wisconsin, North Carolina, New Hampshire and Nevada.

I keep hearing people say, “What if the polling is off like it was with Brexit.” They could add to that, “and almost every other election in recent memory.”

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Pollsters weren’t exactly spraying champagne on each other after the 2014 elections. According to Nate Silver, the average polling bias across all the senate races was D+4. The polls skewed too far in favor of the Democrats by 6.4 in Georgia, 7 in Iowa, 12.3 in Arkansas, 8.9 in Kentucky, 7.9 in Virginia, 12.3 in Tennessee. They were even skewed D+21 in the Nevada gubernatorial race—a carnival fortune teller with a deck of tarot cards and a cup of tea leaves would have done better.

Election polls didn’t just miss the mark on Brexit. They miss all the time. In fact, they’re significantly skewed much more often than they’re right because nobody knows what the electorate will look like. Add in cellphones, laws that don’t allow automated dialing, caller ID, and the proliferation of non-probability polls being passed off as legit polls, and you might as well ask a Ouija board who’s going to win.

And it doesn’t help that we’re dealing with the least predictable election of our lifetimes. I expect the polls to miss this electorate big league.

3) Disclaimer: This Article Has Not Been Approved by John Podesta
A few weeks ago, I knew almost nothing about John Podesta. Now, my favorite dinner party anecdote has become, “Alexandria Phillips sent Clinton campaign chair John Podesta an article I wrote.” It gives me instant WikiLeaks street cred.

Nobody knows what WikiLeaks’s next drip will be or who it will land on. I keep thinking that I haven’t seen a John Podesta email to or from Hillary Clinton yet. Maybe they don’t email each other or maybe those will all be leaked together in their very own batch. There are a lot of John Podesta emails still to come and nobody knows what we might learn tomorrow.

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Hillary Clinton’s entire campaign is built on nothing but the idea that Donald Trump is a bad person. No noteworthy policies, just political wind testing. No accomplishments, just scandals. The more WikiLeaks exposes her corruption, the more Trump doesn’t look so bad.

Trump is the change candidate in a change election. He’s got new ideas and he wants to reform Washington. Hillary Clinton is the “change-maker” whose promising to keep everything the same. She’s the Wall Street funded candidate promising to get “dark money” out of politics, stand up to Wall Street, and stop the TPP. Electing Hillary to do all that is like putting Dracula in charge of a blood drive.

TV pundits and pollsters don’t know who will win this election. Neither does Nate Silver, or anyone on Twitter, or your next door neighbor, or me, or Hillary Clinton, or Donald Trump. They’ll count the votes, and then we’ll know. I’m sure the Chicago Tribune will wait; the rest of the media should too.

Eddie Zipperer is assistant professor of political science at Georgia Military College.