As noted before, Donald J. Trump achieved the Republican nomination for President while breaking almost all of the rules for politicians that have been developed over history.
Having done so, he failed to recognize that once he was nominated, the strategy and tactics used during the primaries would no longer work. Once he got in the big arena, the mainstream media put him in their sights, and proceeded to parse every word he said and use them to beat him up.
And he provided them plenty of ammunition in the first weeks. It cost him a month in which the media and the Democrat they serve did their best to brand him however they wanted. In those weeks, his poll numbers fell accordingly. No surprise there.
In August, he has seemed to get things under better control, and he has stopped making the undisciplined statement and tweets that we saw during the primaries. This appears to have helped with the poll numbers.
To have a chance of winning the election, he is going to have to get the branding the media and his opponent have done to him reversed. This is difficult to do now. One cannot do it with rallies, however well attended. There he is preaching to the choir.
To reach the biggest part of the electorate, he is going to have to do it with media. During the primaries, he got free media from everyone. Now, only Fox and a few others report on him positively. The rest of the media, best described as Democrat operatives with bylines will only report him in a very negative way.
That means he will have to buy advertising, and therefore do a lot of fundraising. He has taken some pride in self funding much of his campaign so far, though he has been raising money since the nomination.
He will need to do much more in order to buy the advertising he will need.
Perhaps his biggest issue from the beginning has been illegal immigration. During the primaries, he was able to get by with generalizations. We are going to deport all illegals is very easy to say, and appealing to many, but again ugly reality raises its head.
Trying to deport 12 million illegals immediately is just impossible to do. Even if that is what is wanted, the resources to do so do not exist, nor will they. We have a system of laws in place that deal with the procedures for doing so, and although they are not being used by the current administration they would have to be followed by a Trump administration. The hope that the laws could be changed to facilitate mass deportation is not justified because Democrats would filibuster it in the Senate even if Republicans would pass it.
Trump appears to have realized that, and is modifying the policy a bit. We do not know how much change there would be, but he has said that he would follow the law. That is at least something that Democrats have failed to do for many years.
Some Trump supporter will be critical of any change, but my view is that the change is necessary and proper. Of course, many of those critics are people who would drive the bus over the cliff to stand for "principle." A good leader would not do that.
Trump is meeting today with Enrique Pena Nieto, the President of Mexico, in what is a very interesting development. That will be followed shortly with what is billed as a speech giving details about his immigration policy going forward. These things could very well make or break his candidacy.
Whatever he says and does today, Trump must face the reality that in order to get his ideas into the body politic, he cannot rely on the media for free publicity. He has to raise the money and buy ads.
So, we will see how it goes.
Showing posts with label Media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Media. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 31, 2016
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Of Yellow Dogs and Stuff
From back when I was a Democrat until this very day, I have known Democrats who would swear they would vote for a yellow dog, if he was a Democrat.
There are a lot who actually would....its not a joke.
There is a lot of "tribalism" that goes into political parties, I guess.
I was always a bit too independent to turn over my political choices to a group that anybody could join, so although I supported Democrats back in the day with whom I didn't fully agree, I didn't pull the straight ticket lever but once. That was in 1964. Big mistake. Have not done it since.
But back to yellow dogs....I have seen some candidates who wouldn't be able to stand up to a good yellow dog, and from both parties. I have nothing against yellow dogs, per se. In fact, I like dogs, even yellow ones.
Where I take issue with those Democrats is when the candidate doesn't measure up to a good dog, and they will vote for him or her anyway, if they run for election as a Democrat. (To treat everyone the same, I would feel the same way about a Republican who would do such.)
Of course, there are some elections where neither of the parties offer a decent choice. One that comes to mind was the last election for governor here. There were lots of candidates, but I wasn't real happy with either of the two parties' candidates, and the independent, although an old friend, just didn't measure up. So I voted for old UT graduate Kinky Friedman, because I knew he couldn't screw things up nearly as badly as the others could. But Kinky, although really a Democrat, wasn't a yellow dog.
I came up with this yellow dog business today as I was pondering some of the emails about Obama that are flying about the Internet. You know, the ones about his birth certificate, his travel to Pakistan on a foreign passport, his college records, and all that stuff.
Now, I have no idea whether those allegations are true or false.
But what I do know is that the allegations have been out there since before the election (many are based upon his books).
That raises the question: how can anyone have voted for him without knowing the answers to the questions?
The so-called mainstream press never pressed any of it, although private parties tried to. I understand Obama has spent nearly a million dollars keeping it all hushed up. He, like any individual, has a right to privacy, but it would seem that a candidate for President would not be concerned about a birth certificate. Or college records (we had Bush's). Or passport records.
I have been in public service for over 40 years, and my life has been an open book. I never had anything that I was sufficiently ashamed of to hide. Why is Obama ashamed?
He could very easily solve the problems and answer the questions.
And that is what got me to thinking about the yellow dog.
There are a lot who actually would....its not a joke.
There is a lot of "tribalism" that goes into political parties, I guess.
I was always a bit too independent to turn over my political choices to a group that anybody could join, so although I supported Democrats back in the day with whom I didn't fully agree, I didn't pull the straight ticket lever but once. That was in 1964. Big mistake. Have not done it since.
But back to yellow dogs....I have seen some candidates who wouldn't be able to stand up to a good yellow dog, and from both parties. I have nothing against yellow dogs, per se. In fact, I like dogs, even yellow ones.
Where I take issue with those Democrats is when the candidate doesn't measure up to a good dog, and they will vote for him or her anyway, if they run for election as a Democrat. (To treat everyone the same, I would feel the same way about a Republican who would do such.)
Of course, there are some elections where neither of the parties offer a decent choice. One that comes to mind was the last election for governor here. There were lots of candidates, but I wasn't real happy with either of the two parties' candidates, and the independent, although an old friend, just didn't measure up. So I voted for old UT graduate Kinky Friedman, because I knew he couldn't screw things up nearly as badly as the others could. But Kinky, although really a Democrat, wasn't a yellow dog.
I came up with this yellow dog business today as I was pondering some of the emails about Obama that are flying about the Internet. You know, the ones about his birth certificate, his travel to Pakistan on a foreign passport, his college records, and all that stuff.
Now, I have no idea whether those allegations are true or false.
But what I do know is that the allegations have been out there since before the election (many are based upon his books).
That raises the question: how can anyone have voted for him without knowing the answers to the questions?
The so-called mainstream press never pressed any of it, although private parties tried to. I understand Obama has spent nearly a million dollars keeping it all hushed up. He, like any individual, has a right to privacy, but it would seem that a candidate for President would not be concerned about a birth certificate. Or college records (we had Bush's). Or passport records.
I have been in public service for over 40 years, and my life has been an open book. I never had anything that I was sufficiently ashamed of to hide. Why is Obama ashamed?
He could very easily solve the problems and answer the questions.
And that is what got me to thinking about the yellow dog.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Why don't we get the truth on Iraq?
Michael Yon has a new report out, entitled Resistance is futile: You will be (mis)informed. Yon is an independent reporter and blogger who has embedded with US Army and Marine units in Iraq, and sent firsthand reports back to his readers for quite some time.
He was recently home for a few days, and the report describes what he found here in the US:
"....I was at home in the United States just one day before the magnitude hit me like vertigo: America seems to be under a glass dome which allows few hard facts from the field to filter in unless they are attached to a string of false assumptions. Considering that my trip home coincided with General Petraeus’ testimony before the US Congress, when media interest in the war was (I’m told) unusually concentrated, it’s a wonder my eardrums didn’t burst on the trip back to Iraq. In places like Singapore, Indonesia, and Britain people hardly seemed to notice that success is being achieved in Iraq, while in the United States, Britney was competing for airtime with O.J. in one of the saddest sideshows on Earth.
"No thinking person would look at last year’s weather reports to judge whether it will rain today, yet we do something similar with Iraq news. The situation in Iraq has drastically changed, but the inertia of bad news leaves many convinced that the mission has failed beyond recovery, that all Iraqis are engaged in sectarian violence, or are waiting for us to leave so they can crush their neighbors. This view allows our soldiers two possible roles: either “victim caught in the crossfire” or “referee between warring parties.” Neither, rightly, is tolerable to the American or British public......"
He is being kind and generous to our mainstream media. They have ignored good news and magnified bad news from Iraq from the beginning. Is it deliberate? Pehaps. Most people, even journalists, tend to view events from the perspective of their experience and beliefs. Something that might seem credible to one person, may not seem so to another. The same goes for a determination of what is important or not. What we do know is that most journalists are quite liberal. The result is that the news we get is tilted in that direction, whether intentionally or not.
A pretty good example of this is the current reporting out of Iraq. Has anyone noticed that the number of stories reported has gone down? Seems so to me. It also seems that the news, if reported, would mostly be good. Perhaps that is why it is not reported.
Yon has in the past offered his columns free to the mainstream media, but, of course, they would not accept. They wouldn't be caught dead printing or reporting the true story, when a bad news story fits their political leanings much better.
To try to get the real story out, Yon has offered his reports to the National Newspaper Association at no cost. Will anyone print them? We will see.
In the meantime, we are stuck with having to ferret out the truth from disparate sources, and piece it together for ourselves.
Yon's perception of what we have now is pretty good:
"......Clearly, a majority of Americans believe the current set of outdated
fallacies passed around mainstream media like watered down drinks at happy hour.
Why wouldn’t they? The cloned copy they get comes from the same sources that
list the specials at the local grocery store, and the hours and locations of
polling places for town elections. These same news sources print obituaries and
birth announcements, give play-by-play for local high school sports, and
chronicle all the painful details of the latest celebrity to fall from
grace.
"To illustrate the absurdity to which this conceit of the collective has
grown, I’m tempted to borrow from the boy in the fairy tale, only this time
pointing to and shouting at the doomsday-sayers parading by: “Hey, they aren’t
wearing any clothes. . . . ”............."
How sad. You should read all of Michael Yon's reports, along with those from Michael Totten, and Bill Roggio. They have been there, are beholden to no one, and one can get a good idea of the real truths in Iraq from them.
UPDATE: The United Nations reports good news from Iraq:
"Taxi driver Ahmed Khalil Baqir used to station himself outside Baghdad's main morgue, waiting for grieving families who went there to claim their relatives’ dead bodies.
"I was totally dependent on them for my living," Baqir, a 44-year-old father of four, said." I never thought about picking up people in the street as I was being hired five to eight times a day by these families. But now it is a waste of time to wait there and these days I wait only for about three hours in the morning and I continue my work picking up passengers in the street.”
Read the whole thing.
Via: Instapundit
He was recently home for a few days, and the report describes what he found here in the US:
"....I was at home in the United States just one day before the magnitude hit me like vertigo: America seems to be under a glass dome which allows few hard facts from the field to filter in unless they are attached to a string of false assumptions. Considering that my trip home coincided with General Petraeus’ testimony before the US Congress, when media interest in the war was (I’m told) unusually concentrated, it’s a wonder my eardrums didn’t burst on the trip back to Iraq. In places like Singapore, Indonesia, and Britain people hardly seemed to notice that success is being achieved in Iraq, while in the United States, Britney was competing for airtime with O.J. in one of the saddest sideshows on Earth.
"No thinking person would look at last year’s weather reports to judge whether it will rain today, yet we do something similar with Iraq news. The situation in Iraq has drastically changed, but the inertia of bad news leaves many convinced that the mission has failed beyond recovery, that all Iraqis are engaged in sectarian violence, or are waiting for us to leave so they can crush their neighbors. This view allows our soldiers two possible roles: either “victim caught in the crossfire” or “referee between warring parties.” Neither, rightly, is tolerable to the American or British public......"
He is being kind and generous to our mainstream media. They have ignored good news and magnified bad news from Iraq from the beginning. Is it deliberate? Pehaps. Most people, even journalists, tend to view events from the perspective of their experience and beliefs. Something that might seem credible to one person, may not seem so to another. The same goes for a determination of what is important or not. What we do know is that most journalists are quite liberal. The result is that the news we get is tilted in that direction, whether intentionally or not.
A pretty good example of this is the current reporting out of Iraq. Has anyone noticed that the number of stories reported has gone down? Seems so to me. It also seems that the news, if reported, would mostly be good. Perhaps that is why it is not reported.
Yon has in the past offered his columns free to the mainstream media, but, of course, they would not accept. They wouldn't be caught dead printing or reporting the true story, when a bad news story fits their political leanings much better.
To try to get the real story out, Yon has offered his reports to the National Newspaper Association at no cost. Will anyone print them? We will see.
In the meantime, we are stuck with having to ferret out the truth from disparate sources, and piece it together for ourselves.
Yon's perception of what we have now is pretty good:
"......Clearly, a majority of Americans believe the current set of outdated
fallacies passed around mainstream media like watered down drinks at happy hour.
Why wouldn’t they? The cloned copy they get comes from the same sources that
list the specials at the local grocery store, and the hours and locations of
polling places for town elections. These same news sources print obituaries and
birth announcements, give play-by-play for local high school sports, and
chronicle all the painful details of the latest celebrity to fall from
grace.
"To illustrate the absurdity to which this conceit of the collective has
grown, I’m tempted to borrow from the boy in the fairy tale, only this time
pointing to and shouting at the doomsday-sayers parading by: “Hey, they aren’t
wearing any clothes. . . . ”............."
How sad. You should read all of Michael Yon's reports, along with those from Michael Totten, and Bill Roggio. They have been there, are beholden to no one, and one can get a good idea of the real truths in Iraq from them.
UPDATE: The United Nations reports good news from Iraq:
"Taxi driver Ahmed Khalil Baqir used to station himself outside Baghdad's main morgue, waiting for grieving families who went there to claim their relatives’ dead bodies.
"I was totally dependent on them for my living," Baqir, a 44-year-old father of four, said." I never thought about picking up people in the street as I was being hired five to eight times a day by these families. But now it is a waste of time to wait there and these days I wait only for about three hours in the morning and I continue my work picking up passengers in the street.”
Read the whole thing.
Via: Instapundit
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