Op-ed: Even before results were in from Pennsylvania Tuesday night the national television had declared Donald Trump the winner. It wasn’t the first time. And then some spent an hour talking about Trump as a winner, declaring themselves fools for thinking otherwise Hillary Clinton had a 58-41 lead over Bernard Sanders but the networks delayed declaring her the winner. They didn’t mention their mysterious exit polls. These were the same polls that declared John Kerry the winner over George W. Bush. Some felt people lied to polltakers because they were ashamed. Four years earlier former Vice President Al Gore got half a million votes more but lost due to the electoral college. One major “narrative,” to use a newly popular word, that has changed. But it is not talked about. Democratic voters, meanwhile, described as very small, and they were at the start. Now they outnumbered Republicans in New York and Pennsylvania. It may have been that since Clinton was the presumptive winner few bothered in the early months. And there was a sexy race among Republicans. Now exit polls find that Democrats are “energized” by the Sanders-Clinton race. Even more likely to energize Democrats is for Clinton to choose a woman as her VP. It received almost no publicity on television during the weekend. It finally was mentioned on Tuesday, but pundits focused on Trump picking a woman. Elise Jordan, a Republican commentator on MSNBC, was quickly cut off when she said Trump couldn’t beat one woman, let alone two. The Washington Post said: “It doesn’t matter if Sanders continues his candidacy until the last votes are cast in June. What matters is that he quits gracefully, and there should be every expectation that he will, for a simple reason: Sanders is not a fool." Simply recycling unproved claims that Hillary is dishonest - most apparently based on discredited Benghazi claims – is boring. It won’t write headlines. Journalists want new things. Trump will try to plagiarize previous claims. Although CBS is on record as saying Trump makes money for them, that doesn’t mean they have chosen to elect him. They chose to make money. They don’t care who the president is. Hillary already has a YouTube channel. She needs to update it hourly, not every two days. It would take little work. Most of it would be just quote the network when they report on something other than Trump. Her tech staff can do a split screen when Trump’s fraud trial opens on the same day as the Cleveland Republican Convention. The judge could grant a delay but they were loathe to do this in cases that have been going on for years. If there was any doubt what Sanders would do he answered it by saying he would "do everything that I can to make certain that Donald Trump is not elected president." More: Biggest surprise of Presidential campaign Hillary Clinton appears presumptive nominee Say goodbye to Bernie Sanders
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Robert Weller
2016 US election news and other news from the USA
Bio
Worked in journalism, including on the Internet, for more than 40 years. Started as a news editor at the Colorado Daily at the University of Colorado, joined a small Montana newspaper, the Helena Independent-Record, and then United Press International. Archives
November 2016
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