Monthly Archives: December 2015

Gettin’ High off The Supply

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The other day I was listening to someone on the radio talking about the presidential campaigns. I was driving and not really paying close attention. It was one of those deals where they bring on an “expert” to answer questions about different aspects of the campaign. At some point, the host asked the expert if Trump could really win the nomination and even the general election.

That caught my attention as the conventional wisdom has been that Trump will either fade or blow himself up by saying something crazy. No one ever talks about “President Trump” as it is just assumed he is a novelty act. Heck, I don’t think about Trump as President or even as the nominee and I’m enjoying his run. So, I listened to what the expert had to say about it.

The first thing the guy said was that Trump has more paid staff on the ground that anyone other than Bush. He has the second biggest team in Iowa and the biggest team in New Hampshire. Bush with all his money has more paid staff in Iowa, but Bush has collapsed and is laying off staff everywhere. Trump meanwhile keeps climbing in the polls. Current numbers have him in the 30’s.

The other thing he said is professionals on the ground in the early states are getting used to the idea of him winning. According to the expert, this is the prelude to voters getting used to the idea of him winning. That’s why his numbers keep climbing and why it gets harder for a challenger to emerge. The pool of people looking for an alternative is shrinking and is divided by the field, thus making them seem less credible.

You have to take these things with a grain of salt simply because we now have a whole industry built around elections. The “experts’ make six figure salaries in the business of being an expert on elections so they naturally promote their industry by placing a lot of importance on ground games, polling and consultant teams. A man good with the hammer sees the world as a nail.

Still, if you look at Trump’s 2015, it looks a lot like what you would expect from a winner. Six months ago, he was in the teens along with half a dozen other choices. The experts dismissed him as a clown and a side show. It was just a publicity stunt, we were told. Once he got bored, he would sell more books or TV shows and quit the race. Blah, blah, blah.

When his numbers improved, the establishment threw everything they had at the guy. The ambush by Fox at the first debate was well choreographed. His numbers rose into the 20’s and he became the front runner. The subsequent attempts to promote others like Farina and Carson were flops. Trump is now in the mid-30’s and there is no one that looks like a credible challenger.

In the 1980 campaign, the Cult went bananas because Reagan was too Hollywood. He and his team used the things they learned from movies and TV to present their man to the public. Reagan was a natural in front of cameras, he knew how the medium worked on audiences and he had spent a lifetime being quick on his feet in front of crowds. His team used those assets to great advantage.

In some respects, it was the birth of campaign-industrial complex. Suddenly, the people who sold laundry soap could make money selling Fred Jones for town dog catcher. The people who made movies could make campaign videos for congressmen, senators and presidential candidates. The math dork with the bad wig could get work as a pollster and maybe even get famous.

Of course, the ad men and consultants suddenly had whole new markets beyond making issue ads. They could shape the message, tailor the speeches, choreograph events and even tell the candidate what to wear. Today, tens of thousands make a living in some way from elections. They fill dead time with lobbying and issue advocacy, but their main business is the business of elections.

The reason the chattering skulls, and much of the consultant class, has been all wrong about Trump is they have been getting high off their own supply. For over a quarter century these people have been telling the public that elections are about service, issues and principles. They actually believe the crap they school their clients to tell the public. Every day some jack-off on NRO posts something about this or that candidate’s core values and he seems to believe it.

Trump looks at the election industry as he would any other business. He is not romantic about it. For him, it is a simple thing. You hire good people, let them do what they do best and he sells the hell out of the enterprise to the potential customers. The Trump campaign is just like a Trump golf course or a Trump casino.  His job is to sell it and make sure he has good people running it.

That’s the other aspect of it. Trump is good at winning. He also knows how to lose. Again, this is not a guy who gets high off his own supply. His act is for the customers, not for him. On the other hand, the people in the election rackets are all convinced they are geniuses. They are convinced they are the smartest people in the room, despite losing most of their campaigns.

The party system is somewhat to blame. Both parties have often pulled their punches for the sake “bipartisan” cooperation. It’s the equivalent of handing out participation ribbons. The result is an industry where losing often has no downside. In some cases, it is all upside. Eric Cantor lost his House seat and landed in a $3.4 million per year gig at a bank. Losing is not so bad in modern politics.

I suspect this is the cause of some of vitriol coming from Conservative Inc. Yeah, they are wedded to immigration romanticism and they fear nothing more than being called insensitive to the NAM, but they also resent Trump’s success. His poll numbers say to these people that the public is not buying their bullshit anymore. The game is up and they no longer hold the place of prominence they imagine.

This is most obvious among the conservative scribblers. They were so looking forward to the paying gigs where they penned 10,000 word essays on the GOP’s tax reform proposals. Trimmers like Ramesh Ponnuru were salivating at the prospect of maybe getting a paying gig with Team Bush. Bill Kristol was ordering drapes for his new office in the White House. Now this crude outsider is making them look like idiots.

The financialization of the political class over the last 25 years has caused all sorts of mischief in American life. Probably the worst result has been a layer of individuals between citizens and their rulers, who function as insulation for the political class. It’s been a good deal for them. So much so they started believing their own bullshit and now that’s being threatened by a vulgarian with a billion dollars to spend.

Cutting The Cord

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Yesterday I got home early and flipped on the news for some reason. The only time I bother with TV news is when something big happens and they have pictures or video. Otherwise watching some dunces read from the teleprompter is of no interest to me. The shout-shows are even less interesting as they never have anyone on representing my ideological perspective. for whatever reason, I had the urge, so I put on Fox News.

They have a show called The Five starring Greg Gutfeld and some other people who are unknown to me. I saw a middle-aged guy who reminded me of every marketing VP I’ve ever met. There was a little blonde scold that I think worked for Bush. Being Fox, they had two bimbos with big hooters to fill out the set. Presumably, the gag here is they have five people on the set, hence the name.

I only watched for a few minutes as they were taking turns showing their outrage and dismay over something Trump said about a reporter. It was like an AA meeting where instead of taking turns confessing their sins, they took turns confessing Trump’s sins. “Hi my name is Greg and Donald Trump is a big meanie.” The way they were carrying on I thought maybe Trump dropped the F-bomb on some nuns, but it turns out he just said something mean to a reporter.

As I turned it off, I was thinking about why Fox would be anti-Trump. It seems to me that their target audience overlaps quite a bit with the sort of people who like Trump’s bluntness and candor. From what I gather, they have a parade of chattering skulls day after day saying bad things about Trump and his supporters. That strikes me as foolish, but maybe I’m misjudging the Fox New audience.

Anyway, it got me thinking about the cable news rackets. I’m about to cut the cord and go Kodi/Sling for my video entertainments and the one thing I will not have is a cable news channel. I’m not really sure I care, but I suspect the reason none of them offer a cable-free service is they know there’s not that much interest. I’d watch free, but I would not pay and I doubt many people would pay to see Fox or CNN.

The thing is, American news operations are pretty much the opposite of what they claim. They always talk about speaking truth to power, but that’s nonsense. They are not reporting on the doings of the powerful for the benefit of the people. They are lecturing the people on behalf of the powerful, operating as a propaganda organ for the managerial state.

Conservative media like Fox was supposed to be what the Progressive media claims to be, but it really has not worked out that way. Instead, they function as the media arm of the Republican Party. One of the reasons I no longer watch Fox News other than when there is a disaster is that I know what they plan to say before they say it. It’s the same old cheers I’ve been hearing since the Bush years.

One of my themes here is that the two parties are really just two sides of the dominant culture of America. You see this with the cable news operations. In the 90’s, CNN was the dominant operation and reflected the ruling consensus. It was called the Clinton News Network for a reason. Fox came along simply because CNN was so flagrantly biased in favor of one side.

In the 2000’s, MSNBC became the super Progressive challenge to CNN. This reflected the Progressive takeover of the Democratic Party and ruling elite. Fox boomed as the other side of the coalition needed a media outlet of its own. Poor CNN, which represented the old Clinton-Bush consensus, fell to third place. There were times when CNN had no ratings, suggesting no one was actually watching on purpose.

Fast forward to now and CNN has absorbed the MSNBC crowd to become the left hand side’s media outlet. They are now #2 in the ratings behind Fox News, which is the right hand side’s propaganda outlet. Whether or not the viewership numbers reported are accurate, I don’t know, but hardly anyone watches any of these channels. They exist as entertainment for the political class.

That’s why they are fighting the cord cutting and unbundling. Make CNN optional and they lose 99.99% of their “subscribers.” Fox would probably lose 95% of their subscribers. Fox could probably live off ad dollars, but as a much smaller operation. MSNBC would go bust in a week and the extra channels like CNBC would be gone in an hour.

Like so much of modern life, normalville is farmed for taxes and fees to keep the managerial elite in the lifestyle they expect. Working men are paying $100 a month for TV service so Bill O’Reilly can peddle his crappy books. If you want to be an optimist, the coming implosion of the cable model is one place to look. This rentier system that is the modern American economy is slowly unraveling, one cord cutter at a time.