Recommended: Elite Media Got it All So Wrong

The media today is full of pompous talking heads and slightly desperate Clinton spokespeople telling us dozens of reasons why Donald Trump can't possibly beat Hillary Clinton in the presidential election.  These are the very same people who have been telling us for almost 12 months now that a Trump candidacy would be a one-day wonder, a joke, and that he would certainly fall at the first (second, third,......) primary race. The piece Elite Media Got it All So Wrong today summarizes this situation pretty well.

It is clear that the narrow political and media elites who have been running the country have gotten so completely out of touch with the mood of the average American voter that they simply cannot conceive of how Trump could ever do what he has apparently not only managed to do, but do convincingly. In the most recent primaries he won almost every demographic group - men, women, highly educated, poorly educated, white, black, rich, poor, conservative, evangelical, old. Only the very young defected - not to Hillary but to Bernie.

Establishment Democrats (and who else would be supporting Hillary?) would be foolish indeed  to underrate Trump's appeal to American voters across the board.  It's not, I think, that American voters think Trump is so great - it's that they think the establishment alternatives, including Hillary, are so bad.

In fact, Trump's sentiments, indelicately as they may be expressed, align pretty well with what a lot of American voters, perhaps even a majority, feel. That America has been pushed around and taken advantage of. That Obama has been outfoxed repeatedly by Putin.  That the administration has been rudderless in the whole Middle East fiascos (all of them - Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and especially the ISIS phenomena). That China is eating our lunch on more ways than one.  That the federal government is a total mess and can't run anything right, from the VA health system to Obamacare to military procurement to fiscal policy.

One may agree or disagree with these positions - the elites, obviously, mostly disagree - but many voters apparently see the world differently.  Perhaps because they don't live in the East Coast intellectual and political bubble. Perhaps because they are not immune from the job losses and declining middle class incomes the elite's policies have generated.  Perhaps because they have to run or work in real-world businesses instead of cushy government or government-subsidized jobs.

I have no idea how I will vote in this election. Trump looks like a disaster, but then so does Hillary. But one thing is clear - it's time to stop taking seriously the predictions and arguments of the mainstream political consultants and media talking heads - they have been so completely wrong for so long now.