Four years ago, I went to bed on election night thinking that we had elected the first woman to be president. I woke up the next morning to find out that the polls had been very wrong, and Trump was the new president. It had been 68 years since the polls were drastically wrong. I was eleven years old, and the presidential race was the first one that I remember being aware of. My family went to bed sure that Thomas Dewey had defeated Harry Truman and would be the new president. We found out that we were wrong the next day, and Harry would continue to be president for the next four years. This is interesting, because I am writing this three days before the 2020 election and there is speculation that it may happen again. By the time you read this, the election will be over and the mystery that I am wondering about will be solved. Either the polls will be wrong again, or we may have to wait another 68 years for it to happen again. One pollster said that if Trump wins this time, against the polls, he (the pollster) may be out of business.
It has been a grueling campaign and has actually lasted since the last election—since the Democrats have never conceded or accepted Trump as their president. The last few weeks have been extremely screwed up with the constant TV spots. Most of them were out-and-out lies. Since the media only tells the left’s position in a positive manner and the right in a negative manner, many believe what they hear because they only get one side. The brutality of the ads is apparent with constant name calling and demeaning the opposition. Major candidates have become vulgar in their depiction of the opposition with some, along with the media, calling half the nation names because they support Trump. The Hunter Biden problem has been eliminated from most left-leaning newsrooms, which includes the major networks, and now we have the social media giants choosing sides and blocking conservative comments while not doing the same to the liberal or anti-Trump outlets. This is the first time in my life that I have seen a former president ridiculing another president and getting down in the gutter to do it. He should remember that Trump was elected because of his performance.
What has been causing me to think about this election and the way it has been viewed by the public is that the 1948 election between Truman and Dewey was hardly heard about. There were reports on the radio during regular broadcasts, but television was still a dream for the future. Most of the campaigning was train whistle-stops and newspaper articles. I remember the election because my mother and father discussed it and not because I heard about it through the media of the day. I actually like the old election better because it was more about ideas and principals rather than personal traits and quick retorts. You actually had to do some research unless you were a generational voter. You voted as your parents voted, as their parents voted. We still see some of that today as in the African American vote that is taken for granted to be Democratic. Some of this is changing because of the modern-day media, which is so disappointing due to the bias by most of the media outlets. In 1948, it was nearly impossible to discover the news reporter’s party preference. That is gone, and now you have to do your own research to find out the true facts. It is really too bad that the press—which is protected by the Constitution—cannot do the job that was envisioned by the Founding Fathers to keep all of the politicians honest. Now the news outlets will cover up for their favorite candidate and protect them from the scrutiny they deserve. There is one good thing that has happened because you cannot believe the news outlets anymore, and that is that many people have started to do their own research and consider most news and opinion articles as false until proven true.
Well, enough about the election that I am still wondering about and about which you, the reader, know the outcome. The people still rule the country if they wish and not the politicians who seem to think that they do. May God bless us and keep us faithful to do the right thing that he has granted us to do.
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