in 2024 Election, Democrats, Media
This year’s election exposed the relative insignificance of two of the main pillars of the Democratic Party: money and control over the press. Thirty or forty years ago, it might have been impossible to overcome a much better-funded opponent who was supported by virtually 100% of what then constituted the press. In 2024, Donald Trump was able to blow past those once-formidable obstacles.
First, money. Financial resources are obviously significant. A candidate in any race needs enough money to get his messages out. But there is considerable evidence that in today’s world, a point of diminishing returns is often reached.
It is hard to reconstruct all of the dollars that are spent on a presidential race, because there are so many different sources of funds. But I don’t think there is any doubt that Kamala Harris vastly outspent Donald Trump:
Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign has given Democrats a substantive fundraising lead, with last-minute federal filings released ahead of Election Day suggesting her campaign is maintaining a massive lead over former President Donald Trump in the final days of the race….
The Biden—now Harris—campaign committee raised $997.2 million and Trump’s campaign committee raised $388 million in total between Jan. 2023 and Oct. 16, 2024, the most recent date for which Federal Election Commission filings are available….
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The Harris Victory Fund—which raises money for both Harris’ campaign and Democratic groups—raised $1.2 billion this election cycle, according to a FEC filing released on Oct. 24.Trumps National Committee JFC, which raises money for Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee, took in only $375.3 million during this election cycle, while the ex-president’s Trump 47 Committee, a different joint fundraising committee that collects funds from bigger donors, raised $327.5 million.
While Harris had already garnered a fundraising lead over Trump, her donations shot up in September: NBC News first reported that Harris and affiliated committees had passed the $1 billion mark since she entered the race based on her September fundraising….
All of that money availed Harris little. The largest share goes for television advertising, but when the candidate does not have a compelling message, more TV ads do nothing to persuade voters. Probably the most effective campaign spending goes for on the ground staff, get out the vote efforts, and so on. But both candidates had plenty of resources for the essentials. At the margin, more money accomplished little.
Similarly, the Democrats’ control over what used to be called the “mainstream” press is an asset that has been steadily depreciating for the last 20 years. This is where we at Power Line came in: we played a role in exposing the falsehoods about George W. Bush that were propagated by 60 Minutes and CBS News during the 2024 campaign. That was one of the first of many serious blows to the credibility of the “mainstream” press.
At this point, that credibility, and the influence that goes with it, are gone. Outlets like the New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, the Associated Press, and so on, are correctly viewed as mouthpieces for the Democratic Party. I usually refer to them as the Democratic Party press or the liberal press, which is how most people see them.
Some of these outlets still claim to have some kind of authority, stemming from their purported objectivity or expertise. But no one believes it. Reporters, editors and talking heads have revealed themselves as partisan, dishonest hacks so many times that their cover is blown, and what they say persuades almost no one.
This doesn’t mean that controlling the Times, the Post, the AP, etc., is of no value. But the value of those outlets lies pretty much exclusively in preaching to the far-left choir. They can roil and motivate the Democrats’ base, but they can’t do much else.
This year’s election showed how much more effectively persuadable voters can be reached by going to them directly, through interviews, podcasts and events. No one really cares what the New York Times thinks of Donald Trump–we all know the Times hates him–but listening to Trump talk with a podcaster like Joe Rogan at length, not in the snippets or even sentence fragments so often broadcast on the “news,” is vastly more effective. As is watching Trump and his supporters at an event like the Madison Square Garden rally.
The people who run the Democratic Party are well aware that in Kamala Harris, they were saddled with an inadequate candidate. I am not sure they equally understand how far the structures on which they they have long depended have been weakened.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2024/11/two-more-takeaways.php
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