Three links about last night, which encapsulate the evening:
1. The Guardian’s brief description of the election, which sounds amazingly similar to the 2016 US Election:
pic.twitter.com/i0EWiNz8Zl
— dcg1114 (@dcg1114) June 9, 2017
2. Worth remembering that the knives were out for Corbyn within the Labour Party before this election. If you know who these people are it may be more interesting, but several wanted the leadership of the Party for themselves:
Lovely compilation by @EL4JC of anti Corbyn Labour MPs and media pundits having to admit they were wrong
pic.twitter.com/nX0sN2tB5D— Hussain (@Chemzes) June 9, 2017
3. Finally, Marina Hyde in the Guardian, nails the pundit class’s inability to understand that elections are more volatile than they think.
It’s important to remember that the worst thing Theresa May had ever done before this was run through some wheat fields. So while she may have been on the Tory authorities’ radar at some point, there was nothing in her record to suggest she posed this level of security risk. Despite helming a campaign with more suspiciously unforced errors than the first round of a tennis grand slam, though, Prime Minister May has no intention of resigning. Is this a bit like when she had no intention of calling an election? Either way, I hope the BBC is already cutting a farewell montage of her best bits to Sting’s Fields of Gold. “We’ll remember her, when the West Wing blows, upon the fields of barley …” Or however it goes.
Elsewhere, and before the day is out, most of the political class are to be forcibly tattooed – choice of our foreheads or the arses we talk out of – with William Goldman’s famous dictum about Hollywood: Nobody knows anything. I mean, really. Really. With a few notable exceptions, there are uncontacted Amazon tribes with more of a clue – certainly ones that are less prone to collective failures of imagination. In fact, if you’d flown a plane over north-west Brazil last week, you might have spotted some rocks and pottery or whatnot arranged into a giant message reading: “You’re all going to drop a complete bollock with this youth turnout stuff”
…Received wisdom was that the Tory election machine was a crack special forces unit. So thanks for the laugh, Delta Farce! Crosby has masterminded a campaign akin to one of those Funniest Home Videos where someone attempts to light their own farts and ends up in hospital. They’re still the government, but they’ll never use the bathroom the same way again.”
The Beep somewhat redeems itself for confronting all those anti-Corbyn Labour MPs with their own words.
Michael Savage and Alex Hacillo at The Guardian write of Corbyn’s ‘secret sauce’. As if it can be bottled and used by any politician. As silly as Kushner’s, Obama’s, and Rove’s ‘secret sauce.’ Corbyn, like Sanders, is a turtle. He’s been at this for a very long time and keeps putting one foot in front of the other on the path he’s been on his whole life. Money can’t buy authenticity.
I like that Guardian article, and think you’re being too hard on them.
>>”there was one factor that made the whole thing work: Corbyn’s unspun personality and his willingness to be upfront about his beliefs… suddenly people felt like someone was being honest for the first time.”
that’s hardly an easy recipe to copy, though certainly some politicians are better than others at faking sincerity.
Yes, that point was included but mostly it was about using social media and volunteers in novel ways. If all media campaign coverage were full and impartial, the social media end-around would hardly be needed for authentic candidates.
Jim Messina tweets (he needs no introduction for political junkies):
That one got a few taunts over the next couple of days but it came alive on June 8.
One participant reminded others of a Messina tweet from a few months ago:
Wonder how much the Tories paid campaign whiz-kid Messina?
Any US media cheeky enough to confront US prognosticators such as:
President Obama suggests Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party is ‘disintegrating’ and has lost touch with ‘fact and reality’
and
Labour chose Corbyn as he was `maddest person in room’ – Bill Clinton
well there’s you…
The main reason the US media won’t do that is that too few readers care much about UK politics, and the second reason is that too few writers are well informed about UK politics.
the coverage of this campaign has convinced me that most US writers on the subject know less about UK politics than I do, and therefore try too hard to find similarities between the UK and here.
I will cut Obama a little slack, (just a little) the Torygraph has certainly spun that interview as hard as they could.
Not talking about readers — on camera confrontations of VIPs that were completely wrong on their pronouncements. ie. all the assholes that publicly assured us that Iraq had WMDs.
There are always similarities but the structure is so different that it’s not easy to grasp. It would be as if the US presidential election were decided by congressional districts. But unlike the UK PM, the US President is head of state and head of government. (Not sure the latter was intended to devolve as fully as it has.)
Obama chose to weigh in and his guy, Messina, has worked for the Tories in the past two elections. Plus, given how ballistic he and the Democrats have been because Putin hinted that Clinton would be difficult for him while they feel free to actually endorse or disparage candidates in other countries, such as Macron and Corbyn, I’m not cutting Obama any slack on this. He knows which side butters his bread and that happens not to be the side that favors the people.