It was a big win for President Obama on Tuesday night. Exit polls had him scoring lots of minority votes – African-Americans again voted in huge numbers for the first black president. But the political bloc that most helped push Obama to reelection was the American media.
All throughout election night, pundits and reporters were talking about the economy and how that had impacted the campaign. That was seldom the story the news media told throughout the election.
According to several exit polls, Romney’s lead on the economy was small and many voters actually thought it was improving, despite years of economic cataclysm. “But Romney is winning early on a key question in the exit poll: Who can better handle the economy? He scored 49 percent to Obama’s 48 percent there, though those numbers are still moving,” reported ABC.
No wonder. Networks that hammered President George W. Bush for high gas prices and high unemployment gave their candidate almost a complete pass – blaming Bush more than twice as much as Obama. On Election Day, unemployment was 7.9 percent, actually higher than it had been when Obama took office. Debt, deficit and underemployment were off the charts.
Obama didn’t win despite the numbers. He won because the media didn’t report them. They spent an entire campaign promoting social issues – abortion, gay marriage and more – where journalists near 100 percent support. The onslaught against GOP candidates was huge. The left/media strategy was merely to link Romney with any social conservative they could and hype what that candidate said.