We are under three months out from the US election. Let me give you two different analyses of what will determine its outcome. The first you can think of as the pre-2016 old-school Republican analysis. You’ll find this in the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journalor, The Australian. You’ll hear it from the preponderance of hosts of the Sky-TV-after-dark shows. Most right-of-centre British commentators take something like this line too. Basically, it sees the election as depending on whether Donald Trump can stay disciplined on core economic issues and (for some) immigration concerns. The more Trump attacks Kamala Harris, the more he ad-libs in interviews, the more he exaggerates and digresses, the less likely he is to win because he’ll be reminding voters how much they dislike him personally. These voters will want to avoid all the Trumpian chaos. That’s a very truncated account but it covers the core points of this sort of evaluation. And many of these types of analyses, probably most, are broadly pessimistic about Trump’s chances (though most are also coming from those on the right who wish someone else were the Republican nominee). They think it more likely that Kamala will win in November – not certain, just probable and odds-on. But the key factor will be Trump’s discipline or lack thereof.

I don’t buy that analysis at all. First off, Donald Trump’s character has been priced in for a long time now. After nearly a decade with him in the limelight you’d be brutally hard-pressed to find a dozen US voters who didn’t already have a firm, locked-in take on Trump’s character. Well before Joe Biden was pushed out of the race voters were clear on whether they hated Trump’s temperament, disposition and suitability. Or whether they loved it (because an ancillary point is that Trump brings out a lot of voters who flat out would not vote for a disciplined, establishment Republican). Or whether they fell somewhere in between. And, more importantly, voters had largely made up their minds on whether his ‘lack of discipline’ (if indeed they thought this) would override the various factors pointing in favour of a vote for The Don. When you stop and think about this first analysis you realise that it assumes that a lot of voters – not least in the key swing states largely in the mid-West – are rather flighty, whimsical, and almost capricious. ‘I would have voted for Trump if only he hadn’t pointed out that for years Kamala had been selling herself as an Asian-Indian politician, not as a black.’ Trump’s claim is true, by the way. But true or false what kind of voter or person makes that Trumpian attack/true observation (according to taste) a remotely determinative factor when somewhere between 11 and 20 million illegals have come across the border under Biden/Harris; when a dollar in 2020 is today worth about 80 cents; when there is patent lawfare in play; when the top judges (wonderfully or outrageously, again according to taste) took abortion away from the courts – try to imagine other Anglosphere judges today giving back powers to the elected legislatures because the top court concedes past judges had effectively ‘just made it up out of thin air’ when purporting to interpret legal texts. My point is that whether you be left-leaning politically or right-leaning the first analysis of what will decide the November election takes a very dim and condescending view of voters.

So here’s my alternative analysis. In a sentence, I think the November election boils down to whether the legacy press and mainstream media can succeed in doing whatever they have to do to drag Kamala over the line. We know from all sorts of data that legacy journalists break for the Democrats around 9:1 (and of the Republican supporters few would like Trump). We also know that the commitment to some modicum of balance and fair coverage ain’t what it used to be in today’s ‘we’re social justice warriors’ world. And so far the legacy press has been shameless in trying to sell the Kamala that some polls had ranked as the worst Vice President ever. These are the journos who a fortnight before Biden stepped down had said ‘he’s sharp as a tack’ and denied vehemently that the Biden family was corrupt (though, predictably, the New York Times, coincidentally, now concedes there is Biden family corruption as regards the Ukraine). So here are just a few of myriad examples. Kamala purloins the Trump plan not to tax tips. The same network that called the plan an economic disaster a few weeks ago now calls it a boon to the working class. Call Kamala the ‘border czar’ who basically never went to the border and who oversaw tens of millions of illegal immigrants pouring into the US (after Biden revoked some 51 of Trump’s Executive Orders) and a near entirety of the press pretends to be scholastic philosophers in order to point out that she was never actually made a ‘czar’ – a misdirection ploy to cover the fact that she was in charge; she didn’t try to limit the numbers; she probably wanted the numbers; but hey, the title ‘czar’ was never bestowed on her – as though anyone with an IQ over 50 actually believed the appellation was meant literally. Oh, and best of all Kamala has been the anointed Democrat candidate for 25 days (as of writing this column) and she is yet to give even one unscripted, no teleprompter press conference. Trump meanwhile has sat down for all sorts of anything-goes long interviews with foe and friend. Yet the press simply covers up for Kamala. Sure, there’s the odd ‘well, we’re asking her campaign’. But if it were Trump every newspaper would be having a daily count of how many days he’d been hiding in the basement as would all the MSM TV channels.

So the way to analyse this election is to ask whether the legacy media, which is all-in for Kamala, can get her over the line in November. Because we all knew this was coming, this love-in for Kamala. We knew there’d be a bounce for her in the polls – though I note that her bounce has her now more or less even with Trump and she’ll need more than that to win the Electoral College. We knew, too, that quietly there’d be massive corporate and financial interests pour money in for her.

Here’s another way in which I diverge from the first analysis. I’m optimistic about the average voter. I don’t think the legacy media will succeed (and not just because journos are these days regularly ranked the least trusted institution in the US). Put differently, I don’t believe that the big, Disney Princess make-over of Kamala will work. There is already some polling to show it’s not working with Hispanic voters, a subculture more distant from mainstream media influences with some coming from countries with real, actual repressive governments and so who don’t think Trump is Hitler.

As I said, I’m on the optimistic side as regards voters. We know corporate media outlets can be utterly untruthful. But I confidently believe the voters will not be swayed by them and will put Trump back in the White House. Of course, no one can know the future for sure and only time will tell. But I’m not regretting any of my four bets on the outcome.