So, at what point did it dawn on you that Kamala Harris not only was probably going to lose but deserved to lose? For me it was probably that moment at her last rally when she held hands aloft with Oprah Winfrey to the cheers of the multitude. "Yes She Can" said Oprah's T-shirt.
Well, No She Couldn't, actually.
The celebrities who are sad today - it's a bad day for Taylor Swift, J-Lo, Beyoncé, the lot - can reflect that their girl's performance has proved one thing: celebrities do not swing elections. They can, however, annoy ordinary voters with their asinine pronouncements.
There was, however, a more obvious reason for the result. Two clips from the BBC (a bad day for them too) two days ago summed up the campaigns, one from Harris, one from Trump. Harris declared: "Being president isn't about who you can bring down; it's about who you can lift up" (cheers). Trump's was shorter: "Are you better off now than four years ago?" ("No!"). There you had it. One candidate wanted you to feel the glow; the other wanted you to be better off. And look who the voters went for.
The meltdown among celebs and the pundits at the result is not, however, confined to America. There was quite the little temper tantrum on the part of Emily Maitlis when she presided over Channel 4's election coverage and used a bad word to describe Trump's rhetoric on immigrants and was correctly taken to task by Krishnan Guru-Murthy, her co-presenter. She also had a go at the former PM, Boris Johnson, for the "Trump-like behaviour" that he "imported here" and got quite snappy when he suggested it might be better to focus, you know, on the US result rather than on him.
Wilfully blind
Denne historien er fra November 07, 2024-utgaven av The London Standard.
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Denne historien er fra November 07, 2024-utgaven av The London Standard.
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