With nearly all votes counted, Ms Hyde-Smith had taken 53.9% of the vote in the staunchly Republican state compared to 46.1% for Mr Espy.

That’s quite a decisive win considering traditionally the mid term elections trend against the incumbent President’s party. Plus the overwhelming disdain for President Trump from almost all the media, showbiz and the establishment “conservative” punditocracy

Naturally the BBC was disappointed. Taking the lead from their friends at NYT, WaPo and CNN they had orgasmed over what was claimed to be Hyde-Smith’s macaca moment….

The race narrowed after Ms Hyde-Smith, who is white, was recorded saying she would happily attend a public hanging. The comments evoked the lynching of African-Americans in a state scarred by a history of racial violence.

Of course the beeb failed to point out that state officials who turned a blind eye to Jim Crow, the KKK and the lynchings were almost entirely Democrats. But why spoil a good narrative with historical facts….

To be fair the beeb did refer to Espy’s “ethical issues”

The Democrat has himself come under scrutiny for his 2011 lobbying work in the Ivory Coast, whose former leader Laurent Gbagbo is on trial at the International Criminal Court. Mr Espy was agriculture secretary under President Bill Clinton, but resigned under a cloud of corruption allegations, on which he was later acquitted.

Nevertheless, although forced through gritted teeth to declare the Trump supported Hyde-Smith’s win as decisive, the BBC had to weasel something out of it

Yet Democrats and their candidate Mike Espy may well claim some sort of moral victory. In a state widely regarded as a Republican stronghold they made this run-off election a genuine battle.

Trump 1 Macaca 0

Like most of the “official” US media the UK Daily Telegraph covered the whole Kavanaugh saga in a manner so shallow and biased that at times I thought I was reading the Guardian. Very little was reported of the gaping holes in the allegations and the lack of evidence. Certain Democrat senators were presented as honest brokers without any suggestion that the process had been orchestrated. Even worse a veritable regiment of Polly Fillers were allowed imply that Kavanaugh’s accusers were telling the truth and the man himself was a sinister rapist…..no mention of the 75 former fellow students, girl friends or colleagues who vouchsafed for his character

Strangely the strong defence of Mr Kavanaugh by Sen Graham was hardly mentioned which was rather odd as until now, as a regular GOP critic of the president he was often wheeled out by the resident DT US team to provide ammunition against Trump.

And of course, the whole chorus was part of the sustained anti Trump agenda that has been carefully followed by the DT since the moment he announced his candidature in 2015 – magnified by the embarrassment and humiliation of the paper’s so called US “experts” who refused to even countenance the possibility of his victory.

I think the people who run the DT need to seriously address this issue of bias. By all means criticise Trump but please cut out the sneers about him and his family. Indeed it might even be possible to address the lack of balance by getting some input by folk like Don Surber, John Nolte or Candace Owens who could give an alternative perspective.

Or, of course, you could continue to be the cut and paste surrogates for the Washington Post or the NYT….

With all the current huffing and puffing and virtue signalling (and sheer lying) cascading from the US and UK media over President Trump’s Executive Order on Immigration, Don Surber’s “Trump The Press” (available both in the USA and UK) offers a timely antidote to their hysterical rantings and distortions.

It’s a must read, not only for US pundits and hacks but also for their fellow scribblers here in the UK who mostly copy/paste them…(yes. including you DailyTelegraph) Mr Surber records some of the most embarrassing quotes from almost every big league American political commentator from both left and right who, imprisoned by their own bias and arrogance, failed to use those time honoured ancient journalistic skills of wearing out shoe leather to find out why millions of ordinary Americans were ignoring their advice.

If some of the sneering, contempt and sheer bias seems familiar this side of the pond it is because there are echoes here of the same failings from our own UK “experts” over the Brexit campaign.

Written with sardonic humour this is nevertheless a massive indictment of a profession that, though still dining out on Watergate, is, in essence, seeking approval by looking into the mirror.

BTW – I didn’t steal this from the review on Amazon UK….it was my review!!!!

Surber on experts and pundits

….and, of course, the highly regarded Chris Cillizza

Meanwhile, from giants of the right…

But the quote I loved the best because it is so true not just in America but here in Britain

On the surface a book that will make you smile at the cluelessness of these professionals – but, on reflection, also a tragedy when you realise it is also a sorry tale illustrating a collapse of integrity.

Buy the whole book – you’ll enjoy it…..

The Daily Telegraph highlights a story about a radio interview that might have been with Donald Trump a quarter of a century ago. The previous day there was a piece about Trump’s butler. Then there was something about how few music celebs would perform for him.

Meanwhile, over at the lefty liberal Guardian, John Harris actually went to Indianapolis and talked with Trump supporters who were entering or leaving the polling station during the Indiana Republican primary election.

That’s right – instead of cutting and pasting from stuff already in the US media Harris used up some shoe leather and went out and chatted to actual voters. Yep, the stuff that real journalists used to do.

His conclusion?

Donald Trump supporters are not the bigots the left likes to demonise

Read it. It’s not totally uncritical but, unlike the pap in the Telegraph it is very fair.

The moral? If you want to find out why Trump resonates with many voters – don’t bother reading the Telegraph

You would think that a really serious newspaper, a really serious right leaning broadsheet like The Daily Telegraph would, after seven months realise that a man who has topped almost every poll for the Republican Party nomination prior to the forthcoming primaries would have struck some sort of chord with American voters.

The fact that he is not a politician but a businessman, a reality TV star with a larger than life reputation and a habit of “telling it how it is” and a fairly colourful CV would have at least piqued the interests of the solemn if rather pompous conservative young fogeys who pontificate daily from the elevated levels of Canary Wharf.

But it was not to be.

Yes, in the summer months when both the UK and US media regarded Donald Trump as a one hit wonder, an amusing interlude before the big boys like Jeb Bush and Scott Walker came out to play, the DT was full of jokey references and patronising asides. Hacks laughingly described as “US correspondents” performed their regular ritual of cutting and pasting quotes from the Washington Post and New York Times, presenting them as if they were golden nuggets of reportage gleaned from weeks of pounding streets from coast to coast and wearing out their own shoe leather.

All the pundits from left and right, every single self-important media figure and academic and, above all, the ghastly regiments of political consultants and operative who leech off the American body politic – they all dismissed Trump’s prospects with a disdainful sneer.

But as the autumn months got closer and Trump refused to fade the political class and their media parasites fell strangely silent – and so did the Telegraph and its hacks. There was very little reporting of the polls or the massive crowds attending Trump’s rallies because somehow it didn’t quite gel with the narrative of Trump the clown.

Until l he was endorsed by Sarah Palin – and the Telegraph went full frontal. The Telegraph Polly Fillers in particular unleashed their claws, presenting Palin as some sort of shrill, screeching fishwife who had entered the US scene as an Alaskan version of Kim Kardashian via a tasteless TV reality show. That she had been a very popular state governor, an insurgent crusader against a corrupt Republican establishment in the pocket of Big Oil as conveniently omitted.

The Telegraph campaign against Trump finally reached its crescendo with an article penned by former BBC hack Matt Frei, pimping his Channel 4 documentary, sneering at Trump, his supporters and, of course Palin (including the totally false claim that her selection by McCain as candidate for VP lost him the 2008 election). A day or so later one of the Telegraph’s boy wonders, a young man with zero knowledge of US politics outside of watching “The West Wing”, grandly proclaimed as the torpedo that would finally sink The Trumptanic.

At no time has there been any serious attempt in the pages of the Telegraph to present a serious analysis of the key question – why has Trump, derided by the media, the punditocracy and the professional political class, has nevertheless gained such support. There has been nothing about the apparent extent of blue collar support, much of it from traditionally Democrat voting swathes of the electorate or the suggestion that he has a significant degree of interest from black voters. No mention either of some evidence that he has reached across to women and younger voters.

There is, at times, a reference to “anger” about illegal immigrants and their willingness to work for wages much lower than the American born working class. – or social and economic upheaval caused by the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs to Asia. But the DT hacks never dig deeper into that manifestation of anger or pursue a line of thought that might question the inevitability of such a process.

Above all, our “journalists “are unwilling to confront the truth of the high degree of contempt felt by ordinary Americans for the media and its refusal to raise those issues in print or on air for fear of falling foul of the great god of the comfortably off chattering classes, the god of political correctness – buttressed, of course, by the availability of a cheap immigrant servant class that allows them to live a very comfortable life at very low cost.

A pity, for, once upon a time, the Telegraph really was a newspaper that treated the world seriously. Unfortunately, it has whored itself out to shallowness and empty posturing

Reading the Daily Telegraph and/or The Spectator, both (reputedly) right wing organs one could be forgiven for thinking nothing much has happened during the period leading up to the Presidential election next November – except for a weekly sneer about Donald Trump. You just wouldn’t realise that for half a year several people have been jockeying for the Republican Party nomination.

Of course within a few days, starting with the Iowa caucus, there will have to be some column inches but the hacks will be operating in the dark without a compass. They have no bearings.

They have no bearings because, of course, reporting US politics is almost always a cut and paste job for the Brit hacks. They check the US media, find out what the pundits and the consultants and the academics are saying – then they alter one or two words and phrases and regurgitate the message to UK eyes.

Only the 2016 race is not going to plan.

It was all going to be so simple. Back in the early summer the Republican Party establishment had it all sussed out. The summer and early autumn would thin the ranks. “Outsiders” like Trump and Carson would flare brightly for a few weeks and then flame out. The young bloods like Rand, Walker, Rubio and Cruz would tear each other apart for the “conservative” vote and then former governor of Florida Jeb Bush, rich with big donor cash and the support of regiments of consultants led by so called “genius” Karl Rove, would come through the middle. By October the media and GOP establishment would be crowning him the unofficial nominee and all would be set for the dynastic clash of Bush v Clinton in November 2016.

Except it didn’t pan out that way at all. Despite all those consultants and over $100m in donations and the support of the official conservative media Jeb never lifted from the ground.

Instead Donald Trump has stolen all the oxygen. Despite weekly predictions of demise from the punditocracy Trump polling lead has been consistent. Attacks from the left and right media have regularly missed the target. Not a single big name media figure has come out in support – and it seems that a lot of ordinary Americans don’t give a damn.

This is why in the Telegraph/Spectator the cover has faded. They can no longer cut and paste what the pundits/consultants/academics are saying because there is very little to cut and paste. Since early December the “experts” have clammed up, scared witless by public mockery of their failed predictions. There is a subdued sneering at Trump but that is all.

What has never appeared in the Telegraph/Spectator is a serious analysis attempting to explain the phenomenon of Trump. It is sometimes put down to anger and frustration amongst older white males but if you look at the thousands who attend the Trump rallies there are a lot of younger folk as well – and women.

There is some evidence of support from previously Democrat leaning blue collar workers and elements of the black community, constituencies in which none of the other GOP hopefuls could hope to gain any traction.

Pennsylvania, anyone?

Of course nothing is certain and casting political runes is ever an unpredictable game. But even if Trump was to eventually fade post February US politics can never be the same. As someone has said he has not only ignored the rule book – he’s ripped it up and written another,

But of course, nobody in the Telegraph/Spectator said that. They feel much more comfortable and cosy with their heads stuck up their own derrieres….

Notice how the UK media have been very quiet about Trump lately. We were earlier told by the resident pundits that he would fade and the consultant class choice Jeb Bush (Romney 2) would be emerging as the front runner ready to lose gracefully to Hillary in November 2016 having been deserted by the base.

But the Trump “fade” (rather like the UKIP fade) hasn’t happened so far and the “experts” both here and across the ocean are worried. As with UKIP,the SNP and Corbyn it’s a new landscape and their maps don’t appear to be making sense. Seems also that their regular hires from the so called “conservative” Washington punditocracy who inhabit the legacy media and the think tanks are also beginning to hedge their bets.

But in the US it’s not just the liberal/left usual suspects in the MSM who are starting to get angry at their compasses – “conservative” websites are wondering why outsiders like Trump, Carson and Fiorina getting a combined 50% plus in the polls while assorted GOP governors and senators are in single digits.

I suppose it’s beginning to feel a bit like being in St Petersburg in December 1916……

The Telegraph’s resident guru on US politics, Dr Tim Stanley, puts the boot into Obama

The midterm elections were the reckoning. After six years of Obama, America finally passed judgement. And the Republicans won in Florida, Maryland, Colorado, Arkansas, West Virginia, Texas and the President’s home state of Illinois. This much is certain: no matter how disappointed the American people are in Barack Obama, the feeling will be mutual. One senses that he’s never been a huge fan of the voters.

You are a bit late catching this bus, Tim….some people pointed out in 2008 that electing an empty suit backed by the corrupt Daley machine who had zilch experience at running anything and was minded by a seedy collection of Chicago chic lefties and expecting him to guide the US through choppy waters just because he was “black” was a recipe for disaster. They were shouted down with cries of racist, not just by the usual Guardian/BBC leftists but also by pundits at the Telegraph who swallowed all the hopenchange bilge. Buyer’s remorse from the same stable is all a bit too late

But you can’t keep a pontificating pundit down. He also saw the midterms as a useful tip for No !0

The Republicans are breaking new ground with voters – and that won’t be lost on David Cameron………

In the midterms, America elected its first ever black female Republican congressman – Mia Love from Utah….. The future of the party is probably best represented by Susana Martinez, a Hispanic woman who comfortably won re-election as governor of New Mexico.

Isn’t it odd how “experts” like Tim always manage to post articles like this after the results are in. I’ve followed Mia Love’s political story in Utah for several years…never seen her mentioned by Tim before. Similarly with Susana Martinez (endorsed by Palin in 2010 BTW)…and he still leaves out Nikki Haley (a woman of Hindu heritage, Tim) who was successfully re-elected as Gov of S Carolina

He could have spent the last few weeks spotlighting many of these people with some in depth analysis but he stuck to vapid generalisations usually cut and pasted from the tame “conservative” pundits out of New York and Washington – then he falls into the default position of the commentariat by constructing a false alignment of two entirely different electoral systems

Remember when after 2008 Cameron was told to emulate Obama and go Guardian/BBC via hopeandchange? Remember when 2010 he won a huge majority when facing the open goal of the Blair/Brown inheritance?

Funny, I don’t remember that second one either…..

Labour leader Ed Miliband spent 25 minutes with President Obama at the White House. At the end Ed asked him for some advice on how to ruin run a nation…….