Conventional wisdom is frequently wrong.
It's kind of like a superstar act releasing a new album. Expectations are high, but frequently there's disappointment. Not only Frampton's "I'm In You," but everything Michael Jackson did past "Thriller." He kept telling us he was the King of Pop, we got turned off and stopped listening.
The newspapers will tell you where you've been, but not where you're going. That's the problem with research. That's what's great about art, you never know what will truly succeed, what will resonate, and when people will stop paying attention to what they once were riveted by. Kind of like movie musicals... A staple, and then unmakeable. Everything falls off the cliff. Whether it be baseball, football, Debbie Gibson or mood rings. Razr scooters too. There are fads and there are trends and if anyone could call them right, they'd be a billionaire. That's what wowed us about Steve Jobs, he constantly gave us what we didn't know we wanted. Meanwhile, Microsoft fell behind with me-too products, constantly refining what came before, as if we were looking for more features as opposed to a breakthrough. As for Amazon, it's eye-popping numbers are a result of cloud services, hell, they make more money selling others' products than their own, they're the new eBay (and the new Google too, Amazon is the place to advertise).
The "New York Times" missed Trump. The whole media enterprise missed Trump. The statisticians missed Trump. They were just not in touch with the will of the public. That's the game, what the public wants.
Does the public want an aged politician who hasn't run for solo office for an eternity who's got a long history of putting his foot in his mouth? Biden didn't realize he could challenge Hillary in 2016, that he was more appealing, and the media got Bernie Sanders wrong then and now. They keep criticizing the Vermont senator for being a millionaire. His fans don't care, he keeps saying things that appeal to them. Columnists thought he was a joke, they told him to drop out, but he's leading now.
As for Mayor Pete, no one saw this coming. Come on, a gay mayor from Indiana? But he spoke truth to power and admits what he doesn't know and that resonates with people. What resonates with Biden? His hair plugs and rust belt talk? The rust belt rusted, like coal it's in the rearview mirror. We live in a tech/gas/solar world right now, youngsters know this, does Biden?
The Presidential race is not sports. Sports are littered with bad people who succeed. You may not be able to predict the winner, but you know who is excellent, who's got the best possibility of winning. But Presidential races?
What the media doesn't understand is not only has the game board been flipped, it's been taken away. It's like playing Monopoly without GO! Or tennis without a net. You can move your pieces, hit the ball, BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
Hell, the news outlets themselves have been challenged, by Google, Facebook and the internet. Are they the sources to be trusted to know what is really going on? As for TV news, it's professional wrestling, pure entertainment, outrage is king. But if you were that outrageous at work, you'd get fired, you'd have no friends in your personal life.
The truth is most people are hurting, except for the wealthy. They think the game is rigged against them, whether it be the right or the left. They don't want incremental change, they want something more akin to revolution. That's why they voted for Trump, that's why Biden is in trouble. He's the safe entry. The one in the middle. Look at music, in the middle always fails. We want something new, and edgy. And more people pay attention to music than politics.
I'm not saying it's impossible for Biden to get the nomination, but he hasn't run yet and the public hasn't voted yet. Polls don't reflect the truth... First and foremost, most people never answer them. Few have landlines. I've never answered a question online. It's not the seventies anymore, it's a whole new era, and it appears the populace wants new faces, or old faces that don't reflect the status quo.
But the media keeps shoveling us the same old crap, believing they live in the pre-cable era, when the three networks purveyed bland product to appeal to everybody. But it turned out the public wanted edgier and racier fare on not only HBO, but FX and A&E and Bravo...
And then Netflix came along and upset the apple cart. Everybody is chasing the newbie and no one in Hollywood saw it coming.
Do the prognosticators see what is coming in politics?
NO!
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