Leftie pundits cannot fathom Kamala’s loss

The Rest is Politics co-hosts, Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell
The Rest is Politics co-hosts, Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell - Jamie Lucas

A lot of Lefties are learning today that it’s messy to cry through a nose ring. Me, I’m quids in. A Trump victory is a goldmine for writers who aren’t heartbroken: one producer told me they were struggling to find a pundit who didn’t sound depressed.

Ian Dunt, a former host of the Remainiacs podcast, called it “America’s darkest dawn”; Paul Mason, “a fascist process”.

My favourite was Sadiq Khan, not a pundit but then not really a mayor either, who tweeted: “An important reminder for Londoners: our city is – and always will be – for everyone.” That’s the style: portentous and self-involving, as if the election of a president thousands of miles away has any effect on Barnes Pond. But the commentator I most enjoyed this election was Rory Stewart, a podcaster who once ran a province in Iraq (the fact that he shares his podcast with the man who helped destroy Iraq, Alastair Campbell, never fails to amaze me).

’Twas a masterclass. The bad prediction: “Harris will win comfortably.” The jargon: “Ignore polls – they’re herding.” The snub to lesser mortals: “Journalists would like the US election to seem as close as possible – it suits their appetite for suspense.” Then, on the night, the scholarly U-turn (“it’s completely fascinating”) dipped in unreality (“she barely put a foot wrong”). Finally, this gem at nine in the morning: “For the record – I was completely wrong about Kamala Harris. It is heartbreaking that Trump is now the president.”

Such a relief that he put that “on the record”. The only other way for us to find out would be to check the record.

Centrist-dad pundits are at their worst in American elections, tweeting as if they were a diplomat and “going granular” in a manner that emphasises their distance from events (“the county to watch, Emily, is Miami-Dade”). Of course, I see myself in this. I’ve backed my fair share of lame duck candidates, from Mitt Romney to Liz Truss to the X Factor’s Olly Murs. But the difference with the pun-dads is they think their cause is so obviously moral that they see their victory as inevitable, whatever the data says.

They tend to start with “Trump is evil”; analysis flows from an assumption that good people must agree. The tone is super-serious, which is why The Donald particularly upsets them. Absurdity punctures grandeur. When Trump said “they’re eating the cats, they’re eating the dogs”, a New York Times columnist wrote that he had crossed a “truly unacceptable line”; the voters set it to hip-hop beats with animated pets.

They’ll never write songs about Kamala. Witnessing her nomination in August, Campbell – who informed readers that conferences are called conventions in America, so deep is his local knowledge – described Trump as “floundering” and Harris as being, he hoped, “unstoppable”. Some journalists pretended she was gutsy, funny, ordinary and amazing – till the results came in and CNN reported she hadn’t outperformed Biden in a single state (“Holy smokes!” said the station’s Washington anchor, Jake Tapper).

Kamala declined to address her own supporters. I wondered, looking at the empty stage, if she had really existed at all. Our only proof is the columns that were written calling her historic.

The problem with such punditry is that it creates a wall of misunderstanding between Britain and America. Comedians, ex-MPs and former Countdown presenters are often people’s first take on what’s happening Stateside, so their subjective interpretation is received as truth: big, bad, orange man wants to enslave women. How could he win?!

The reality, from day one, was that food prices had spiked, Americans were worried about the economy, and a slim majority thought Trump was best placed to fix it – a decision that was rational, almost banal. It takes a whopping pair of blinkers to miss it.

But be of good cheer, my fellow pundits: Brexit proved that in this game we can always fail upwards. Anger at the EU referendum revived Campbell’s career, made James O’Brien a household name and birthed a magazine, The New European. Lost causes generate fresh markets.

“I think I was wrong because I’m an optimist,” explained Rory, and I’m positive his career won’t suffer. He remains the most eloquently, intelligently wrong man on the planet – and I can never get enough.