Presidential Election Results- How are both sides handling them?
Kendra Duli, 23’
As we all know, this year's presidential election was won by vice-president Joe Biden which has caused huge relief for some and for others less so. Nowadays each political side has their own media outlets and it is hard to know who to trust. This time I will be looking at both sides and see how they are reacting to the news. Now to find out the sources I will be looking at the news sites in the media bias chart to see where each of the media outlets fall.
Democratic media outlets
The Democrats are incredibly happy about the election results and claim that it is a relief for many Americans that Joe Biden won. The first source we will be looking at is CNN which sees Biden as a good step forward after Trump’s election and is happy to see Trump go. “America has chosen Democrat Joe Biden as its 46th president, CNN projects, turning at a time of national crisis to a man whose character was forged by aching personal tragedy and who is pledging to restore calm and truth after Donald Trump's exhausting and manic single term.”
This sentiment was repeated by Vox who spoke about Joe Biden's agenda and the necessity for Democrats to take the Senate in order to fulfill his agenda: “Things look even worse for Biden if Republicans keep the Senate. Much of his agenda is likely to be dead on arrival. In that case, Biden will have to decide how to use what little leverage he has, like the ability to force a government shutdown, to pressure McConnell, and he will have to decide which issues he will use that pressure to push.” So from this I get that Democratic media outlets are happy that Biden won but would say that he would need the senate to reenact his agenda.
The last source we will be looking at is Buzzfeed News which speaks about how Kamala Harris is the first person of South Asian heritage to be elected vice president and shares this in relation to Trump’s presidency: “Trump’s time in office was marked by undermining public health measures during a pandemic that has killed more than 236,000 Americans, by weaponizing the functions of government against perceived opponents, and by boosting conspiracy theories and white supremacist groups. Much of Biden’s first months in office will be consumed by attempting to undo what Trump has done, with nothing more pressing than gaining control over the coronavirus.”
Solely by looking at these sources, I can summarize the democratic leaning stance as being very relieved that Biden won with Kamala Harris as vice-president, but adamant on disliking Trump's presidency with disappointment that the Republicans won the Senate.
Republican media outlets
The Republicans have a widely different outlook on the election results. Fox News accepts that Biden won but claims that Trump will keep fighting. They say: “Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has defeated President Trump, denying him a second term after a bitter campaign and dramatic, prolonged vote count in battleground states that sparked a flurry of lawsuits.” Fox News is implying that Trump should have won by saying the election was denied to him.
National Review is another right wing media site that is not too happy about Biden’s victory calling it an “ empty victory.” National Review is more sympathetic towards Trump supporters, which is revealed when they say, “Joe Biden appears to have won the presidential election, following a ferocious fight by President Donald Trump that defied the polls and media expectations.The president’s supporters are understandably agonized, as the current vote counts show that Trump missed by less than 1 percent of the vote in each of Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Georgia.” They are implying here that Trump won the election, which has been proven by election-officials as being false.
In an opinion piece by Ben Shapiro posted by the Daily Wire, he doesn’t have much hope on Biden’s return to normality saying that it is going to be terrible. When Ben Shapiro talks about the normal he says “It was a system in which constitutional boundaries were routinely overridden in the name of left-wing policy priorities...That's the "normal" the media and Democrats wanted. And it's the normal they'll apparently be pursuing. Biden is stacking his administration with all the members of the establishment Democratic gang.” What he is basically saying is that the normal that the Democrats want to return to will be to pressure their own agenda and go forward with left wing policies.
By looking at these sources we can see that the Republicans believe that Trump should have won the election -- with some news sources claiming he did -- and that with the Biden victory the Democrats will try to push their policies through Congress and the Senate.
I have to say that these are some of the most extreme thoughts of both sides and I spent some time looking at all sides to put myself into the mindset of people on each side of the political spectrum, so if I seemed biased in a section I was honestly reporting how people feel on all sides. That being said, each side has their own opinion and most of the time they are accusing one another of having false opinions. Despite this, we should all respect each other's political opinions even if we might disagree with them. It is important for us to make sure that we check our news sources and their biases because usually they reflect a political opinion, and not necessarily an objective truth.