Opinion

Television aligns with Biden

photo_camera Biden

Despite Joe Biden's prominence in the polls, no one dares to consider the Democratic candidate the winner without running the risk of making a mistake. The experience of 2016 was too sobering to make the same mistake of underestimating a President Trump who grows up in the face of criticism and unfavourable developments.

Entertainment, an industry which has clearly sided with its adversary in North America and which sprinkles anti-White House tenant audiovisual materials every day, every hour, in the form of documentaries, fiction series released conveniently close to the election date, feature films and docudramas. All of them valuable and of high quality, like almost everything that is done in the United States with a camera, but clearly positioned in favour of one option and seeking the detriment of the opposite.  

Many such examples of how American industry is clearly betting on Biden at the ballot box are coming to Spain. The leading platform has these days hosted almost a dozen titles under the heading 'Journey to America'. "The loudest voice" tries to portray in all its crudeness the figure of the founder of the Fox News television channel, Roger Ailes, the choice of millions of viewers in that country who do not feel identified with the rest of the media. But they do it from positions that are not very politically correct, which is why they are rapped by the creators of the series.

Never before has there been such a harsh criticism from a personal point of view (as a sexual harasser, fully deserved) towards the creators of TV channels with a progressive audience. But Ailes supported Trump, and there's no point in my explaining this. "The Comey Rule", the recreation of the events within the FBI when the Hillary Clinton e-mail scandal was investigated and the Trump option to become the most powerful man in the world was already emerging. A timely premiere, although Spanish audiences cannot tip the scales in favour of his opponent.  

It is even worse the titles under 'The Trump Era', which includes nostalgia for what could have been and was not with a documentary about the woman who fell on the way to being the first woman to become president of the United States. The golden girl lost the candidacy, but she is not the only one to receive congratulations from the programmers and authors of the new television. Judge Ruth Bader Gingsburg is raised to the altars, with all due justice given her long life of defending her principles. But there is nothing opposite to her on the remote control. It will not be long before we see her substitute Amy Comey Barrett massacred in similar documentaries. 'The Trump Era' is completed with a documentary feature entitled 'Unfit: The Psychology Of Donald Trump', also produced in the US, and 'American Dharma', which puts the driving force behind 'extreme right-wing populism' directly into the mud, according to the text that accompanies the film.

"El efecto Trump" ("The Trump Effect') traces the days when the most controversial president received the report on the Russian interference that favoured his election in 2016, and how he declared war on the FBI. And as a last-minute guest, tireless Michael Moore, who cannot even get his biased work released in his country, closes this catalogue with 'Fahrenheit 11/9', which was finished almost three years ago...  Those who are waiting for a counterweight to this flood of documentary material, a critical report on Joe Biden, his figure, his career or the questionable radical nature of his "pal" Kamala Harris, should better be patient because they will find nothing on that side. This hardly detracts one bit the value of each of these works. What makes them lose it is their one-way placement, as if the subscribers of Albacete, Huesca or Almeria were about to vote on November 3rd presidential elections and should vote accordingly.  

The telly will prove more useful and impartial than ever in the wake of the elections. My advice about the night on November 3rd and 4th will be to watch TV from the living room, with the heating on, and the eyes kept on Florida. Neither Biden nor Trump will be president if they don't win at The Sunshine State. We could say something similar about Pennsylvania, but the state where Biden was born elects nine fewer pledges than the sunshine peninsula in the southeast. We will know the results of the exit polls in Florida at two o'clock in the morning, Spanish mainland, and then we will have a decisive key to dealing with the recount with one of the two candidates launched for the Presidency. The latest Florida Atlantic University poll gives the Democrat a two-point lead over the Republican. Pay no attention. Everything is possible there because Trump has great influence over this state, but the early and mail ballot vote promises a mobilisation that leaves a very narrow margin of indecision this time, as it is the case with the margin of abstentions, which in the United States is much when they exceed 45%.