Over at NRO, Jim Geraghty is crowing about a new poll showing that 52% of Americans think the country is worse off than a year ago. But as I mentioned a few days ago, this is meaningless:
When you break things out, 94% of Republicans think the country is worse off and 76% of Democrats think it's better off. What a surprise.
But I'll confess to puzzlement that so many independents think the country is worse off. Putting politics aside, isn't this kind of crazy? A year ago we were in the middle of a massive pandemic. Thousands of people were dying every day. The economy was at a standstill. Millions of people had been laid off or furloughed. Travel was virtually shut down. Schools were shut.
Today, the pandemic is under control. Anyone who wants to be vaccinated has been. The economy is strong and jobs are available to anyone who wants to work. Schools are mostly back in session and airlines are flying again.
In any concrete sense, what could possibly be viewed as worse than a year ago? Beats me. The only thing I can think of is pure politics. If you believe, for example, that anti-white racists have suddenly taken over local school boards all over the country, I guess you might think things are worse. Or if you believe that Democrats stole the election. Or that hundreds of Americans are still stuck in Afghanistan and are at the mercy of the Taliban.
In other words, if you happen to have been exposed to anything that Fox News says. That would explain it.
How deliciously literal minded this comment is! When you ask people to compare to a year ago they don't take a calendar and check out the status of 12 months ago. They just compare to "a long time ago" and for most this means before COVID arrived.
Hence the result.
bingo!
It's like the 100 Years War* or Spain's Siglo de Oro**. Time is a construct.
*116 Years.
**96 years.
If you get your news from the massive right-wing propaganda network, or pay attention to lots of pundits in the non-partisan media, you have been told again and again that America is in the grip of runaway inflation, the economy is grinding to a halt, and this is basically Jimmy Carter's second term. Oh, and China will whip America's ass in the coming war.
China can't even control the DPRK, who just launched another sub-based missile.
(Surprised El Jefe isn't crowing that El Pepe Maximo destroyed all the progress the previous regime made with Pyongyang.)
“But I'll confess to puzzlement that so many independents think the country is worse off.“
I happen to think this is because there is no such thing as an independent. They are 98% republican and just don’t have the courage to admit to it.
I know several Republicans who are like that.
For a few of them, right now, they're Republicans who don't like the current Republican party.
Lots of people are independents because they do not much like either party. That's basically my situation, though rest assured Hell would freeze over before I would vote for Donald Trump. But I have to say I am puzzled why people think things are worse now than in October of 2020. To be sure, my view is probably colored slightly by the fact I lost two friends that month (neither to Covid), but still, along with the Pandemic and a bad economy we were also coming off a summer of rioting. Covid is still around, but on a much lower scale, the economy is doing much better, and there's nary a riot anywhere. How are things not better now?
Uh, the Delta variant is about 2.5 times worse, the Pandemic is NOT under control thousands were dying 2 weeks ago and even in mixed or light blue areas the appetite for reducing cases is none existent.
The fascists are both more open and more entrenched at the local level. Political violence is becoming more common.
The country has also failed on climate change in the face of weather and conditions even worse than 2020 in terms of fires and droughts.
None of these problems appear to have any solutions.
Yeah Trump isn't making it worse but Biden now has almost as many deaths under his belt from the coronavirus as Trump.
600,000+ deaths under El Jefe.
<200,000 under El Pepe.
In what world is this almost the same number.
The world in which that poll was taken.
About 400,000 deaths on January 20, 2021.
About 750,000 deaths to date.
350 v. 400 is pretty fucking close.
Deaths before summer 2020 are down to Trump. He left Biden a terrible situation & no vaccine plan.
That's uh, quite the date there friendo.
You can make a better argument for spring. Summer is pure hackery though.
What a difference two weeks makes? https://jabberwocking.com/heres-the-latest-covid-19-mortality-rate/
Or perhaps a month? https://jabberwocking.com/covid-19-mortality-may-be-near-its-peak-in-the-us/
Go back only a little more and: https://jabberwocking.com/covid-19-is-surging-in-red-california/ or: https://jabberwocking.com/the-us-death-rate-from-covid-19-is-still-unbelievably-high/
Has anything especially concrete been done to bring things under presumed control, or has it simply been ebb and flow?
Vaccine mandates.
RIP NICK ROLOVICH
GOOD LUCK WITH YOUR OWN KRAKEN LAWSUIT AGAINST TYRANNICAL GOVERNOR JAY INSLEE & WASHINGTON'S MENGELESQUE VAXXX PSEUDOSCIENCE DEATH TRAP
Polls like this mean little with so little actual participation in its development.
Is the country worse off than a year ago? Don’t be ridiculous.
A) Most people are clueless AF when it comes to policy and politics. News at 11.
B) Right wing media is driving some of this, no doubt, but part of it flows from the Delta wave, and how it crushed the optimism of early summer. Yes, "early summer" rather obviously wasn't "a year ago." (See "A" above).
A plurality Independents (which apparently means not R or D) are Libertarians or ashamed Republicans. So I'm not surprised that they lean right in the survey.
Also, as others have said, people have no real sense of "a year ago" life is measured in events, not years, so if you stayed home for most of 2020 that doesn't count as a years worth of time.
I could just about guarantee very different results, depending on the construction of the survey. For example, suppose one asked about specific experiences before the general question, e.g., “One year ago, were you employed?”; “One year ago, were schools in your city/town in-person, online, or hybrid?”
A lot of independents lean pretty heavily to one party, so their answers are going to be partisan.
But for the small fraction who really don't align with a party, we may be hitting expectation vs reality. Everyone expected things to be bad in the middle of a pandemic. But people now expect things to be much better, and they aren't really all that great. People are sick of masks and not doing all the things they want to, anyone still working is exhausted from extra work because their coworkers are quitting in droves, and now they won't even be able to buy the crap they want for Christmas. Anyone with small kids or immune compromised family is still trapped in the same level of concern as a year ago, since vaccines can't relieve that until we actually immunize nearly everyone.
I'm pretty burned out from this pandemic. My life has regained all the work and responsibilities of pre-pandemic life, but none of the fun.
If they are sick of masks now, it's only because they refused to wear them earlier, when it really mattered (pre-vaxxx).
Here is a funny observation: Conservatives always portray themselves as the manly men, the people who are not decadent and would be brave enough to fight if required and win in a manly man way. Liberals on the other hand were the effete cowards who would run away at the first shot.
Then COVID arrived and guess what: It is the conservatives who are unwilling to make the slightest sacrifices for the society and the country, who are absolutely unwilling to tolerate the most minor inconveniences such as mask wearing.
Methinks if America had been controlled by conservatives around 1940 America would have lost the second world war. Back then civilians (especially in th countries that were occupied by the enemy) endured much more severe hardship for three times the time we have had with COVID and they endured. They bitched but they endured and they cooperated. What a bunch of wusses these heroes have turned out to be!
Kevin assumes only conservative independents, especially those who watch Fox, will consider the country worse off than a year ago. I can imagine progressives ones think the same thing. A year ago pollsters predicted a Democratic landslide with up to 57 senators and a sizable majority in the House. Democracy if threatened would be definitively fixed. Biden's outreach across the aisle would bring the country together. Vaccines were on the way, not politicized yet, and the pandemic would be over. I was more optimistic about the US a year ago too.
"A year ago we were in the middle of a massive pandemic. Thousands of people were dying every day. The economy was at a standstill. Millions of people had been laid off or furloughed. Travel was virtually shut down. Schools were shut"
Not everyone was affected the same. I didn't (and still don't) know anyone that had died. I had my job and don't know anyone that lost there's. My family was actually able to save a lot more. We didn't have any big travel plans anyway but we travelled to see my parents as usual and several trips for my daughter's lacrosse team. Schools were open here in Florida. The main thing for me that's different now then a year ago is inflation is higher. No question that at a national level things are better now. But I can certainly understand how people responded in consideration of their personal situations and said things are worse now then a year ago.
*theirs
Hate not being able to edit.
I have a crazy theory about this. It's not really Fox News because most people still don't watch that. Most people (meaning the "non-extremely-online" people) still get their general impressions about the state of things from the TV news. Or from their relatives, who get it from the TV news. And the impressions you get from TV is this: when Republicans are in charge, they are tough, tough, TOUGH! When Democrats are "in charge," they are a bunch of weenies. When Republicans shit all over them, they wring their hands and say a lot of words, and eventually they form a committee that says even more words. But they don't fight.
The one piece of evidence that seals this for me is the gap between men and women in which party they support. Why do men overwhelmingly support Republicans? Is it because they are troubled by too much government spending? Or disapprove of immigration policy? Hell no. It's because they perceive Democrats as a bunch of weenies who talk too much and don't fight for what they believe.
And everything that's happened this year reinforces that impression. Trump and all his gang should be in jail. If they were, American men would sense that the Democrats have finally grown some testicles.
Josh Marshall put it pretty well. One party subscribes to the bitch slap theory of politics. The other party has decided you can't even use "bitch" like that anymore.
Democrats are feminine, and feminine is coded as weak in western culture.
I was curious about the gubernatorial polls in Virginia so I did a Google search and up popped an article about independent voters in Virginia. Turns out they're voting for the GOP because Critical Race Theory is infesting the public schools in Virginia (it isn't), trans kids are using the wrong bathrooms, and Democrats are guilty of stealing the election from Trump. So in other words, the so-called independent voters are actually Fox News Republicans.
Or the poll is meaningless. How do they register what a "independent" is???? Critical Race theory is crap. But that is already known. Use better examples.
Another virtually meaningless poll question.
It doesn't matter as much where we are today as where we will be soon. If Manchin and Sinema succeed in sabotaging Biden's agenda and Republicans regain control of both houses of Congress next year, it won't matter at all where we are today. Is anyone truly better off if they make more money and live in a fascist state with rigged elections and rampant racism?
It is not implausible to foresee a Trump victory in 2024 with Republicans controlling both houses. Looking back from that vantage point, does anyone here think it will matter how Americans viewed our condition in October 2021?
Kevin likes to focus on lots of "chartable" statistics to make his cases, but they won't matter at all if the electorate does what it is capable of doing -- returning power to Republicans.
Trump will never run again. Your not getting it.
I would not count on it. Besides, there's lots of Trumps: Donnie junior, Eric, and maybe best of them all, little Ivanka.
The very fact that the madman former guy is no longer president, except in his own deluded, senile mind means things are infinitely better. Also, a presidential election isn't going on.
(We've got a mayoral election here in Albuquerque, plus a bunch of other lesser offices, but that's nothing like the prez. Admittedly, earlier in the week, fireworks broke out in the mayoral debate...)