Greg Sargent comments today on a poll saying voters aren't really aware of Donald Trump's most incendiary comments:
Large swaths of voters appear to have little awareness of some of Trump’s clearest statements of hostility to democracy and intent to impose authoritarian rule in a second term, from his vow to be “dictator for one day” to his vague threat to enact “termination” of provisions in the Constitution.
....The poll asked them about 10 of Trump’s most authoritarian statements, including: the two mentioned above, Trump’s claim that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” his vow to pardon rioters who attacked the Capitol, his promise to prosecute the Biden family without cause, his threat to inflict mass persecution on the “vermin” opposition, and a few more. Result? “Only 31 percent of respondents said they previously had heard a lot about these statements by Trump.”
Only 31%? Compare that to various questions asked in recent YouGov polls:
Hell, only 34% had heard about the Hur report. Only 24% knew we were striking back against the Houthis. And the fact that a star witness had lied about bribes paid to Hunter and Joe Biden? Only 22%.
Most people don't know anything about anything. In fact, I'll bet that even these numbers are inflated, with lots of respondents saying they've heard a lot about these things because they watched a segment on the evening news or got pointed to a Facebook post.
This is why I think Biden has a fair amount of upside in the presidential race. In September, when people start paying attention, what are they going to learn? Mostly bad stuff about Trump and good stuff about Biden's little-known positive accomplishments. That's where the greatest ignorance is right now, so it's also where there's the greatest potential for change.
Look, when you sit in the pew you just listen and nod and bide your time until football - there's no thinking involved!
Wait till voters hear what Trump is saying now:
"I don't need votes. We have all the votes we need."
Glad to see Biden-Harris is working to get the word out.
Voters Aware Of Few Negative Facts About Trump
Why Democrats Should Give Up Right Now
A Times Panel Discussion
I seriously don't know whether I can survive 8 more months of media-horserace narratives, and then there's all the speculative game-casting. Personally I think it's a gigantic plot to keep us from volunteering and voting. Probably Chinese thermostats involved ...
Love the "NY Times Pitchbot" headline.
I honestly think there are many "smart" [sic] people who want TFG back (including Russians) who are spending loads of time and money stoking Doom on the left, in order to suppress the vote.
Sadly, they are probably right to focus there (in terms of the best way to defeat Biden"
Sadly true! We lefties seem to be suckers for gloom'n'doom, fashionable cynicism, and realist apathy. Yet we assume we're somehow "smarter" than the other guys.
I think it's time for Dems to switch from the doom stuff to get off your butt and vote. Taylor Swift told her 282 million Instagram voters to get out and vote today.
"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."
-- apocryphally attributed to Winston Churchill
But Kevin has summed it up just as well: the ignorance of the average voter about virtually everything is simply gobsmacking. The fragmentation and political polarization of the media (thanks Fox and Rush Limbaugh!), and media conglomerates' views of their news operations primarily as profit-generating clickbait operations rather than serious journalistic enterprises, has rendered the American voter a complete idiot when it comes to being able to make decisions based on a rational understanding of the facts. It's no way to run a country and the only winners are corrupt autocrats like Trump willing to exploit people's base instincts and prejudices in the absence of even the most basic understanding of social and political affairs.
I find Kevin's faith that most voters will ever start "paying attention" to be more than a little over-optimistic. It's like predicting Dallas Cowboys fans will realise how misguided they are once they open their eyes to the team's obvious shortcomings.
My disdain for the contemporary American public opinion industry crystallised when I read a story in the NYT describing the problems their pollsters had finding anyone willing to do a survey. It took an hour's cold-calling, on average, to find each participant. It's blindingly obvious that the result is anything but a sample truly representative of the population, and no amount of "weighting" or other tweaking can make it so.
A story published today should shake the faith of anyone who still pays attention to public opinion surveys:
❗️
My wife gives me crap *every* time I answer a call on my cell from a number I don't recognize, unless I'm expecting a call back from a contractor or something.
Almost no one I know, including my kids, ever pick up a call from an unknown caller. I can't count the # of times I heard "If it's important, they'll leave a message."
And after that story about the woman who gave $50,000 in cash to someone who cold called her from the "CIA", I bet the numbers dropped even further.
It's breathtaking to consider the amplification of Hillary's "deplorables" comment, by the everything-is-Democrats'-fault crowd, when Trump has directly referred to his opponents as "vermin" and paid no price for it.
The difference is that HC violated a basic precept: never insult the voters. Trump has insulted his perceived opposition among the "deep state" and such. The closest he came to dissing his base was "I love the poorly educated."
Voters don’t know anything yet
they know trump called for using horse de-wormer and bleach during the pandemic
and yet they still wanna vote for him
Voters don’t know anything yet
More like
Voters don’t know anything at all
The one I actually find most shocking is the Boeing story. That’s been everywhere for a while including national and local news stories, comedy acts, and snark jokes. You almost would have to be deliberately not paying attention.
That, and the $1B lawsuit against Boeing and Alaska Airlines by some passengers. The poor dear must have suffered a lot of emotional distress.
what are they going to learn? Mostly bad stuff about Trump and good stuff about Biden's little-known positive accomplishments.
i think you're discounting the possibility that the right wing floods the zone with pictures of a weeping trump nailed to a cross while biden rapes children in the foreground
History could very easily prove me wrong (with a Trump victory in November), but I’m beginning to wonder if we aren’t in the midst of an epic (and of course unnecessary) media herd-mind moment of historic proportions .
I like to think I’m at least somewhat intelligent. But I cannot make sense of the media freak out regarding Biden’s reelection campaign. Yes, he’s old. But that simply does not explain the intensity of debate around his fate in 2024. Yes, he is apparently behind in swing state polls. But how am I seemingly one of the only people not very concerned about that at this point in time?
Biden is an incumbent president who signed transformative legislation and is presiding over a booming economy in a country that is mercifully free of major social unrest or upheaval.
(The lunatic Left wing bigots cheerleading as Hamas rapes and terrorizes Jews are an insignificant - but admittedly loud and incredibly offensive - minority).
And modern American history indicates that incumbent presidents in Joe Biden’s situation win.
Not just that, but modern American history also offers clear examples that the party of presidents who resign after their first term lose (see 1968).
How is it that SO MANY otherwise smart people ignore these well known historical trends and concentrate instead on much less important polling conducted months before the election?
Can it all be explained by the fact that Biden sometimes gets a name wrong?
Maybe, but I don’t think so. Ageism, certainly, must be a factor in this otherwise inexplicable situation, but I also suspect that some sort of critical mass has built up in the media echo chamber.
Everyone is trying to scream even louder than everybody else about Joe Biden’s age. Dissent is drowned. Sane voices inevitably lose all conviction. Only the most nihilistic prophets of doom speak with passionate intensity. And, of course, the moderate center of Joe Biden coverage has essentially been obliterated. We’re witnessing yet another (largely media driven) moment of mass hysteria.
Good restatement of the fundamentals of incumbency and economics. I think those have not lost their potency.
Also in Biden’s favor: Trump has lost the popular vote twice, the second time by a significant margin, to Biden, when Trump was the incumbent. Since that second loss, I can’t see that TFG has done anything to enlarge his appeal; in fact, his attempt to reverse his loss has surely lost him voters. I think (and hope) he’s in for another loss.
Nate Silver today: The White House is flirting with poll denialism
The White House is betting the election on a theory of skewed polls:
https://www.natesilver.net/p/the-white-house-is-betting-the-election
"This year, however, Biden is losing to Trump in the polls — not by a huge margin, and not in every single poll, but in the vast majority of recent national surveys. And although it hasn’t been talked about as much, Biden generally trails Trump by a wider margin in swing state polling."
"faced with abundant evidence that voters have soured on Biden — his approval rating is 38 percent — Democratic officials have mostly reacted with denial."
The Biden campaign hasn’t really gotten going, and I’m with Kevin Drum that people aren’t paying attention yet anyway, so it’s a time to keep one’s powder dry. Sure, it would be good for the pundits’ business if Democrats’ hair were on fire — Silver says in the linked piece, “there was 2016, when Democrats should have been more freaked out than they were”. I don’t think freaking out is a great way to make good decisions, and I think the massive pile of cash the campaign has raised is a sign that the Biden team isn’t being complacent.
Well, if by the summer, if Biden regains a 5 point lead in the poll averages, I will be pleased. My male intuition tells me it isn't going to happen. But I've been wrong before, and could be wrong again. I hope I am.
Not much I can do about it except to wait and see what happens.
"Most people don't know anything about anything. " It's important to remember, too, that half the people out there are below average.
Actually half the people are below the median, not the average. If there is one person out there with an IQ of one gazillion, that will push the average IQ way past that of most people.
Voters know EXACTLY who he is and what he believes. They just DON'T CARE. We really need to stop babying these Trump supporters. They want what he's selling. Period.
Do we think there will be debates? I'm guessing not.
Also, don't forget to read the graph. The subtitle is "Percent reporting 'a lot'"
Not have you heard about these topics. Have you heard "a lot" about them.
I'm pretty sure the question makes the results essentially random noise, highly dependent on what a random respondent thinks the words "a lot" mean.