We Have Met the Stupid, and it is Us

 

I have talked about the stupidity of using polling as a "story" for news purposes before. People are measuring opinions, but you can't measure facts. If an opinion is just wrong as to the facts, what did you learn? People might not answer honestly. They might be just vibing and have never thought about your question before. It might be useful for a news organization to see what sorts of things the public needs to be more educated about--but is it news?

Look, the above chart is from two years ago, about when I wrote the post I linked to. Yougov.com found that people wildly misestimate the size of various groups. When you see that people are estimating 21% of the population is transgender, bathroom panic starts to make more sense, until you ask yourself if people responding to the question even really understand fractions. Do people really think one out of five people are trans? Do they think like one in four are Muslim, and that one in three are atheist? 

These numbers don't jibe with anything in people's actual lived experiences. What this poll shows is that people are innumerate. Their mental math is broken. They aren't converting their concept of how many people per are anything--they are just really bad contestants on "The Price is Right".  

TWGB: Big and Little Lies for the Goon King

 

Crowd size--that's very important to TrumpWorld, because Trump is a size queen and tries to pretend his little fingers are a lie. Eric Trump had to use a lying Charlie Kirk post to play a game of "Make Abusive Daddy Love Me" by showing a Joe Biden crowd as if it were a turn out for his pops. It wasn't the first time the Trump crowds were inflated, they did it just recently regarding his Wildwood stand. But like, of course TrumpWorld does that--the first major kick-off lie of the Trump Administration was Sean Spicer lying about the inauguration crowd size. We get it--Trump wants everything BIGGER.

But you can see where a part of that is "manufactured consent", right? Like, pretending more people really think Trump is great than honestly do, and also, kind of implying people who don't like him are not "real Americans" at all. You can look at Michael Cohen rigging polls for 2016. They are still being rigged a lil' bit, you bet?  (Consider what fake IP addresses can do to online polls.) 

But that's just a little lie--now, that there are undocumented people registering to vote--that's a Big Lie. How can undocumented people register and have their votes even count as valid? Where's the logic, there? 

This 2024 Candidate is Very Unpopular

 

You know, while some bent people want to use the ennui before the 2024 campaign is properly underway to suggest that the current actually extremely effective president isn't very well liked or is really fucking old or whatever, there's been some trepidation, I think, in acknowledging that the guy who lost the popular vote twice and was impeached twice in his ONE term of office is actually not that popular himself and is also facing 91 felony counts in four separate indictments, with possibly more to come might not be popular. (The above picture is from a minute ago in Iowa, but the same thing happened in 2019, as well. Whoops--folks do hate him! For a while now!) 

That shit is so wild to me--how is it happening? People are marveling in column inches that they get paid to fill about how and why Biden is just not moving that applause meter needle, and they sort of fuck up the obvious thing where these polls aren't a measure of the important voices of the people--so much as feedback on what the media is telling them, and if the public gets basic shit like whether the direction inflation is going is wrong: well shit, motherfuckers, are you telling these people the truth or what? 

Because who the fuck was supposed to inform them? 

The Country is Held Hostage By the Fifth Dentist

 

Whenever I think about the 27% crazification factor (as an old-head blogger), I think about the vintage commercials about "four out of five dentists" thing when I was a kid. You don't know that fifth dentist in the survey. Maybe he just doesn't endorse products. Maybe he thinks chewing gum at all is a disgusting habit. Survey questions don't actually tell the whole tale of what the respondents believe, and that's a large part of why I feel like making a big deal out of polling can be kind of stupid. 

You can get poll numbers for people who blame Obama for the Katrina response. You aren't getting a snapshot of what people know. You are getting a snapshot of what they don't know but definitely feel. You are learning where the public messaging needs to concentrate and do better at factual/useful information. This is why polling about whether Biden could do more about fuel prices is stupid. You aren't gauging a fact--but the degree to which people understand the facts that we are not a socialist economy, and Biden doesn't control fuel prices. 

It would be great, I think, if actual journalists who cared whether they were doing a good job or not, actually used these polls as a yardstick to whether they were doing a great job of getting facts out there. Maybe poll numbers that deviate from reality aren't a partisan problem, so much as a failure to break out of "both-sidesing" stories to play pretend impartiality as opposed to the real thing of exposing absolute partisan shitbaggery. Maybe truth is the job of journalists to promote, not the job of partisans to correct the record. 

And yeah, I'd like it if Democrats could message better to overcome this shit, But I get why they haven't. It's so pervasive.

Oh, His Tone is Changing, They Say?

So disgusting to watch Twitter’s so-called “Trending”, where sooo many trends are about me, and never a good one. They look for anything they can find, make it as bad as possible, and blow it up, trying to make it trend. Really ridiculous, illegal, and, of course, very unfair!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 27, 2020

I know I keep saying this, but the pivot isn't coming. People thought back in 2016, at some point, Trump would stop dishing out red meat to the rubes and start behaving like a person who wanted to win a general election. He didn't pivot, and welp. So, after the election, he was gonna get serious once he was on the job, and behave presidentially. Welp. And now he is saying mean hashtags on Twitter are not just "very unfair!" but illegal. Sure. All bad news about him is "fake news" and all bad polls are "rigged".

So when I see any story that suggests he's got a "new tone", let's take that with a grain, it better include, as the link does, that that new tone is probably about re-election and his discovery that "his people" are also getting it. (Let's just not take it with a grain of hydroxychloroquine, which the newly-serious Trump has been retweeting links about this evening. It still hasn't demonstrated any proven effectiveness and has serious side effects, including death.) He wants to appear serious and concerned, but let's not confuse that for actually being that way.

In other news, Trump apparently announced that he would throw out the first pitch at a Yankees game because he was jealous of Dr. Anthony Fauci....and there was no such event ever planned.

“Randy Levine is a great friend of mine from the Yankees,” Mr. Trump, referring to the president of the baseball team, told reporters on Thursday as Dr. Fauci was preparing to take the mound. “And he asked me to throw out the first pitch, and I think I’m doing that on Aug. 15 at Yankee Stadium.”

There was one problem: Mr. Trump had not actually been invited on that day by the Yankees, according to one person with knowledge of Mr. Trump’s schedule. His announcement surprised both Yankees officials and the White House staff.

But Mr. Trump had been so annoyed by Dr. Fauci’s turn in the limelight, an official familiar with his reaction said, that he had directed his aides to call Yankees officials and make good on a longtime standing offer from Mr. Levine to throw out an opening pitch. No date was ever finalized.

That seems a little weird, doesn't it? I wonder how that kind of thing polls with the boaters. Yes, I said "boaters":

According to two people who’ve been in the room when Trump has fixated on the issue, the president has repeatedly stressed that “boaters”—MAGA fans who join in on pro-Trump flotillas, with ships adorned with Trump and Mike Pence banners and gear—are a shining exemplar of the enthusiasm gap he enjoys over Biden. He has delighted in advisers showing him boater photos and videos that have bubbled up on social media. And during strategy sessions in the past two months, he’s told officials to keep bringing him more and to push out the content on their own accounts, as well.

He lives in his own little world where doing things like pretending to throw out a first pitch or impressing people with boats matters, and actually doing his job well or respectfully does not. So when you consider things like his not planning on stopping by to pay his respects to Rep. John Lewis, keep in mind that he isn't wanted at certain funerals or weddings because of who he is, what he says, how he behaves.

There is far more wrong with him than merely "tone."

UPDATE: See also Parker Molloy's very good coverage of the last five years of journos pretending Trump is doing something he is most certainly incapable of.

OAN Also Works That Poll

Pro-Trump Network OAN Pulls Poll That Had Unfavorable Numbers For Presidenthttps://t.co/qXUrZTiOEh

— Andrew Solender (@AndrewSolender) June 12, 2020

But they could only work it soooooo much. Whoops. And now it is disappeared.

(Click to embiggen)

They had to try it though.

Trump Works The Poll

Trump lives in a universe where he needs to look good and can't stand any criticism, where he needs to hear adulation and can't take any responsibility.  And it is driving him, allegedly, "malignantly crazy" that his poll numbers are dropping like a rock. Joe Biden's lead over Trump is more solid than Hillary Clinton's was, and this was precisely the scenario Trump feared.

(So much so, in fact, that last year he extorted the president of Ukraine for dirt on Joe Biden's son, Hunter, by withholding aid, an act for which Trump was later impeached by the Democratic House of Representatives. Ukrainian prosecutors, in fact, haven't got anything on the former vice-president's son.)

So, it's certainly not out of form for Trump to retain the services of a friendly if possibly misguided polling firm to provide more pleasant-sounding numbers. (His former personal lawyer admitted to rigging polls for his boss so this has precedent.) The president has acquired the notion that polls exist, not to provide metrics for what a campaign needs to improve messaging for (because that would be work and might even require discipline, and yeah no, Trump isn't getting that shit together anytime soon) but to create impressions. So he has fallen under the belief that a bad CNN poll (that nemesis, CNN!) has been devised to suppress support for him. So much so that CNN has been sent a cease and desist letter to take down the offending poll.

CNN, naturally, has declined, with a letter that boils downs to "First Amendment, fuck you."  As they absolutely should.

It's sad that Trump can't think of anything better to do regarding his poll numbers than, well, this, even though, if his campaign staff has any competency whatsoever, they've certainly tried to get him to try and get a handle on his messaging--so he will be resuming his campaign rallies on Juneteenth in Tulsa  (planned stops in Texas, Arizona, and Florida after Oklahoma, so you can tell he's concentrating on those battlegrounds, there) and is also going to have a speech on race written by Stephen Miller.

So that's really...reading the room, I guess. Rather like his carefully-crafted statement just a bit ago about those military bases named for Confederate leaders. However, I don't think he's in the same room as the rest of America, and is all too happy with a polling sample of one--himself.

*I thought the better of the most amusing YouTube video I originally used for an accompanying visual but if you did see that, sorry, not sorry. I only thought it too graceful to really represent Trump's essence, so I went with this somewhat idealized portrait that I believe he purchased with charity money and used at one of his business locations, so, much more representative of his actual self.

The Trump-Lincoln Debate

"This is not a party, this is a cult... Rick Perry said Trump was the chosen one. And he wasn’t even the first person to say that." - Leonard Pitts responds to poll in which 53% of Republicans said Trump was a better president than Lincoln. https://t.co/mHgleZJZir

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) November 30, 2019

The idea that 53% of Republicans in a recent poll think that Trump is a better president than Abraham Lincoln actually doesn't bother me excessively because I drink an actual fuckton anymore have been watching Republican polls for a long time, and have observed the rise of poll-trolling and troll-polling. You know, the thing where Republicans, when questioned, will blame Obama for the Hurricane Katrina response or where pollsters will ask questions trying to cast a certain demographic (presumed knuckle-draggers) in a weird light by pointing up one weird and very click-baitable response. You can tell me Republicans by just 53% are defensive enough in support of Trump to compare him favorably to the guy on Mount Rushmore, the $5 bill and the freaking penny, and I'm going to basically shrug. (I will note, however, for posterity's sake, that Trump invited this comparison. And outside of Republicans, he definitely does not compare favorably.)

Republicans are going to like the current Republican president. It isn't brain science. Lincoln was broke as far as presidents go, pissed off the entire south, and was nearly a Commie.

There is something kind of weird about the idea that Republicans have that Trump is the particular right man of this given moment of history, though; that he is the Chosen One. Sometimes, even secularly, the sweep of history is defined by the idea of "Great men". But the current trend seems to be thinking that Trump was called to public service and has sacrificed things to be here--quite different from the reality of Trump's various buckrakings. He hasn't really accomplished anything great. The economy is just generally good, as it was under the last guy, and otherwise Trump's foreign policy is nonsense.

He could very well lead to a civil war of some kind, though, so there is that. I would not call that a "feature" though. Definitely a drawback. Not good.

Frigging in the Rigging 2

It would be a lie to say that there are actually no daily newspapers that have endorsed Donald Trump for president--to date, there are two. But these papers stand as rare islands in what looks like a sea of Clinton endorsements, from papers that have seldom or never endorsed a Democrat before, or even publications that generally have no political bent whatsoever--like Vogue (?!) or who very seldom make presidential endorsements except at what their editorial staff deem to be an historic juncture.

It's no wonder, then, that Trump has been softening up the media all this time--look at them! In the tank for Hillary Clinton! in part blaming the media for the rigging of the election. His rhetoric has become so negative regarding the press that reporters at Trump rallies fear for their safety. (I don't think any of this bodes well for the First Amendment under a possible Trump presidency--could anyone?)

But "the media" is not some cozy monolith that can just lockstep into a conspiracy to get a given candidate elected. There was no bias for Clinton or against Trump displayed in the primaries in terms of media coverage (the opposite seems to have been the case). I hate to be the bearer of the fucking obvious, but when you read something like this that indicates that there is more "negative coverage" of a certain candidate (Trump)--it might just be because that candidate has generated more negative coverage by stupid things that he or she has actually done or said.  As in, Donald Trump has interesting stories about himself that he calls attention to and drags out in the media because that is who he is. And frankly--the email stories about Clinton are basically Yawn City at this point. That's not an indication of bias. It's what's current and what the audience might find interesting (yes, Virginia, there is a ratings clause). Trying to create balance where it does not exist would be, well, false.

So when Hillary Clinton gets endorsements from assorted GOP officials past and present, retired military figures, GOP national security experts, and Nobel Laureates in Science,  it might actually serve us to look at whether these endorsers are seeing a qualitative difference between the candidates. Numerous figures have pointed out that Hillary Clinton is simply the most qualified, by virtue of experience, candidate to have run for this office, while Donald Trump's ace card is his "outsider cred". As in--he has little relevant experience for the job at all. And he seems, to many observers, to be a petulant credulous man-baby with boundary issues, a fetish for self-aggrandizement, and an inability to admit he is wrong about obviously wrong shit. (Like his repeated claims he was originally right about the Iraq War, Libya, or whether the US is the most taxed nation on Earth. Sad!)

But beyond that, the "rigging" could only be evident if somehow the election results madly deviated from all the polls. Now, we know local polls can go all wonky--witness the incredible failure of polls to predict the primary loss of Eric Cantor to David Brat in VA a couple years back. But presidential polling is way more granular--there are more polls, different samples, they are taken more frequently, etc. And we can see that Trump has a deficiency with POC voters (Wow, really? Is this a source of shock to anyone at all, even his fans?) And young people are turned off by him. Even if you allow that POC and young voters might not turn out reliably--in general--they bloody well will for this election.

Add to all this the Trump campaign's lack of a strong ground game or strategic ad buys or logical campaigning strategy. There are obvious real-world indicators to point to if Trump loses that do not necessitate an assumption of "rigging".

Long story short--Trump might want to imply that there has been substantial rigging--but he's frigging wrong.

Dancing Around the May Poll

I know there is some hay being made out of this spring grass already,  but I just don't know how to relate to May polls when I know that Barack Obama wasn't supposed to win in 2008 according to a poll done as late as September.  After McCain picked Palin. I don't even know what all was going on at the time because I was unplugged in Reggio Calabria on a personal vacation, but as far as I know--my individual data from people I knew didn't match the poll numbers. I thought Obama would win, and he did.

A poll in May of 1988 showed Dukakis comfortably kicking Shrub Senior's ass. Belief in polling strength was nothing but stupid for Romney. And we all have anecdata of where polls were especially wrong.

I like quantifiable data, but polls are kind of a snapshot suggesting a direction, but aren't actually a "story" outside of horserace politics. Take the poll numbers suggesting that Sanders has better "unfavorable" numbers than Trump and would be better able to beat him than Clinton.