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The Revenge of the Red Wave
Someone on here recently shared with me that polling is not about reporting objective facts, or even trends among opinions. Rather, polling is aimed at shaping opinion. For those of us who grew up watching cartoons on Saturday morning, it’s the modern-day equivalent of “be the first one on your block to have a [fill in the blank].” The cool kids all want to be woke and express the “proper” opinion, and thus, the polling data showing Trump losing shows the “proper” opinion. Thus, polls shape, they don’t describe opinion.
But I don’t buy it.
I will admit that my data set is skewed. I talk to my neighbors. I talk to folks I meet at the grocery store wearing shirts emblazoned with “Make America Great Again” or “Keep America Great.” I drive down the road. Just the other day, on the way to go vote, I saw an actual Biden sign. One sign. It was surrounded by a bodyguard of about fifty Trump signs. When I walk my dogs in my neighborhood all I see are Trump signs. There are no Biden signs.
At my home in Auburn, the situation is very similar. In the neighborhoods of Opelika and central Auburn – away from the university – there are seas of Trump signs. The closer you get to the college (where conformity and communisn tend to hold the ground) you do see a few Biden signs. As one man observed, “don’t they know they’re destroying their property values?”
Then there are the cars and trucks. There are so many cars and trucks with Trump flags or stickers that you really cannot count them all. Admittedly Alabama is a pretty red state, but Florida, where I live, is supposed to be a Biden haven. Not from what I’ve seen.
I have a theory, and it’s about an angry electorate. Call it the Revenge of the Red Wave.
Conventional wisdom says that where there is smoke, there’s fire. So when “news” broke about Russia, Russia, Russia, in 2016 and early 2017, and that paragon of virtue Rod Rosenstein inflicted the Mueller Special Counsel on President Trump, people were apt to believe there was something there. It was a reasonable assumption if you believed the media told the truth.
And let’s face it, the “news” was all bad. Of course, none of these “informed sources” would ever go on the record, it was always on background, but they would tell CNN and MSNBC that “the walls are closing in” on the president. After bombshell after bombshell turned out to be a wet firecracker, Dan Bongino coined the Bongino Rule: Wait 48 hours before you panic over anything in the news because it’s probably false. Indeed, I learned to apply the Bongino Rule regularly. The media: not so much.
The president, on the other hand, was simply doing his best to fix the problems caused by the last 40 years of incompetent political leadership. All the informed sources said Mr. Trump was in the pocket of Putin. All of them said that the Trump Tower meeting was an attempt to sell access for Hillary’s emails. Time after time the all the talking heads told us that the president was going to either be indicted or removed by impeachment. Yet…it didn’t happen.
You see, now we all know the truth. Even while they were spewing this bile, the FBI and Mueller knew in 2017 that the dossier was Russian disinformation. They knew the Democrats paid for it. They tapped Carter Page’s phones and email and got nothing, and they did it with a continuous series of lies and half-truths. They knew none of the Steele dossier was verified. And in spite of Adam Schiff telling everyone that he’d seen actual physical evidence of collusion, plain on its face, the witnesses testifying before Schiff’s committee all disclaimed any evidence of this collusion. Perhaps Schiff should have realized that even mythical townspeople catch on after a few turns of crying wolf.
The lack of evidence did not stop Mueller from continuing the persecution, however, and the reason that Mueller continued the probe into 2019 had nothing to do with being thorough, and everything to do with taking the probe past the 2018 midterm elections. They knew before they appointed Mueller that the sub-source said it was all made up. They knew what the end would bring. That leaves only one reason for the Mueller probe to have gone past November of 2018. That reason was the midterm elections.
The electorate heard nothing but Russia, Russia, Russia, and made the smoke=fire connection that Mueller and his 18 angry Democrats all expected them to make. Republicans lost the house; impeachment was all set to go.
Then Mueller, apparently taking the same medications that Biden is taking, came before the Congress and, looking like a Bassett hound that overslept, admitted: “yep, we got nothing!”
But at that point, it didn’t matter.
The Democrats held the House.
They commissioned the impeachment immediately, they just waited until they had a colorable (but ludicrous) claim to advance it to a vote, and did so by breaking a century’s worth of tradition such that the process was never bipartisan. Even today the Inspector General’s testimony and name of the whistleblower remain cloaked in secrecy because Adam Schiff doesn’t think you deserve to know the truth.
Impeachment failed, although it did give Mitt Romney, the second most worthless Republican senator in Congress (behind only Susan Collins – ladies’ first!) a great chance to virtue signal and tell us all about his very strong faith and how Joseph Smith himself came back from the dead and told him he had to vote to convict on at least one charge or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir would be called home. And I had always thought so highly of the electorate in Utah. Maybe I was wrong.
So, if the people who voted for Trump in 2016, but who stayed home in 2018 because of the Russia hoax, learned anything, they learned that the media truly was the enemy of the people. They learned media would publish anything that hurt the president even if it rivaled a National Enquirer headline (Trump Inks Secret Deal with Planet Xoron!). They learned that all of it, every last bit, had been a scam, and that they had been its intended victim.
And guess what, CNN, NBC, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, New York Times … they’re pissed off about it! And while the media’s continued suppression of the Hunter Biden MacBidet (aka, the laptop from hell) continues and is aimed at the low information voter, even the low-information (low-IQ) voter is apt to remember the way the air went out of the Russia balloon and how Schiff, Maddow, and Matthews all lied to us with a straight face, never expecting the resiliency of a truly patriotic president.
The Streisand effect elevated the Biden MacBidet news, Bobulinski corroborated the news, and the Senate is going to make sure the public learns about the laptop and what it contains. Before November 3 the information will come out, and even if it comes out slowly, the obvious suppression by the media will confirm to everyone who has paid attention that the media is not a neutral observer.
Much as banning a book in Boston in the 1950s was the surest way to get that book on the national bestseller list, banning publication of the lurid details found on the Dyson Biden’s laptop from hell, and its shady connections to Jim Biden and Joe Biden, has effectively told the public that there is indeed a there, there. Smoke sometimes does equal fire.
The boat parades that are not covered except on social media, the car and truck parades that are not covered except on social media, the organization of these events by regular people sick of the media and fed up with the Democratic party, all point to a different kind of polling data that I believe is much more accurate.
The only way Trump loses is if there is massive voter fraud. Biden even admitted he has created a voter fraud operation – saying the quiet part out loud. But even voter fraud only carries you so far. There are only a few people who are willing to spend years in prison to elect a 78-year-old fossil and a 50-something Indian-American. You can change 10,000 votes, maybe, but you can’t sweep away all the patriots. At the end of the day, truth and justice will prevail.
I don’t want to get too far over my skis. But I believe that what God has ordained, no human machination can unwind.
Published in Elections
Don’t want to get into the “How could he win? I don’t know anyone who voted for him!” mode.
The coup-makers held the con in anticipation that Donald would blow his stack and start firing people right and left, thus establishing “obstruction of justice.” I thought that could work. Trump let them twist in the wind instead, which is what I was hoping he would do. “Russia, Russia, Russia” is a punch line now; one that the media can’t get out from under because they’ve never dealt honestly with it.
In 2012 I could not imagine that the nation would elect Obama a second time. I think that the early voting has attenuated any benefits of a last minute surprise at this point in this election. But I still agree with the last sentence of this post.
I believe this depends on the characteristics of the individuals, whether they think independently or whether their mindset is influenced by others, particularly educational institutions and media. I saw some age category breakdowns of poll responses and as far as I can tell this really shows up in 18-29 year-olds. I think your view prevails in the over thirty age group who shape their own views from more from their life experience. I see the same thing you describe at AU in Athens, Ga. at UGA. Maybe they will be too busy protesting to remember to vote.
[wrong thread]
Except, only half of America accepts the truth – as we view the “truth”. We are cocooned in our warm and agreeable Ricochet enclave. There is a vast percentage of Americans (and the world) that has a stridently different viewpoint, that they see as “the truth”. They still believe Russia, Russia, Russia, emoluments, graft, grift, racism, white supremacy, The second coming of Hitler, fascism, and rape. And to top it off, they simply
don’t likehate the guy. Take a venture into the foreign lands of the Huffington Post, The Atlantic, CNN, The Bulwark, or any of the media sites that dominate the landscape. They are monolithic and consistent in their unabashed hatred and condemnation of all things Trump. When @garyrobbins declares that all his friends agree that Trump is horrible, he is telling the truth. We dismiss and belittle him for bravely declaring that belief in our secure little land of Ricochet. For that other half of the populace that watch and listen to MSM, how can they, and why should they, believe anything else?Clarifications: “they simply hate the guy.” They actually have been trained to hate the guy. Every. Single. Day. they are told lies about him and his supporters being evil, racist, fascist. They are told that Trump supporters deserve to be punched in the face, and they are acting on it now with impunity.
“bravely declaring that belief” When I first joined Ricochet, it felt like there was a more diverse pool of opinion, where disagreements were rationally and objectively debated. Like the rest of America, the arguments there and here, have become more emotional, more baseless, and more insulting. The posters that disagree are verbally punched, and they either shut up or leave. That Gary is still around continuing to post his anti-Trump rants is admirable because he stands alone in our cocoon, knowing he will be as vilified here, the same as as when we are posting a pro-Trump post on FB. Or in real life like the Jews For Trump rally found, are being physically attacked https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-antifa-militants-attack-trump-supporters-in-new-york-city
I was at a massive Trump party yesterday (and feeling the pain today, lots of beers and hot dogs). These things are popping up everywhere. I’ve never seen enthusiasm like this and I live in a fairly split district (far more Biden signs than Trump signs). It gives me hope that there’s a massive surprise out there ready to smack the polls upside the head.
I agree with your general assessment of Romney. He showed up in Utah with a great deal of money and out of state support and those are election factors created by the 17th Amendment. I’m in Arizona now and see a similar squishy Republican mentality leftover from the McCain machine that was dominant here for so long. I don’t think his political posture has much to do with his religion.
At some point anecdotal information combined with rigorous analysis of various polls, plus discernment of motivation on the part of the media, reveals a better prediction.
Anecdotal information for me in 2016 was seeing giant Trump signs while driving across Michigan, knowing Michigan normally tilts blue, and like other swing states, was reliant on manufacturing with many voters holding a healthy contempt for NAFTA, to predict an upset. National reporters don’t normally drive through Michigan ( unless they are Selena Zito)
Now, without any explanations about how they got 2016 predictions so wrong, these same polling companies -being paid by the corporate media, let’s not forget – are assembling data telling us the same thing with a different and weaker candidate. This, while Trump has a record of success and has proven a valiant fighter for conservative principles (regardless of his personal history or reputation) and won over many skeptics who did not vote for him in 2016. It doesn’t add up. How can a pathetic candidate like Biden be so popular? As popular or more-so than Hillary Clinton. Wasn’t Trump an ‘oafish boor’ in that election also?
There is a huge trove of evidence that Trump is far, far stronger than the polls report( including other polls which are considered ‘unscientific’ by the media corporations who hire their own pollsters). The overwhelming support Trump received in primary voting, which has proven a worthy metric for a century, indicates the incumbent is on the path to victory. The obvious indications, both anecdotal and polling results, of markedly increased support from the black demographic and an increase in Hispanic support.
The justifiably tepid reaction to Biden by Progressives, which highlights the very real Democrat party split between the establishment globalist elites and the ordinary rank-and-file union Democrat and the struggling poor and the government-dependent poor, who are slowly awakening to the fraudulent promises from the Democrat party regulars and the collapse of whole meta-narrative they’ve been marketing.
When political yard signs first started appearing in large numbers, I figured Trump would win the election by about 50-1 if the election was held in rural America where I ride my bicycle. There are more yard signs now, but the Democrat ones always did tend to come out a little later. I’m not sure if the ratio would even be 10-1 any more. And the small towns are a lot more evenly divided, though Trump probably predominates. However, if you ride near the lakes with expensive homes where the ruling classes live, you will find only Biden signs. Close to home I’ve seen Trump signs and flags in places where I’ve never before seen political yard signs, but I’m not sure those expensive lake homes ever displayed political signs before, either.
Nor do I Bob. I think he’s just squishy.
Great use of the word, by the way.
I try never to dismiss or belittle anyone. I think its fine to disagree, but there’s no need to be ugly about it. I have views I am sure would be unpopular, but I try not to cram them down other people’s throats. I figure if I disagree with someone on here, I can just keep on browsing. Someone once told me never to get in an argument with an idiot, because someone you don’t know might come by and not be able to tell which one of you is the idiot. I try to remember that, and I wind up erasing a LOT of my comments.
How can Trump NOT be given the Nobel Peace Prize now that he’s had the interplanetary diplomatic skills to ink that secret deal with Planet Xoron?!?!!??! When I picked up the Enquirer last week, I heard they were about ready to invade!
Just got back from southwest Florida. Trump signs everywhere, including on the roof of a restaurant…I mean, you’d think they might be worried about driving people away. Apparently not.
I wonder if the person meant to say what polling, concretely, has become, rather than what he said: what polling is by definition.
To say that polling is aimed at shaping opinion is like saying that locksmithing is aimed at facilitating burglary.