If the polling is this wacky, why bother publishing it at all?
Over the weekend, ABC and the Washington Post published the results of a poll that made both operations look like its results were the product of a month-long exercise with a Magic 8-Ball. The way you know it was an embarrassment is the Post story about the poll began by telling us all we should probably ignore it completely.
The Post-ABC poll shows Biden trailing Trump by 10 percentage points at this early stage in the election cycle, although the sizable margin of Trump’s lead in this survey is significantly at odds with other public polls that show the general election contest a virtual dead heat. The difference between this poll and others, as well as the unusual makeup of Trump’s and Biden’s coalitions in this survey, suggest it is probably an outlier.
Before I launch into a diatribe, I have a simple question that often works to separate rational arguments from articles of faith: What could someone say, what evidence could they give, to convince you that your assumption of the left as the problem in American electoral outcomes, is incorrect? Is there anything?
I live in NY. We’re unlikely to go red, and if we do, by some awful magic, there are bigger problems than my vote. I’m going to vote my conscience. And if I lived in a swing state, I’d vote for Biden. Though I will say, it’s getting harder to take people seriously when they keep blaming the left for their losses and not actually paying attention to their policy preferences. (I hope you realize Dem partisans have used this argument in every election of my lifetime…I’m 38.)
No party is owed one’s vote. It has to be earned with policies. The Dems couldn’t protect women (and other people with uteruses); I had to get my tubes removed to sleep at night when I visit family in the shittier states. When a mutual-defense pact fails to protect one of its largest and most powerful constituent groups, it naturally starts a slow collapse. Imagine where NATO would be if Russia bombed a German city and NATO “allies” did nothing. I used to make arguments like yours; I was a left-leaning Dem until my mid-20s. But in addition to the Dems’ repeated disappointments (repeatedly bringing policy papers to gunfights), climate change has made clear that there are times where selecting better or worse doesn’t matter, because both are inadequate.
I agree with you in that “we have to vote for Biden to avoid armageddon” is ridiculous. After all, we should aim higher than plainly “avoiding armageddon” because we see the Dems as an escape from the whatever the right see as this week’s Boogeyman. The Dems don’t care for social issues AT ALL, while still giving the rich and big corporations handouts.
What could someone say, what evidence could they give, to convince you that your assumption of the left as the problem in American electoral outcomes, is incorrect?
You could have read their comment before asking a BS leading question about something they never said in the first place. Why would you expect anyone to engage with your bad faith assumptions?
In any first past the post election anything more than 2 candidates means there is a spoiler.
