Nonsensical Presidential Polls

Timothy Birdnow

Writing in The Federalist Molly Hemmingway explains why Trump will be re-elected despite some much ballyhooed ridiculously early polling that suggests otherwise.

From the article:

Now, the public is not in election mode, and it is natural for an incumbent to be behind to the fresh faces who are, at present, feted as heroes by the slobbering media. It is also true that Trump, having been smeared relentlessly since his inauguration, no doubt is suffering a bit of fatigue from the low information voters, who are tired of the endless negativity. But none of this matters a wit because there is no actual candidate identified, so nobody is serious. Oh, they'll say they like Mayor Pete Bootycall or whatever his name is, or Bernie Sanders, the guy who really DID collude with Russia, or at least vacationed in the Soviet Union back when they were real enemies, or the cigar store Indian, or whatnot, but that is because there is no serious consideration of them. Once the campaign begins for real it will be very different.

Molly continues:

There are polls and there are polls. The polls the media promotes are usually designed to influence public opinion, not measure it. People who actually make their living from accurate information think Trump is going to win.

The article continues:

So what explains the rash of stories about Trump’s certain doom in 2020? There’s a method behind the false narrative, and one relates to the fact that the media and other members of the Resistance are invested in Trump’s destruction. In the years since Trump did the unthinkable and won, they’ve been monomaniacally focused on overturning the election or otherwise making sure, in the words of one Democratic politician, it’s a one-term aberration.

For Democrats, the media, and NeverTrump Republicans, the current situation is much worse than they anticipated when their Resistance effort began. One shared goal was to drive a wedge in the Republican Party with elected officials splitting from the president. While the Resistance counts some top Republicans in its ranks, the ones that have tested their anti-Trump message publicly with voters instead of just privately with reporters and colleagues — such as Sens. Jeff Flake and Bob Corker — have been run out of politics.

End excerpt.

Trump is not Richard Nixon, and we do not live in a world where newspapers and three television networks control all of the news the public receives. The news media could smear Nixon and he couldn't reply. Now there are avenues to disseminate information that make an end-run around the media, which means that we can learn that, yes, the Obama Administration weaponized national security apparatus against Trump, that Hillary Clinton paid for the very thing used to justify spying on Trump, etc. Those chickens will come home to roost some time before the election, by the way.

And with the economy roaring the public is unlikely to want to change horses midstream.

Remember, the economy wasn't doing that well under Nixon. Nixon imposed Keynsian economic policies on the country, including wage and price controls and stimulus spending. The country experienced slow growth and high inflation. Still, Nixon was popular enough to win re-election by a wide margin. It was not until after Nixon won big that the Democrats and Media began pushing for impeachment, and they were able to drive Nixon's poll numbers down to the point that the Republicans would support his removal. Nixon resigned.

This won't work with Trump. Trump is more popular than Obama at this point in his presidency, and Trump has been successful despite overwhelming opposition in many fields. There is a natural sympathy for someone being abused by the powers that be - look at Clinton's high poll numbers during his impeachment, for example.

The real danger lies with the Federal Reserve. If the Fed - run by Jerome Powell, a Keynsian protege of Obama's Janet Yellen, one whom Trump appointed in one of his casual lapses into madness.- should manipulate the money supply or suddenly shock the economy with interest rate manipulations. An economic downturn next summer could spell doom for Trump. That, I believe, is the reason why there was so much opposition to Trump's two picks for the Fed board. Trump has been denied two excellent candidates because they were supply-side types, not Keynsians, and because the represent a danger in preventing the Fed from wrecking the Trump Presidency.

The Federal Reserve was the primary cause of the Great Depression. The contracted the money supply suddenly after a decade of easy money policies.

Trump is also at the mercy of foreign affairs. And don't think our enemies don't know that; it's why china, North Korea, Iran, etc. are playing the waiting game. They know that if they can deny Trump a win they can perhaps get him out of office and return to business as usual. They desperately want that, because it served their purposes and not ours.

Be that as it may, this talk about Trump being in electoral trouble is designed to split Republicans from Trump, to get them to distance themselves from the President. Already Mitch McConnell has called for Republican Senatorial candidates to run on local issues and not mention Trump - this despite the fact that Trump carried a wave election last time. Those local issues never accomplished anything and McConnell knows it. What this poll is attempting to do is make the whole GOP into McConnells.

That, and to depress our side. It's an old, old trick. Don't fall for it.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 10:36 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 1115 words, total size 8 kb.