There is a new Times-Siena poll up, featured prominently on nytimes.com. With this, I have reached my limit. I am experiencing strong cognitive dissonance in that the Times expects readers like me to believe this poll reflects something meaningful. But I have very hard time believing the majority of Americans, even in a “snapshot” believe the results stated in it.
I see two possibilities: If this poll is accurate, then it demonstrates that mainstream media including the “Gray Lady”, supposedly the flagship of them all, has massively failed in its most important mission: to accurately inform the public. They may respond that this is what we are doing with these polls. Making all of us face the uncomfortable truth of what people are actually thinking. But if even a strong minority of Americans believe things that are the opposite of the truth, then that means that the mainstream news media such as the Times at this point have little worth other than perhaps as a vehicle of entertainment. At a time when we have to deal with rampant disinformation spread by countries such as Russia and China that do not mean us well, as well as coming from within the house (Trump), this is a critical failure.
If this polling is true, then Trump has run circles around the Times using the most transparent propaganda, so dumbed down as to be child-like. In a cascade of lies he claims that he had the best economy in history, that if he had been President there would have been no Ukraine, no Hamas-Israel, we would have heaven on Earth. Better medical care, lower taxes, no inflation. What this says to me is that the Times and other mainstream news sources have been abjectly and completely defeated by the sleaziest New York real estate salesman type of braggadocio. Now they may say in their defense that most people are not getting their news from the Times. But the Times has very much overresponded to fears of being called biased, by pounding over and over again questions about (only one) candidate’s age, and story after story not about the actual facts, but more polls, focus groups, anecdotal comments, much of it not in the opinion pages mind you, but presented as news. And they have been doing this for a long time: see “Her Emails”.
The alternate possibility is that this poll is garbage. There is some systematic problem with the polling methodology when over and over again the polls indicate the majority of Americans believe the sky is green and the sun rises in the west. I believe there may be some possibility that this is what is happening.It is based on the fact that these days only one person in a hundred responds to a request to be polled. That means that the pollsters have to account for the possibility of having a biased sample by coming up with weighting formulas. But at some point the response percentage falls so low and the self-selecting becomes so strong that there is no way that this can be done with any accuracy. I think we have reached that point. It could have something to do with why special elections results have not matched predictions by large margins.
So let’s look at some of the specific poll results that set me off:
A larger share of voters see Mr. Trump’s term as better for the country than the current administration, with 42 percent rating the Trump presidency as mostly good for the country compared with 25 percent who say the same about Mr. Biden’s
This is already well into “the sky is green” territory. During Trump’s presidency we endured one self-created crisis and scandal after another. We had massive turnover in cabinet members. It was followed by total mishandling of Covid that contributed to national panic and a feeling that nobody was in control. As hospitals had to bring in refrigerated trailers to contain all the bodies, we heard press conferences about shininglights and bleach. We saw health officials visibly cowed when confronted by nonsense – in a Soviet-like way. It was all the opposite of reassuring. But this was topped off by us all watching, during this pandemic, our own Capitol Building being stormed by mobs who came within minutes of committing bodily harm to our elected representative in an attempt to stop the transition of power.
During the Trump years we had every vital major institution diminished – the courts, the Congress, our national security apparatus, our public health system, in ways that are still sowing chaos, even with Trump gone from office for more than three years. As a result, we have Trump’s own Vice President saying he will not vote for him, plus many of his prominent cabinet members and other officials and people that actually worked closely with him during his actual Presidency.
Contrast with Biden. He came in and what I first remember is an extremely well organized country wide distribution of vaccines. Despite all the craziness we are hearing now about vaccines, we all know and experienced in our own lives, that this was a huge step in bringing back normalcy. We had a record-breaking economic recovery from previous economic panic. We are now investing in the future, in massive infrastructure rebuilding, in producing computer chips here. Our unions are seeing a much needed revival, given that their decline contributed significantly to middle class wage stagnation for decades. Health care was provided to millions, the poverty level of children was cut by more than half. In the House, much of this was facilitated by Nancy Pelosi, working with only a two seat majority. Much of the progress has since been rescinded and the House has fallen into complete chaos, mostly because of Trump who currently holds no official office.
Moving on...
When asked the one thing they remembered from Mr. Trump’s time in office, a vast majority of positive comments referred to the state of the economy. Many specifically remembered the stimulus checks with his signature printed on them that were sent to tens of millions of Americans during the waning days of his presidency.
?
That was not a typo or a random piece of punctuation. That is the only coherent response I can make to the last sentence in the quote above.
...that while they disapproved of Mr. Trump’s inflammatory style, they wondered whether they had placed too much emphasis on his personality in past elections
It is not “personality” and “style”. It is his actions and non-actions. But readers quoted by the Times evidently never learned this from the Times. And even when it comes to what they dismissively term “style”:
While 70 percent of participants said that Mr. Trump had at one point said something they found offensive, those statements were a distant memory for many. Nearly half of that group said he had not said anything offensive recently. Young voters were especially likely to say it had been a while since Mr. Trump said something they found offensive.
Recent Trump Quotes:
“any Jewish person who votes for Democrats “hates their religion” and hates “everything about Israel”
“ Donald Trump called immigrants illegally in the United States "animals" and "not human” in a speech in Michigan on Tuesday, resorting to the degrading rhetoric he has employed time and again on the campaign trail”
Still moving on…
less than 2 percent of voters mentioned abortion or Mr. Trump’s role in the Supreme Court’s repeal of Roe v. Wade as the main thing they remember from his presidency.
How about how they feel about the effect Trump’s Presidency had on abortion now?
“Maya Garcia, 23, described herself as a former “Trump hater.” But now, she says, she has come to believe that Mr. Trump’s contentious style helped control crime and maintain order in the country.”
Crime rose sharply under Trump. It is falling sharply under Biden. The sky is such a beautiful shade of green today.
And the story is brimming with one-off, unbalanced, quotes evidently from the few people who would respond to such polls, such as the aforementioned person who said
“But to be honest, if you look deep into his (Trump’s) personality, he actually cares about the country”
That quote stands on its own. I have nothing to add at this point – except – Times Fail.
So people are not always clear on the definition of gaslighting. Reading this article in the Times should clarify any uncertainty. Because that is the effect that this article would have on any sane person – they would start doubting their own sanity.
If I worked at the Times I would look at this story – where they prominently headline their own failure, and ask, “Why am I here?” If this is the best they can do, then maybe it would be better to stop pretending that they make any difference at all, and just resign to becoming some of the detritus that they themselves in no little part helped to create.