News is seeping out of an effort by Democratic polling organizations to determine what factors led to their having gotten the November election so wrong. While it seems that the final margin of Joe Biden’s national general election total is somewhere near the margin of error associated with such polls, the fact that the Republicans did as well as they did in House races (they gained seats in an election polls predicted would be more difficult for them), while also doing better in key Senate races than indicated, has Dems and pollsters nervous.
There are all sorts of theories emanating from the story linked to above (my own theory is that many Americans have just decided that it is fun to lie to pollsters) that attempt to understand why they got the polling wrong, but what the more interesting question is why—in an election year in which the single most unpopular President in generations was on the ballot—did 1) he nearly win under the rules governing Presidential elections and 2) did the Democrats do poorly elsewhere. To put it another way, maybe it isn’t the polling, but the policies?
The electorate was worn out from the four year White House circus act, there was an understanding that not only had the federal government under-performed in its pandemic role, but that it had done so under the direct influence of a President who viewed the virus as an election opponent rather than a public health crisis. Enough people wanted this President gone that he is now gone. But the electorate also spent that four years in a generally good economy (maybe more people have 401K’s and IRA’s than the media considers?), and the “forever wars” crowd had a President who sang along with their adolescent screeching about living up the responsibilities of world leadership. Add to this the fact that American cities were being burned and looted, one party was calling for “de-funding” the Police, and the electorate turned to the Democrat whose stated policy preferences were THE LEAST DIFFERENT from those generally understood to be in place. In other words, while November may have been a “change” election, it was about changing the guy at the top and NOT the general program below him.
How do we know this? Well, as we said earlier, the GOP gained seats in the House when many observers believed they’d lose seats. Secondly, the GOP did not do as badly in the Senate as some predicted, and as a matter of fact there is a 50/50 tie in that body, one in which moderates of both parties are now feeling their oats and exercising outsized influence in attenuating the the excesses of the loud and energized left. Yes, the President got a COVID/Stimulus through, and it was very popular. His infrastructure bill is far less popular, and he will have a tough time getting major portions of it through, the Democratic preference for Orwellian labeling (everything is infrastructure!) notwithstanding.
The echo chamber that is the modern American metropolitan/media mashup creates a situation in which everyone participating in it believes that everyone else sees the world as they do, and so the cognitive dissonance between how actual voters vote and how the popular media believes they ought to vote widens. It is not unlikely that the GOP will win majorities in both chambers of Congress in 2022, an event that will cause liberal heads to explode.
John Boehner’s Book
I recently ordered former Speaker of the House John Boehner’s new book “On the House: A Washington Memoir”. He’s been on the telly recently doing a number of interviews, and from what I’ve watched, I’m going to enjoy this book immensely. I always liked Boehner—he seemed to me to understand how to get things done and that policy is the art of compromise, but he was part of a system in which compromise was “othered” by the increasingly wing-nutty elements of both parties (but especially his own). I’ve always wondered why Paul Ryan—after having watched the shitshow that Boehner presided over—took the Speaker job. He knew what he was inheriting. Maybe it was duty. Maybe it was ambition. But it was dumb—he should have stayed as Chairman of the Budget committee and put his head down on moving policy forward.
Just Because…
This move by the CDC seems….over the top and unwise.
You may be cool, but you aren’t feet up on the port bridge-wing in the South China Sea shadowing a Chinese aircraft carrier cool….