Friends, thanks mainly to the ineptitude of Democrats, Republicans are riding high in CNBC's latest poll, with a record ten point lead on the "generic ballot" question for 2022. And this is what the Left's own data is telling us! Man, oh man!
Among the biggest takeaways from the CNBC poll is the fact that the pandemic is no longer Americans' top concern. Now, it's inflation that's worrying us more. To date, the Dems have been downright dismissive over concerns about inflation. Likewise, they deny that there is a "crime wave" or a problem at the southern border. As the voters' skepticism rises, even self-satisfied Bolshies will have to ask themselves whether living in denial is the best approach to electioneering...
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/10/consumer-price-index-november-2021.html
Another poll is revealing that Americans' trust in our major institutions, including the military, the presidency, and the Supreme Court, continues its precipitous decline. As Republicans, we might be inclined to see this as "good news", because an angry and dissatisfied public is likely to support a change in leadership. That's true, as far as it goes, but when the American people lack confidence in ALL of their institutions, it becomes much easier to convince them that system itself, or the Constitution, is the problem. I worry that the Dems, once they realize how much the electorate has turned against them, will make a move against democracy itself. At the very least, they could declare Donald Trump, or even mainstream Republicans, "out of bounds", and forbid us from running in 2022, 2024, or beyond. They're pretty close already to condemning us as outlaws and traitors. Why not go all the way?
Speaking of the delegitimation of Republicans, conservatives, and "dissent" in general, some establishment Republicans are actively aiding in the process. Mitch McConnell and the Dole family seem to regard casting doubt on the results of the 2020 election, and participating in illegal acts of "insurrection", as the same thing. That sort of fuzzy thinking is totally un-American, in my view, because it can (and is intended to) prevent Americans from exercising their right to free speech.
In other news, there IS a crime wave, much as some leftists continue to deny it. Some other progressives, however, are starting to wake up, as their own environs become less safe, and as their friends and family members become targets. Most leftists are too ideologically committed to the lionization of violent criminals to change course, but moderate and independent voters are a whole different story!
https://spectator.org/enablers-of-rising-crime-take-great-pride-in-their-work/
https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/when-the-crime-wave-hits-your-family
There's very bad news for those of us who live in the Empire State: an indoor mask mandate has been reinstituted for all businesses. I thought the days of donning a face diaper when I visit the grocery store were over. It will be fascinating to see if people comply, and if businesses pester them to do so.
https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-mask-mandates-reinstated-in-new-york?utm_campaign=64487
As we all know, Jussie Smollett's faked beating at the hands of Trumpian racists/homophobes was eagerly and uncritically embraced by almost everyone on the Left, including "President" Biden and "Vice-President" Harris. After all, when the news tells us what we want to hear, it HAS to be credible, right? These people ought to have egg on their face. Instead, they're utterly unashamed, and they're primed and ready to jump on the next race hoax bandwagon.
Finally, congrats to Kyle Rittenhouse, who is officially out of the social media doghouse. If I were him, though, I'd sign up ASAP for Trump's "Truth Social", where free speech and the right to defend oneself probably won't be equated with "white supremacy".
Nicholas, what you keep forgetting is that polls in December 2021 are virtually meaningless when it comes to votes in November 2022. We have 4.2% unemployment, the lowest number of people filing for unemployment benefits in years, strong GDP and wages, and a record stock market. Add in the employment growth to come from the infrastructure bill, and you have a gangbusters economy.
ReplyDeleteAs for inflation, gasoline prices are heading down. Natural gas prices are heading down even faster. Inflation will persist for a while longer, until the supply chain problems get worked out.
The point is, come November 2022, the economy could be looking very strong, and voters will feel much better about things. That would bode well for Democrats.
If only the Dems can get it together for the BBB bill. Then the economy will take off like a rocket, and the lives of millions of our citizens will improve.
Rod,
ReplyDeleteBBB? Isn't that the Bolshevik Booster Bullet bill. Just joking. I was thinking about how great things used to be under Comrade Stalin when the lives of millions of Soviet citizen improved under all those corrective labor programs that were mostly in The Gulag. You Lefty types never give up promoting your Marxism, do you? "Gangbusters economy"? Really? Were you thinking of all those smash and grab people out in the S.F.Bay area? Dream on Rod. Keep that propaganda going.
I'm with Ray, Rod. I think you may have exceeded your daily limit of Kool-Aid... Sure, a lot of economic fundamentals are okay, but DESPITE THAT people are in a funk. You cling to the hope that everything will look better a year from now. What makes you think everything won't look worse? I mean, stranger things have happened. You're right, though, that the current polls mean nothing re: the actual voting in November 2022. Well, the polls do mean this much: you have some catching up to do! An historic quantity of it, in fact. You seem totally convinced it will happen, nonetheless. Okay. When it doesn't happen (and it won't), I imagine you'll be totally convinced it will all turn around in 2024. And heck -- one of these days you might even be right!
ReplyDeleteNicholas, I am really surprised with you. You are a historian and yet have completely forgotten the history of the last two years. In January 2000, Trump looked like he was favored to win re-election and Biden was pretty much toast in the Diem primaries. We then had a pandemic, Biden upset the rest of the field, Trump mismanaged the crisis, so Biden beat Trump by 7 million votes. By the time Biden was inaugurated, Trump encouraged an insurrection against the government, leaving Biden with solid approval ratings.
ReplyDeleteSince that time, Biden's approval numbers have dropped, partly because the pandemic has dragged on (in no small measure due to Trumpsters refusing to help squash the virus by refusing vaccinations), and partly because of inflation caused by pent-up demand, a lack of production of supply, and logistics issues. Logistics issues are starting to resolve themselves, energy prices are dropping, and the emergency funding that kept those who lost their jobs afloat financially have ended or will end. Consequently, inflation will slowly, but steadily drop.
Could things get worse by November 2022? Yet, if there are outside events -- such as Russia invading Ukraine, China invading Taiwan, or another variant as deadly as Delta emerging. If those don't happen, and Biden's entire economic plan can be implemented, the "funk" people are in will turn around.
The thing with public opinion is, Nicholas, it can drop fast and it can rise fast -- much faster than ever before in the internet era.
One thing for sure, that pandemic came along at just the right time, didn't it? Such timing for The Left I have never seen.
ReplyDeleteThe pandemic came around at a great time for Trump had he taken it seriously and not screwed things up. If he had been honest with the American people, and provided them with safe information (like wearing a mask versus taking bleach), Trump would have won, and brought the Senate with him. He might have even gotten the House.
ReplyDeleteFortunately, we were spared that disaster, but it was Trump election to lose ... and he did.
Rod
DeleteI feel much better now after your explanation. You are a true Amigo if ever there was one. I'm glad the BidenISTAS are providing the proletarian masses with safe information. As for me, I'm wearing three masks as we speak, including when I sleep. Also, I wear a mask when I eat. I lift my mask slightly, take a bite, and then back on. I feel so safe now that I'm looking forward to the next pandemic, with many variants to follow. I'm so happy, I could just shit!
Dr.Waddy from Jack: The "Rather Doctrine" , which mandates that "if its not true but should be true, why then it IS true" dominates the MSM. Objectivity is to them a naive principle.
ReplyDeletetest from Jack
ReplyDeleteDr.Waddy from Jack: Re: Smollet's game: The MSM has embraced the "Dan Rather Rule", "if it isn't true but should be true, then it IS true". The profession of journalism would have a rare old time cleaning its house of these prevaricators, if it even has the will to do right.But failing it it can look forward to inclusion in that shameful but hilarious place reserved for professional wrestling, the Clintons and midsummer county fair hucksters!
ReplyDeleteDr.Waddy from Jack: Why hooray for those platforms which have deigned to readmit Kyle to their exalted fellowship. Somehow I sense though, that it is not altruism, "equity" or an admittance of their presumptuosness in shunning him. No, something has compelled them. They would as lief have shown him good will, since he earned their summary and therefore irrefutable antipathy. Something has them concerned but certainly not that good kid's well being! I'd love to see him scorn them!
ReplyDeleteRod, I'm not sure Trump was ever "favored" to win anything, certainly not if the media had anything to say about it. And the suggestion that, if only Trump had managed the pandemic the "right" way, the media would have fallen in line and praised him to the hilt is just laughable. The pandemic was ALWAYS going to be weaponized to destroy Trump, just like everything else that came down the pike. Trump was always going to struggle to win reelection. Now, you're right that Biden rose from the ashes, and remarkably quickly too. You're right: public opinion can change. You're wrong that there's any reason to suppose that most of our current crises will resolve themselves by November 2022. Consumer confidence and the public mood are circling the bowl, Rod. If ever there was a time for a recession, it's now. We'll see, but I don't like your chances of a miracle comeback in 2022.
ReplyDeleteAnd Ray is right to poke fun: so, if only we had been given "correct" coronavirus info by Trump, there would have been no pandemic, right? So that's why not a single person has died of COVID in all those great socialist European countries, right? Please!
Jack, I think you may be right that professional wrestling has greater credibility than mainstream journalism. In fact, if you polled the American people on the question, I suspect the numbers would be darn close!
True, Jack: Big Tech could have banned Rittenhouse "for life", a la Trump, simply because even his most banal comments could be INTERPRETED as calls to violence.
Are the social media titans feeling a bit vulnerable to Republican retribution after November 2022??? Could be. I'm okay with that. Whatever forces them to allow a modicum of free speech on their platforms is fine by me.
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ReplyDeleteNicholas, please tell me what you think of the administration of President Thomas Dewey (1949-1953). In December 1947, everyone knew he would coast to victory. According to Gallup, Truman had a 36% job approval in April 1948. From the time Gallup started publishing job approval polls, no president has ever been re-elected with job approval numbers under 50% eight months out from an election ...
ReplyDeleteOK, one - Truman. Public opinion is public opinion. Votes are votes.
Consumer confidence and the public mood are sour NOW. Things could be very different in November.
For example, the omicron variant looks like it is milder than delta. That could very well mean that COVID is following the path of most viruses and weakening. We could be at the end of this nightmare, which will brighten the public mood.
Gas prices are slowly falling and natural gas prices have dropped a lot. Logistics are getting sorted out, so the economy will be much stronger in November.
The GOP will need to be careful what they wish for. Restrictions on abortion will turn suburban women back to the Dems.
Some of what fired up the GOP in November (the blatant lies over Critical Race Theory being taught to students, as well as the DOJ "targeting" parents) has already begun to fade into the background. There will have to be some new lie generated to fire up Trumpsters.
I never said or implied that if Trump had given the "correct" COVID information that there would have been no pandemic. But, if he had taken the lead on social distancing and mask wearing, and not pushed quack solutions, far fewer people would have died. Now we know that he had COVID before debating Biden and was a one-person superspreader at the ceremony for Amy Coney Barrett.
As for the media relationship with Trump, any wounds he had were self-inflicted. When you lie 30,000 times and call the media "the enemy of the people," the relationship will be rather "icy."
Finally, the social media titans are not feeling vulnerable to Republican retribution. IF the GOP takes over both houses in November (a very big if), then any anti-social media legislation will need to be signed by Biden, which he won't do. The GOP will lack the votes to override. So, I don't think Meta or Google are worried.
Dr.Waddy from Jack: I stand informed, appreciative and concerned after reading your comments and the posted article on creditable polling showing sharp declines in public confidence in vital institutions like Congress, the Presidency, the Courts and the military. I find some consolation in the possibility that the public knows and is put off by, increasing "wokeism" in the military and that the cherished by the left "spit on the soldiers" campaign is not being revived. A common sense Commander in Chief could do much to eliminate the former. As for the civilian branches: the real America is accustomed to experiencing the presumptuous contempt of law making courts and criminal excusing judges forcing counterintuitive decisions on them. Since President Trump's assault on leftist bias in the Federal judiciary there is much hope for a revival of common sense at the higher law and even policy making level but criminal loving DAs and local judges will have have be hounded out of office by volcanic public outrage at the insane deference they show to thugs and victimizers. "Enough is too much"!
ReplyDeleteDr.Waddy from Jack: Congress? Well,much of the public remembers when the very suggestion of such as "the Squad" in our Congress would have been implausible. But it is a yet appalling reality. They were democratically seated ( I suppose?) but are thoroughly exemplary of an antidemocracy conviction which would, if empowered, destroy America. Their far left faces fundamental challenges in the next three years (on abortion, gun control and in the 2022 and 2024 elections) and if things go "south" for them they may surrender to their emotion commanded impulses and presumptions. In doing so they may make a quixotic grab for totalitarian power, I agree. I think the real America would spurn them but that benighted NY, CA, Oregon , DC, MA, might attempt to esconse them in a rump People's Republic. The real America might then choose to say: "good riddance and we will welcome the refugees from your now surely totalitarian rump!"
ReplyDeleteDr.Waddy from Jack: To that element in the public which might accept it I offer my view as one with 20 years close contact with incarcerated criminals: views of criminals and criminality change over time. But reality does not change. It is this: society must, if only for the protection of those which any healthy civilization shields from predation: children,senior citizens and anyone incapable of personal defense, take an aggressives stance and a positive course of resolute, unrelenting, action.Sans this, criminals WILL exercise their depraved and presumptuous choices , whatever they be! Any measure which excuses them simply enables them. Any society which rejects this as a working principle ensures its experience of limitless criminal predation. Hollowly compassionate outreach to criminals is cynically and disingenuously embraced by them and ensures their continued victimization of all subject to them (many, many of them unfortunate too!)
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: I'll presume to repeat some of my previous comments on criminals. Some of them can be reformed but only after they have been convinced that they CANNOT persist in their negative lifestyles, because society, having identified them,WILL Not TOLERATE on their part any regression. This has to be done in very tightly controlled setting where any attempt to reprise street games is immediately and directly confronted. Also vital, once CREDIBLE progress is noted by trained, experienced counselors, is recognition of positive behavior with the object of proving to offenders that positive living IS worth pursuing. A long period of probation must then be expected of them. But then there are the true stone cold thugs:
ReplyDeleteDr.Waddy from Jack: In dealing with them, any society which allows misplaced compassion to expose the innocent to their vicious outrages, as we do, is pusillanimous in this.Regardless of the origin of their sociopathic miens, society MUST protect the vulnerable from these yegs. Potentially all who live positive lives are their objects. Do not credit their disingenuous pleadings even if they are embraced as regular commentators on such as MSMBC and CNN. Lock them up permanently. Any true civilization in that regard, does NO LESS. Measured compassion should be extended to some law breakers who DEMONSTRATE willingness to live positive lives but NOT to indifferent thugs! For any society which tolerates unchallenged criminal behavior, the consequences, proven today, are guarante ed and are shameful!
ReplyDeleteRod, I've always said that Thomas Dewey was one of the greatest presidents we ever had, and I stand by that assertion. I especially liked it when he personally strangled Stalin to death... I thought that was very pro-active of him.
ReplyDeleteI take your point that it ain't over 'til the fat lady sings. That much is true. There are rather a lot of messes into which you Dems have stepped (knee-deep) in the last few months, but you're right that a few of them might clear up.
I find it adorable that, in your desperate search for good news to cling to, you're putting a positive spin on the omicron variant! Man, oh man! I bet you would have done the same thing if Trump were still president, of course. You're nothing if not fair-minded. Anyway, I happen to agree that omicron could end up being a blessing in disguise. There's no question that the end of the pandemic would be a big boon to your side.
Bon chance!
Jack, I wish I could agree that public confidence in our institutions will be revived as soon as we have better leadership at the top, but I'm afraid that the media is the cancer eating away at the flesh of our national self-image, so until the media experiences a wholesale change the country's mood will remain bleak, and trending bleaker.
Jack, I agree 100% with your comments on criminals and criminality, except the part about "lock them up permanently". I've never seen the point of life sentences. If a person is that degraded and hopeless, what's the point of keeping them trapped in a cage for 50 years? Capital punishment would be both more just AND more humane, in my view.