Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Pointless Polls on Ukraine

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Associated Press, Biden, Gallup, National Opinion Research Center, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, polls, public opinion, Putin, Russia, Ukraine, YouGovAmerica

Here are two of the weirdest polling releases I’ve seen in a long time.  And both concern the Russian invasion of Ukraine – not exactly a trivial issue.

The first is a Gallup survey from yesterday with findings on American views on the Ukraine conflict that (unwittingly, it seems) leaves the subject more mysterious than ever.

Gallup reports that, just before Russia invaded Ukraine, “52% of Americans [saw] the conflict between Russia and Ukraine as a critical threat to U.S. vital interests. That’s a change from 2015, after Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula, when less than half of U.S. adults, 44%, thought it posed that serious a threat.”

Keep in mind that “vital” literally means needed to ensure the physical survival, or at least the independence of the country. And even if respondents didn’t have that particular definition in mind, surely they equated the term with first-order importance. In either case, you’d think logically that at least a sizable portion of those viewing the Ukraine conflict as a “vital threat” would support a U.S. military response.

But in this survey, Gallup never even posed the question. And its additional queries created even more confusion. Chiefly, a big plurality (47 percent) favored keeping the U.S. commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) “where it is now” – even though the challenges facing the alliance obviously have grown dramatically.

Another 18 percent did favor an increase to the commitment. But the same share of respondents wanted it decreased. And 13 percent supported “withdrawing entirely.” “Go figure” seems to be what Gallup is suggesting.

The second bizarro poll was conducted by the Associated Press and the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. Between February 18 and February 21 (the day Russian leader Vladimir Putin ordered troops to enter eastern Ukraine), these pollsters asked American adults whether they thought the United States should play a “major,” “minor,” or “no role” in the situation between Russia and Ukraine.” What on earth does that mean?

For the record, 26 percent backed a major role, 52 percent a minor role, and twenty percent no role. That sure sounds like strong opposition to a step as dramatic and fraught with peril as joining a conflict with a nuclear-armed superpower. But these results say absolutely nothing about what kind of role should or shouldn’t be played, which matters a lot because the range is so wide among sending troops, expressing rhetorical support, and all the options in between. And why ignore the troops question in the first place?

Not that all pollsters have sidestepped the issue. The YouGovAmerica firm conducted a survey for The Economist of U.S. adult citizens earlier this month – between February 5 and 8. It found that by a 55 percent to 13 percent, respondents considered it a “bad idea” versus a “good idea” to “send soldiers to Ukraine to fight Russian soldiers.” Fully a third weren’t sure.

But even this survey wasn’t devoid of weirdness. Chiefly, YouGov asked about the option of “Sending soldiers to Ukraine to provide help, but not to fight Russian soldiers.” Granted, the actual Ukraine war was still a hypothetical at that point. But what gave the pollsters the idea that this option was remotely realistic? Or prudent, given the tendency of large-scale fighting to become larger scale fighting, and embroil nearby regions and populations. (The public was split almost exactly into thirds among the “good idea,” “bad idea” and “not sure” alternatives.)

Politicians are fond of bragging that they don’t make policy based on polls. At least when it comes to the war and peace decisions presented by the Ukraine conflict, these surveys make clear that’s something to be grateful for.

Im-Politic: Bad Polling News for Both Biden and Trump

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Associated Press, Biden, conservatives, Donald Trump, election 2022, election 2024, GOP, Im-Politic, independents, Laura Ingraham, Morning Consult, National Opinion Research Center, NBC News, Politico, polls, Republicans

A major shift in American politics may be in the works according to some recent polling results about President Biden and Donald Trump. Specifically, they could mean that the American public has had it with both of them.

Let’s start with the President’s results…since he’s the President. Astonishingly, no fewer than three surveys during the last week show not only that his popularity and job approval are way down, but that huge and in one case slightly growing percentages of the public doubt his overall mental fitness to handle his job.

Two days ago, Politico and Morning Consult consult released survey findings reporting that only 22 percent of all registered voters “strongly agree” that Mr. Biden “is mentally fit,” 18 percent “somewhat agree,” 12 percent “somewhat disagree,” and 37 percent “strongly disagree.” So a plurality (49 percent) are in the “disagree” camp (versus 40 percent agreeing that the President is mentally fit), and the most popular answer, by 19 percentage points, was “strongly disagree.”

Of course there was a partisan split. But when it comes to political independents, those who overall disagreed that President Biden is mentally fit outnumbered those that agreed by 48 percent to 37 percent, with 33 percent choosing “strongly disagree.”

More worrisome for the President: Politico and Morning Consult asked the same question in November, and since then, those disagreeing that he’s mentally fit has inched up from 48 percent to 49 percent, and those agreeing that he’s mentally up to snuff has fallen from 46 percent to 40 percent. About the same deterioration appeared among independent voters.

Similarly, a poll this week from NBC News asked American adults (a group somewhat different than registered voters) how they would rate various Biden traits on a scale of 1 to 5 with 1 being “Very Poor” and 5 being “Very Good.” No party affiliation-based findings were provided. But on “Having the necessary mentally physical health to be president,” here are the Biden scores:

5: 18 percent

4: 15 percent

3: 16 percent

2: 9 percent

1: 41 percent

In other words, 4 and 5 (those believing Mr. Biden is mentally and physically healthy enough) add up to 33 percent. One and 2 (those who don’t) add up to 50 percent. And “Very Poor” leads the pack by a mile.

The Associated Press (AP) and National Opinion Research Center (NORC) reported better views of the President’s capacities – but not much. Here the question (again, for adults) was “How confident are you that Joe Biden has the mental capacity to serve effectively as president?” There was no political affiliation breakdown here, either, but here are the results:

“Extremely confident”:   11 percent

“Very confident”:            17 percent

“Somewhat confident”:   25 percent

“Not very confident”:      18 percent

“Not at all confident”:     29 percent

AP-NORC concluded that those lacking confidence in Mr. Biden’s mental fitness outnumbered those with confidence by 47 percent to 28 percent – figures not far off those published by NBC News. And once more, the biggest individual category contained those with the least confidence.

The news isn’t any better for the former President, though. Since early this year, I’ve been trying to keep track of whether Republican and Republican-leaning voters are more loyal to their party, or to Trump. And the new sounding from NBC News makes clear that Trump has been losing ground on this score.

As the survey reports, since January, 2019, although the results fluctuated some, the “supporter of Trump” position consistently registered a plurality and often a majority. (Those answering “both” never made it out of the single digits as percents of the whole sample.) Even last January (not a great month for Trump politically or in any sense), the “supporters of Donald Trump” and “supporters of the Republican Party” were tied at 46 percent.

But as of today? The percentage of “Republican supporters” topped that of “Trump supporters” by a whopping 56 percent to 36 percent. That’s the biggest such margin ever in this data series.

One other (non-poll) possible straw in the wind worth noting in this respect. In a magazine interview this month, Fox News talker Laura Ingraham said that “I’m not saying I’m there for him yet,” when asked if she would endorse a 2024 Trump presidential bid.

As is well known, Ingraham remains a fervent backer of Trump’s presidential record and policies, as well as an admirer of the former president personally. Less well known – Ingraham was dissenting in a Trump-ian/populist way from the old Republican Party orthodoxy for several years before Trump declared his first White House candidacy, especially on China-related issues. Given her wide following, that’s a clear signal that what’s been called Trump-ism without Trump is a distinct possibility for the Republican future.

But on the subject of the future, the worst news for both the President and his predecessor came from the AP-NORC survey. By a gaping 70 percent to 28 percent margin, respondents didn’t want Mr. Biden to seek reelection. That was almost identical to the 72 percent wanting Trump to stay on the sidelines and only 27 percent supporting a third White House bid.

We’re still very early in political cycle for this year’s Congressional elections, much less the 2024 presidential race. But so far, the polls are saying pretty clearly that Americans want new faces to choose from when they next choose a Chief Executive – and pretty ardently.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Why So Few are Impressed with the “Biden Boom”

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Associated Press, Biden, Bill Clinton, conjunctions, grammar, incomes, inflation, living standards, Mainstream Media, polls, prices, stimulus, wages, {What's Left of) Our Economy

What a difference a coordinating conjunction can make!

You remember coordinating conjunctions, don’t you? They’re the little words that “join two verbs, two nouns, two adjectives, two phrases, or two independent clauses.” In English, for those of you who cut or snoozed in your “parts of speech” classes, they’re “for,” “and,” “nor,” “but,” “or”, “yet”, and “so”.  (Here‘s the source.)

I bring them up because an Associated Press (AP) article today just illustrated how important they can be, and in the process, added to the burgeoning mass of spoken and published material lately making clear how completely many of the usual suspects in America’s chattering classes have forgotten the fundamental purpose of the national economy and economic policymaking.

It isn’t to generate more growth, more jobs, more spending, or any other specific great performance metrics. (See, e.g., here and here.) Instead, the fundamental purpose is to help improve people’s lives. Better numbers on the above fronts and others obviously can help achieve this goal. But they’re no guarantee.

That’s why the header on the piece used the wrong conjunction. It shouldn’t be “AP-NORC Poll: Income is up, but Americans focus on inflation” – which at least to me connoted, “Why are those Americans accentuating the negative?”

Much better would have been “AP-NORC Poll: Income is up, and Americans focus on inflation.” Because the results of the survey itself are sending the exact same message as the most important figures from an individual or family perspective: Prices this year have been rising faster than wages, which means that despite all the encouraging data nowadays, the typical American is falling behind economically, not getting ahead.

To cite just a few examples from the poll:

>”Two-thirds [of respondents] say their household costs have risen since the pandemic, compared with only about a quarter who say their incomes have increased….Half say their incomes have stayed the same. Roughly a quarter report that their incomes have dropped.”

>”Most people say the sharply higher prices for goods and services in recent months have had at least a minor effect on their financial lives, including about 4 in 10 who say the hit has been substantial. The poll confirms that the burden has been especially hard on low-income households.”

>”U.S. households, on average, are earning higher incomes than they did before the pandemic. Wages and salaries grew 4.2% in September compared with a year earlier, the largest annual increase in two decades of records.”  But as RealityChek readers know, the cost of living in September rose by 4.4 percent on year according to the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation, and by 5.4 percent according to the more widely followed Consumer Price Index.

>Similarly, government stimulus checks and other supports “combined with higher paychecks, lifted Americans’ overall household incomes by 5.9% in October compared with a year earlier. Yet inflation jumped to 6.2% that month, the highest reading in three decades, negating the income gain.” (And then some!)

When he first ran for the presidency in 1992, Bill Clinton touted the importance of “Putting People First” as the lodestar for economic policy. As the AP article indicates, that’s advice that urgently needs learning or re-learning by the numerous reporters and commentators puzzled by why Americans are less impressed with the current supposed economic boom than with their falling living standards.

Glad I Didn’t Say That! Vaccine Derangement Syndrome

Tags

Associated Press, CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, Delta variant, Glad I Didn't Say That!, Mainstream Media, MSM, vaccination, vaccines, Wuhan virus

“Tens of millions of Americans have refused to get vaccinated,

allowing the highly contagious delta variant to tear through the

country….” 

– Associated Press, October 2, 2021

 

“Virus surge hits New England despite high vaccination rates”

– Associated Press, October 3, 2021

 

(Sources: “COVID-19 deaths eclipse 700,000 in US as delta variant rages,” by Tammy Webber and Heather Hollingsworth, Associated Press, October 2, 2021, https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-dead-us-milestone-80209c66802902e42adfbe075ff5272b and “Virus surge hits New England despite high vaccination rates,” by Wilson Ring, Associated Press, October 3, 2021, https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-health-pandemics-vermont-d25aae90b2dda65b3d1c2c0d5d00156c)

Those Stubborn Facts: Immigration Excuse-Making for California

Tags

Associated Press, Barack Obama, California, Donald Trump, green card holders, green cards, immigrants, Immigration, legal immigration, Mainstream Media, MSM, Those Stubborn Facts

California’s “immigration decline has been particularly fast in the past half decade as President Donald Trump’s administration sharply reduced the number of people legally entering the United States.”

– Associated Press, April 24, 2021

 

Average annual grants of legal permanent U.S. resident status to

immigrants, Trump years: 1,085,181

 

Average annual grants of legal permanent U.S. resident status to

immigrants, second Obama term: 1,060,402

 

(Sources: “Awaiting census count, California ponders slow growth future,” by Kathleen Ronayne, Associated Press, April 24, 2021, Awaiting census count, California ponders slow growth future (apnews.com) & “Table 1. Persons Obtaining Lawful Permanent Resident Status: Fiscal Years 1820 to 2019,” Yearbook 2019, Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, Immigration Data and Statistics, Department of Homeland Security, Table 1. Persons Obtaining Lawful Permanent Resident Status: Fiscal Years 1820 to 2019 | Homeland Security (dhs.gov))

Im-Politic: Slandering the U.S. on Climate Change

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Associated Press, Biden, Bloomberg.com, China, climate change, Conference of the Parties, COP26, Donald Trump, European Union, greenhouse gases, Im-Politic, Leaders Summit on Climate, Paris climate accord

I’m sure I’ve mentioned before that it’s as typical for us news/policy bloggers as it is for journalists to start the day expecting to write on a certain topic only to change course abruptly upon encountering a development that SIMPLY CAN’T WAIT.

Especially with a big U.S.-organized global summit on climate change set for later this week, that’s the category into which I’d place this new Bloomberg.com post titled “Biden Wants the U.S. to Lead on Climate Action, But the World Needs Proof.” And if the header didn’t make the portrayal of the United States as a preachy climate change hypocrite clear enough, the subhead informs readers that “after policy reversals and years of inaction, the country has a wide credibility gap to overcome.”

Predictably, moreover, authors place all the blame on you-know-who:

“The Biden administration [will] have to overcome the major trust deficit run up by former President Donald Trump, who withdrew from the Paris agreement and dismantled domestic policies key to driving the the country’s promised emissions cuts. The past four years revealed how tenuous pledges of U.S government action can be.” {Note:  This Associated Press report made much the same point.] 

Whatever you think about the merits of the issue, there’s no question that climate change wasn’t exactly a Trump priority, that he weakened (but did not eliminate entirely) important Obama-era regulations aimed at slowing it, and ran a very fossil-fuel-friendly administration. Moreover, the former President displayed no interest whatever in meeting, much less beating, the Paris agreement goals set by Barack Obama’s presidency.

But is that the real measure of U.S. credibility on climate change? Only if you believe that words matter more than deeds. For the latest available (2018) data show that, by two key measures, America has actually done a better job  restraining greenhouse gas emissions than many of the main Paris accord signatories.

If the chart below looks familiar, it’s because I used it in a post near the beginning of last year. 

But it’s as important as ever. Because it shows that, on an absolute basis (the left half of the chart), U.S. emissions dipped slightly in 2009, and then stayed basically flat since (including in Trump years 2017 and 2018). That’s actually better than it sounds, however, because the US economy grew the entire time, meaning that more economic activity didn’t lead to more emissions. And growth picked up a fair amount during those Trump years.

As for other Paris signatory countries, China’s rapid growth has only slowed – but the Chinese economy has slowed, too, so that doesn’t necessarily signal any carbon efficiency gains.   

Emissions from 28 of the European Union (EU) countries, began falling in absolute terms in 1990, and have consistently been lower than America’s. (Earlier results aren’t presented.) But the EU’s economic growth also has been considerably lower than America’s throughout this period, so lower emissions no doubt are mainly due to that steady fall in overall economic activity. (You can compare the growth rates of any countries or groups of countries by playing around with this interactive feature on the World Bank’s website.)   

On a per capita basis (he right half of the chart), we see major U.S. progress since about 2000, and it’s continued with minor fluctuations through 2018 (an especially good US economic growth year).  In fact, the United States has performed better than the world as a whole since 1990.   

EU 28 progress on a per capita basis has been slower than the US’, but better than the world’s as a whole.  And China’s per capita emissions soared till about 2010, before starting to level off.

Does the chart show that the United States is doing enough to mitigate climate change? Nope. Does it mean that lots of skepticism isn’t justified about President Biden’s ability to turn his climate change agenda into U.S. policy? Of course not.

But it does make clear that it’s simply off the wall to claim that Mr. Biden will be chairing his own climate change conference, and participating in a United Nations conference this November, as head of a country with a climate credibility gap, or anything climate-y to feel sheepish about. Indeed, pushing that line can only undercut the President’s message, and do far more to retard climate progress, not spur it. 

Im-Politic: The Swalwell Spy Scandal News Blackout Extends Far Beyond the NY Times

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ABC News, Associated Press, Bloomberg.com, CBS News, China, Christine Fang, Eric Swalwell, espionage, Fang Fang, Fox News, Im-Politic, Mainstream Media, McClatchy News Service, media bias, Michael Bloomberg, MSM, MSNBC, NBC News, NPR, PBS, Reuters, spying, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USAToday

If you’re a news hound, you know that The New York Times, long – and long justifiably – seen as the most important newspaper in the world, has devoted exactly zero coverage to a bombshell report earlier this month that California Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell several years ago was pretty successfully targeted by a spy from China.

And if you don’t know about this Swalwell story, you should. He’s a member of the House Intelligence Committee, which means that he’s been privy to many of the nation’s most important national security secrets. In addition, he has long been a genuine super-spreader of the myth that President Trump is a Russian agent. So although there’s no evidence so far that Swalwell either wittingly or unwittingly passed any classified or otherwise sensitive information to this alleged spy, understandable questions have been raised about his judgement and therefore his suitability for a seat on this important House panel. Further, he hasn’t denied having an affair with this accused operative, who was known as Christine Fang here, and Fang Fang in her native country.

In other words, it’s a pretty darned big story, and The Times decision to ignore it completely (not even posting on its website wire service accounts of developments) is a flagrant mockery of its trademark slogan “All the News That’s Fit to Print” and clearcut example of media bias – especially since the paper showed no reluctance to report on his abortive presidential campaign this past year or his (always unfounded) attacks on Mr. Trump.

At the same time, if you don’t know about l’affaire Swalwell, you’ve got a pretty compelling excuse. Because The Times has by no means been alone in its lack of interest. Joining it in the zero Swalwell coverage category since the China spy story broke on December 8 have been (based on reviews of their own search engines):

>The Associated Press – possibly the world’s biggest news-gathering organization

>Reuters – another gigantic global news organization

>Bloomberg.com – whose founder and Chairman, Michael Bloomberg, is a leading fan of pre-Trump offshoring-friendly China trade policies

>USAToday

>NBC News

>CBS News

>MSNBC (The FoxNews.com report linked above says this network covered this news once briefly, but noting shows up on its search engine.) 

>National Public Radio (partly funded by the American taxpayer)

>McClatchy (another big news syndicate)

Performing slightly – but only slightly – better have been:

>PBS (one reference on its weekly McLaughlin Group talk show – nothing on its nightly NewsHour)

>ABC News (one news report)

>The Wall Street Journal (one news article, one opinion column)

The Swalwell story isn’t the world’s, or the nation’s, or even Washington’s biggest. But it’s unmistakably a story, and the apparent blackout policy of so many pillars of journalism today, coming on the heels of similar treatment of the various Hunter Biden scandal charges, further strengthens the case that a national institution that’s supposed to play the critical role of watchdog of democracy has gone into a partisan tank.

The only bright spots in this picture? Social media giants Twitter and Facebook haven’t been censoring or arrogantly and selectively fact-checking Swalwell-related material. Yet.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Out of the Mouths of Generals

Tags

alliances, America First, Associated Press, Blob, China, deterrence, globalism, Jim Mattis, Joe Biden, Mark Milley, North Korea, nuclear umbrella, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Poland, South Korea, Soviet Union, tripwires, Trump

Here’s one that genuinely justifies that over-used term, “You can’t make this up.”

Practically ever since President Trump assumed office, his globalist foreign policy critics have been attacking his claims that maintaining the status quo with U.S. security alliances couldn’t be a top priority of American foreign and national security policy. In this vein, they contemptuously derided as “transactional” his belief that rather than viewing these arrangements as vital ends in and of themselves, Washington needed continuously to make sure that they were creating at least as many benefits as problems for the nation.

Indeed, fetishizing alliances was so deeply embedded in the consciousness of the globalist bipartisan U.S. foreign policy Blob that Jim Mattis, the retired Marine Corps General who served as the first Trump Secretary of Defense, based his resignation largely on the argument that the President did not share his “core belief…that our strength as a nation is inextricably linked to the strength of our unique and comprehensive system of alliances and partnerships.”

So imagine my surprise upon reading an Associated Press story Thursday reporting that U.S. Army General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff (the nation’s top military office), has recommended that Washington – obviously meaning the probably incoming Biden administration – should reconsider “permanently positioning U.S. forces” overseas in instances where these servicemen and women are not actively engaged in combat.

Now it’s true that Milley, at least reportedly, was never especially tight with Mattis in particular. But in this age of political generals and admirals, he couldn’t have risen through the ranks this high had he dissented significantly from the globalist line. And Milley has spoken of the need for U.S. alliances in pretty urgent terms himself.

But there he was this past week, giving a speech on the future of warfare that not only called for more selectivity in creating and maintaining an American military footprint abroad, but basing this proposal largely on his unhappiness – and this is the real shocker – that the so-called forward deployment of these units has usually been accompanied by the families of soldiers, sailors, and airmen, and therefore places them in harm’s way.

His position is a shocker because, as I’ve explained before, stationing spouses and children so vulnerably has been a linchpin of globalist strategy toward alliances. They play a crucial role in turning the units they’re linked with into genuine tripwires – forces whose likelihood of defeat at the hands of much larger and stronger invaders like the Soviets or the North Koreans would give an American President little choice but to use nuclear weapons to avert disaster.

Of course, this approach didn’t stem from itchy nuclear trigger fingers in Washington. Quite the opposite: The working assumption was that the high probability of U.S. nuclear weapons use would deter conventional military aggression to begin with. And the probability that their attacks would wind up killing American non-combatants as well as troops was seen as an even stronger forcing event for nuclear weapons use – a situation that, in strategic parlance, would make this contingency more credible, thereby further inhibiting (or, again using strategy-ese, deterring) enemies from striking.

Skeptical? This is exactly why countries like Poland have been urging recent American Presidents to replace the policy of rotating various U.S. units in and out of their lands with big, permanent deployments. And weirdly and alarmingly, Mr. Trump has taken some steps in this direction.

I’ve concluded that, although the creation of such so-called nuclear umbrellas was defensible during the Cold War, when it was used to protect genuinely vital regions like Western Europe and Japan, and when its use in Asia was aimed at prospective foes that lacked nuclear retaliatory forces, it’s recklessly dangerous today. For the Soviet Union is an increasingly distant memory, many major U.S. allies are amply capable of their own defense, Asian adversaries have become able to strike the American homeland with their own nuclear weapons, and the security of South Korea in particular is no longer crucial for the United States’ own safety and well-being (as opposed to Taiwan, which, as I’ve recently argued, has moved into this category because of its world-class semiconductor manufacturing capability).

Not even the America First-y President Trump has gone remotely this far in actually changing U.S. alliance policy. Yet there was Milley, including in his remarks the statement that if war came with North Korea, “we would have a significant amount of non-combatant U.S. military dependents in harm’s way….I have a problem with that.”

The General didn’t make the needed follow-on case that the presence of these civilians has turned these alliances into “transmission belts of war” that could easily go nuclear and bring on the incineration of entire American cities. But an administration that followed his recommendations would greatly reduce this unnecessary potential danger.

So whether Milley recognizes the full implications of his stance or not, all Americans should hope that he keeps pushing this position as he continues as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs past Inauguration Day, and that even some of the globalist enthusiasts of the Biden administration start listening.

Those Stubborn Facts: A Strange Definition of a Broken Trump Promise

Tags

Associated Press, CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, health security, Mainstream Media, manufacturing, masks, medical supplies, PPE, supply chain, textiles, Those Stiubborn Facts, Trump, Wuhan virus

“Shortages of meltblown textiles, key to N95 mask-making, illustrate ‘the failure of this administration to take necessary steps to fulfill’ its promise of restoring critical manufacturing capacity lost to China.”

– Associated Press, September 10, 2020

“Pre-pandemic, five U.S. producers were making about 42 million N95 masks a month. By October, that is projected to have increased to 11 U.S. producers making 168 million a month, which could amount to 2 billion a year….”

–Associated Press, September 10, 2020

“Also pre-pandemic, 24 U.S. companies were making meltblown, with 79 machine lines in operation….But only a fraction of that was going into medical respirators….By the end of 2021… there will be 28 new lines in the U.S., representing a 35% increase, with almost all of the newly produced textile going into medical supplies.”

–Associated Press, September 10, 2020

(Source: “Scarcity of key material squeezes medical mask manufacturing, by Martha Mendoza, Juliet Linderman, Thomas Peipert, and Irena Hwang,” Associated Press, September 10, 2020, https://apnews.com/02a0542e8a05176bd5d79757134bc277)

Im-Politic: The Public and the Protests

Tags

African Americans, Associated Press, Democrats, election 2020, George Floyd, Im-Politic, National Opinion Research Center, NORC, police brutality, politics, polling, polls, pollsters, protests, racism, Republicans, Trump, University of Chicago

Here at RealityChek I try to focus on polls only that come up with unusually interesting results,, but even by that lofty standard, this new survey from the Associated Press-NORC [National Opinion Research Center] for Public Affairs Research (the latter affiliated with the University of Chicago) is unusually interesting. And for more than one reason.

First and maybe foremost, is the methodological note that came at the end: “[B]lack adults were sampled at a higher rate than their proportion of the population for reasons of analysis.” You don’t have to know much about polling to ask legitimately “What the heck is that about?”

After all, if you’re looking to find out what Americans (or any group) think about this or that subject, you need to ask a sample of that population that’s representative. In this case, sampling African Americans at a higher-than-justified rate is bound to produce results that permit African-American answers to distort the findings in the direction of African-American opinion. And given African Americans’ overwhelming preference for Democrats and (as far as we know) overwhelming opposition to President Trump, this practice is also bound to produce results that skew markedly pro-Democrat and anti-Trump.

Second, even with this “pro-African-American” bias, the survey shows that although a majority of Americans “approve…of the recent protests against police violence in response to [George] Floyd’s death,” the majority isn’t that big. Overall approval is only 54 percent (and again, this finding is thrown off by the aforementioned methology) and “strong approval” was expressed by only 21 percent.

Black Americans’ backing was much stronger: 81 percent overall, with 71 percent strongly approving.

Third, Americans as a whole aren’t buying the notion that the recent protests have been all or mostly peaceful. Indeed, only 27 percent agree with those characterizations combined. Moreover, a slim majority (51 percent) favored the description “both peaceful and violent” and fully 22 percent regarded tham as all or mostly violent.”

And again, the numbers tilting toward emphasizing the violence seen during the protests have probably been depressed by the pro-African-American and therefore pro-Democratic skew of the sample. Nearly half (49 percent) of Democrats called the protests all or mostly peaceful. At the same time, 42 percent of them viewed the protests as “both peaceful and violent.”

Fourth, no racially broken down results were provided for the violence question, but they were presented for the results judging “law enforcement’s response.” In this case, the U.S. public as a whole chose “appropriate response” over “excessive force” by 55 percent to 44 percent. But 70 percent of black Americans believed the police et al used too much force – which surely propped up the 44 percent figure reported for Americans as a whole.

Finally, don’t conclude from the above results that this survey offers much good news for President Trump and his supporters and the relatively hardline approach they’ve favored for handling the protests. As the Associated Press and NORC put it: “Over half of all Americans say his response made things worse and just 12% say it made things better. While there are racial differences, about half of both white Americans (51%) and black Americans (72%) feel that the president’s response made things worse. ”

And in this case, the bizarre sample used by the Associated Press and NORC can’t come close to explaining these underwater Trump ratings. The most positive pro-Trump spin that makes any sense is that although there’s major overall public support for the President’s positions and the actions that logically follow, he’s getting almost no credit for advocating them.