Im-Politic: Abortion Really Did Prevent a Red Wave, Part II

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abortion, Arizona, Associated Press, democracy, Democrats, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, economy, Edison Research, exit polls, Fox News, Im-Politic, inflation, midterm elections, midterms 2022, National Opinion Research Center, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Republicans, Roe vs. Wade, Supreme Court

 As observed on Friday, U.S. midterm elections are really collections of state and local elections. So it’s crucially important to recognize that the exit polls on these races – including in the closely contested swing state races whose outcomes have been vital for determining control of Congress – show just as convincingly as the national poll results that mishandling the abortion issue was a huge mistake for Republicans.

In fact, as I first saw it weeks ago, even though large numbers of variables always influence all such votes, strong GOP support for the Supreme Court’s take-back of national abortion rights and for enacting sweeping bans in its wake, turned out to be a huge enough mistake to explain most of the Republican under-performance in swing states that as of this writing could cost them both the House and Senate.

As with the national level, the evidence for these propositions at the state level (the focus of this post) comes from two leading exit polls. We’ll start with the data from the survey conducted for the Associated Press (AP) and Fox News by the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Corporation, mainly because it looked at more individual states than the sounding by Edison Research for other major news networks, and because it contains state-level figures on that odd quirk pointed out in yesterday’s post: the tendency of many more respondents to brand abortion as the single most important factor behind than designated it as the most important issue facing the country.

That distinction – which I still find head-scratching – seems to account for much of the failure of so many pollsters to pick up on the significance of abortion in the weeks and months before Election Day. Opinion researchers evidently assumed that the wide lead over racked up by the economy over abortion when voters were asked about their top concerns would translate into an election completely dominated by economic issues, and therefore big Republican gains. But it didn’t, and the greater-than-expected influence of abortion on the actual voting looks sufficient to have swung the swing states in the Democrats’ favor.

Let’s kick off with Nevada, since incumbent Catherine Cortez Masto’s (typically narrow) win over Republican Paul Laxalt has just assured Democrats continued control of the Senate. When AP/Fox asked voters views on “the most important issue facing the country,” they responded almost identically like the country as a whole, giving “the economy and jobs” a majority (52 percent) and answering abortion just nine percent of the time.

Yet when it came to identifying “the single imost important factor” behind their vote, inflation’s margin over abortion was a much smaller 54 percent to 25 percent.

Moreover, it’s clear that voters motivated mainly by abortion were opposed to the overturning of the 1973 Roe vs Wade decision. In the AP/Fox survey, Nevadans took a “pro-choice” over a “pro-life” stance by a landslide-like 69 percent to 31 percent. And of that 69 percent, nearly half were “angry” about the Roe-overturning Dobbs ruling.

Voters in neighboring Arizona, where another loss helped kill GOP chances of capturing the Senate, gave the AP/Fox pollsters similar answers. They named the economy the country’s most important issue by 45 percent to 15 percent. But they said that their own vote was determined chiefly by inflation over abortion by a slimmer 50 percent to 24 percent count.

In addition, 62 percent of Arizona voters favored legalizing abortion in all or most cases with only 38 percent supporting a ban in all or most instances. And 35 percent of them described their views about the high court’s Dobbs ruling rescinding abortion rights as angry.

But this pattern isn’t simply a Mountain State phenomenon. In Pennsylvania, Republicans thought they had a great chance to hold a Senate seat because of Democratic candidate John Fetterman’s health problems and supposedly far-left views.

There again, a majority (51 percent) of voters said the economy was the country’s most important issue, and only 12 percent named abortion. But inflation beat abortion as a the key vote motivator by just 50 percent to 24 percent.

And in the Keystone State, too, voters supporting legalizing abortion in all or most cases by 65 percent to 35 percent, with those professing to be angry about Roe’s demise totaling 35 percent.

In New Hampshire, Republicans thought they could flip the Senate seat held by incumbent Maggie Hassan. On the “most important issue facing the country” question, they chose the economy over abortion by 50 percent to 13 percent. Yet on the “single most important factor” shaping their vote, that lead shrank to 48 percent for inflation compared with 23 percent for abortion.

In New Hampshire, “pro-choice” views topped “pro-life” views by a yawning 73 percent to 27 percent, and nearly half of all voters (47 percent) declared themselves angry about the Dobbs decision.

The Edison survey, again, didn’t ask the “most important issue facing the country” question in its exit poll. But it, too, found much more prominence given to abortion, and more heated opposition to the strike-down of broad abortion rights, than was apparent from the pre-election surveys.

In Nevada, Edison found that 36 percent of voters named inflation the “most important issue to your vote” – not overwhelmingly ahead of the 28 percent naming abortion. Nevadans backed broad access to abortion by 66 percent to 29 percent, and fully 35 percent were angered by the Dobbs ruling.

According to Edison, Arizonans prioritized inflation over abortion by a slim 36 percent to 32 percent. Broad abortion legality out-polled broad illegality by 63 percent to 35 percent, and those angered by the Supreme Court’s latest abortion decision totaled an impressive 40 percent.

In Pennsylvania, Edison researchers found that abortion actually beat out inflation as voters’ biggest motivator by 37 percent to 28 percent. Pennsylvanians took “pro-choice” positions over “pro-life” positions by a wide 62 percent to 34 percent, and 39 percent expressed anger over the Dobbs ruling.

Finally, in New Hampshire, Edison reported that inflation edged abortion by just 36 percent to 35 percent as the biggest factor behind voter decisions. “Pro-choice” backers exceeded their “pro-life” counterparts by 68 percent to 29 percent, and those angry due to the overturning of Roe vs Wade numbered a considerable 42 percent.

Incidentally, another major surprise in both sets of exit polls was the importance respondents attached to “the future of democracy in this country,” as AP/Fox called it. In nearly all the states examined above, this issue registered in the low- or mid-40 percent range as “the single most important factor” behind individuals’ votes.

But it’s difficult to understand whether Democrats or Republicans benefited on net, because members of both parties have expressed significant but significantly different sets of anxieties about the subject.

The numerous factors influencing midterm election results include national issues, state and local issues, candidate personalities, voter turnout, and changing demographics. Moreover, the lines separating these issues are rarely blindingly bright, or even close.

But the surprisingly great salience showed by abortion issues in the post-election exit polls, in contrast to the findings of pre-election polls, tells me that my hunch about the political impact of the Dobbs decision was well-founded. As was the case with no other issue, its announcement (on June 24) gave the Democrats a mobilizing cause when they had absolutely nothng going for them before. That’s why this gift looks like the single development most responsible for turning the Red Wave into a Red Trickle – at most.

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Im-Politic: Abortion Really Did Prevent a Red Wave, Part I

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2022 election, abortion, Associated Press, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, economy, Edison Research, exit polls, Fox News, Im-Politic, inflation, midterms 2022, National Opinion Research Center, NPR-Marist Poll, politics, polls, Red Wave, Republicans, Roe vs. Wade, Supreme Court

At the risk of blowing my own horn, I think it’s of more-than-usual interest to report the evidence that I’ve been proven right on my prediction that the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down abortion rights, and Republican support for such efforts, would be nothing but trouble for the GOP in this year’s mid-term elections.

Indeed, the exit polls – which, to be fair, are preliminary at this point – show that public anger at the Dobbs decision, and fears of it spurring a wave of draconian state-level and even federal abortion bans, influenced voting decisions nationally and in key swing states nearly as much as resentment over the state of the economy. And this development supported, in spades, my belief that whereas before Dobbs, Democrats had little or nothing going for them as the election approached, the Supreme Court gave them something. If anything, though, I underestimated how big this “something” would be, for it appears important enough to explain by itself why the “Red Wave” widely expected didn’t materialize.

Let’s start with with a survey conducted for some major broadcast and cable news networks by Edison Research. Practically up to Election Day, polls were showing that inflation was voters’ most pressing concern, with abortion trailing far behind. For example, this NPR/PBS/Marist College sounding from late October found the margin to be 36 percent to 14 percent among adults and registered voters, and 36 percent to 11 percent among those saying they’d “definitely vote” in the contest.

In addition, respondents believed that Republicans could control inflation better than Democrats by nearly two-to-one. No wonder so many in the GOP was so optimistic. 

But Edison’s exit poll found a much smaller margin for inflation’s paramount importance –  just 31 percent to 27 percent for abortion.

Findings like this, however, can be of only limited value, because Americans can be concerned about various issues for different reasons. So it was smart of Edison to publish a party breakdown. And with abortion ranking as “the most important issue for your vote” by 76 percent of Democrats but only 23 percent of Republicans, the Dobbs decision and its aftermath looked like definite political losers.

Backing up this conclusion: According to Edison, 37 percent of voters viewed the overturning of the 1973 Roe vs Wade high court decision establishing a privacy-grounded right to an abortion to some extent with “enthusiasm” or “satisfaction,” while 60 percent reacted with “dissatisfaction” or “anger.” And nearly two-thirds of that 60 percent were angry.

The second major exit poll is one conducted for the Associated Press and Fox News by the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center. Its findings came with a major quirk. As with so many pre-election surveys, respondents ranked the “economy and jobs” as “the most important issue facing the country” by far. It claimed the top spot for 48 percent of those contacted versus just nine percent for abotion. In addition, respondents overwhelmingly (78 percent) thought the economy was in “not so good” or “poor” condition, and gave President Biden poor grades on handling this challenge.

But many more respondents (24 percent) called abortion “the single most important factor” behind their vote (versus 51 percent for the economy). And again, the decided (61 percent to 39 percent) backing for “a law guaranteeing access to legal abortion nationwide,” and the emotions registered over Roe’s demise (41 percent “happy” or ”satisfied,” 59 percent dissatisfied or angry, and 33 percent angry), demonstrate unmistakably how the issue cut politically against more powerfully than generally anticipated against Republicans. All the more so given how close so many key state and local elections were.   

And speaking of these state and local elections, since especially for matters like control of Congress, what counts most are those results (particularly for the supposed swing states where the GOP saw real promise of victory), not the nation-wide findings. As I’ll show tomorrow, the state and local results, too, all but clinch the case that the Dobbs ruling dashed those Republican hopes.

Following Up: Ukraine Coming to its Senses?

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ABC News, Biden, David Muir, Following Up, Fox News, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, Russia, Ukraine, Ukraine-Russia war, Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelensky

I’m interrupting preparing my regularly scheduled same-day report on the new official U.S. trade figures (for January) to report on a potentially game-changing development in the Ukraine crisis: President Volodymyr Zelensky told ABC News last night that he’s no longer insisting that his country retain the right to become a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

As you may remember, just yesterday, my post made the case that Zelensky’s former position – a main reason cited by Russian dictator Vladimir Putin for his invasion of Ukraine – resulted in part from the alliance’s long-time policy of treating Ukraine as a member in all but name, to the point of conducting joint exercises with Kyiv’s armed forces. At the same time, by declining to admit Ukraine officially, NATO studiously avoided formally committing to come to Ukraine’s defense if attacked. So I concluded that the alliance irresponsibly created unrealistic expectations on the part of the country’s leadership regarding its options as a next-door neighbor of a much bigger, stronger, unfriendly power.

But Zelensky’s statements last night strongly indicated that he’s stepping off that primrose path down which NATO and most recent U.S. Presidents have led Kyiv.

Specifically, he told ABC News‘ David Muir: “I have cooled down regarding this question a long time ago after we understood that … NATO is not prepared to accept Ukraine.,”

He added, “The alliance is afraid of controversial things, and confrontation with Russia.” And given the strong opposition voiced by President Biden and NATO’s leaders to sending military forces to Ukraine to help fight the Russian invaders, or to establish a No-Fly Zone over Ukraine (specifically for fear of igniting direct conflict with Russia), it’s hard to argue with his assessment.

Nor is Zelensky’s position totally out of the blue. In a development I’d missed, three days ago Ukraine’s top negotiator with Russia (and leader of Zelensky’s party in Ukraine’s parliament, told a Fox News reporter that

“The response that we are getting from the NATO countries is that they are not ready to even discuss having us in NATO, not for the closest period of five or 10 years. We would not fight for the NATO applications, we would fight for the result, but not for the process.  

“We are ready to discuss some non-NATO models. For example, there could be direct guarantees by different countries like the U.S., China, U.K., maybe Germany and France. We are open to discuss such things in a broader circle, not only in bilateral discussions with Russia, but also with other partners.”

Those specific ideas sound pretty far-fetched to me, but the signal of flexibility on this crucial bone of contention was unmistakable. So was the scorn displayed in David Arakhamia’s reference to security “guarantees that NATO is afraid of.”

Oddly, (or maybe not so oddly, given the Mainstream Media’s strongly globalist bias on foreign policy issues), these remarks by Ukrainian leaders have gone almost entirely unreported so far. Nor were they mentioned by President Biden this morning when he announced a ban on imports of oil and other energy products from Russia.

Let’s hope that the President’s silence stems from caution and information-gathering that are entirely understandable given the new Ukraine stance’s potential for peacefully ending Europe’s worst and most dangerous security and humanitarian crisis since World War II, rather than embarrassment over evidence that his own stubbornness and fecklessness (along with that of his predecessors and other NATO leaders) on the issue deserve some blame for its outbreak.

P.S. I’ll post the trade report tomorrow!

Im-Politic: Fauci Doctors the Facts Again

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Anthony S. Fauci, Biden administration, Bureau of Labor Statistics, CCP Virus, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Chris Wallace, coronavirus, COVID 19, essential workers, Fauci, Fox News, Im-Politic, law enforcement, mortality, Officer Down Memorial Page, police, vaccine mandates, vaccines, Wuhan virus

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser, had a ready answer this past Sunday when a news anchor asked him whether or not he bears any responsibility for the growing criticism he’s attracted during the CCP Virus pandemic:

“[I] have stood — always making science, data, and evidence be what we guide ourselves by. And I think people who feel differently, who have conspiracy theories, who deny reality that’s looking em straight in the eye, those are people that don’t particularly care for me.

“And that’s understandable because what I do and I try very hard is to be guided by the truth. And sometimes, the truth becomes inconvenient for some…people, so they react against me. That just is what it is. There’s not much I can do about that…”

Actually, here’s something he can do about it. He can stop presenting facts that are not only completely free-floating but so devoid of any context that they become completely misleading – as he did on the same program.

Asked by Fox News‘ Chris Wallace whether vaccine mandates should be enforced for essential workers like police – many of which oppose the requirements, Fauci declared,

“We now know the statistics, more police officers die of COVID than they do in other causes of death. So, it doesn’t make any sense to not trying to protect yourself as well as the colleagues that you work with.”

Fauci’s claim is correct strictly speaking – at least according to this organization that tracks police deaths in the line of duty. But comparing police virus deaths with other causes of police fatalities has zero to do with how especially susceptible or not officers are to Covid. In fact, the only valid way of determining the relative vulnerability of these law enforcement personnel is to compare their CCP Virus experiences – in this case, mortality – versus that of their closest population-wide peer group.

And what these data make plain as day is that police nationwide are much less likely to die of the virus than those most like them demographically.

The peer group in question is working age adults, and this source pegs their population at 170,975,648 as of last year. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that through October 13, they’d suffered 233,965 deaths. “involving” the CCP Virus (which RealityChek regulars know is a problematic concept). So that’s a mortality rate of 0.14 percent.

The number of police officers whose deaths have been attributed to having contracted the disease on duty is 479 according to the aforementioned Office Down Memorial Page. And the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has pegged the nationwide number of police and sheriff’s patrol officers at 654,900. Do the math, and you get a death rate of 0.07 percent. That’s only half the level for the working age adult control group.

Surely one big reason for this disparity is that law enforcement personnel are healthier as a rule than their closest demographic peers. But far from “explaining away” Fauci’s mistake, it’s a point so obvious that he should know it. He should also realize that because, like other essential personnel, policemen and women stayed on the job during the worst of the virus, stayed on it long before vaccines were available, and worked jobs that required lots of personal contact, many surely contracted Covid – and recovered, thereby acquiring natural immunity. Despite his enthusiasm for the mandates, as even Fauci has admitted, this inconvenient (for vaccine zealots) truth of virology is tough to square with calls for mass, indiscriminate, and forced jabbing.

I’m enough of a believer in vaccines’ effectiveness and in the seriousness of the CCP Virus that I cringe every time I hear some pundit or news talker argue that members of the public health establishment like Fauci and the politicians that follow them have supported vaccine mandates and other forms of anti-virus business and behavioral curbs primarily because they’re control freaks. But every time I hear such folks so blatantly and sanctimoniously peddle this kind of misinformation, it makes me wonder.

Im-Politic: How Social Media Could Really Fight Misinformation

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censorship, Facebook, Fox News, Im-Politic, journalism, Mainstream Media, media bias, misinformation, NBC News, social media, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Twitter

During the last three weeks alone, major national news organizations have issued important corrections admitting that they’ve gotten two front-page stories completely wrong, and another has been caught red-handed in a comparably important misstep.

Contrary to two New York Times reports, the Biden administration has confirmed that there was never any credible intelligence indicating that Russia was paying Taliban-linked militants in Afghanistan bounties for killing American soldiers – and therefore no good reason for former President Trump to raise the issue with Russian officials. Contrary to claims in the Times, the Washington Post, and NBC News, the FBI never warned former New York City Mayor and Trump personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani that he was being “targeted” (i.e., “used”) in a Russian misinformation campaign. And contrary to Fox News, the Biden administration has no plans to require Americans to reduce their consumption of red meat sharply.

And it’s not like these are the only badly dropped balls by such news organizations in recent years – or even close. Moreover, since there are no evident penalties for such incompetence or bias (or both), there’s no reason to suppose that the media’s performance will impove significantly. Indeed, it’s clear that the most troubling kinds of “Who guards the guardians?” questions are being raised by these incidents, since it’s the news organizations themselves who – sensibly – are supposed to serve as our democracy’s watchdogs over its other main instit utions. Unless you want any government agencies, at any level, stepping in to play this role?

But perhaps not all hope is lost – at least in principle. For there are powerful actors in America who have tried to stop the spread of misinformation: Facebook and Twitter. As widely known, they’ve taken it on themselves to identify cases of misinformation, label them for users, and on a regular basis punish the perps by limiting their access to their enormous and influential platforms. Why can’t they apply the same policies and practices to journalists and even entire news organizations that admit major mistakes, or whose mistakes have been admitted by politicians or others who have made or benefited from consequent allegations?

Any number of criticisms can be made about how these social media giants currently go about fighting misinformation, ranging from their questionable expertise on subjects they rule on, to the biases they bring to these exercises, to the broader matter of whether most of the transgressions they’ve spotlighted are misinformation at all – as opposed to expressions of opinion or interpretations or analyses of events or data that are completely legitimate.

But when it comes to journalistic retractions or corrections, none of these problems should arise – because the error has already been acknowledged. Similarly, it should be easy for such technologically advanced companies to track and tag repeat offenders, whether individuals or entire organizations, with contemporary versions of (truly deserved) Scarlet Letters.

Equally easy should be justifying suspending them or kicking them off for good if they don’t mend their ways. Indeed, it would be a valuable service to the reading, viewing, and listening public, and because the use of social media is so crucial to news organizations’ business models, would create powerful incentives for journalists to use anonymous sources in particular much more responsibly.

Ideally, in a free market system, quality news would eventually and consistently prevail over the alternative by customers rewarding the good performers with bigger audiences that fattened their bottom lines, and penalizing the bad performers by tuning them out. But for whatever reason or combination of reasons (like growing partisanship or more general political polarization, and the resulting tendency of news consumers to follow only ideologically congenial news outlets), it’s not happening. And when news organizations do report on their industry critically, they rarely shine the spotlight on themselves – and wind up in “Coke versus Pepsi”-like dogfights, or thinly disguised ideological vendettas.

Since in theory, anyway (yes, I keep using this kind of qualification), the social media companies aren’t competing directly with either legacy or on-line news organizations, their misinformation monitoring needn’t be so self-interested. And if they stuck to calling out admitted corrections and retractions or other unmistakably debunked scoops, they’d steer clear of any genuine controversy.

Maybe just as important: If Facebook and Twitter won’t reorient their content policing to focus on or even simply add this relatively simple task, everyone will be entitled to wonder whether their main concern all along has been fighting misinformation, or simply the kinds they don’t like.

Im-Politic: The Mainstream Media’s Approval Ratings (Rightly) Keep Sinking

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Fox News, Gallup, globalism, Hunter Biden, Im-Politic, Joe Biden, journalism, Mainstream Media, media bias, MSM, news media, Sean Hannity, Trump

Some RealityChek readers have noted (and kind of griped) that I spend a lot of time here attacking the performance of the Mainstream Media (MSM) – and they’re right. This focus stems from two related reasons: First, this performance (as I’ve documented extensively*) has not only been genuinely terrible when it comes to getting facts and their obvious implications straight, but it’s been genuinely terrible in an overwhelmingly pro-globalist vein, including on trade, immigration, and foreign policy issues, and of course on the highest profile of all critics of these views – President Trump.

Second, media performance deserves attention because they’re supposed to play such a crucial watchdog role in our democratic republic. Yet their biases have been so flagrant, and even so deliberate, that these news outlets are no longer serving as a source of reliable, trustworthy information, and consequently keep weakening the foundations of accountable government.

Anyone skeptical should take a look at a new Gallup poll that tries to measure how Americans view the ethics of major occupations. I know that pollsters didn’t exactly cover themselves with glory during the last presidential election, but journalists coming in tenth of the fifteen categories mentioned has “epic fail” written all over it. The only occupations ranking lower? Lawyers, business executives, advertisers, car salesmen (apparently new and used) and Members of Congress. (They came in dead last.)

To be sure, Gallup didn’t single out MSM journalists in its survey, so reporters and editors with a less America First-y outlook, as with many (but by no means all) newspeople in conservative outlets like Fox News were undoubtedly included in the ranks of the mistrusted. But the highly skewed partisan divide reported strongly suggests that it’s the MSM (which, being mainstream, is by definition the media that reach the biggest audiences) that’s got the biggest problem.

If this wasn’t the case, why would only 28 percent of Americans considering themselves political independents give journalists “very high” ratings for ethics and honesty? (The figures for Republicans and Democrats were five percent and 48 percent, respectively.)

It would be great to think that, with Mr. Trump out of public office (if not necessarily the limelight), the MSM might recover some of its integrity. But the timid coverage of apparent president-elect Joe Biden so far, and of the worrisome foreign business dealings of his son, Hunter, don’t justify much optimism. 

As Fox News-talker Sean Hannity (not my favorite) complained during the presidential campaign, the MSM in effect put Biden into a “candidate protection program.” If this approach continues into his likely administration, the next Gallup report could show media trustworthiness sinking further – and America’s democratic republic under even greater strain.

*During my long tenure at the U.S. Business and Industry Council (USBIC), I first began going after news coverage of trade and globalization issues (as well as policy decisions and proposals) in 1997 or so in two series of reports sent around by fax called “Globalization Follies” and “Globalization Factline.” Eventually, they were all posted on the organization’s AmericanEconomicAlert.org website. But shortly after I left USBIC, in 2014, the website seemed to have gone dark, and the only decent set of surviving records is in my computer files.

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.

Im-Politic: A Must-See CCP Virus-Election 2020 Poll

Tags

2020 election, CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, Fox News, George W. Bush, Im-Politic, Joe Biden, polls, September 11, Trump, Wuhan virus

If you automatically dismiss anything put out by Fox News as right-wing, pro-Trump propaganda, you can stop reading right here.

If you’re an adult, however, you’ll keep reading, because a new Fox poll offers an unusually detailed, and therefore unusually instructive, early idea about how the difficulties of predicting how the CCP Virus pandemic will impact the upcoming presidential election.

The results, released April 9, drew the most attention for two findings. The first was that President Trump’s overall approval ratings had hit an all-time high of 49 percent. Just FYI, Fox polls’ previous such readings have been pretty much in line with other soundings – finding a range of 38 percent to 49 percent since 2017.

The second was that Mr. Trump and now-presumptive Democratic nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden, were tied in the presidential race. Also FYI – Fox has consistently reported that Biden had been significantly leading the President since it’s been tracking this formerly hypothetical contest since March, 2019. (Biden’s formal entry came in late April, but was widely expected beforehand.)

As always, however, those overlooking the internals will be missing major takeaways, and in this case, they entail how the public judges Mr. Trump’s handling of the crisis. In a nutshell, feelings seem to be pretty mixed.

For example, 51 percent of respondents approved of the President’s CCP Virus record. That was the lowest favorable rating of the choices offered. (Public health official Anthony Fauci’s 80 percent led the way with 80 percent, and “your state government came in second at 77 percent.) But it was still net positive.

Somewhat more Americans than approved of the Trump response (57 percent) agreed that the nation is “moving in the right direction” against the pandemic. The President’s marks for “caring about what people are going through” (51 percent agreeing versus 45 percent disagreeing), “providing strong leadership” (opinion split at 48 percent), “making good policy decisions” (47 percent agreeing, 45 percent disagreeing), and having “an understanding of the facts” (an underwater for Mr. Trump 45 percent-47 percent reading) look pretty good. And the same goes for whether the President is “reacting appropriately” to the pandemic or not taking it “seriously enough.” Here, Trump is down 46 percent to 47 percent – just about where he was when Fox first asked the question between March 21 and March 24.

Yes, there’s less of a rally-round-flag effect visible here than, say, former President George W. Bush enjoyed after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. At the same time, Bush had the advantage of fighting a foreign enemy easily portrayed as contemptible. Mr. Trump is fighting a micro-organism. It’s tempting also to argue that partisan feelings today are much higher than two decades ago, but national feelings were pretty raw after the hotly disputed, incredibly narrow presidential election of 2000.

More concerning for the White House and Trumpers generally, though: Fifty-five percent of respondents endorsed the view that the federal government “could have slowed the spread of the virus.” Only 31 percent believed “Nothing could have prevented it from spreading the way it has.” Moreover, these results were little changed from Fox’ March 21-24 finding.

Which brings us back to the Trump-Biden results. Although, as indicated just above, the public seems pretty strongly inclined to blame the President for a lagging CCP Virus response, and although these views are essentially unchanged since late March, that’s the period during which the share of respondents supporting Trump’s reelection edged up from 40 percent to 42 percent, and the pro-Biden vote shrank from 49 percent to that 42 percent.

Could these shifts be due to Biden’s inability to attract much national attention during this period of pandemics and social distancing? My sense is, “To some extent.” But that still doesn’t necessarily explain the continuing gradual increase in Trump support.

Two big cautionary notes. First, when it comes to presidential election polling, because of America’s Electoral College system, what counts most are state-by-state results, not national results. Second, it’s not only still very early in the presidential cycle, but the potential for big surprises down the road seems especially great given the virus, its disastrous effects on the economy, and the wide open question of how the CCP Virus will influence voting procedures.

What does seem reasonably clear is that when it comes to the race for the CCP Virus’ effect on the White House race, the verdict might depend on whether Americans in November are more focused on the President’s initial responses, or on his performance since (assuming of course no big blunders). Much less clear is which emphasis will prevail.

Im-Politic: Times Pundit Krugman Grows Ever More Truth-Challenged

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class warfare, Fox News, Im-Politic, Immigration, non-college whites, Paul Krugman, polls, Populism, pundits, tariffs, The New York Times, Trade, Trump

Oops, he (almost) did it again. That’s not only (almost) a gender-specific version of a Britney Spears song. It’s also an apt description of Paul Krugman’s latest column for The New York Times. As I wrote on RealityChek two weeks ago, Krugman’s June 3 essay on tariffs cited information on the U.S. agriculture sector fallout from 1920s duties that the source material simply didn’t contain. Yesterday, his piece on President Trump’s allegedly phony populism were partly based on a blatantly cherry-picked poll result.

According to Krugman, Mr. Trump’s talk of helping his core white working class voters economically is in fact so transparently phony that even these voters no longer believe it. His evidence? A June 16 Fox News poll finding “that only 5 percent of whites without a college degree believe that Trump’s economic policies benefit ‘people like me,’ compared with 45 percent who believe that the benefits go to ‘people with more money.’”

Regardless of whether these views reflect economic reality, the results certainly sound damning. But here’s the rub. First, Krugman didn’t get the question exactly right. Pollsters asked respondents whether the Trump programs “benefit everyone” or “mostly benefit people like you….” In other words, the benefits distribution was not presented solely as an either-or choice.

Second, and more important, the percentage of whites without college degrees believing that the Trump program “benefit everyone” (i.e., including them, and not qualified with “mostly”) was 32 percent. That’s not stratospheric, by any means, but it’s a lot higher than five percent. (See question 24.) 

(Adding another complication missed by Krugman, that five percent wasn’t five percent of the entire non-college white sample. It was five percent of the respondents who didn’t view the Trump policies as benefiting “everyone.”)

And some other notable poll results Krugman conveniently passes over:

The percentage of total Trump voters answering that his economic policies “benefit everyone” was 67 percent. That finding suggests an inclusive, rather than an us-versus-them view of how the economy should work – which in turn interestingly indicates that this part of the electorate isn’t terribly receptive to the kinds of so-called class warfare memes pushed by so many Democratic politicians.

In addition, the share of non-college whites who say they’re “strongly” or “somewhat optimistic about the U.S. economy right now” was 55 percent. That’s only a bit less than the 58 percent of the total sample that turned in such answers.  (See question 23.)  

These Fox poll results hardly demonstrate that the President is home free with his base on the economy. Moreover, they show that he’s far from having persuaded this big share of his staunchest supporters – much less the rest of the electorate – that he’s on the right track when it comes to his signature issues of immigration and trade (although as is often the case, in my opinion, the questions on these subjects – see 16-20, and 25-26 – leave much to be desired).

But Krugman’s selective report on the survey, following his off-base portrayal of an analysis of past tariffs, does demonstrate that his writings should now be accompanied by the warning, “Let the reader beware.”

Im-Politic: And Now, Immigration Derangement Syndrome

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Dan Amira, Fox Business News, Fox News, illegal aliens, Im-Politic, Immigration, Jose Antonio Vargas, Mainstream Media, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Trade Derangement Syndromeu, Trump Derangement Syndrome, Twitter

My main Twitter hashtag of choice to express disdain used to be #TooFunny” but lately I’ve largely switched over to #SMH (Shaking My Head) because it added the idea of incredulity. And items like The New York Times Magazine‘s interview last week with illegal alien author Jose Antonio Vargas nicely illustrates why the change is needed.

Vargas, in case you don’t know, is an illegal alien with a difference – other than being a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. He’s made his status public, in the apparent confidence that he’s created too high a profile to run any serious deportation risk. And so far, he’s been right.

The Times Magazine interviewed Vargas because he’s just published a memoir, and of course that’s fine on both counts. What’s not fine is how interviewer Dan Amira, and all his editors, gave Vargas a total pass for the following jaw-dropping statement:

“There’s an entire anti-immigrant machine, and it’s very savvy at how it uses media.”

That’s when Amira should have shouted, “Whoa!” Not that the school of thought that favors sensible restrictions on immigration (that “anti-immigrant machine”) isn’t full of highly intelligent and capable people. Of course it is. But Amira should have aggressively followed up on the idea that the individuals and organizations that comprise the restrictionist movement have been highly, and even a little sneakily, effective at manipulating news organizations and their employees into unknowingly peddling “anti-immigration” propaganda.

In the process, ignore Vargas’ fatuous definition of savvy media work: “cementing” in Americans’ minds the notion that the immigration policy debate “is about borders or walls.” If it’s not supposed to be largely about borders, what should be the focus? Melania Trump’s wardrobe?

Just consider the apparent belief that any major media organizations (outside of a few anchors and panelists on Fox News and Fox Business News) are chock full of reporters and editors and pundits harboring any significant skepticism about the most indulgent possible immigration policies, including maximally open borders and maximal leniency toward the current illegals population. Who does Vargas think these journalists are? Can Amira identify any at his own New York Times? And if so, where have they all been hiding since the current phase of the immigration policy debate began in 2006, when illegals and their supporters started staging large-scale pro-amnesty protests complete with cheeky signs contending “We Built America” and the flags of their countries of origin flying proudly.

It’s tempting to ascribe these utterly ditzy performances by Vargas and Amira to the simple cluelessness so often shown by journalists and policy activists, who rarely need to step outside their tightly circumscribed socio-professional bubbles. But my hunch is that there’s something else going on. I suspect that Vargas believes the media is gullibly parroting a restrictionist line, and that Amira let his observation pass, because both find it a convenient explanation for why the kinds of loosey-goosey immigration policies they and everyone else they know (along with all people of good will) supports aren’t yet the law of the land. After all, in their eyes, its virtues are so obvious and so widely appreciated that nothing but a devilishly clever conspiracy could be responsible for frustrating their objectives.

In other words, it may not be enough that American politics and policy are being saturated with Trump Derangement Syndrome and Trade Derangement Syndrome. Large shares of the establishment may now be suffering Immigration Derangement Syndrome as well.