Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson has documented a strange mix of catastrophism and overconfidence that dominates the thinking among Republican voters. “Republicans both deeply fear a 2024 loss and can’t fathom its actually happening,” she wrote. And the focus groups she conducts for the New York Times bear this conclusion out. Though their political views and values differed, precisely none of the eleven Republican participants in her last sample could envision a scenario in which Joe Biden won reelection in 2024. That doesn’t just also apply to Donald Trump if he emerges as the Republican Party’s presidential nominee. They think it is especially true of the former president, who Republican primary voters appear to believe is Biden’s strongest hypothetical opponent.
The theories that political observers posit to explain the Right’s certitude are unsatisfying, partly because they are predicated on a variety of uncharitable assumptions about Republican voters. For example, the notion that Republicans refuse to entertain the prospect of loss because Trump has coached them into believing that he didn’t actually lose the 2020 election is one unsatisfactory theory.
-
No comments on 1948, 2012 and 2020 again?
-
Three weeks ago, I wrote that, while Trump and Biden were running even in the polls, I thought Biden had the edge for next year’s general election, because I just didn’t see how Trump was making or could make gains among the undecided (assuming there are any truly undecided).
Today, there’s evidence I might need to re-think that. I still doubt that Trump is making any converts. But what might be happening is something I underestimated: that while Trump fails to gain, Biden is slipping.
The evidence is in a NYT article by Nate Cohn titled, “Consistent Signs of Erosion in Black and Hispanic Support for Biden.” The subhead is, “It’s a weakness that could manifest itself as low Democratic turnout even if Trump and Republicans don’t gain among those groups.”
Why is this important? Because, as the last two presidential elections tell us, even a marginal erosion of black support for Biden in, say, Milwaukee, Atlanta, and Philadelphia could throw Wisconsin, Georgia and Pennsylvania to Trump, and with it the election.
The Times notes:
On average, Mr. Biden leads Mr. Trump by just 53 percent to 28 percent among registered nonwhite voters in a compilation of Times/Siena polls from 2022 and 2023, which includes over 1,500 nonwhite respondents.
The results represent a marked deterioration in Mr. Biden’s support compared with 2020, when he won more than 70 percent of nonwhite voters. If he’s unable to revitalize this support by next November, it will continue a decade-long trend of declining Democratic strength among voters considered to be the foundation of the party.
Given Biden’s narrow winning margins in just a few swing states last time, a slippage to that extent would make Biden’s winning them again a long shot, and probably put Trump in the White House.
The Democratic Party’s share of support among non-white voters has slipped across every demographic category — gender, age, education and income.
Mr. Biden’s tepid support among these voters appears to be mostly responsible for the close race in early national surveys, which show Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump all but tied among registered voters even as Mr. Biden runs as well among white voters as he did four years ago.
Could it be that black voters have had enough of their cities being hollowed out by roving gangs of thieves, with the consequent dozens of store closures; or of their young men being murdered while prosecution standards go flaccid under progressive DA’s; or of public education dooming their kids to lousy jobs or no jobs because they never learn to read or add or speak decent English?
I don’t know. I’m not a sociologist. But sooner or later, these things were bound to register, and black people — whom the Left has taken for years as ciphers and fools — might be in the process of showing they’re no such thing.
…the possibility that [Biden’s] standing will remain beneath the already depressed levels of the last presidential election should not be discounted. Democrats have lost ground among nonwhite voters in almost every election over the last decade, even as racially charged fights over everything from a border wall to kneeling during the national anthem might have been expected to produce the exact opposite result.
That passage wonderfully illustrates how much the stupid passes for the sage among those who write the NYT (and a legion of other, similarly liberal outlets). Hey Lefties, wake up! Neither working class black people (nor any other working class people who think) are going to be thrilled when illegal immigrants are taking their jobs, and doing so just as the taxes they pay are financing the services illegals absorb. And the Times’ breezy assumption that blacks support gestures of contempt for the United States is worse than merely patronizing. It’s disgusting and almost certainly false — or, as the Times would airily say, “without evidence.”
I mean, hello! Just because the Harvard and NYU and Vassar grads who work at the Times have had their brains turned to mush doesn’t mean that black people have. People who have to live with their daily dose of wages falling behind Bidenflation, and crime and drugs and vagrancy at the streetcorner, and failing and dangerous public schools, have a grip on reality that the editing room at the Times could really use but has next to no chance of getting.
Many of Mr. Biden’s vulnerabilities — like his age and inflation — could exacerbate the trend, as nonwhite voters tend to be younger and less affluent than white voters. Overall, the president’s approval rating stands at just 47 percent among nonwhite voters in Times/Siena polling over the last year; his favorability rating is just 54 percent.
Support that tepid among what should be the Democrats’ strongest constituencies has to be ringing alarm bells inside the White House. If that doesn’t, these two paragraphs buried down in the article will:
The survey finds evidence that a modest but important 5 percent of nonwhite Biden voters now support Mr. Trump, including 8 percent of Hispanic voters who say they backed Mr. Biden in 2020. Virtually no nonwhite voters who say they supported Mr. Trump — just 1 percent — say they will back Mr. Biden this time around. In comparison, white Biden and white Trump supporters from 2020 say they will return to their previous candidate in nearly identical numbers.
Beyond voters who have flipped to Mr. Trump, a large number of disaffected voters who supported Mr. Biden in 2020 now say they’re undecided or simply won’t vote this time around. As a consequence, his weakness is concentrated among less engaged voters on the periphery of politics, who have not consistently voted in recent elections and who may decide to stay home next November.
When, as was the case in the last two elections and is likely to be in next year’s as well, the outcome is determined by narrow margins in three or four states, each with significant black and/or Hispanic populations, the Times is spot on in noting that even a modest shift toward Trump could tell the tale.
Still, before too much cheer about getting rid of Biden seeps in, it’s worth remembering that Trump might not be Biden’s Republican opponent, and that if he’s not, it remains to be seen whether Trump’s (relatively high, for a Republican) appeal to minority voters would also accrue to a different candidate like Ron DeSantis on Nikki Haley. But that’s yet another imponderable: What a DeSantis or Haley might lose in not having Trump’s appeal to minority voters, he or she might gain in re-establishing support in the suburbs — support that has been battered by exactly the rouge, rough-and-tumble style that Trump uses so well in building his more populist appeal.
It’s anyone’s guess how it will work out. But one way or the other, the NYT’s account of Biden’s slipagge among his most needed constituencies counts as good news for anyone who thinks the country cannot continue on its present path.
-
The number one single in the U.K. todayyyyyyy in 19677777777 …
One yearrrrrr laterrrrrr, the Beatles recorded Eric Clapton’s guitar part for “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” making him the first non-Beatle on a Beatle record:
The College of Rock and Roll Knowledge reports:
… The Beatles’ George Harrison was heading in to London for a recording session for “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”. His neighbor, Eric Clapton needed a lift into London, so George offered to take him. George had a different idea though.
Harrison wasn’t happy with his own guitar tracks on the song so while driving, he asked Eric to come to the session and do a track on.
Clapton at first refused, saying that “nobody (famous) ever plays on the Beatles records!” but George insisted. Clapton came in and the invitation has its intended effect: the band members were completely professional and Eric’s solo sounded great.
As Clapton was listening to a playback, the thought his solo wasn’t “Beatle-y enough,” so the solo is run through an ADT circuit with “varispeed”, with the session engineer manually ‘waggling’ the oscillator: Engineer Chris Thomas has recalled: “Eric said that he didn’t want it to sound like him. So I was just sitting there wobbling the thing, they wanted it really extreme, so that’s what I did.” The effect sounded like the guitar was run through the Leslie rotating speaker of the Hammond B-3 organ cabinet.The number one song in the U.S. today in 1975:
-
Michael Smith on this liar:
Twitter is full of “I’m so glad Biden is my president because he is just so empathetic” tweets these days. Idiot GenZer and DNC shill, Victor Shi, tweeted:
“The Right can try and twist and lie about President Biden’s visit [to Maui] all they want but THIS is what the people of Maui saw — a comforting, empathetic, compassionate LEADER & decent human being. This is why we love him.”
Well, alrighty then. Gaslighting all the way down for the young and stupid.
The media palace guards have been pulling overtime for a while now:
- “How Empathy Defines Joe Biden”, Forbes August 2020
- “Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and the Return of Empathy When America Needs It Most”, Time, November 7, 2920
- “Joe Biden: An Empathetic Leader Whose Time Has Come”, Forbes, November 7, 2020
- “Biden’s Empathy Is What Matches Him to This Moment”, The Atlantic, November 2, 2020
I could go on, but you get the idea. Google “Joe Biden empathetic” and you will get literally thousands of articles about what an awesome dude Joe is.
The people around Biden have carefully cultivated an image of Scranton Joey that is in direct conflict with his character, was labeled empathetic, caring, a real softie. Good old grandpa Joe, doting over the American people the way he does over his grandchildren. Throughout his political career – which essentially has been his entire adult life – Biden worked diligently to invent and nurture the persona of a kind and caring man.
Well, he isn’t that man today and based on his performances since attaining the Oval Office, it seems the left is beginning to question the assumptions that he is, or ever was the man advertised. Here’s a little taste from the AP, contrast this headline to those above:
- “Biden’s empathy shapes policy, but some voters don’t feel it”, AP, February 2023
But anybody paying attention, knows the aura around Biden is a show that has run longer than Phantom of the Opera did on Broadway.
All the way back in 1975 Biden insisted the US had “no obligation, moral or otherwise, to evacuate foreign nationals” and “the United States has no obligation to evacuate one — or 100,001 — South Vietnamese.”
In April 1975, President Gerald Ford argued that, as the last American troops were removed from the country, the U.S. should evacuate the South Vietnamese who had helped the U.S. during the war, too but being the empathetic and kindly spirit he is, Biden objected and called for a meeting between the president and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to voice his objections to Ford’s funding request for these efforts.
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told the senators that “the total list of the people endangered in Vietnam is over a million” and that “the irreducible list is 174,000.” Biden said U.S. allies should not be rescued: “We should focus on getting them [the U.S. troops] out. Getting the Vietnamese out and military aid for the GVN [South Vietnam’s government] are totally different.”
During and after the disastrous Afghanistan retreat, circumstances coalesced to reveal what he has always been, a narcissist and a sociopath, incapable of empathy of any sort.
In the years prior to his decision to evacuate Afghanistan, Biden had repeatedly claimed that no American would be left behind and he had “plans” to evacuate Afghanis who helped American soldiers. During the 2020 campaign, Biden was asked if he believed he would bear responsibility for harm to Afghan women after a troop withdrawal and the return of the Taliban. Biden bristled as he squinted and said, “No, I don’t!” he snapped, and put his thumb and index finger together. “Zero responsibility.”
And history has proven he was telling the truth.
The parents of the 13 soldiers killed in the Abbey Gate bombing at Hamid Karzi International in Kabul during the Biden Afghanistan withdrawal noticed Lunch Bucket Joe checking his watch multiple times during the return of their children’s bodies at Dover (of course, the media tried to explain away Biden’s conduct).
“It’s two fucking thirty, asshole!”
This were the words uttered into the Congressional record by Mark Schmitz, whose son, Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Jared Schmitz, was one of thirteen killed.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1696603882489512398
When asked if he was going to East Palestine, Biden said he hasn’t had the time to visit a small Ohio town that was devastated by a train derailment months ago. Never mind that he just got back from a long family getaway at Tom Steyer’s $15 million “cabin” in Lake Tahoe.
He also took multiple trips to Delaware just in the last month, on one of which he was at the beach and asked by the press what he thought about the wildfire on Maui, to which he responded, “No comment.”
He will be the first president since 9/11 not to be present at the anniversary memorial.
Emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop from hell displayed how, for years, he treated Hunter as an asset rather than a son and likely used him to generate a retirement nest egg.
So, while Biden may a dirtbag and not at all empathic, at least he has his intellect, his mastery of economics, his foreign policy successes, his unparalleled negotiating skills, and soaring rhetorical skills to fall back on.
-
The number one song in Britain today in 1954 was the singer’s only number one hit, making her Britain’s first American one-hit wonder:
The number one song in the U.S. today in 1964:
Today in 1967, the Beatles probably felt like they were the walrus (goo goo ga joob) after needing 16 takes to get this right:
-
While the prevailing post-payrolls narrative has focused on the divergence between the stronger than expected (if soon to be revised lower) headline payrolls print (which at 187K came in just above expectations of 170K but followed two sharply downward revised months) and the unexpected spike in the unemployment rate from 3.5% to 3.8%, the highest since Feb 2022, a closer look at the details of today’s jobs report reveals just how ugly the reality behind the the Budget-Busting Bidenomics truly is.
Let’s start with revisions.
Regular readers are aware that earlier this year we spotted a peculiar trend when it comes to economic data releases by the Biden admin which – without fail – had been revised lower…
-
The new major of Chicago wants to fight crime by creating new opportunities for young people, and he has blamed recent upswings in violence in Chicago on the lack of opportunity. Research from the NBER suggests that there is less violence when there are more job opportunities, so this is at least promising. So why aren’t there more jobs?
Maybe it’s because so many people are all fools and knaves, but if economics teaches us anything, it’s to look at people’s incentives before we examine their mental and moral fiber. After a quick internet search, I learned that the minimum wage in Illinois is $13 per hour. If legislation makes Chicago youth unemployable, why should we be surprised that no one will employ them? Chicago – and cities around the country – need to repeal minimum wages and reduce the regulatory hurdles teenagers have to clear to find work.
These aren’t dead-end “McJobs,” as they are sometimes derisively called. They’re important opportunities to learn how to function in the labor market and, importantly, how to serve others. One of the most important things about working for pay in a service enterprise is that it takes you off the throne. It makes you contend with the fact that you are not the star of the cosmic narrative. Other people matter, other people have preferences and problems, and it is presumptuous to expect them to ignore those preferences and problems and do what you want for no other reason than because you want it done. It turns out that the best way to do what you want is to govern your selfish passions and help other people do what they want.
Unfortunately, I expect this argument to pass unnoticed before blind eyes. H.L. Mencken allegedly said that the definition of “fundamentalism” is the fear that someone, somewhere might be having a good time. 21st-century progressive fundamentalism is the fear that someone, somewhere might make money, and progressives look askance at fast food companies and retailers that make a great deal of money. This is not in itself vicious; if it is done via exchange – which, as it happens, is how fast food companies and retailers make their money – it is positively virtuous. In competitive labor markets, these firms’ profits do not come at the consumer’s or employees’ expenses. They do not take it. They earn it by making consumers and employees better off relative to their best alternatives.
“McJobs” aren’t just worth having. They’re vital. They make it easier for the people who have them to accumulate valuable skills and labor market experience, which research has shown leads to higher future earnings. The market process allows low-skill people to specialize in what they do best while freeing up high-skill people who can concentrate their efforts on things they do best. Everybody wins, and in some small way, you have a part in every achievement by every bleary-eyed customer for whom you dutifully pour coffee on their morning commute.
Consider a real-world example. This article has sat in my “drafts” folder for a very, very long time. I wrote the very first draft of this article more than a decade ago at a McDonald’s and revised it one time at India Palace (one of my favorite restaurants in Memphis, where I was living at the time). The opportunity to cooperate with the owners and staff at India Palace freed up time I would otherwise spend on food preparation and allowed me to concentrate on something I enjoy and do relatively well, namely, writing articles like this one. The owners and staff at the restaurant were able to earn higher incomes. I’m able to earn a higher income. We’re both better off.
Someone might object that I, a privileged white guy, am ruthlessly and brutally exploiting the low-wage workers who prepared and served my meals while I mused about the labor market. It’s true that the restaurant’s proprietors haven’t had the same opportunities I’ve had, but that is largely because of lousy political institutions in their home countries and a nonsensical immigration policy in their adopted home. Their children have vastly expanded opportunities relative to what they would have enjoyed elsewhere, and in just a few short years I’ve seen things changing in my “day job” as a college professor. More and more of my students are immigrants or the children of immigrants. Their educations are financed in no small part by the opportunities afforded by a more integrated global market for goods and services.
Someone might object, “We can’t build a strong economy on jobs at Walmart and McDonald’s.” Actually, we can. Bryan Caplan has made several excellent points in this regard and continues to do so as he prepares his book Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids. He argues, quite correctly, that allowing people to have the ability to specialize in low-skill occupations frees up the time and energy of high-productivity, high-skill workers. Both high-skill and low-skill workers can innovate, and mightily.
But these allow us to save time and energy, which in turn allows us to have greater output. The productivity increases might be indirect, but they’re there.
People want big, splashy programs administered by fancy leaders with flashy titles and flashy outfits. I’m convinced that there remains a lot of low-hanging fruit, however, that requires none of these. Market integration that allows capital and labor to cross borders freely – borders, after all, are lines drawn by politicians – has enormous potential to increase standards of living. Getting rid of regulations on labor markets, even and perhaps especially at the bottom of the skill distribution, will allow for greater specialization.
People look at “dead end” jobs and so-called “McJobs” and say one isn’t going to earn enough to support a family flipping burgers. This misses the point. A “McJob” gives someone the opportunity to make connections and learn and practice valuable skills like punctuality and reliability – the kinds of “soft skills” that can lead one to new opportunities. And regardless, it’s easier to feed and support a family at some wage than at no wage.
Is it the world we would design if we were starting from scratch? No, but it’s the world we inhabit now in no small part due to millennia of attempts to redesign and rebuild society according to the plans and visions of intellectual and moral elites. No one wants to spend an entire career in a McJob, but they don’t have to–and usually, they don’t. Any job, no matter how bad, can be a stepping stone to bigger and better things. It’s obnoxious to look down on the jobs, the people who do them, and those who provide them. “McJobs” have an undeserved bad reputation. They provide good and honorable work if you can get it, and they can be important steps on the road to bigger and better things.
-
The number one song in the U.S. today in 1961:
Today in 1962, the Beatles recorded “Love Me Do,” taking 17 takes to do it right:
Three years later, the Beatles had the number one single …
… which referred to something The Who could have used, because on the same day the Who’s van was vandalized and $10,000 in musical equipment was stolen from them while they were buying … a guard dog:
-
The number one song in the U.S. today in 1955 was written 102 years earlier:
The number one song in the U.S. today in 1966:
Today in 1970, Arthur Brown demonstrated what The Crazy World of Arthur Brown was like by getting arrested at the Palermo Pop ’70 Festival in Italy for stripping naked and setting fire to his helmet during …
-
Britain’s number one single today in 1972:
On the same day, the Erie Canal Soda Pop Festival was held on Bull Island in the Wabash River between Illinois and Indiana. The festival attracted four times the projected number of fans, three fans drowned in the Wabash River, and the remaining crowd ended the festival by burning down the stage:
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 