Biden sinking in polls – so what?
In a recent The Economist/YouGov poll, Biden’s overall approval rating is at 39%.
My first reaction is: why so high? It should be something like 2%, if that.
My second reaction is: it’s about time.
My third reaction is: so what? Biden can do a lot of damage anyway. After all, no one is about to remove him unless his approval falls down way below that and polls indicate it will really really hurt Democrats in Congress in 2022 and Democrats figure that they can’t cheat enough to overcome that effect. Only those practical considerations might get the Democrats to activate a Biden-ectomy, and if so it will be done not through impeachment but through the more face-saving 25th Amendment or a forceful arm-twisting to effect a resignation for health reasons.
However, looking at the poll numbers we see the following (approval/disapproval numbers in that order):
Overall: 39/50
Men: 36/53
Women: 42/46
White men no degree: 28/61
White women w/ degree: 53/42
Black: 65/26
Hispanic: 41/36
Registered Voters: 43/53
Dems: 77/15
GOP: 9/89
Indie: 35/56
Who are these supposed GOP members who still approve of Biden? As Stephen Green writes in the linked article: “I don’t know how Biden managed to get a positive nod of approval from 9% of GOP voters, unless The Economist/YouGov oversampled the Bill Kristol household.”
The numbers indicate to me that “white men no degree” are the smartest American demographic. Whereas “white women with degree” – a group of which I happen to be a card-carrying member – are pretty stupid and/or gullible and/or uninformed. Note also that black voters are not as keen on Biden as black voters usually are on Democratic presidents, and Hispanic voters really aren’t all that fond of Biden. Independents have soured on him, although a lot of them were fooled at the time of the election and probably are in some ways most responsible for placing him in office because many of them constitute the all-important swing voters.
Well lets just call it MORE bad news for the Biden team/Dems to worry about. If it stays low enough maybe it will help in 2022.
The numbers indicate to me that “white men no degree” are the smartest American demographic.
Perhaps it’s not that they’re necessarily the smartest (in terms of raw IQ anyway), but the wisest and most sensible. I imagine it has something to do with solving real problems on a regular basis in the “blue collar” universe.
In general when it comes to “people with degrees” who seem to draw highly dubious conclusions with regards to politics, I think the real disconnect is accredited midwits who may imagine themselves to be far wiser and more sensible than they really are.
If this trend continues, one potentially near term positive effect of this will be the euthanization of Pelosi’s $3.5 trillion nightmare and the stalling of the Biden agenda in general.
My first reaction is: why so high? It should be something like 2%, if that.
Ha! My wife shouts at the TV screen, “Why is it so high??” Every, single, time.
The MSM can draw a veil over a lot of Biden’s mess, but they can’t cover up high prices and scarcities. People will notice.
I suspect that white women w/degree will tolerate quite a lot for the sake of Roe v Wade.
White women w/ degree: 53/42
Black: 65/26
Dems: 77/15
That’s the crux of it, right there.
In the movie “The Wild Bunch” William Holden and Earnest Borgnine discuss the reason for the above findings;
William Holden, Pike:
“A hell of a lot of people, Dutch, just can’t stand to be wrong.”
Earnest Borgnine, Dutch: “Pride”.
Pike:
“And they can’t forget it… that pride… being wrong. Or learn by it.”
There’s a reason why “Pride” is the first of the Seven Deadly Sins…
Nobody likes to be wrong, much less shown so publicly. I know a number of these women. They’re not “wrong” in their conclusions. They’re wrong in what they think is the real world. Inflation doesn’t matter. What they mean is it “shouldn’t” matter because taking it into account leads you to doubt the government. And most of them are less vulnerable to such shortcomings than others, many of whom are deplorables and outside the bounds of sympathy. I don’t mean the latter figuratively.
Other negative items don’t exist. Or you’re a poopyhead for noticing them. Anybody whose fact palette was similarly loaded would conclude similarly.
“Whereas “white women with degree” – a group of which I happen to be a card-carrying member – are pretty stupid and/or gullible and/or uninformed. ”
Not stupid nor gullible nor uninformed… just trained since the inception of their education to be very, very, very nice… nice to everyone regardless of race, color, creed, national origin, or decayed brains. They want to ber nice and want to be seen as nice. Nice is what they are and nice is what they do and it is a much of a muchness. Is it not?
Gerard vanderleun:
Nope – I disagree heartily.
Maybe women over 45 or so were trained to be nice. Younger women were trained to be “assertive” and are often not the least bit nice.
And even women over 45 regularly manage to overcome “niceness” training and be very very mean – as you no doubt have observed in your life.
Girls in junior high are certainly not renowned for niceness, either.
I don’t buy the “niceness” thing at all.
Oh, and the same women had no trouble at all wishing death and mayhem on Donald Trump.
I’m also a card carrying member of the women with college degrees.
Women are not trained to be nice. They are trained to viciously turn on anyone who is not part of their group. They will do, say, believe anything they need to do, say or believe in order to stay in the good graces of their crowd.
It’s why they flock to academia, which is based on that very model.
The preference cascade against Biden, when it comes, will be epic.
I went shopping the other day. I and several others noticed empty shelves. These “others” were women and judging by appearance (a danger I know) they seemed to be solidly middle class, like me (but I am male – won’t change to another gender). When this group that may have voted for biden start really feeling the pinch things might change. When the fill up their cars they might notice too.
Guess we will have to wait for 2022. Although there are local elections this year for school board and city “leaders”.
GnomeGranny:
Shirley Jackson’s story “The Lottery.”
And since they vastly over sampled Democrats, as per the article, the WH should be even more worried. I’d bet also they oversampled those with advanced degrees as most polls have done since at least 2016.
It’s in there right along with all the other explanations, implicitly rather than explicitly: the ongoing demonization of all things Republican (and, since mid-2016, Trump). I know this demonization is right in there along with pride, but I believe it’s different from, rather than merely related to, pride.
Plus self-image, also related to pride. Can’t imagine myself [one may be thinking] *not* approving of Biden, given that he was (successfully, by the mainstreamers) marketed as the quintessential anti-Trump who was going to be the adult in the room and restore a semblance of normalcy to the body politic.
In any event, brushing aside all this theorizing . . . heaven help us.
Neo:
Exactly.
See also: Zebras with nonstandard stripes being eaten by lions or middle school mean girls.
Another white woman with degrees here. I agree with Neo about “nice.” Nope. Just work in an all-female or majority-female office sometime. Some of us, alas, never get over being Mean Girls.
My husband sometimes says that we never should have given women the vote. He’s mostly kidding, but not entirely, I suspect. I don’t vote like these left-wing idiots, but lots of women do.
What were the numbers for dead voters, voters who have moved away, and the all-important non-existent voters?
They will be the key components of the mail-in vote surge for Democrats in 2022.
. . . and of the mail-in vote surge to retain Gavin Newsom in the California Governor’s office less than a week from now, in 2021.
“They are trained to viciously turn on anyone who is not part of their group. They will do, say, believe anything they need to do, say or believe in order to stay in the good graces of their crowd.” GnomeGranny
As succinct a description of tribalism, as I have ever seen.
If there actually is a multiverse, then it’s possible a world exists where the matriarchy never fell out of favor. In which case, arguably neither civilization nor nations ever arose but one in which tribalism flourishes.
“…tribalism…”
Indeed, it’s back with a vengeance and fueled by the toxic combination of privileged victimhood—promoting grievances of any and every kind—AND social media.
Things are already nasty.
They’re about to get super nasty.
https://spectatorworld.com/topic/nikole-hannah-jones-schools-teacher/
In fact, the word “purge” comes to mind (AKA “cancel”; AKA “fire”)…
https://nypost.com/2021/09/08/biden-fires-trump-trio-from-naval-academy-board/
Whereas “white women with degree” … are pretty stupid and/or gullible and/or uninformed.
Because “vote blue no matter who”.
Why that statement is considered to be moral and good and just but “my country right or wrong” is considered to be jingoistic and evil is beyond me.
No, really, it’s not. Because leftists reject the very idea of consistent principles. Silly me.
“SO WHAT?” I agree. As I asked in an earlier thread, is there anything, anything at all which is so horrible it will result in Biden’s dismissal by some means? Even if it breaks through the laptop-level MSM censorship.
Biden was a not-Trump. The next repub will be “another Trump” and so it will be necessary to vote dem again.
Geoffrey Britain —
Re: Matriarchy, civilization and tribalism
“If civilization had been left in female hands we would still be living in grass huts.” — Camille Paglia
Just work in an all-female or majority-female office sometime.
I have. In my experience, the cattiness is strictly intramural, sometimes justified, and low grade. YMMV.
IMO, the problem you get in female-dominated offices (in the absence of strict operational measures of competence), is that they’re not particularly goal-oriented and thus underperform. Meetings (all with formal minutes) meander and are taken up with discussions of who is to do things rather that what’s to be done (when they’re not complete time wasters), and the ground-level staff spends an inordinate amount of time chattering with each other. One type of manager favors multidirectional placation, so decisions are made with they object of managing office politics. Another type is the faux-disciplinarian, who fancies she’s making things ship shape when she’s actually picking fights with her subordinates over trivia and damaging their morale and productivity.
If there actually is a multiverse, then it’s possible a world exists where the matriarchy never fell out of favor.
https://www.amazon.com/inevitability-patriarchy-Steven-Goldberg/dp/0688001750
I think this anthropologist’s thesis is that matriarchal societies are so rare that the idea borders on the mythological. (IIRC, Margaret Mead claimed to have found a few examples in New Guinea).
Bryan Lovely,
Now that you mention it, I recall that assertion by Paglia. I’d be interested in what led to that perception.
Art Deco,
Fertility statuary are reportedly quite common in prehistoric digs. I can’t recall seeing any prehistoric male figurines. That seems fairly indicative of matriarchal societies. Pre-agricultural, a tribe’s very survival depended upon sufficient procreation in a time when medical services were nonexistent. If there were prehistoric matriarchal societies, what led to the rise of patriarchal societies would be interesting to learn.
A society needs to tell itself a bunch of pretty lies in order to wallpaper over the Lovecraftian cracks in the walls which protect us from seeing the Horrors Outside — twist being that good number of them are Inside, and always have been. So the Really Good Lie has to be pretty and distracting and tell a compelling tale as well as keep the chilly drafts out.
One of those pretty lies is that Women are Nice. It comes and goes throughout history. More often than not, civilizations are more realistic about female nature — cf. Ancient Greeks, not to mention every legal code before C19 2H. Neither women or men are ‘Nice’. Both are capable of and indeed often do terrible things. Their stratagems differ a lot and the dominant feminized culture now constantly spews out a gigantic narcissistic word salad designed to divert all attention onto Men as the cause of all problems in the world.
A healthy society must have a healthy tension between reality and the lies it tells itself… probably they should not be too comfortable lies (complacency, stagnation?) but they cannot be diametrically opposed to Base Reality.
Anyway Deep Down, the Wimminz are all pining for someone to come along and bend the Bow of Ulysses… and give those other Pesky Bitches the What For. 😛
I’d like to include a bit from the end of the Fagles translation, but our Esteemed Hostess takes exception to my untethered allusions to Rope, Uses of.
Wonder if I could get away with Chapman’s Homer?
@ Geoffrey
Take a look at “When God Was a Women” at Wikipedia.*
Whether one accepts the author’s claims or not, it’s become a touchstone of feminist theology.
Robert Graves reaches similar conclusions in his “The White Goddess” but at least he throws in some solid analysis of poetic muse-worship.
Not surprisingly, both blame the overthrow of the matriarchy on The Jews, or at least the ancient Hebrews.
The assertion may have some historical validity, but I don’t see it as being so detrimental and negative as they do.
Artfldgr may agree with me.?
*I’m on vacation and links are hard to do on my tablet.
You guys are in luck – no 7 page screeds tonight!
A society needs to tell itself a bunch of pretty lies in order to wallpaper over the Lovecraftian cracks in the walls which protect us from seeing the Horrors Outside
It doesn’t. And normal people have a general sense of the problems in this world, which bear little resemblance to the imagination of the purveyors of horror fiction.
Apropos Greek myths- I read Graves’ “Hercules, My Shipmate” recently and really enjoyed it. The basic plot is to work as many myths and legends as possible into the story of Jason and the Argonauts, on the theory that all of them had some basis in the geography, history, and politics of the era.
@ArtDeco:
It does. Large part of the history of your (presumed) Race is that of ending up on the wrong end of what goes down when Other People’s Pretty Lies fracture. This rotation of the wheel, there’s a race on between fixing Whitey to be the Scapegoat and the arrival of the Collapse. Why that might be so is another topic. Good news is that this time around You’ll Be White, Too 😛
@AesopFan:
Have you read the works of Mary Renault? You might enjoy them. Some are historical and some set earlier are on the dividing line between mythos and ‘fact’.
@AesopFan:
Robert Graves wrote exceedingly well but was a bit of a &^%%$-whipped degenerate. The trenches broke him.. and a lot of other good men, too.
In the vein of Graves Breaking a Lance for Xanthippe (*), let me say Something Good About the Jews:
Nobody could EVER accuse the Jews of not being Matriarchal.
There. Be it so noted.
* The Case for Xanthippe
https://www.jstor.org/stable/4334072
Certainly more fun than talking about Biden or Polls (what are they, anyway?).
I’m a college-educated woman who used to vote Dem. As nearly as I can reconstruct my mindset from memory, I was a sort of Libertarian, inclined to worry about the dangers of a tyrannical government. I thought the federal budget should be balanced, believed neither party would control spending, and concluded I should support the Dems because they were realistic about setting taxes high enough to avoid excessive deficit spending. I also sensed that conservatives thought women weren’t quite citizens and trusted the Dems to support me in my goal to get a good education and support myself with a demanding, well-paying job, which I believed they would do by inspiring (requiring?) everyone to look at accomplishments rather than accidents of birth.
The walls began to crack when I encountered federal regulators on the other side of lawsuits. They were incompetent goons, clearly more interested in wielding arbitrary power than in either seeking the truth or fulfilling the ostensible goals of their agencies. Newt Gingrich got my attention with the argument that, while MacDonald’s may be derided as a crass commercial establishment, at least it stays in business only by giving people simple hot food that they’ll voluntarily pay a market price for, unlike, say, the DMV, which simply imposes its failure on us permanently. I was shocked to find that the economy improved after the Reagan tax cuts. I was horrified by the push for socialized medicine. Affirmative action looked increasingly like straight-up racism, and impractical to boot if we expect competence instead of optics; I had previously thought it meant training ourselves to notice talent instead of superficial similarities in the candidates we interviewed.
Somewhere during the second Clinton term the Dems lost me. The last straw may have been the bizarre reaction to 9-11: blaming us for inciting the Islamofascists with all those “root causes,” but a close second was the destruction of my individual-market health insurance for my own good in 2010.
In the last 20 years, of course, the Dems went from annoyingly wrong to crazy as a rat in a coffee can, with a dizzying acceleration during the last 5 years.
In all this time, I wasn’t trying to be “nice,” but I did labor under the delusion for some time that Dems were the party of meritocracy, honesty, and limited government power in the form of the Bill of Rights. I was young, and not paying close enough attention. It didn’t seem that I could find anyone remotely like myself among the ranks of Republicans; they all struck me as tiresome men who wanted women to stay home and bake cookies, with little value beyond good looks during youth.
AesopFan,
Blaming the “overthrow of the matriarchy” on The Jews is sheer poppycock. The Jews were never more than a regional power and most of the time a very minor regional power. Until the rise of Christianity under Constantine, neither was Christianity a dominant force. But the real factor that disproves that ‘theory’ is that Abraham lived long after matriarchal societies had begun to decline. Arguably, the Minoans were the last regional power to be matriarchal. In a world of Cain and Abels, women will always need protection from the Cains. As the Taliban are currently demonstrating.
“Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Whose gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinburg? … You don’t want the truth because deep down in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline.” Col. Jessup
“People sleep peaceably in their beds at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” George Orwell
Any peace loving society that forgets the absolute necessity for controlled violence is signing its own death warrant.
“If you would have peace, prepare for war.” Flavius Vegetius Renatus 390 B.C.E.
You might have been right about that, at least in part.
There is probably nothing wrong with a man wanting a Stepford Wife if they are both agreed on the terms of the contract. But then, he’s got some long term living up to do, if he expects that bargain to last.
More likely, like the old Viking, he will find himself toothlessly cursing a fate that has left him competing with children for a warm spot by the hearth.
I might have; once, back in High School. Something about ancient Greece or the Minoans.
There is some young hero, and some women he runs into. And some strange orgiastic homicides in the hills or an event like that. And then a volcano or a tidal wave happens. And then the survivors – it is implied have an orgy. And then, well, I don’t recall much more other than the feeling that they should all be killed for being so annoying.
I think that that was Renault’s book.
What I would really like is a pneumatic powered BB machine gun like they used to have at carnivals. Then I could really deal with the Squirrel Nutkin “tree rats” which infest my walnut and fruit trees.
I wonder how the Cretans dealt with squirrels. Did they even have squirrels in Crete? https://greekreporter.com/2021/05/13/minoan-language-linear-a-linked-to-linear-b-in-groundbreaking-new-research/
@DNW:
That rings a bell… Sounds like The Praise Singer featuring the poet Simonides. I thought she did a good job of capturing the whole Mediterranean Thing… Could almost see those Alma-Tadema skies and seas — if not the Victorian Hussies got up as Greeks and Romans.
But then I’m not jaundiced by the Squirrel Problem.
If you lived on the other side of the Wallace Line you wouldn’t have to worry about squirrels. But the natives would have confiscated your collection of all the good stuff. Those things that got stolen and mislaid long ago.
They must be hard to hit with a regular air rifle — little blighters don’t sit still much at all. We have a kind of Mini Wallace Line here: Monkeys in the Mainland parts of New Territories, but none in the Islands or on Hong Kong Island itself. Squirrels catch the subway in this mad place:
https://coconuts.co/hongkong/news/passengers-go-nuts-squirrels-spotted-mtr/
Does polling or even elections matter?
Courts don’t function.
Police don’t function.
Military operates as a junta (Milley, Austin).
Where do we go from here?
If the GOP can hopefully take back both the Senate and House (or even just one of those ) we can stymie a great deal of his Progressive agenda. However he will still have the media shilling for him and will serve out his term unless he (frankly) dies.
Sure, Biden’s polling numbers are bad when taken in a vacuum. It was doubtful he would have won the Democratic nomination if the primaries weren’t completely orchestrated under the guise of covid. So when they say only 65% of blacks or 41% of Hispanics approve of him, all that really means is that they would prefer another Democrat to be president, but if they had to vote for Biden again, they all would. Likewise, I think most Bernie Sanders followers would say that they disapprove of Biden in one of these polls. After all, they weren’t happy with him when they were saying he stole the nomination in 2020, yet they all ultimately voted for him because Trump was a greater evil.
“dargon on September 9, 2021 at 2:40 pm said:…”
Yes. Disapproval of Biden does not mean that they would vote for a Republican if forced to choose.
They are and don’t … some of them.
The generally inoffensive Fox or Greys are easily taken, even when on the move because of their size. Though one is tempted to let the suburban ones do their thing, even if it means their stripping your pear trees of half grown fruits, and ensuring that you never see a developed English walnut from your plantings. In other words “tolerance” and benevolence, until you finally either give up on your own projects, or upon living alongside them peaceably.
The whitetail deer have even become a nuisance and very bold all across American conurbia. Down in Charlotte and environs, they mosey across the landscaped lawns of mini-mansions, and languidly browse the flower beds and ornamental trees.
Red squirrels, are exactly the creatures you allude to. Looking almost like Chipmunks at a glance, save for the stripes and the cuteness, they constantly dart about as if on amphetamines. And if you want a creature expert at boring through fascia boards and soffits in order to get into attics and dormers, you could not choose a better animal.
They are hard to lead on the run, as they shift speed so often. And sitting still, as briefly as they do, they are a much smaller target at 90 feet than a fat Grey perched on a cottonwood limb eating a stolen apple.
I use a Spanish made, Beeman .177 knockoff of a famous German break barrel design. It has enough velocity to catch the Reds on the run. My childhood “Sheridan” .20 (famous among generations of American boys) is a bit too slow at distance, and one usually ends up over-pumping it in hopes of getting up beyond the 700 fps mark. Its virtue is that it shoots smoothly. I suppose the effect of the piston rushing forward in a break barrel design, is somewhat analogous (somewhat, I said “somewhat”) to shooting for single round accuracy with an open bolt rifle.
True air-gunners must be insane. At least by judging the prices they seem willing to pay, when a very accurate – if plain Jane – rifle could be had for less than half the price of some of them.
The .22 Short is a round that probably deserves a comeback.
@ Geoffrey > “Blaming the “overthrow of the matriarchy” on The Jews is sheer poppycock.”
Of course it is. I was only stating the opinions of Graves & the other author, whose name escapes me because she now uses one that is different than on the byline of my copy.
As I said, “Whether one accepts the author’s claims or not, it’s become a touchstone of feminist theology.”
@ Zaphod
I have a complete set of Renault’s books, including her early contemporary romances. Once she moved her attention to ancient Greece, her writing improved, but they are all still romances.
@DNW:
Figures. The ones I’ve seen have always been manic and have always been red.
I’ve seen a video of YouTube of someone dropping a Cape Buffalo with a heavy caliber air rifle. Quite something and not to be attempted without some conventional backup.
Reminds me of this hunting story:
Hemingway’s Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber — one for all the Rose-tinted Glasses Brigade in the Wimminz Dunnit Thread.
http://www.standardsinstitutes.org/sites/default/files/material/winter16_ela_9-12_day_2_session_1-macomber.pdf
Kim du Toit has been posting in his blog about his new (old) Mauser 1938 vintage. He said that when as a teenager he proudly took his first Mauser along to a family gathering back in the Old Transvaal or wherever, one of his uncles said:
U: What do you call a Boer without a Mauser?
KduT: Enlighten me, Ancient One.
U: An Englishman!
DNW,
The always instructive Ian McCollum on a .22LR submachine gun from the 1960s:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J50N5lQoAFw
Might be the right tool for your job. If you can find one.