Voters now prefer Biden??
I don’t want to be a downer – especially on Valentine’s Day – but what on earth is this about?:
Harvard CAPS/Harris (Jan. 28–29): Mark Penn’s polling firm found that 51% of registered voters say Trump is doing a worse job than Biden, compared with 49% who say he’s doing better.
Rasmussen Reports (Feb. 2–4): The Trump-friendly pollster is fending off MAGA criticism after finding that 48% of likely voters say Biden did a better job as president, compared with 40% who chose Trump. Another 8% said the two presidents have performed “about the same.”
YouGov/Economist (Feb. 6–9): This survey found that 46% of U.S. adults say Trump is doing a worse job than Biden, compared with 40% who say he’s doing better. Another 7% said “about the same.”
I would ignore the polls except for the inclusion of Rasmussen, usually quite accurate and also usually quite fair to the right.
More:
That first result represents an 18-point swing since the same poll was taken last February and 58 percent said Trump was doing a better job than Biden, versus 40 percent who said Biden was better.
It’s one thing to hate Trump, but that sort of swing doesn’t represent NeverTrumpers, who tend to be a stable Trump-hating group. What it does represent I’m not sure. The comments to the article are not especially helpful on that score either – I read quite a few and then gave up because they were the usual reflexive ha-ha-ha MAGA-bashing junk.
What do I think this is about? My guess is that those who prefer Biden are a combination of the following: Democrats who’ve always hated Trump and always will, plus Independents who’ve been swayed by all the negative coverage (especially of ICE), some Tucker-type Republicans who think Trump doesn’t hate Jews enough and isn’t isolationist enough, plus independents and people on the right who are angry that Trump hasn’t just snapped his fingers and made the economy well-nigh perfect overnight. In addition, I think many people have very short memories.
It’s depressing, though. And yes, I think at least some of it is real. That doesn’t mean it’s set in stone, but it’s worrisome.
Cleaning up the mess which Biden made is difficult but fairly straightforward. Much more difficult and ultimately more important is cleaning up the mess which made Biden. We have too many who simply do not understand the country.
Reigning in the EPA, exposing our Black Robed Rulers, exposing the massive fraud and theft, eliminating the mad mullah nuke card, restoring what it means to be and how one becomes an American citizen; all of these things are to difficult for theTikTok generation to comprehend?
“1984” was a how to manual and “Idiocracy” appears to have been a documentary. “Handsmaid’s Tale” – my ass.
Another registered voter poll, which all pollsters and journalists know don’t accurately measure the sentiment of voters, and so there’s little point in making an attempt to explain the result, which is going driven by how the poll weighting was done and not what actual voters think.
They report on these things purely to set a narrative.
Niketas:
The Rasmussen poll is of likely voters. Rasmussen has a good track record in recent years.
It has ever been so, some people are determined to assist in paving the road to hell with their good intentions.
“There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, But the end thereof are the ways of death.” Proverbs 14: 12 KJV
@neo:Rasmussen poll is of likely voters
I missed that one of the four is of likely voters, thank you for the correction. But we can’t learn much about the details of that Rasmussen poll. Your linked article is Yahoo, which copied from Mediaite, which quotes Axios, which links to Rasmussen, which is behind a paywall, so we’re just taking Axios’s word for it at three levels of remove, but the headline describes it as a poll about “America’s Golden Age”, and I suspect there’s a lot of nuance hiding behind the Axios summary.
What I can see that’s not paywalled says
@neo: … plus Independents who’ve been swayed by all the negative coverage (especially of ICE)…
That’s where I land. I suspect Trump does too. Hence, the ICE pullback in Minnesota.
VDH’s latest podcast deals with the midterms and the Trump administration’s challenging, but possible routes to victory. Mainly get the economy humming and don’t do stupid stuff which antagonizes voters.
–“Victor Davis Hanson: Trump, Beware—These ‘Unforced Errors’ Could Hand Democrats a Midterm Win”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQYHao2pVjw
We’re still a pretty evenly divided country and Trump has been getting a lot of bad press regarding ICE and the Epstein files. The relatively good economic data takes some time to filter down and most people are still feeling the effects of inflation. So I’m not really surprised by these results.
One note about the Rasmussen poll — Mark Mitchell, who conducts the Rasmussen poll, is not so Trump friendly these days. If you look at his X page, it’s filled with Epstein file posts and warnings about war with Iran. Mitchell is part of a group of former MAGA supporters who have become increasingly anti-Trump after the bombing of Iran nuclear sites. Theoretically this shouldn’t effect his polling but I think it does.
“Depressing.” Absolutely. And “worrisome” too. On top of that, it’s hard to understand. No matter how much one hates Trump, how on earth could a voter think Biden was better than any president we’ve ever had. Do these people even have a brain?
Would be interested to see the figures for:
1. Married women, no college degree
2. Married women, college degree
3. Single women, no college degree
4. Single women, college degree
My bet is it splits as follows pro-Trump/anti-Trump:
65/35
55/45
45/55
25/75
I think it’s the “make it stop” people who don’t like all the so-called chaos. It reminds me of 1972-74, the last time the left launched distributed violent attacks to topple a President that wouldn’t cave to their demands.
F:
I can assure you many of them have brains; I know plenty of them, and in most areas of their lives they are quite intelligent. They hate Trump with the heat of a thousand suns, so of course they think Biden was better.
The ones who puzzle me are the ones who voted for Trump in 2024 but don’t like him now and prefer Biden now.
I’m going to take a guess people think the economy is still bad because prices haven’t come down. In order for them to come down we’d need deflation and that would be bad. (But the average voter is for that because they’re economically illiterate and it sounds good. )
The Ds will take the House come next January; possibly the Senate as well. Probably the Presidency come Jan 29. That will be the end.
huxley (5:48 pm) counsels the Trump administration:
“Mainly get the economy humming and don’t do stupid stuff which antagonizes voters.”
That latter suggestion appears to me to go thoroughly against Trump’s grain and actual being. In fact, aside from sincerely trying (I believe) to Make America Great Again, “do[ing] stupid stuff which antagonizes voters” seems to me to be what makes the man tick, his chief raison d’être in life. I wish it (along with many other things) weren’t so.
Consequently, I’m inclined right now to agree with DT (6:27 pm): “That will be the end.”
I think the biggest driver is all the ICE coverage. It bothers a lot of ordinarily Trump leaning people who support deportation but think ICE is too heavy handed.
IMO so much is likely to happen that it is impossible to know how things will look on election day.
I say To H with polls.
I’m with the commenters who say narrative setting. This is about demoralizing, setting the worriers to worrying, sapping the will, undermining the changes we voted for. Yeah negative ICE coverage – they maze the country with a constant drumbeat message, make stuff up, and eventually the soft, smart, Nice People are going to turn.
Are we going to succumb to mob rule? Every time there’s a president the Left doesn’t like, they take the streets and burn, rampage, actively try to create a bad response from the LEOs, and then when they get what they’re after they scream see see??!! Horrible feds! Trump is evil! And all the Nice People clutch their pearls and gasp in horror and take to the fainting couches.
If there really is a majority of people who think the cabbage with the autopen was better than Trump there’s really no hope left. While I do think there are too many soft, smart, Nice People who think this, I doubt there’s a majority of them. It’s herding, narrative boosting. There will be those who fall for it. What’s that quote about an idea so ridiculous that only an intellectual will fall for it?
The’ve gone openly wobbly.
Leftists setting up neighborhood checkpoints and demanding papers or loyalty to the cause doesn’t outrage them. Couldn’t happen to them, so who cares, they are “safe.” Struggle session? What’s that?
Cowed. They always were wobbly.
The donkeys are drowning and gasping for air. The wussy repubs hate the turmoil. Trump can’t let up even if it means civil war. If there was a next time, Trump dies in prison, Hegseth is tried for war crimes. Revenge, revenge, revenge . They told us so. Trump and all who aided him or supported him. So it is existential for both sides.
If voters are swayed by what ICE is doing what do they want? Continual murder, rape, kidnapping, human trafficking by illegal aliens? Don’t do anything because someone might be hurt? Voters with no determination to see something through. We are as soft as chewed bubblegum.
Do we deserve this country?
Richard Cook (9:46 pm), et al:
Those who believe what ICE has been doing is wrong likely don’t believe how many awful crimes illegals have committed.
I’m so tired of those who believe illegals commit fewer crimes.
Like Trump has said, prisons were emptied (–maybe mental health asylums too — Do many foreign countries really have those??).
But I do believe multiple countries emptied prisons & effectively said “Head to America. Destroy it.”
The “compassionate” left think most foreigners who break in here are just looking for honest work.
With all I’ve seen of the crimes, especially over the latest decade — all the angel families, plus victim survivors, plus all the fraud uncovered recently — I am quite done with even wishing that was true. (Well. Some days are worse than others.).
That’s simply naive to think they are “mostly innocent”.
The culture differences are killing us. Literally and figuratively. Following our laws is largely a stretch, it seems.
And MSM censoring the truth — by lies and by omission — is a horrid and effective smokescreen & drug that continues to fool so many.
…. re: Trump:
I can hardly believe what some neighbors think they KNOW of Trump. He’s a racist! He’s anti-lgbtxyz!!
What the heck????
Show me!!
How do we side step or avoid the leftist indoctrinated media?
Only speak to selected conservative Substackers and bloggers and web based proponents, along with conservative think tanks and related NGO’s for election integrity and similar causes?
Then the “nominal media” would have to contact the more conservative groups to find out “what did he say?” to fill their readers and viewers with something that might not be tripe or distorted (but it will be)??
The media may be losing ground, but not fast enough to bring the “more or less ordinary” Democrat back from the brink of idiocy. And as Neo and others have mentioned, polling is an art form as much as a social science, depending on how the questions are framed, presented, analyzed, etc.
BigD, “I’m going to take a guess people think the economy is still bad because prices haven’t come down. … which requires deflation. … ”
Yes, how I wish public ed was better!!
Also, 2 factors that won’t rewind nor “wear off”, which keep many prices higher:
1) all the wage increases that happened for some types of “essential jobs” thru-out COVID, and as people returned to the labor force as the lockdown waned.
The staffing shortage meant employers HAD to raise wages, and the Left labeled that has “fair and overdue”.
Every job must come with a “liveable wage”!
As if every person must be able to afford to live alone!
. . .
2) Theft! The crazy increase in retail theft had enormous costs to us all.
Stores had to implement new strategies, & of course that included higher prices. Especially since city leaders often didn’t/don’t take retail theft seriously.
…
We lost so many businesses due to un-stoppable theft. And who can blame the surviving businesses for not reducing prices??
Even now, the theft continues. Too many people seemed to decide they were entitled.
I see it often.
It’s very depressing.
The midterms are always uphill for the incumbent President’s party. However the exceptions are:
1934 – Democrats under FDR
1998 – Democrats under Clinton
2002 – Republicans under George W. Bush
These are exceptional times and Trump is an exceptional president.
Too early to call.
I know of couple of people who voted for Trump and now are “getting tired of him.”
Is it “short-term” memory as they have forgotten how bad Biden was?
And, yes, they are believing all the negative media about Trump.
But, none of them have told me that they prefer Biden now over Trump. So, that is a puzzle!
I too am skeptical about polls, and if a poll is reported in the Democrat Media, forget about it!
========
I go to a shopping mall almost every day. It could just be the weather, but my unscientific impression over the last week is that business is picking up.
Marlene
We are a country that revels in ignorance. I have long seen that we are unserious on the whole. Immune to correction and not willing accept that there is absolute truth.
The left is the enemy. They want to destroy the country. I believe the average American would rather bury their head in the sand. The old saying preferring sweet lies to bitter truths applies. I really don’t think the average American can accept that:
The Left wants to remake us into Progressive/Communist.
The Left wants to practice genocide against whites.
Islam wants to convert us by the sword.
Network news lies as naturally as they breath
Etc,etc,etc.
Because if they recognize it, then, if you want to keep the country you have to do something.
I like most of Trump’s program(s). But the way he runs his mouth annoys me no end. It’s not merely the subject. He starts a sentence in the middle of a sentence, usually about a subject only partially, if at all, related, Brags, Sheesh.
Recently, two women have cut me off in Facebook. One, I worked with in a field project in the Sixties. She was having problems and my partner was a good listener so I was at least sitting nearby, Bailed her out of a physically dangerous issue. Brief on-line contact about the forty-year reunion. Caught up with her recently. Usual thing at our age; hubby in memory care in St. Paul, other things okay. Asked if I were MAGA. Nope, but conservative. Cut me off instantly.
Another who’d had a really hard time more recently. My wife and I worked pretty hard getting her set back up, including some stuff women couldn’t do. I don’t hate Trump enough, so I’m cut off,
No loss. Thing is….what is it with these people?
To a different cohort, what on God’s Green Hills was there about Biden that they would prefer that era and that way of doing things? WHAT!?
To the extent we discuss such things, they claim as if they believe, that things were going really well back then.
We have an assistant pastor who was born in the US but whose parents were Pacific Islanders. She said she and her kids carry passports in case they’re pulled over for speeding or something. Apparently presumes nobody knows Obama gave Homan and award for deporting over 900k people.
It’s beyond lying to others, or getting one’s facts wrong.
It’s lying to oneself, forcing one to believe that which one knows from experience is untrue.
Why?
“It’s lying to oneself, forcing one to believe that which one knows from experience is untrue.
Why?”
I have several stories like yours, including close family members. The only answer I can give to your question is an overarching white hot hatred of Trump. How that hatred comes about seems to depend on the individual and their previous mindset. though in the case of my BiL it really came down to brainwashing. He retired. He had always spent an inordinate amount of time with the TV. After retirement he basically spent his entire day watching CNN, then MSNBC, then the late night shows. How many more like him?
Those without a life find a purpose in hunting and hating The Great Orange Whale. The media and their social groups (other cult members) give them constant dopamine rage reinforcements. Their rage extends well beyond the main object, TGOW, to the other 1/3 to 1/2 of US citizens and conversely they love anyone in the world who is thought be a potential ally. Hence any black or brown insufficiently full of rage and hate for TGOW is race traitor.
The mistake that the right makes is focusing too much on the left and assuming that everyone who is not on the left is, by default, on the right.
The truth is that the people who decide elections (and decide the outcome of polls like this) are neither left nor right. Many of these folks voted for Trump in 2024 not because they wanted peak MAGA. They voted for Trump in 2024 because the had recent experience of how awful Democrats’ governance was and all of the things that they hated about Trump were four years in the past. The most recent memories of Trump in 2024 were of Trump as the victim of unfair lawfare, a condition that (incidentally) was often accompanied by gag orders that prevented Trump from being Trump and reminding these normies of why they didn’t like him. So as between Trump and the continuation of Biden/Harris, many of these folks chose Trump as the lesser of two evils.
Well, now we’ve had a year of Trump taking every aspect of governance to the extreme in a way that he did not do the first time around, while memories of Biden’s governance (or lack thereof) have started to fade from memory a bit.
Of course these normie folks who decide elections are going to swing back to the Democrats and begin to remember the Biden years more fondly, just as poll showed these same folks begin to remember the Trump 45 years more fondly while Biden was around every day to remind them why they disliked him.
Related corollary – a lot of folks around here, when confronted with Trump’s less palatable qualities and actions, seem to justify Trump by saying that they are willing to put up with these things to keep Democrats out of power. Well, yes, you may be, but the relevant question is whether 50% of voters plus one are willing to do the same? Are people who are not MAGA and not on the right, who selected Trump as the lesser of two evils are going to make the calculation now as memories of Biden/Harris fade and Trump is all over the news every day? Are they going to make the same lesser of two evils decision next year and in 2028 when there is a different Democrat on the ballot who can pose as a “new” kind of Democrat with the slovenly support of the press?
I’m actually amazed that so many are surprised by this.
How would concerned conservative (CC™ – Bauxite) know a f’en thing about what motivated anyone to vote for The Great Orange Whale(TGOW -President Trump)?
l stopped reading CC™’s latest screed after his bold assertion of insight about the TGOW voter.
CC™ is ever and always wobbly.
Too many voters base their voting decisions on how they feel about a candidate and just ignore the policies a candidate will support.
I would be curious to learn what percent of democrat voters support open borders or requiring voter ID.
I will speculate that even if these voters oppose open borders and support voter ID they will still vote for the democrat nominee.
Unbelievable.
The best argument against democracy is a 5 minute conversation with the average voter.
Churchill
The best argument against democracy is a 5 minute conversation with the average voter!
Churchill
Growing up in a crazy, self-destructive family has its advantages. I’m never surprised when people make poor, irrational choices.
I’m mostly surprised societies work as well as they do.
@Sennacherib: Churchill
Noted Gen X commentator Kyle Churchill, no doubt, because Winston Spencer didn’t talk like that and never said any such thing and this quote has no documentation before 1995. It’s not Winston Churchill the best-selling American novelist either.
Re: Famous Quotes — Rule of Thumb
Nobody never said nothing!
An actual 1947 quote from the big Churchill about democracy–which he says is not original to him:
The sentiment is the polar opposite of “5 minutes’ conversation with the average voter”, and the diction is rather different too. The past is a foreign country, as the fella says.
One wonders why the soft Nice People who squirm and go wobbly over the media’s portrayal of ICE methods under continuous local government-sanctioned mob harassment never lost any sleep over Laken Riley and others like her. One wonders if they even know who Laken Riley was, or who was president at the time, and who was overseeing the policies that allowed that to happen.
One also wonders if ICE really is as bad as portrayed, since the complaints are only from places where local government has encouraged mob harassment tactics against them. ICE has done their job quickly and quietly in most states and cities. The trouble occurs in so-called Sanctuary States and Cities.
One wonders about these soft, smart, wobbly, Nice People so concerned about ICE and their methods and the need to Follow The Law, yet by their very existence Sanctuary States and Cities are in open defiance of The Law.
It also appears that the soft, wobbly, Nice People never stop to consider that they may be the next Laken Riley. Vote (D) and find out how it feels to be easy prey.
Related?
“Fetterman Reveals His Parents Are Trump Supporters, Refuses To Call MAGA Voters ‘Nazis’”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/fetterman-reveals-his-parents-are-trump-supporters-refuses-call-maga-voters-nazis
So is Fetterman living on borrowed time?
(Or will he be POTUS48?)
+ Bonus:
Turley:
https://instapundit.com/776468/
Key graf:
The nice wobbly folk are in the choir of crickets when a struggle session is brought uninvited into a church.
How expected, the sheep that won’t even bleat.
om-
I am blessed to be Eastern Orthodox. No struggle sessions
I’m fortunate to live in Eastern Washington far away from the Puget Sound and far, far away from Malignant Malicous Minnesotans – 3M. Now The Land of Ten Thousand Flakes?
My father is probably spinning in his Uppsala, MN grave.
@om: Malignant Malicous Minnesotans – 3M
3M was originally the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company.
I’ve long been amused that the adhesive in Post-It Notes was a failed 3M attempt to create a powerful glue.
Then someone realized there was a use for a weak adhesive that didn’t leave residue. Voilà! Post-It Notes.
Our current problem is that we haven’t found the right use case for Antifa
Minnesotans. 🙂
No surprise. Our side is losing the information war. The media has been pounding relentlessly about Trump’s “Gestapo” operations. In another area, I’ve noticed a significant recent uptick in YouTube short videos, presenting reasonably sounding people (no colored hair, nose rings, or tats) calmly discussing such operations (carefully sidestepping the “illegal” word when discussing immigration). And I recently read that Apple TV (I think that the right name) has zero conservative voices presenting news.
On top of all this at home, it looks like we’re going to get involved in yet another Midwest war. I think the country is tired of such — I know I am. If it does kick off, it had better go our way.
@Occasional Commenter: …If it does kick off, it had better go our way.
Aye. There’s the rub.
Those wondering why Trump didn’t act swiftly after the mullahs started killing protesters… There you go.
This is different!
How incumbent is it on the average voter to know issues? To know truth or falsehood? Since we have no standard, other than feelings and “where’s mine”, with which to measure events, legislation and politicians it seems more likely that people will be swayed by BS. What responsibilities do voters have? None?
Sennacherib on February 15, 2026 at 11:12 am
Your Churchill comment deserves a double posting. Even if it is not from that Churchill.
Huxley:
“Our current problem is that we haven’t found the right use case for Antifa
Minnesotans.”
My first thought was to dig a hole about 2 feet in diameter and about 4 or 5 feet deep, then add a bag or two of ready mixed concrete and a pail or two of water. Probably best to wait for summer.
Occasional Commenter: “it looks like we’re going to get involved in yet another Midwest war”
Minnesota vs. South Dakota?
FOAF, Lol.
I was wondering something similar!
.
Richard Cook: “voter’s responsibility” vs feelings and “where’s mine?”
This issue has led me to want to raise the minimum age to vote.
That age might even vary.
As in “2 years after you’ve gotten a real job” — full-time. Can’t be civil service. Lol.
Also, I want to require some sort of “common sense” test, in order to vote.
(– I know that could never happen, or not in an effective manner. But wouldn’t that be great?!)
R2;
I wouldn’t try it, if I were you. Ask Dark Age Britons how they did when the various Viking warships landed. The smart Brits ran and hid. The dumb ones became Viking thralls, or worse yet, fertilizer for British farmland. The Viking toast “Skoal!” comes from the word “skull”, due to their habit of drinking mead from the skulls of their enemies.
And the descendants of those Vikings? They crossed an ocean and battled their way thousands of miles through blizzards, famine, and hardship…so they could live in a place just as cold and miserable as the one they left (ie Wisconsin and Minnesota).
Skoal! 😉
But seriously, folks, just remember Occam’s Razor: the simplest explanation is usually the correct one.
There’s no media conspiracy. There’s no left wing cabal. The voters chose Trump in 2024 because they thought he could make “the groceries” (how he loves that word!) prices go down. They didn’t vote for him to start a war over Greenland. They didn’t vote for him to slap his name on the Kennedy Center. They didn’t vote for him to tear down the West Wing so he could build a ballroom bigger than the White House itself.
They voted for him to bring food prices down. Period.
Has he done so?
Check out your grocery bill: everything is up across the board. Coffee prices alone have nearly doubled. And why? Because Trump has slapped tariffs on everything. Think the tariffs don’t apply to your green beans? Think again: if they come in a can, they’re up in price because of the steel tariffs. And no, foreign countries aren’t paying the tariffs: we lucky grocery shoppers get to pay them. The higher the grocery prices go, the lower Trump’s approval falls. He might get some breathing space if he took off the tariffs, but he will never do that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17CsLvJS4cc&list=RD17CsLvJS4cc&start_radio=1
— Huxley
This^^.
The midterms are still 8 and half months away. A lot can happen in 8 and half months. This far out, a lot of voters aren’t even fully engaged.
— Bauxite
This^^^.
There is a substantial pool of voters who vote primary against. They detest both parties, and so tend to favor whoever is out of power, because it’s the way to get rid of the current guy. This isn’t new, it’s true of every election.
There are also many voters who just want the culture wars, the disputes, the intractable arguments, to just go away already. They hate the Democrat ‘protests’ and they hate the GOP enforcement efforts. They want people to calm down and just get along. Which can’t happen, but they want it.
That said, it should be kept in mind that another truth is that ‘swing voters’ rarely decide Federal elections. Usually, the prime factor is turnout. Whichever side turns out their own voters better wins, or conversely, depending on how you want to look at it, whichever side motivates their own side less well loses. Swing voters decide elections when both parties turn out their base voters about equally well. This is doubly true in off-year elections, when many voters just aren’t engaged at all.
— Richard Cook
Yep.
My own mother was a Republican and a conservative who detested Bill Clinton, and thought the Democrats were corrupt, but she used to criticize me for saying that they actually hated America and that the liberal left was a worse threat than the Islamists.
She did eventually come around, toward the end of her life she admitted that she had simply not been able to believe that they could be that bad. It was just alien to her. But eventually the evidence forced her to admit it, years later.
Republicans taking voter studies often found the same reaction with focus groups of independent voters, when told what the Biden Administration was doing regarding immigration, they refused to believe it. Not what the BA wanted to do, but what they had already factually done. It was just too alien, too weird and bizarre, they couldn’t imagine that anyone would want to do that.
— John Tyler
Absolutely, and in many cases their motivation is no puzzle. It’s easy to forget that a huge swath of reliable Democratic voters are voting for them in spite of their immigration and social positions. They’re voting against Republic economics.
It’s easy to overlook just how many people are terrified of the idea of ’19th century classical liberalism’ as an economic approach. And I do mean terrified.
I can still remember back in the eighties, when adult members of my family were turning against their life-long Democrat support because of the military, social, and other bad ideas. The same reasons most of us on this site oppose them. Nascent ‘Reagan Democrats’, people who would later become the GOP base.
But I also remember them saying, many of them and more than once, that they were scared of what the GOP would do to them economically. The GOP were the party of the employer, and perceived as hostile to employee interests. That fear is still in place.
I can still remember when NAFTA was being pushed through by a GOP/Democrat alliance under Clinton. I was hearing reliable Republican voters referring to their own Senators and Congressmen as ‘traitors’ for supporting it, and they meant ‘traitors to their country’, not the Party. That’s how intense the economic hostility is.
It doesn’t help that the Republicans who are squishiest on immigration are doing it precisely because of business interests.
— Occasional Commenter
Maybe we are, and maybe we’re not. It’s hard to be sure in today’s wide-distributed media environment. Yeah, the former MsM is pounding hard on the narrative, but they just don’t have the audience power they did even five years ago.
@BJ
You know, I was going to criticize Bauxite some more but lo and behold, you have managed to upstage him in basically every way. So prepare for some remedial history, foreign affairs, and economics.
Of course you wouldn’t, because you ignore how AntifA has actually been fought and crushed in the past by actually applying the law. Moreover I note that a lot of what R2L calls “Minnesota Antifa” are not in fact from Minnesota at all, as the misnamed Robin Good can attest.
But that pales in comparison to what you have to peddle here.
You can see for yourself. May I suggest the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles? The Welsh “Chronicles of the Princes”? The Treaty of Perth?
If you stretch the definition of “Briton” and are willing to dabble in even more overtly fantasy stuff you could go with the propagandistic “War of the Irish and the Foreigners.” Suffice it to say, this isn’t going to go well for you or the claim you are trying to make. I would know, I’ve actually studied, written, and wargamed in this period and era, and even worked as a consultant or playtester.
Only for a time. Even Aelfred the Great had to alternatively run and hide or pay off the “Danes”, but only as a means to an end as he gathered strength to fight them off. Indeed, too much running and hiding or paying off was a bad idea, just ask the Franks across the Channel or King Edmund of East Anglia, better known as St. Edmund the Martyr.
In truth, while the “Great Heathen Host/Army” (Host is closer to the original meaning of the term) did strike Britain like a sledgehammer and rolled up all but one, maybe one and a half of the Saxon Kings and a host of smaller Brythonic polities inside of a decade, Aelfred and the West Saxon and Mercian gentry rallied and resisted, and from 875-8 they so turned the tide they killed off one of the major Viking leaders (Ubba) and destroyed his army, then pursued one of the others so far they actually shut him up in his fort and forced him to convert and make peace, hence Wedmore and the conversion of Guthrum/”Aethelstan”, ensuing about a generation of RELATIVE peace between the consolidating Wessex and the Brythonic groups on one side and the former Vikings/Norse settlers. And when it was broken in the early 900s, it was as a result of a succession crisis after Aelfred’s death between Aelfred’s son and his deceased elder brother’s with the Norse interfering on behalf of the rebellious cousin, only to (admittedly) narrowly lose in a “Won the battle lost the war” kind where their claimant died after a victory.
Edmund, Aelfred’s successor, retaliated by conquering about half of the territory that his father’s treaty and fending off attempts to make headway there while the Scots united with what was left of the Picts after the latter suffered a devastating defeat to the Norse and began driving the Norse out of the lowlands. A generation later, Aethelstan finished reconquering the Norse held territories, fought off several Viking attacks, and in fact pushed things so far that the Norse rulers of Dublin, the Norse pretenders to York/Jorvik, and the Celtic kings of Strathclyde and Scotland united to try and stop the surging English at Brunaburh. And failed, with the Norse being driven out of Britain or forced to bend the knee while Strathclyde and Scotland accepted English vassalage.
There’d be a few decades more drama in the North with the likes of Erik Bloodaxe trying to reclaim a hold to little avail before the major British polities consolidated, suffering little more than Scandinavian raids. Again, all of this happening within a century of the Great Heathen Host’s arrival on Britain.
To be fair, there WERE still raids (even if increasingly ineffectual ones) and some limited intrigue in the North. But it wouldn’t be until about a century after the Great Heathen Host and a half a century after Brunaburh before the Norse actually had much success in Britain again. And that owed to a really unfortunate matchup/
A: One of the worst British Kings (easily, EASILY in the top five, possibly a worse human being and ruler than even the justly hated John), Aethelraed the Unraed/poorly counseled/unready of England, who “suspiciously benefitted from” the murder of his brother the sitting King, and then imposed a brutal rule over England elevating corrupt and brutal favorites like Eadric Streona to power, while being unable to mount effective opposition to the opportunistic Norse raids. Which he made worse first by excessively paying them off after gutting his own military due to the aforementioned purges and favoritism, and then doing an about face and trying to basically Final Solution the Norse in Britain on St. Brice’s Day in a world where much of the population had mixed Scandinavian ancestry and they were overwhelmingly Christian, with St. Brice’s Day Massacre going down in infamy in history.
B: The dynamic father-son duo of Sweyn Forkbeard and Cnut (the famous “Canute” off the much-misunderstood tides parable), who were among the best rulers and warriors of their time or that Scandinavia ever produced, and who were accomplished Christian Viking warlords. Who among other things had a relative killed in the aforementioned massacre by Aethelraed.
So the result was not a very fair fight, in large part due to large swaths of the English and Welsh leadership defecting from Aethelraed to the Dano-Norweigians due to believing (correctly on the whole) they’d be better rulers. Not helped by an ongoing civil war between Aethelraed and his own son Edmund the Ironsided. For a time it seemed like Edmund might actually be able to overcome the hole his father had dug but then he also-conveniently died, with the result being that Cnut was recognized as King of England, forming a triple empire of three crowns (England, Norway, and Denmark) across the North Sea.
And even then it only lasted about 30 years before Cnut’s sons died off and in England were replaced by a younger son of Aethelraed who cleverly played off Cnut’s sons against each other and waited for them to die off. Ironically had you wanted a better example you’d have picked France (which suffered even more from Viking attacks and ultimately ceded far more of its territory to the Norse on a more permanent basis, though still as vassals rather than the relative equals of Wedmore) or Russia. But that would require knowing history.
In any case, the Vikings, the “Northmen”, were justifiably feared and cast a long and formidable shadow over Europe, North Africa, and even the Middle East in their heyday as adventurers, mercenaries, pirates, explorers, and even conquerors. But they suffered from major glass jaws in that they rarely managed to outright conquer the territories they harried, and even when they did they tended to be booted out or forced to assimilate inside of a generation or two due to things like tactical inflexibility, low population numbers leading to them being dominated by either locals or inflowing foreigners/thralls (gee, where might that be relevant here?) or so on.
Suffice it to say, the last great Vikings got wiped out over the course of the early 1000s, with Harald Hardrada falling at Stamford Bridge in 1066, the Norse being driven out of the Scottish isles in 1263, and conversion happening steadily at the time eroding the religious and economic basis for the Vikings. Heavy losses probably didn’t help either.
Tell me you know Farq All about the Old Norse or Vikings without saying that.
Firstly: You’re using the term “Viking” wrong. Viking isn’t a nationality. It isn’t even a cultural identity. It is an activity. One is not a “Viking” properly, one GOES A VIKING, as in goes out to be a raider or pirate from the bay (Vik in old Norse). And while many of those were of course Norse, a majority of Scandinavians/Norse would probably never have been a Viking in their LIVES, while actual Viking crews could include plenty of Scandinavians but also others such as renegade Franks/English/Frisians or others like Lithuanians or Balts.
Secondly: This sounds about right until you actually do the arcane method of “Asking why the Farq Old Norse warriors would be screaming something about a SKULL in what is not merely English but MODERN ENGLISH (which unlike Old English – which was closely related and mutually intelligible with old Norse, had several centuries of Latin and Celtic influences and linguistic drift)” and “Asking what the Etymologies of Skull in English are.”
In reality the thing the Norse would have shouted, Skoal/skål, has a very, VERY different if distantly related etymology to both the Old English and Old Norse “Skalle/Sculle” meaning Skull. In reality Skoal derives from the Old Norse/Germanic “skaal” or “husk/shell”, which later went on to mean bowl, cup, or so on. And while they LOOK way similar to us when we write them out like that, they are pronounced and written significantly differently, as you might guess from the different transliterations I’ve tried and how one emphasizes the long aaa sound that evolved into an o-a, and the other emphasizes an l-l-e.
Now, are these words and languages related? Yeah, probably though distantly. And it’s not hard to see how a word that means “Husk, Shell” would gradually diverge into children to both mean “Skull” and “Bowl/Goblet.” But they’re far more different and distant in that relationship than what you’re claiming.
To put it in simple terms, this would be akin to listening to knowing “Mort/Mord” in French means Death or Kill, hearing the nickname “Mort’, and concluding it originates from a title for a brutal killer of men, perhaps an executioner caste or a feared warrior elite.
When in reality the name “Mortimer” – Still Pond – has basically nothing to do with “Mort as Death” and it is just a trick of linguistics, as false a friend as “Gift Haus” would be to a tourist in a German speaking country.
Why do I mention this in such autistic detail that is at best tangential to the “points” you were trying to make? Do I just like seeing myself write?
Firstly: Yes, to a point.
Secondly: To underline how absolutely little you have actually done the research on these people or this history, as shown furthermore with your attempts to paint the “Viking Master Race” nonsense on Dark Age Britons, in spite of the fact that said Dark Age Britons ultimately came to grips with said Vikings and beat the tar out of them inside of a century, and indeed had broken the high point of Viking conquests inside of a decade.
Thirdly: To emphasize how while you want to make a grand point about how in touch with the common people you are by appealing to references of tariffs cascading onto our groceries and how you know how tariffs work, you apparently have so little understanding of how common people actually live.
Apparently at no point in this entire misbegotten trash heap of a paragraph did it EVER Occur to you to think that MOST OLD NORSE PEOPLE WOULD NOT BE VIKINGS and EVEN MOST VIKINGS WOULD NOT BE A-VIKING FULL TIME, and that even the most hardy of iron age pirates and mercenaries – to say nothing of more weekend warriors or their families – would spend EXPOENTIALLY MORE TIME getting a drink like – you know – humans kind of need to do than cleaving skulls or viking across the coast, and that it’d be EXPONENTIALLY UNLIKELY that such a common phrase would come down to us as the result of some bigwig ring-giver cutting off some notable’s head, cleaning it out to use as a goblet, and then toasting themselves and the gods to their hall, presumably full of people who had to make use of less noteworthy skulls for their drinks or – Vanir and Aesir forbid! – normal, non-fatal drinks like wooden or stone goblets.
But please, please tell me how you, BJ the Learned Everything You Know About Car Physics From TV Shows or How the demand for Drinking Vessels even in Scandinavia would vastly outstrip the supply of Skulls, comprehend how normal people live and what the real world is like.
Lol. Lmao. Lmaof. No. No they did not.
Firstly: Most of the descendants of those Vikings that actually did cross an ocean and battled their way across thousands of miles though blizzards, famine, and hardship to places like Iceland, Greenland, or Vinland either went back to Scandinavia or DIED as the Medieval Warm Period gave way to the Little Ice Age, with the locals driving off or forcibly assimilating the few people from the Greenland Colony that stopped off at L’Anse aux Meadows and other North American continental timber and hunting stations, while the Greenland colony got hit with a mixture of its own logistical isolation and outright famine and ice that would see what few survivors assimilate with the Thule and other Amerindian peoples, forming a passing genetic imprint that would be all that would be left of them when Scandinavians finally regained contact with Greenland decades later. While Iceland combusted into anarcho-feudal civil war and then Norwegian autocracy that so hollowed things out when the British started picking on them in 1807 there was no gunpowder on the entire island to ward off their raids.
The descendants of the Vikings and other Old Norse that ACTUALLY SETTLED Minnesota overwhelmingly came meekly and law abidingly over the course of the 1800s and especially 1900s as poor farmers or at best middle class professionals seeking a better life, checking in in legal checkpoints like Ellis Island and having to prove themselves. This is not surprising considering that after the Viking Age the power of the Scandinavian states in general waned heavily for about 300 years before the 1500s, and this sort of last great flourishing of Scandinavian power in the 1500s-1700s seeing things like the Kalmar Union and its collapse, Denmark-Norway, the Swedish Empire and its Lion of the North and Deluge of Poland, and so on before it all combusted in a mixture of fratricidal wars and defeat from the emerging powers in Germany, Britain, and especially Russia, with the last great conquering army in Scandinavian history being wiped out in the years long aftermath of Poltava while what Scandinavian overseas colonies were sniped by other powers (New Sweden for instance being conquered by the Dutch with little fanfare) or left to wither (like the Danish West Indies). You see periodic ghosts of Scandinavian possible resurgences with things like the brief Danish victory over a united Germany in 1848, the Norwegian push for independence or war from Sweden, and the old North’s attempts to ward off Nazi Germany and the Soviets in WWII, but these were ultimately fleeting, mostly failed, and short lived, much like the desperate 19th century Swedish re-adoption of the Tricorne as part of a military uniform as kind of a desperate LARP of when they were a great power to be reckoned with.
Which is why the Scandinavians that came to Minnesota and elsewhere in the American Midwest were not only more like the dependents that came in the wake of the Vikings – the land hungry, poor civilians like wives and children – but if anything generally even more desperate than they had been, with moderately better life expectancies but little hope of things getting better in their home countries. Why they were overwhelmingly civilians rather than soldiers, checked in the border checkpoints at customs, and generally from countries that had not won a war in decades and which were stagnating at the time technologically and economically. Which may be hard to believe especially for someone like you, but no less true especially if you study the accounts of those that came.
So you are trying to convince us not to take on domestic terrorists that may or may not be from Minnesota because they MAY be descendants from a bunch of peasants and townsfolk that emigrated in the 1800s and 1900s, who in turn may be descended from Vikings. While ignoring the possible ancestry of say the Minnesota Army units or ICE.
Ok champ. Your logic is unimpeachable. Now kindly go with the doctor to check yourself in to the padded room.
Yeah yeah yeah, come back when you actually understand what the heck that term means or where it comes from rather than “It vaguely sounds like something, so therefore let’s go with that.”
That’s not what Occam’s Razor says, BJ.
What Occam actually wrote was “Plurality must never be posited without necessity.” Which sounds similar to what you phrase, but is not. “Plurality must never be posited without necessity” is different from “the simplest explanation is usually the correct one.” It is closer but more accurate to say that the simplest explanation ACCORDING WITH THE EVIDENCE GIVEN/that has the fewest pluralities according with the evidence is more likely to be the correct explanation.
I can postulate that riot police use shields the way they do because they copied them from the High Roman period. This would be a very simple explanation. It would also be more than 98% wrong with it mostly being parallel evolutions with the modern riot police realizing the similarities late in the game and cribbing some notes from the Romans much later in the development.
In reality, Occam’s Razor tells us that plurality must never be posited without necessity. But the track record of biased and inaccurate polling, oversampling of leftists relative to conservatives, and narrative pushing in American polling is well documented and represents a necessity that demands explanation and consideration, even if pluralities must be involved.
Spare me. Anybody on here either should have seen the likes of Journolist or be able to dig it up quickly. We all saw simultaneous censorship of things like the Hunter Biden laptop and the Lab Leak Theory for Covid-19. These were actual, provable media conspiracies, much like the cycling of doctored images on Pretti and the suppression of footage like that for Robin Good just before she tried to accelerate over an ICE agent.
But even nonwithstanding direct, actual conspiracies there can also be conspiracies of silence or connivance. Ones where there was no smoky room where people met, but the aggregate of preferences being played out. The overweening biases of the MSM reporters and staff is undeniable by anybody sane, even by the reporters themselves, and their slant is overwhelmingly leftist.
There is no rational or justified explanation for why Trump obtains such universally negative coverage from the media when the likes of *Kim Yo Jong*, Xi Jinping, and in a previous decade Vladimir Putin did not receive such uniformly negative coverage. So either you have to believe the coverage of Trump is more negative than Kim Jong Un’s torturing propagandist sister and Xi Jinping because he is provably worse than they are, or you have to concede that the coverage has more due to personal and ideological gripes against Trump that skew reporting.
Normally this is the point where I’d say that if you have an alternate explanation I’d like to hear it. But you’re a proven fool who screwed up the origins of the Skoal, the origins of the Scandinavian diasporas in Minnesota, car physics, and a host of others. I am pretty sure any attempt by you to come up with an alternate explanation would be a monumental waste of all our times and an exercise in either malicious gaslighting or abject delusion on your part. Possibly both at the same time.
Correct, among other things.
And guess what? HE DID NOT.
He engaged in what I admit was impolitic posturing over Greenland, but then cut a deal and got NATO leadership to admit HE WAS RIGHT, resulting in further NATO commitments to militarize and a deal with the US being given expanded concessions on Greenland.
THAT is the kind of thing Trump’s base voted for, even if they did not focus on it.
Honestly I think much of Trump’s base would be at most agnostic to that or even supportive of it.
Translation: you’re a fool who doesn’t understand the actual renovations to the West Wing, how this was far from a teardown of the entire West Wing, and how the BIPARTISAN CONSENSUS FOR SEVERAL PAST ADMINISTRATIONS was that a larger ball room was NECESSARY.
So yes, it does represent part of what Trump was elected for: to actually act while previous administrations spoke, and to make what reforms and structural overhauls to the physical or metaphorical structures of the republic are needed.
“Period.” Nevermind things like economic employment, violent crime from illegals, energy independence, asserting the rights of Americans against DIE, and so on.
We are obviously looking at different grocery bills, BJ. Which isn’t surprising because we seem to be looking at different things in general.
Which is why you are trying to appeal to the supposed Continent Crossing Viking Ancestors of Minnesota AntifA while I roll my eyes, point to things like the dieoff of Norse Greenland, and the documents at Ellis Island.
You are delusional. And I do not merely say that as a trite insult. I mean you are actually, seriously, possibly clinically delusional. You cite TV Shows as “evidence” on how ICE should have acted when nearly run over by Robin Good, ignoring a host of things including physics. You almost fantasize about continent crossing Viking Ancestors of Minnesota AntifA that never existed because the Vikings never got that deep into North America. You apparently believe Aelfred the Great united England by continuing to stay in the legendary peasant hut burning food rather than mustering a response and defeating the Norse so hard he made their leader convert and establishing a dynasty that would subjugate the rest. You believe that the wall to wall politicized coverage and provably flawed polling are nothing and that there is no left wing cabal or conspiracy in spite of how we can point to several such cases.
You need help I frankly do not think you can get here.
I admit I do not drink coffee and my household has drunk less of it in general, but I would guess due to a lot of the traditional Coffee growing regions the US orders from like Colombia being under leftist governments that have been hit by tariffs or alternating with trade wars that Trump has been trying to negotiate down. On the other side, tea (which I do drink), hot chocolate, and a lot of other staples have seen their prices go down where I live.
Untrue. Moreover, he’s often negotiated down tariffs and un-slapped some of the tariffs he did impose due to the results of negotiations, as he used them as TOOLS with which to get other countries to negotiate new trade deals and limit their OWN tariffs on.
Yeah uh about that. That price was already higher due to pre-existing, often years or decades old tariffs on steel by the likes of the EU, Canada, and other US trade partners. Which Trump retaliated against with his own steel tariffs in order to use them as a negotiating leverage so that both sides would either discard their tariffs (thus eliminating the trade imbalance and the costs both sides pay), or lowering them to a level both sides can live with profitably.
But you don’t know that because to you, tariffs began existing the second Drumpf came up and started slapping them around, and you have literally no idea why. Which means you have trebly no idea why the likes of the EU and a host of other countries imposed them first and kept them up in spite of how your grade school economic moralizing would indicate they are such a bad idea.
This sounds wise until you start asking yourself why if this is so several countries maintain tariffs on goods like agricultural produce and steel, often to popular acclaim. In reality tariffs are more of a balance pitting the person-as-consumer versus the person-as-producer/employee, essentially raising the prices on the former in the hopes of incentivizing employment and wages for the latter. There’s a real discussion to be had there about what the right move to make is (or if that move is no tariffs), but you’re not going to start that by ignoring the very basic fact that Trump didn’t start the tariff business, as you’d know if you saw how the WTO has gone ballistic on Canada multiple times in the past quarter century.
Which raises the issue of what grocery prices are going and where you are.
Uh, he has taken off several tariffs as a result of negotiations or pledges. Indeed he is planning to rescind several steel and aluminum tariffs. The fact that you do not know this is striking, but not at all surprising.
Go back to your fantasy worlds of Viking Skull Drinker Ubermensch and Super Shot Police Officers. The adults are trying to talk.
Thank you HC68, great post.
Thanks, Turtler. Bookmarking that.
Great post about Scandinavian/British history, Turtler. I learned a few things from it that I didn’t know myself.
There are more polls than people.
The best course I ever took was probability and statistics.
I believe 0.00% of polls
Mexico Avocados were .99/ea, and sometimes more.
now theyre .88/ea
Tell me more about Tariffs.
As Turtler ably pointed out, we didn’t have “free trade” before Trump. We had a complex system of tariffs, quotas, and various market barriers that had “Free Trade” scrawled across the top in purple crayon.
For example, under NAFTA, there was a quota and tariff on American dairy sold to Canada. The low-tariff quota was filled entirely by Canadian-owned dairies in the US, and then everything over that was tariffed in excess of 200%. (What do you mean that’s not free trade, it said “North American Free Trade Agreement” right on the label.)
Even St Reagan put a 100% tariff on Japanese electronics.
Not sure about the “average Trump Voter” being concerned with groceries alone,
Some may be.
Doing some math the other day and discovered that the end of the Civil War is closer to my date of birth than I am. Consequently, in discussing things, I find that in mentioning various Items I have to explain them, not just refer to them.
However, most people have had, say, a quarter of my experience with various issues,
For example. My last year in the Army, I was in Air Defense. Terrible fate for a simple but honest grunt. But I learned the business. And some of our intel briefings included a map not in Mercator and not centered on Dubuque. So I don’t have a problem concerning something or other about Greenland.. But you don’t need my briefings to see that. Looking down on the North Pole of the classroom globe is good enough. Or maybe a world atlas you haul out for your kid’s geography homework.
Al Gore assures us the place is ice free and we don’t have to detour around polar bears,
Many years ago, a Public TV special assured us that the Navy wasn’t ready for the Third Battle of The North Atlantic. Couldn’t cover the Greenland-Iceland-UK cap, Obviously did a number on the Navy. Ran into a Navy guy who’d taught at the War College. Asked him about it. He commenced to swear, However, in order to do a job on the Navy, we had to BELIEVE the Greenland-Icelan-UK Gap was a real threat. Public tv wouldn’t lie and I expect there a number of folks who take that seriously, even if Trump says it is.
Point is, even in a life with half the adult time I have, lots of people must have encountered other issues to an extent that they thought about them. Maybe have some experience, direct or indirect.
Point is…you don’t need top secret briefings to have a clue and maybe some people do.
I was in a fraternity in college, so I know that social cohort. Not bad folks. I did civil rights work so I know the moderate campus leftists and through them the nutcase leftists. I know the former sort of believe what the say, for a while. The latter,,,,are lying through their teeth unless they are certain they’re only talking to a fellow traveler. Lots of folks went to college, with its late-adolescent population density and couldn’t have avoided a whiff of this stuff.
Some of my employment has taken me to crappy areas of various towns. Not many people have avoided that altogether and a good deal of local news concerns it, Can’t miss the good and bad about it.
Nobody’s missed the energy prices. Many people aren’t climate change freaks and don’t prefer the windmills and solar farms providing intermittent, expensive power while being particularly intrusive, You don’t need to get a degree in it. Nor can you miss it by looking the other way.
Groceries? We’re doing okay but still the sales are where it’s at, Day-old pastries don’t get much older. The difference between house brand and name brand, if discernible, isn’t worth paying for.
The directors of ostentatious outrage decide, based on the designated villain-designated victim lineup whether to unleash the Publc Virtue Signallers. George Floyd, yes. Justine Damond, nope. Matthew Shepard, yes, Jesse Dirkhising not at all. Tyree Nichols, YES….ooops, never mind. It’s obviously obvious and a whole bunch of people know it.
Point is, a whole bunch of people know this stuff, to a greater or lesser extent. Can’t not.