Back when he was the lone moderate voice on Mediaite, Joe Concha had a brief set-to with Ethics Alarms that concluded with him writing some nice things about us. I hope he still checks in now and then. Concha’s with The Hill now, and one of the journalists who is fair to all sides while acknowledging his profession’s progressive rot.
In related but completely predictable news, the latest Rasmussen Report’s weekly White House Watch shows the President trailing Biden 44% to 47%, nearly within the margin of error, making up more than half of the alleged ten point deficit the same poll showed a little over a week ago. The significance of this is not the numbers. As I keep pointing out, polls are generally unreliable, polls this far from a Presidential are especially unreliable, and polls involving President Trump and phantom candidate Joe Biden are about as unreliable as polls can be.
Moreover, the news media has been using polls to demoralize Trump supporters, not to mention foes of open borders, speech suppression, racial and gender quotas, slavery reparations, presumption of guilt for males accused of sexual assault, government sanctioned riots, police defunding, drug legalization, the Green New Deal, manipulative news media, gun confiscation, airbrushing history, denigrating America, partisan coups, totalitarianism—you know, what the Far Left has pushed the Democratic Party into supporting, or at least pretending to.
Believing the pro-Biden polls requires a loss of faith in the American culture, just as supporting the extreme progressive agenda requires a rejection of the grand American experiment. It is a cosmic joke that a man like Donald Trump is the firewall between the United States and an ethical and civic unraveling of catastrophic proportions. But I expected the unpleasant reality to begin dawning, especially as the Democrats betray their own values by embracing the actions of the George Floyd mobs and the poison being peddled by Black Lives Matter.
And Joe can’t hide forever. I realized today, as Britney Spears’ mother filed the latest court document in the apparently endless legal battle over her cash-cow daughter’s care, that what Democrats are going to promote is a Britney Spears presidency. For years now, Spears has been treated like a living automaton, going on stage, performing her programmed songs and dance moves, earning millions, and then being returned to the custody of her conservator parents and handlers. She’s a middle-aged, shattered personality now, emotionally ill, only able to function within a narrow range, and completely under the control of others.
A Joe Biden presidency would be like that, with the shell of a man following scripts written by others. Democrats are counting on the hatred of Donald Trump to be sufficient to persuade Americans to vote for that, and the news media is apparently willing to try to help them disguise it.
Amazing.
And futile.
Ethics Alarms 
I may comment more about this post later, but I do note that polls show that voters trust Trump’s handling of the economy by about fifty percent.
I doubt Herbert Hoover would have had that in July of 1932.
I love the Britney Spears analogy (what a sad sags), but I prefer to think of Joe as simply a Trojan horse. If he wins, and I seriously doubt he will, he’ll be declared incompetent by a Yale psychiatrist the evening he’s inaugurated and wheeled off to Walter Reed where he’ll be secured and medicated, and Kamala Harris will be declared president in time for the inaugural balls she will host with Willie Brown as her consort.
Shhhh. Do not speak of such things.
I heard a poll today saying Biden held a commanding 15 point lead. Rush Limbaugh called the poll outrageous and out of touch.
He went on to discuss how Trump voters don’t respond to polls and these are heavily weighted to Democrat voters.
I say keep it up. Tell all those that want Biden that he is a shoe in. That will make them feel comfortable and more likely to let others do the heavy lifting of voting.
I was a Ted Cruz supporter and I would vote for Trump over just about anyone for one reason; the media did not create him so they cannot destroy him. The more people the left tries to villify the less sympathetic to their cause people will be. Suburban white women may hate Trump but if they have to choose between voting for Trump and losing their beautiful suburban home because hubby has been cancelled economically they will choose protection from the cancel culture.
I want to find out if it is possible to charge certain media outlets as campaign functionaries so that the value of their programming which is solely pro-democrat or pro-republican must be treated as a campaign donation and subject to FEC rules.
I have very little respect for the political whores of the right or left. Romney is a joke and his behavior toward Trump is that of a petulant child. My governor, Larry Hogan blames Trump for Hogan’s own lack of planning. He whined in a WAPO op ed about how Trump did not help MD with testing when no test existed. He went out and spent millions on tests from South Korea that could not be used because a special component was unavailable. Hogan is a two faced coward who will never get my vote ever again.
“…Donald Trump is the firewall between the United States and an ethical and civic unraveling of catastrophic proportions. ”
I’m curious: is voting for him still an impossibility?
Time to watch The Manchurian Candidate again.
I remember finding this blog during the election season in 2016. I had seen a story somewhere I loved and did a search to try to find it, and this blog did a story on it.
When I read jack’s writing I felt like I had found a long lost friend. I couldn’t believe there was someone who saw things hope I did. (Almost) And I respected that he equally judged everyone.
As I experienced the left being so nasty and condescending while I was trying to learn about the candidates thinking that my early fifties was a good time to finally vote for president…. I had no idea the Democrats had become sooo mean and opposite of the last time I paid attention to them when it was all about tolerance.
By Election Day, without telling anyone I voted for trump. Why? Because the hypocrisy, nastiness, arrogant behavior I saw on the left I felt needed to be stopped.
I thought if trump won, they’d do what they feared he’d do. NOT ACCEPT his victory.
I thought their ugly underbelly would come out in full force. I had no idea it was so ugly. None.
Also back then, everyone I asked, was voting for trump but not telling anyone.
I hope it’s even more this time. And I hope a strong message is sent.
I’m shocked the media is behind Biden. Truly. How can they be?
It been predicted he won’t be the candidate. I have this weird feeling Hillary will reappear. I hope Trump wins because he’s done some good things and he’s been talking about rebuilding our infrastructure too which I recall Jack writing an article about how important that is. I think trump read the article based on his speech the other day. Lol!
Thanks. My big triumphs are like yesterday, when I beat Althouse (and a lot of other places) to the Smithsonian story. Actual tangible results from the 11,670 posts have been hard to find. I feel like the Sweet Briar episode was a win. There may have been some others.
What’s funny about that story is, Dennis Prager talked about it to that day!!! And I wondered if you had heard about it! And there it was!!!
Do you ever listen to him?
Btw, if we hear a sTory you don’t cover, how can we bring it to your attention?
I hear some I don’t see you write about which I think would for perfect but I assumed you just didn’t maybe like them.
I didn’t realize you were competitive with other writers. I guess because I only read you. Lol. Sooo that means you’re the the best to me.
In so thankful for your hard work.
Oh, email me with any ideas, links or scoops. jamproethics@verizon.net
You inspired me to come up with a pithy remark to hopefully make hard-line Leftists pause for a second.
If they express surprise that so many people vote for Trump, we can say, “So many people vote for Trump because Democrats have no idea why good people could possibly vote for Trump.”
They truly don’t.
So sad.
“So many people vote for Trump because Democrats have no idea why good people could possibly vote for Trump.”
Some of the mystery voters are Democrats.
I will quote from Matthew Yglesias’s article the Great Awokening.
http://www.vox.com/2019/3/22/18259865/great-awokening-white-liberals-race-polling-trump-2020
A thing to note about these racially conservative Democrats is that they are quite liberal compared to the general population, let alone racial conservatives in general.
I have no polling data on these racially conservative Democrats, but it would not surprise me if:
– a solid majority of them favored increasing the minimum wage.
– at least a significant minority supports Medicare for All.
– they lean in favor of abortion rights.
– a lopsided majority objects to rioting, looting, and arson.
– a lopsided majority believe in basic American ideals.
– a lopsided majority opposes removal of monuments and statues of prominent Americans.
-at least a significant minority opposes removal of Confederate statues and monuments.
– a lopsided majority opposes defunding the police.
– a lopsided majority opposes police brutality.
And, as Yglesias noted, they were pushed away by President Obama.
As these particular racial conservatives lean liberal regarding their policy preferences, they were open to going back to the Democrats in four years.
As for Joe Biden himself, neither he or his campaign have done anything to further alienate these racially conservative, liberal-leaning defectors, to keep them from “coming home”. He has impressive law-and-order credentials. He did not embrace defunding the police nor removal of statues of American presidents. I suspect a lopsided majority of these racially conservative Democrats who voted for Trump in the 2016 general election, and voted in the Democratic primaries, voted for Joe Biden.
Even the start of these protests would not have alienated these racially conservative Democrats. After all, they still agree with the principles of equal protection and police accountability. many of them marched alongside racially liberal Democrats and Trump supporters.
But what deters them from making the final decision to “come home” is the rest of the Democratic Party. Democratic officials have endorsed defunding the police. Democratic officials have endorsed Black Lives matter, which is now known as an organization founded by trained Marxists. Democratic officials allowed statues to be taken down by violent mobs, instead of mobilizing police to protect them (compare with Trump, who sent the National Guard to protect the Lincoln memorial.) Democratic officials expanded the meaning of white supremacy into the realm of incoherence. Democrats themselves defamed Mt. Rushmore.
And this is just officials, not the various spokesholes.
This is not to say that Joe Biden himself is responsible for this.
Then again, James Cox had nothing to do with the League of Nations or the Depression.
I posted this exact comment on a Reason.com article and got this reply.
http://reason.com/2020/07/17/potential-key-to-the-2020-election-voters-who-cant-stand-both-trump-and-biden/#comment-8353388
– Quo Useque Tandem
When I’m in a dark mood, I sometimes think that the polls that show Biden with a hard-to-believe massive lead are being constructed in an attempt to demoralize Trump voters. When I’m in an even darker mood, I suspect that perhaps they’re being constructed and promoted as an insurance policy, so that when Trump wins, they will cite all of these polls that showed Biden in the lead as evidence that Trump must have cheated. This will, of course, further undermine an already weakened electoral system and promote more violence and chaos. But I can’t escape the feeling that a whole lot of groundwork is being laid up front to challenge the results of the election. Promoting widespread mail-in voting, ridiculously slanted polling, insinuating (or outright stating) that Trump is planning on cheating or refusing to leave office, all of this is just place-setting of excuses for the inevitable riots and chaos if Trump wins.
Since they really don’t think he’d not leave and since they are making that up…
If he loses, he should stay. And refuse to leave. What would happen? Lol. Has that ever happened in history?
I think that this is exactly what’s going on, and the result will be massive violence if Trump wins.
Jeff said:
When I’m in a dark mood, I sometimes think that the polls that show Biden with a hard-to-believe massive lead are being constructed in an attempt to demoralize Trump voters.
I should’ve addressed this in the comments, but a couple of things regarding the polls drastically favoring Biden:
1. They are polls of a heretofore empty vessel. Such early-level candidates always poll well against incumbents, and especially well against polarizing incumbents, since their presidential platform and personality in the role are not yet fully formed in the eyes of the voters;
2. Almost all of these early polls are registered voters, or even just Americans. When pollsters transition to likely voters, the polls almost always tighten;
3. Generically, Democrats out-poll Republicans by 3-5 points in almost all competitive elections. There appears to be some kind of small but significant poll bias in favor of Democrats, whether that is manifested by the cognitive dissonance of the polling outfit, poor sampling techniques, poor question construction or other flaw created by bias or incompetence;
4. There is a widely-suspected but scientifically elusive Trump voter “shyness.” I don’t think I need to expound on that. Also, there is a general feeling among pollsters that Republicans a) are more likely than Democrats to vote, and b) are harder to poll effectively.
So despite our impulse to declare the polls media propaganda, that conclusion is likely flawed. No doubt the press will take a poll that favors their position and milk it for all it’s worth with hyperbole and divination, but in most cases, the media aren’t commissioning polls expressly to depress the vote opposing their favored candidate.
So until Labor Day comes and goes, take these polls with a grain of salt. If they are holding up by early October with a double-digit lead, that would be a good time to start worrying.
To rouse their audience to action it seems they should present Biden as being behind, not ahead. And then continue with all the activist journalism to bring people over to his side.
I think that’s actually an argument for why they are not actually skewing the polls deliberately. The polls are reporting the results favorably for Biden, and there’s no way to spin a 10-point lead as showing candidate weakness.
So they settle for the best available option, which is to spin it as a sure victory and hope that the other side is demoralized.
There’s no doubt in my mind that they are setting up insurance policies now in case Trump wins.
* The repeated speculative news about Trump not leaving office.
* The weighted polls
* The mail-in ballot controversy.
* The relentless fake news that Trump cheated in the last election and will cheat in this one.
* The tacit and, sometimes, not-so-tacit endorsement of violence against political opponents and/or when one does not get a desired outcome.
Joe Biden is a figurehead. He won’t be the power at all if he’s even allowed to stay in office. If he’s not pressured to resign, the Democrats will use the 25th Amendment they’ve carefully made Americans aware of to remove him and push the woke minority female VP into the oval office. She’ll be out of her league, just like Obama was, but will be treated with kid gloves by the news media and given reverence like we’ve never seen before while she tries to rule by pen and phone.
If Republicans complain about the bait and switch, the Democrats will argue that: 1. it’s cruel to inflict the office on poor Biden when he’s clearly not all there 2. It’s irresponsible to allow the U.S. to be led by an incompetent leader and 3. At least we’re willing to do what you didn’t do with Trump.
But, if that doesn’t happen, you must have a Plan B. Joe Biden will eventually have to come out of hiding. Assuming there is actually a debate, he will have to speak. It reminds me of an episode of “Parks and Recreation” where the main character is running for City Council against a clueless trust fund kid named Bobby Newport who spends most of his time signing autographs and vacationing in Europe. After some give-and-take compromises between the two candidates’ campaign managers, she is asked how she knows this won’t backfire and she responds, “Because in a week, we have a debate. And your guy, Bobby Newport, is going to have to show up and he’s going to have to open his mouth. And I’m going to kick his ass.”
Since it’s pretty clear that Biden cannot debate, they are preparing for a Trump win and have their rationalizations as listed above handy. They are despicable for undermining our democratic institutions in this way just to gain power. I am hoping enough Americans see them for who they really are quickly enough and are willing to stand up to the inevitable violence.
Jack said:
Believing the pro-Biden polls requires a loss of faith in the American culture, just as supporting the extreme progressive agenda requires a rejection of the grand American experiment.
Well, not necessarily, although I want to agree with you. The pro-Biden polls are largely identical to what we have seen year after year when a generic candidate runs against a known quantity. Since the American people are free to fill the empty vessel with their hopes and dreams, it’s no wonder such candidates do well against another who’s flaws are well known and especially against a person like Trump, who’s narcissism compels him to walk around to all and sundry making sure everyone knows exactly what and how large his flaws are, and how little he cares what you think about them.
Normally in a successful campaign, it must be the opponent who defines the empty vessel and displays it as diseased with negative, dishonest and undesirable muck to a great enough degree that people are willing to accept the devil they know. Fortunately for Trump (and arguably for America), the Left has forced Biden to fill himself with undesirable muck. All Trump has to do is find a way to display that to people. He doesn’t even have to paint his own picture, but merely display what’s already there. As Biden is forced to do that himself it has alarmed the same voters that previously favored him, a very good sign for Trump.
You are correct that Biden can’t hide forever. Whether you are right that the American people will roundly reject him is less certain, but doubtless (and hopefully!) plausible (optimism in the American people may be your most endearing quality). Biden’s best defense is to point out the flaws in Trump, but perhaps uniquely, Trump already proudly wears those flaws on his sleeve, and virtually everyone is revoltingly aware of them. There’s not much room to make them more undesirable, and if he’s as close as Rasmussen suggests at this point, Biden is in a much worse position that even the most pessimistic Democrat’s nightmares would suggest.
That a manifestly flawed candidate like Trump with a track record that is subject to incredibly ugly spin could be within ten points of Biden suggests very bad things about what the people think of the Democratic platform he has put forward so far. With riots, cancellations, violence, disease and mayhem afflicting the country, every single thing would seem to suggest doom for the incumbent. But the the best polls for the Democrats don’t show what they need to see, and this one, especially given it’s notoriously pro-Democrat composition, is a big, flashing, red light.
I wrote about this in my comment above.
https://ethicsalarms.com/2020/07/16/on-polls-biden-britney-spears-andnah-theres-no-mainstream-media-bias-note-71-546/comment-page-1/#comment-699695
Biden’s biggest problem is the rest of the Democratic Party, officials as well as spokesholes.
I read an article that described Biden as trying to become the country’s first auto-pen president. I think most of us know what that is, but for those who don’t, an autopen is a machine that exactly reproduces the signature of the person it is set to reproduce, so that while politicians are not in their offices, their correspondence, etc, can continue to go out. The problem is that it is open to overuse and abuse, and can create the image that the person in office really isn’t all there. Donald Rumsfeld was heavily criticized for using an autopen for signing condolences letters to the families of American servicemen killed in Afghanistan and Iraq, and, admittedly, if anything should be personally signed, that’s it. Otherwise, though, usually at least two people have the authority to use the autopen and sign for whoever.
Biden wouldn’t be the first such president, actually. Woodrow Wilson was that, after he was felled by a stroke pre-25th Amendment and his wife and personal advisers assumed decision-making power while keeping then-Vice President Thomas Marshall out of the loop. He would not even be the first president to come into office with major physical problems. FDR almost never let his wheelchair be seen, and JFK never let it be known that sometimes his back pain was so crippling he needed injections just to stand. Let’s also not forget, both armchair and for-real psychologists have diagnosed Trump with a host of mental maladies. Compared to this, Biden seems almost benign. The thought is that maybe he’s a little slower, maybe he’s not as with it as he once was, but all he needs to do most of the time is read a teleprompter anyway. Even on his worst day he’s still poles better than George W. Bush on his best day, and if he takes a turn for the worst we have the first female president waiting in the wings.
I do believe that the media is not only beating the public over the head with polls to steer them in the direction it wants to steer them in, but is running some flawed polls that involve dishonest weighting or deliberate undersampling, and so forth. They WANT everyone to believe the election of Biden is inevitable, that whatever they think is offensive is also found offensive by a majority, and so on. That said, I think the fact that Trump just shook up his campaign means that he knows all’s not necessarily going so well and something needs to change. I also think Biden can in fact hide forever. He’s already imposing impossible conditions without which he will not debate Trump. The real two conditions under which he will debate are, in the words of an article in National Review, “hell” and “no.” As long as he stays out of sight and occasionally snipes at Trump, who is making himself easily snipeable, the intense hatred of Trump might be just enough to put him over the top in enough states to win. Maybe. I guarantee you that if Trump does in fact hold Biden off enough to retain his office, the riots that follow will make this last set look like a Sunday school picnic.
As for Britney, I stopped paying attention to her probably more than a decade ago. I wouldn’t call her middle-aged at 38 (I think you have to be at least 40), but I would say that pop stars age in dog years, and she is long past her sell-by date. The way she is being treated by her parents and handlers is wrong, but she was already too far gone when she married a loser, had two babies in quick succession, displayed lax hygiene, and finally shaved her head and destroyed her appearance. I was way too old for pop music then anyway, and I had and still have no use for out of control starlets. These stories end one of two ways, either she gets her act together or she gets found dead somewhere with a needle in her arm, and I don’t care which.
How would refusing to debate Trump endear Biden with swing voters? I mean, what proportion of swing voters will ask, “If Biden can not stand up to Trump, how can we trust him to stand up for me?”
He can’t get away with that, and it also goes against Biden’s well-documented macho pose, and all his challenges to meet Trump et al and duke it out. Joe doesn’t think he’s demented. If he did, I think he’s have the integrity to drop out.