Waiting for Joe Biden’s speech to a joint session of Congress to begin this week, I observed at New York that Republicans were struggling to define him consistently, which felt like a familiar problem for them:
When Bill Clinton was at the pre-Lewinsky peak of his powers, he drove Republicans nuts. They alternated between accusing him of âstealing our issuesâ with his triangulating pitches on welfare reform and crime and the size of government, and of being âliberal, liberal, liberal!â â a sort of boomer love child of George McGovern and Janis Joplin in a deceptive deep-fried southern packaging. Eventually the opportunity to depict him as a lying sexual predator solved the conservative dilemma, though you could argue he never stopped throwing them off-balance.
Republicans are similarly having problems getting a clear focus on Joe Biden, as the Los Angeles Timesâ Noah Bierman observes:
“Alex Conant, a Republican consultant who has advised Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, [says] that his partyâs two main messages about Biden are at odds with each other, blunting their impact. ‘The thing you hear Republicans say most is that heâs too old for the job, which isnât consistent with saying heâs doing too much,’ Conant said. ‘You canât effectively argue that heâs incompetent and that heâs too effective.'”
This dual framing of Biden was evident during the 2020 campaign, when Trump called him âSleepy Joeâ and with his usual lack of subtlety suggested his opponent was senile, even as he assailed Bidenâs party of radical socialist aims. The 45th president and his surrogates squared the circle by treating Biden as the half-there puppet of the real powers, particularly the âcommunistâ Kamala Harris.
But now, 100 days into the Biden-Harris administration, even though the new president has kept an unusually low profile, there are no signs of Harris or anyone else manipulating him. Indeed, so far his White House has been remarkably free of the factionalism that often undermines clear presidential leadership. With Clinton as president you had a White House staff famously divided (ironically, given the later reputations of the First Lady and the veep) into progressive âRodhamsâ and centrist âGoresâ who jockeyed for position and placed their varying stamps on administration policies. George W. Bushâs presidency was also marked by competing power centers (e.g., his terrifying vice-president and the âBoy Geniusâ Karl Rove); to a lesser extent, so was Obamaâs. As for Donald Trump, hardly a week passed without someone â particularly his rotating cast of chiefs-of-staff â being described by âinsidersâ as the real power behind the throne or perhaps as the wild manâs lion-tamer.
Trump, of course, created some of the same problems for Democrats that Clinton â and now Biden â posed for Republicans. Was he the âtoddler presidentâ who ran a hollowed-out administration with no real core of convictions or goals? Or was he a putative Il Duce craftily planning an authoritarian takeover of the country? Up until the day he left office there was evidence for both descriptions. Indeed, the coda of his presidency, the January 6 Capitol riot, was variously regarded as a fascist coup attempt and a clown show.
Trumpâs successor will have an opportunity in his first address to a joint session of Congress to add to the impression that he is quietly but firmly in charge of the executive branch, and has imposed order on his fractious party as he unveils yet another massive proposal. Kamala Harris will be sitting (and often standing and applauding) behind him, likely looking more like an adoring protĂ©gĂ©e than any sort of puppet-master. But if he stumbles at all, or looks tired, or says things that supposedly centrist Democrats like him donât believe, the knees of many elephants will jerk and out will come the mockery of the old man who is a reassuring front for the Marxists actually running the country.
Such confusion if it continues will be of great service to Biden, much like the current Republican tendency to focus on irrelevant culture-war themes while a mostly united Democratic Party enacts legislative initiatives of a magnitude we havenât seen since Ronald Reaganâs first year in office. For all their political gifts, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama â who, lest we forget, both had a much more firmly Democratic Senate and House the first two years of their presidencies â couldnât come close to the mastery of Congress Biden has exhibited up until now. As Republicans watch Bidenâs speech, they should soberly realize that before long it may not matter that much if they bust up the Democratic trifecta in 2022. The damage to GOP policies and priorities wrought by âUncle Joeâ and his âsenile socialist regimeâ could be too large to reverse by then. While Republicans fret about Trump and rage about âcancel culture,â Biden is eating their lunch.
NEWSWEEK/TIME POLLING IS A JOKE.IT MAY AS WELL BEEN DONE BY THE RNC.38%REPUBLICANS WERE POLLED,31%DEMOCRATS AND 31%INDEPENDENT.THAT IS DICTATING AN OUTCOME.
It excludes the indigent who don’t have internet access or email accounts. Although, most of them are probably more likely to vote for Kerry anyway…
The only surprise here is Iowa — for Bush?
Isn’t it more likely for Dems to have internet?
I doubt it. Isn’t the Internet more likely to be used by the more wealthy, and doesn’t that mean Republicans?
Like xdog and John Mcc, I’m on Zogby’s email polling list.
xdog gave a good description of what we see when we respond.
I’ll note, as I have a couple times previously on this board, that the answer options to the Zogby question on party identification don’t include the Democratic party. Instead, Zogby lists that mythical dittohead creation, the “Democrat” party.
I’ve emailed several zogby contact names several times on the error, with no respons. This last time, I included a Google search URL for “Democrat party” on rushlimbaugh.com.
I’ll be curious to see if the error is corrected in the next poll. Maybe I accomplished nothing more than getting my email removed from the list.
Gore’s speech is getting news airtime. MoveOn might want to replay it in its entirety to take advantage of the publicity. CNN played a decent soundbite of it this morning.
Pelosi, Gore. The language of condemnation is getting stronger. What is needed is a Republican voice to speak as strongly along the same lines so as to take the partisan onus off the words. Of course, anyone who did so would be immediately ostracized from the GOP, but then if Zel Miller can shill for the GOP, someone in the GOP can find enough integrity to call Bush out on his ineptitude. I think it would have to be a CA Republican. There’s got to be a CA Republican with a liberal enough constituency who could make this move without putting his seat too much on the line.
I just finished watching Al Gore’s speech at NYU on the C-span. Wow! It was a beaut. Gore hit Bush about as hard as anyone has.
I hope Move-on.org which sponsored the event finds a way to play it again and again over the next few weeks. It will really help Kerry. Its the kind of surrogate help that Kerry has needed.
If you check out the National Council on Public Polling’s website (www.ncpp.org/poll_perform.htm) you will see that in the 2000 election the closest results were from, believe it or not: Harris Interactive!! Harris Interactive, if I’m reading the results correctly, came closer than any other pollster (including Zogby and CBS) except maybe the regular Harris polling. Maybe there is something to this interactive polling.
xdog – I’m no pollster, but from my understanding of probability, it’s not a factor of 2, but of squareroot(2) =~ 1.41
You’re right angry moderate. I see that happen all over the place, but am a bit suprised to see it here.
Ruy – Ohio isn’t outside the MOE. Aren’t you supposed to double the reported MOE for two-person contests because the MOE is for each individual number, i.e. +/-3 for Kerry individually and Bush so margin would have to be over 6 to be 95% certainty that Kerry is leading. I’ve read this in numerous places including an SSRC guide to interpreting polls so assume it must be true. Did you let down your guard here?
I’ve participated in Zogby on-line polls for a couple of years. He leads with a few questions to determine past voting preferences, party registration, union membership, and the like before getting to the issue at hand (usually national politics although the last was nano-tech–I passed) and closing with demographic questions.
I’m in GA, which is far from being in play.
I realize that Zogby isn’t about to explain the methodolgy but just as with Robo polls the results a can be compared to random sample phone interview polls run contemporaneously.
I receive my email notices during roughly the same period as the Zogby telephone polls
I am in the Zogby internet polling population though
DEFINITELY not in a battleground state (Kerry +15 in CA..Field Poll)..
I have been doing this for 3 years or so but thought that the project was experimental.
Is this not still the case?
AND
What are the methodolgical probems
The methodology page on the “interactive version” says as much:
“Slight weightings were applied to ensure that the selection of participants accurately reflects characteristics of voting population, including region, party, age, race, religion, and gender.”
I imagine that you list your party affiliation and other demographic info, and then John Zogby takes the data, and tweeks the sample based on party affiliation.
For example, say in state A, 75% of the respondats were Dems, 15% were Indys, and 10% were Repubs. However, the actual party registration breakdown in state A is 45% Dem, 40% Repub, and 15% Indy. So, JZ would just do a sample dist of 45% D, 40% R, and 15% I.
Ya, but Republicans tend to stuff the ballots more than Dems đ
My question is, how does responding to an email make the process more accurate? I mean, unless Zogby has some sort of vetting process…
Isn’t it more likely for Dems to have internet?