Hype will not decide in November. Voters who care about the 2024 election will.
As I have written about previously, we are in the process of an election that is closer than it should be. For most of us who have been paying attention, it seems clear one of the major candidates is disqualified but still seen as a viable contender. Here how the media is currently covering the campaign based on the scales model above.
Yet, you read polls that come out and the responses can make you confused and angry.
For the last spot, I made a meme to show the lunacy of this thought pattern.
Plus we get some honest feedback about why the polling looks they way it does.
From Politico, to my surprise, GOP strategists admit Trump is weaker than he appears.
Trump may be raking in donations. But across the country, the mood of Republicans has dimmed, according to nearly a dozen Republican operatives, county chairs and current and former GOP officials. It comes amid ongoing concerns about the effect of abortion on Republican candidates. And it follows defections from Trump in the primaries and, most recently, polling that has found Trump’s conviction in his New York hush-money trial hurting him with independents.
As we prepare for a debate tonight which will probably change no minds and both sides will declare victory, it is worth asking if the Biden campaign is doing something wrong. How can the polls be this close when he should be winning by 20 points? For one thing (as shown by my scale above) right wing media has successfully made Biden's age a major focus of the race.
It should not go unnoticed that the alternative/conservative/GOP media has consolidated around Trump, despite the billions he is costing them in defamation lawsuits. They have made the calculation that this audience of voters needs to keep being pumped full of Trump vengeance/ Biden is a threat 24/7 to keep up ratings and maintain loyalty from Trump and his followers. The conservative media infrastructure has been growing and converging between Fox News, talk radio, the internet and Trump to create an entirely different reality than most of us live in. The sheer power of that force means the coverage of the Presidential race gives Trump an advantage while all the Senate Democratic candidates are ahead in the polls. Focusing more on the Hill article, the opening paragraphs give us important context.
Senate Democrats in key battleground states have consistently performed better than President Biden in polls, fueling speculation that November could see the highest levels of ticket-splitting in years. Voting for different parties on the same ticket has become increasingly rare in the U.S. amid growing political polarization. While some down-ballot Democrats are polling better than the president now, observers caution the gap between them will likely shrink as the election draws closer. Still, the relative polling strength of Democratic Senate candidates in states like Montana, Ohio and Pennsylvania has suggested that at least some voters will back them while supporting Donald Trump or a non-Biden presidential candidate. “This is more split-ticket voting than we would traditionally see, but there’s also a higher undecided factor than we would normally see. I think that plays into it,” said Matt Taglia, the senior director of Emerson College Polling. “The dynamics of this race are just so different from previous elections, even from 2020.” As much as split-ticket voting regularly gets discussed during election seasons, it has grown increasingly rare.
There continues to be a disconnect between the race for President and every other race in America. Are we in such a strange political environment that we will see some the biggest ticket splitting in history? With abortion on the ballot in Nevada and Arizona, what are the chances that these states will vote in favor of the abortion ballot measures, the Democratic Senate candidate, the Democratic Congressional Rep, and Trump? I have yet to find a large pool of these voters. It's not that they don't exist, but not enough statistically to give states wins for all the Democratic based candidates and initiatives except Biden. I have a hypothesis for why we see what we see. The culprit? HYPE.
The power of hype is a well documented area of study and politics is no exception. One of Trump's strengths is that is all about the hype. A creature of reality TV, he understands hype and it's power to shape a narrative regardless of basis in reality. The constant stream of (when I was President everything was better and now it's worse) has taken a hold over the GOP and is being pushed into the mainstream. How else can people honestly say they were better off in 2020 than now? That's the power of hype.
I found this article from 2009 in regards to the power of hype, and I'm going to just put the whole thing in here as I believe it helps get my point across (emphasis mine).
Sunday morning I was out getting food for breakfast. No, I wasn't foraging in the forest; I was driving to the store. On the radio, a popular talk show host was asking listeners if they thought, come Tuesday when Barack Obama is sworn into office, people will suddenly gain confidence in the economy and start buying again.
My initial thought was there's going to be a lot of dead airtime; nobody's naive enough to believe that. I was wrong. People called in, it was a lively debate.
Here we are in the middle of one of the worst financial crises in history, bailing out failing banks and auto companies, layoffs by the millions, up to our eyeballs in debt, and people are actually debating this nonsense. We're in uncharted waters, but instead of logic, people choose hype.
I know, hype did fuel the housing bubble, but it didn't cause it; bad loans, mortgage backed securities, and corrupt lending institutions did. Now we're knee deep in it. Consumer confidence is important, but it will improve when people stop losing their jobs and homes and credit returns to normal. This may come as a surprise to some, but that just may take a bit longer than this coming Tuesday.
Still, Obama's inauguration and the economic crisis got me thinking about hype ... when I should have been thinking about eggs benedict.
No two ways about it, hype is really bad news. It helps to fuel bubbles that then burst, leaving us in situations like we're in now. To paraphrase from Star Wars, "Hype [The Force] can have a strong influence on the weak-minded." And there are apparently a lot of weak-minded people out there, as evidenced by self-help book and male enhancement pill sales.
But hype also destroys careers and companies, and it goes way beyond Enron, WorldCom and Adelphia.
I'm no shrink, but I think hype is a function of grandiose thinking. It's common among narcissists, sociopaths, and other colorful designations for dysfunctional executives - a relatively common breed in corporate America, for whatever reason. Hype is irrational, fanatical, childish, and delusional. It hoists people up on lofty pedestals and sets expectations so ludicrously high that a fall is inevitable.
I've seen dozens of delusional executives self-destruct over their grandiose hype, taking entire corporations down with them. Even boards of directors are all-too-often no defense against it, until it's too late. I can tell you stories, but I'd rather hear them from you. Okay, just one to get us started:
When microprocessor upstart Cyrix developed its Pentium competitor - the 6x86 processor - the CEO vowed to sell it for $1 more than Intel's chip. That was how he expected to break Intel's effective monopoly, by charging more. What was his logic? It was a faster chip. Maybe it was, but that narrow, fanatical perspective sent the company into near bankruptcy and ultimately cost him his job. Top that one.
A few of those key points.
Unlike in 2009, The American economy is now keeping the entire world afloat post Covid. Yet many people think we are in a recession. How? Negative hype. Social media post that talk about how great things are going don't provide the same engagement as posts that say everything is worse now than it ever was. This crowd of "whatever it's all b.s. anyway" is the key to Trump's lead in the polls.
Americans who consume more traditional forms of media like newspapers favor President Biden, while those who don’t follow any political news back presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump. The great political realignment of our era is that the voters who vote in all elections have moved towards the Democratic Party, while irregular voters make up a large part of Trump's coalition. As I've mentioned before, GOP operatives know this is a bad trade for them, but they must keep the hype going if they want to work.
They have their work cut out for them. Let's look this graphic from the New York Times about which voters are going where.
Biden is winning among people who vote, and Trump is winning among people who don't. Considering that 2020 had one of the highest voter turnout rates in American history, why would we expect these voters to show up for the less popular sequel? One more time for emphasis.
Among adults who had voted in each of the past three federal elections, Biden led Trump by 11 points, and Biden eked out a narrow advantage among voters who participated in two of the past three races. But, the poll found, Trump led Biden by 12 percentage points among those who voted in just one of the past three elections and by a crushing margin of 18 percentage points among those who came out for none of them.
With so many other outstanding factors at play, the polls could shift again. The Biden campaign is using their money to open field offices and book advertising slots, while the Trump campaign is paying for legal fees and the comfort of Trump's family. While Biden is trying to get out the vote, Trump is looking to get votes tossed again via lawsuits. Part of that effort an attempt to hype the idea of non-citizens voting so Biden will win again. When you are high on your own hype supply, it will make the reality on the ground harder to deal with once the hype is gone.
People who care vote, and people who believe in hype don't. The Trump campaign is betting against fundamentals and on hype to win. Will it work? I'll leave the last word to Pepper Brooks.