Wednesday, September 18, 2024

A riff on the 'undecided voter' (from Bluesky)

Gift link to the NYT focus group:

Yes, the undecided voter would have to not care about politics at all...

...which in practice translates to not perceiving any personal risk from a Trump presidency, nor caring whether anyone else suffers a risk from a Trump presidency, and thus already leaning Trumpist.

If they're already essentially Trumpist yet haven't decided (after nine years! with two months to go!) whether to vote for Trump, their inability to decide isn't due to a lack of available information.

Frank Luntz, known for developing Republican messaging like "death tax instead of estate tax, and climate change instead of global warming" (Wikipedia), chose participants for a focus group. He and Patrick Healy, NYT deputy Opinion editor, moderated the discussion. The NYT paid Luntz.

Abigail, 23, graduate assistant, voted Biden in 2020: It's the progressives' fault. They dragged Mitt Romney and John McCain through the mud, saying horrible things about them. If you keep crying wolf over and over, eventually, you're going to get a wolf in the party.

Here's Robert Bork in the 1973 Saturday Night Massacre, if you're 43 and don't know. During the Watergate scandal, President Nixon ordered Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox to be fired, which two officials resigned rather than do, but Bork, as the third in line, complied with Nixon's order and fired Cox. He said Nixon had expressed willingness to nominate him as Supreme Court Justice, though this never happened. He went on to be a federal judge on the DC circuit.

Character flows into policy, but policy reveals character. So when Kamala Harris says something that's very progressive about transgenderism or about health care, that to me signals that she's not moderate, that she's rather extreme about who she is as a person.

"Op," as in "operative." This supposed focus group sounds like a psyop. Previously, I wrote: 4 psyops not to fall for

Right — exactly what is it that Harris has supposedly said about "transgenderism"? Since her campaign began on July 21, apparently nothing. You have to go back in time to find "when Kamala Harris says something" about trans people.

"Abigail" is suggesting here that she herself may not care about policies about trans people per se; she cares whether a candidate has a "character" that is "moderate" and not "extreme," and she perceives statements about trans people as a symbol of extremism in other areas.

Of course, even when Harris says nothing whatsoever about trans people, Republicans will talk about her as if she said something, and thus impute "extremism" to her.

Just as Trump — just by saying so on a debate stage — can make half of his supporters believe an absurdly offensive rumor about a particular immigrant community, he can make his supporters believe that Harris said something about trans people even when she is standing right next to him on the debate stage not saying it.

Now this

NYT doesn't get an interview

Still at it, now on NPR

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