That can’t be true, can it? Let me show you why I think it is.
But, first, let me say a word about Jon Stewart deciding to join the Joe Biden age issue piling on crowd this past Monday night on the Daily Show.
For me the most offensively gratuitous part of his monologue was using still pictures of Biden and statements taken out of context to make jokes about his age. Yes, it is on comedy central after all, but, frankly, I thought John Stewart had more decency than that. Obviously, I was wrong.
This thing has gotten old, the media frenzy that is trying to create readers and viewers, but it’s what the American press does these days, and nothing will change any time soon. Like Donald Trump, except for a few, the media never believe they do anything wrong. Why change when you’re always right?
In a recent article in The Guardian, Rebecca Solnit quotes Nikole Hannah-Jones who described the state of American journalism as follows: “As media we consistently proclaim that we are just reporting the news when in fact we are driving it. What we cover, how we cover it, determines often what Americans think is important and how they perceive these issues yet we keep pretending it’s not so. They are not reporting that he is a loser; they are making him one.”
But what I don’t get is why. What possible reason would John Stewart or the media in general have for trying to make Joe Biden look bad as if Donald Trump is a better alternative?
Don’t these people know the existential threat we are facing with Trump? Don’t they realize this is America’s version of 1930s Germany as Hitler was rising to power?
What makes it all worse is that this “the sky is falling” attitude about Biden remaining in the race runs counter to post-debate facts.
The persistent mantra that Trump is leading in the polls so much that Biden is virtually toast contradicts what the facts shows. This week FiveThirtyEight polling reported the following:
Trump favorable opinion: 54% negative; 42 % positive (about the same as in 2020)
Biden favorable opinion: 58% negative; 37% positive. But those numbers don’t say much about the election itself. The latest post-debate conglomerate polling numbers show that Trump now leads Biden 42%; to 38%. That’s within the margin of error, but there’s more.
The Trump/Biden numbers add up to only 80% of the vote. Another 10% say they support Robert Kennedy, Jr, a number that is likely to go down as people decide not to throw away their vote or help elect Trump. More than that, though, that still leaves 10% of voters undecided at this time.
Who thinks those are Trump voters? I don’t. More likely, they lean toward Biden, still persuadable, making the election as winnable as it was before the debate.
But here’s the thing. Donald Trump and his supporters want people to believe just the opposite. They want people to believe Trump’s election victory is inevitable, unavoidable, a fait de accompli.
And the media, celebrities like Jon Stewart, and a few Democrats like Golden, and now Colorado Senator Michael Bennett, are falling right in line.
The above polling suggests at the very least that most Americans don’t want Trump as president again. Only 42% have a favorable view of him, which matches his election number. He won’t get more than that. Joe Biden will.
I think Trump’s stagnant numbers point to the fact that people are afraid of Trump’s dishonesty, corruptness, desire for vengeance, obsession with both himself and power, but no one is afraid of Joe Biden.
They may think he’s too old to run for president again, but they’re not afraid he will destroy our democracy if he gets elected.
As November gets closer, that will matter more and more. I don’t believe for one minute that Americans are going to give up their freedom because Biden is old.
Of course, I could be wrong because, unlike Republicans, I don’t believe an opinion is equal to facts. An opinion is an opinion, meaning it may be wrong instead of right.
But my position has credible support behind it. If you don’t think so (or even if you do), read the editorial in the Philadelphia Inquirer just after the debate.
It stated the case for Biden as clearly as it can be. If you haven’t read it, you should. Here is the link. (https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/editorials/first-presidential-debate-joe-biden-donald-trump-withdraw-20240629.html
One line in the editorial to remember is this: “Biden on his worst day remains light-years better than Trump on his best.”
I believe a majority of Americans know that, which is why Trump’s numbers stand pretty much after the debate where they were before.
Trump is not gaining. Neither is Biden, but he has a better chance of doing so than Trump does.
That’s because most Americans do indeed know that Biden on his worst day remains light-years better than Trump on his best, and that is why I believe the most realistic reading of the polls is that Joe Biden is going to win in November.
linnposts.com 