WTF Is Wrong With This Damned Country. Trump Approval Should Be Underwater.

[TheMastersNemesis]

Trump approval not being in the 10's at best. I am so pissed and sick that the polls are reporting as high as they are. We have a toxic sick evil racist criminally insane bastard for president. He will wreck everything. The world would be a better place if he keeled over. The media gives him too much credit.

[stopbush]

1. Why should it be in the 10s? Because you say so?

That’s not how life works. One may as well kvetch that we still don’t have flying cars.

It would be different if tRump’s ultimate demise - and that of Rs in general - was tied to his approval numbers, but it isn’t.

[oberliner]

5. Bush got down to the mid 20s

You'd think Trump would be around there by now.

[meadowlander]

40. It is though.

Republicans in the Senate are going to sit on their hands until his approval ratings drop into the teens regardless of what the Mueller report says and how many of his associates are indicted or plead guilty. Trump knows he is being tried in the court of public opinion. That’s precisely why he keeps sending out repetitive tweets denying collusion.

[womanofthehills]

43. Reading Rick Wilson's new book - he says Republicans are so afraid of Trump because .....

if they say anything negative about him, he will Tweet their name and then they will get death threats and have all kinds of crazies going after them.

[LuckyLib]

44. Yes. In that way he is terrorizing members of Congress

who don’t have the spine to challenge him.

[madaboutharry]

3. His supporters are living in a right-wing nut job news bubble.

Everything they hear is from right-wing radio and Fox News. They are only exposed to propaganda. And then they are told anything else outside that bubble is fake. They have literally been brainwashed.

[EndGOPPropaganda]

7. Literally brainwashed. Yes

[Ponietz]

30. Vicious, toxic, unstable--what Murdoch has wrought in Australia, Britain, and the U.S.

This was in the Sydney Morning Herald today. This cancer must be excised.

Rupert Murdoch: The Cancer Eating the Heart of Australian Democracy

“Beneath the sound and light show that passed for Australian politics last week, there is a much deeper question of what underlying forces have been at work that have brought us this low. The uncomfortable truth is, since the coup of June 2010, Australian politics has become vicious, toxic and unstable. The core question is why?
...
“But on top of all the above, while manipulating each of them, has been Rupert Murdoch - the greatest cancer on the Australian democracy.

“Murdoch is not just a news organisation. Murdoch operates as a political party, acting in pursuit of clearly defined commercial interests, in addition to his far-right ideological world view.

“In Britain, Murdoch made Brexit possible because of the position taken by his papers. In the United States, Murdoch's Fox News is the political echo chamber of the far right, which enabled the Tea Party and then the Trump party to stage a hostile takeover of the Republican Party. In Australia, as in America, Murdoch has campaigned for decades in support of tax cuts for the wealthy, killing action on climate change and destroying anything approximating multiculturalism.

“What's unique about Australia is Murdoch owns two-thirds of the country's print media. No other democracy has anything approaching his effective media monopoly.
...”

[link:https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/cancer-eating-the-heart-of-australian-democracy-20180826-p4zzum.html|

[diva77]

36. I recommend making this an original post in General Discussion. Really important article!

Thanks for sharing it.

[Ponietz]

49. Check and thanks for the encouragement

[rainin]

52. Can we not heavily tax foreign owners of media operating in the US? Or regulate it?

[DemocratSinceBirth]

4. The economy is performing reasonably well

Ceteris paribus a President Rubio or Kasich would be > 50%

[triron]

19. Despite Trump's idiotic trade wars and corruption.

[EndGOPPropaganda]

6. Rightwing propaganda media. Fox, Limbaugh, Breitbart

The ONLY reason his approval is above 20% is because of rightwing propaganda media that runs interference for him and GOP billlionaires.

You want to fix the country? Talk about the lies of Fox and Limbaugh.

[Different Drummer]

11. 100% this! n/t

[dustyscamp]

26. Also places like Stormfront, /pol/, the_donald, other reddit/chan and gamer communities

[2naSalit]

51. and subliminal messaging?

I swear these people have been hypnotized.

[EndGOPPropaganda]

54. Watch "The Brainwashing of My Dad"

Movie explains it.
It’s on Amazon prime and a bunch of other servicesz

[N_E_1 for Tennis]

8. Because there are always uniformed jackbites...nt

[SunSeeker]

9. Racism. nt

[Grasswire2]

10. His base hates us more than anyone/anything and they are not going to tell a pollster...

....ANYTHING that would give us satisfaction.

That is the damned truth.

[MaryMagdaline]

27. I believe you are right

[smirkymonkey]

12. You know something? I don't think it's that his approval is so high, I think it's that

people are approving of him because they hate liberals and democrats. If there was another republican contender who was viable, I think that many of them would throw Trump over in a second. Many of them are cult members, but I think a lot of them side with him simply because he is a republican.

[Arkansas Granny]

16. My boss admits that he votes Republican because of his Christian beliefs.

Since we don't talk politics since the election, I haven't asked him how voting for Trump fits into those beliefs.

He remarked the other day how the economy was doing so well under Trump. When I mentioned that it had improved steadily under Obama after the 2008 crash he informed me that I was wrong and left the room with no further discussion.

This is a man who is scrupulously honest in his business dealings, is truthful and fair, but when it comes to politics he turns a blind eye to provable facts. It leaves me scratching my head.

[smirkymonkey]

33. They don't see the man, they see the ideology.

They are so blind when it comes to Trump. They don't see who he really is.

[LisaM]

13. Because most people don't even care.

His approval rating basically reflects a percentage of people entrenched on the right, and who take polls. There are just plenty of people who aren't on the right and don't take polls. I also think that more right-wingers actually take them. I take a lot of those quick MSN polls and invariably they skew right, to Trump voters, and to men.

[RockRaven]

14. Politics is the new religion - accept things on faith not evidence, never stray from the flock

and above all, burn the apostates.

He's their guy. He's on their team. He is the authority, or alternatively was chosen by the authority. That's all they need to know. Their minds will not be changed.

[mn9driver]

15. 40 percent of the country does not share the same reality as the other 60 percent

They have their own news and their own facts and it doesn’t intersect with external reality much at all.

And concerning Trump, there is no common ground. None.

[triron]

17. Too many have no idea what is going on and foolishly believe Fox news and WH spin.

[bluestarone]

18. All the heads are up

FOX NEWS'S ASS!!!

[njhoneybadger]

20. Most of his supporters are living In a bubble

the only news sources they ever hear are pure propaganda.
Fox News
The National Enquirer
Right wing hate radio
Alex Jones
Their local Churches
TV evangelist
And whatever horseshit they can find on the Internet
Even my local newspaper is now in the tank for Rethugs

[spanone]

21. he's their 'president' and they're his lackeys...nothing will move the needle

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

22. I learned during the Bush years it wasn't what he stood for, it was how firmly

he asserted himself. Say what you will about Dubya (and I can say a lot), he was absolute certain about what he was saying. Remember the debate where, when asked about any mistakes he made during the first term, Bush replied, "If you give me a couple of minutes I'm sure I can think of one"? Even Jay Leno, after having interviewed Gov. Dubya the previous night, told a guest, "I found him to have a total lack of curiosity." Leno said that!

My point is, what people seek more than freedom is certainty. Freedom is terrifying, because it means being responsible for your life. Many people see themselves as victims, and Trump validates their victimhood and points to who and what's to blame. Look around the room, see someone wearing a red hat (what great branding was that!) and you know instantly that you are not alone in the world.

Barack Obama is the closest president in real life to my ideal:

My favorite part -- slightly edited -- is: "Whatever your particular problem is, I promise you Donald Trump is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things and two things only: making you afraid of it and telling you who's to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections. You gather a group of middle-aged, middle-class, middle-income white voters who remember with longing an easier time, and you talk to them about family and American values and character. And you point to NFL players kneeling during the National Anthem and scream about patriotism and you tell them, they're to blame for their lot in life, and you go on television and you call them sons of a bitch. . . . You want a character debate, Don? You better stick with me, 'cause these NFL players are way out of your league."

[struggle4progress]

23. Paranormal America

October 11, 2017



https://blogs.chapman.edu/wilkinson/2017/10/11/paranormal-america-2017/

[triron]

24. You are mixing superstition with corroborated studies in paranormal psychology.

[struggle4progress]

25. Trump's commission should investigate alien abductions

By Henry Farrell
May 11, 2017

... Some – including Trump’s defenders – have claimed that voter fraud is widespread. However, there is no good empirical evidence that voter fraud occurs often enough to have any plausible impact on elections. As a 2014 article in the Election Law Journal by John Ahlquist, Kenneth R. Mayer and Simon Jackman puts it pungently: “the lower bound on the population reporting voter impersonation is nearly identical with the proportion of the population reporting abduction by extraterrestrials.” More simply put – if you rely on survey evidence to ‘prove’ the existence of voter fraud, you should also believe that large numbers of Americans are kidnapped by space aliens. About the same number of people – 2.5 percent of the population – say that they have been involved in both ...

... Ahlquist, Mayer and Jackman ... use an ingenious trick to make it easy for people to reveal (in the aggregate) whether they’ve committed voter fraud without ‘fessing up to it as individuals. First, they randomly divide the people whom they are surveying into a control group and a treatment group. They ask each group to look at a list, and say how many of the actions on that list they have carried out (without revealing which specific actions they have done). The control group gets a list of purely innocuous actions. The treatment group gets the same list, but with one addition — a question asking them whether they have ever committed voter fraud.

By comparing the average number of actions that people in the treatment group have carried out, with the average number of actions that people in the control group have carried out, Ahlquist, Mayer and Jackman can figure out whether voter fraud is a serious problem ...

... Ahlquist, Mayer and Jackman did a second list experiment in which members of the control group, instead of being asked about voter fraud, were asked whether they have been abducted by aliens. If people answered yes to all questions with about the same proportions in both the space alien abduction experiment and the voter fraud experiment, then this suggests either that people are rushing through the surveys carelessly, or that alien abduction is a much bigger problem than any of us knew. And this is indeed what the authors found ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2013/11/14/about-as-many-people-say-theyve-been-abducted-by-space-aliens-as-say-theyve-committed-voter-fraud/?utm_term=.3d64d6820f54

[ecstatic]

28. I'm so disgusted and disappointed. Nt

[peacebuzzard]

29. 1)Trumpers and 2)ostriches who only care for investments

clueless and/or could care less about important issues.
They approve or listen to their tax advisors.
Sick stuff.

[RussBLib]

31. educational system is screwed up

too many people can't tell lies from truth

too many people are still racist as fuck

[Crutchez_CuiBono]

32. The gop lies about everything, but, somehow

polls are sacrocant and economic figures are perfectly accurate. yEAHHHhhh. Pablum to keep the revolt from happening.

[Garrett78]

37. The GOP isn't conducting or reporting the polls in question.

538's aggregate has Trump just shy of 42%. It's safe to say that's where he's at.

[Crutchez_CuiBono]

38. Thats wonderful.

My position on polls remains. We are in a time when most everything is a lie and in my lifetime polls have been used in many ways. Thats what happens when lies are fed to us everyday. Myself, the view from the ground, w a finger on the pulse, seems often very different from the polls. I didnt ask for the onslaught of untruth since it became A-OK to do it, but, I certainly owe it to myself and my family to take everything w a grain of salt anymore.

[colsohlibgal]

34. Hard To Fathom

About half his support are alt right Nazi types. The other half have something wrong upstairs, maybe helped along by the likes of FoxNews and crazy right wing radio.

[Garrett78]

35. A large percentage of our fellow citizens are racist, sexist, ignorant, hypocritical assholes.

They live in an alternate reality.

[Behind the Aegis]

39. Complacency, bigotry, and a never-ending well of stupidity. n/t

[0rganism]

41. what's wrong is we never fixed our problems, we merely papered over them

we never rooted out racism, sexism, manifest destiny, and "white man's burden" myths from our culture.
we overwrote them with laws and regulations, but only recently have we begun addressing them at the core.
compared to modifying the soul of a society, passing legislation is relatively easy. so that's what our ancestors did -- they passed legislation and pretended all was well with the world. don't get me wrong, such legislation is necessary, and has a real important impact on the world, and things did improve for a while. it was never going to be easy -- the easiest step in this direction is very difficult.

and by now we have taken many of the easy steps. the steps remaining are going to be tricky, especially if we want to preserve our democracy and freedoms along the way. culture must now modify itself in ways it has never done before, to my knowledge. the virtues enshrined in our founding documents and laws must become as natural to us as breathing, while the sins ensconced within them slough away to make room for a new truth. this is a tall ask, but the low-hanging fruit is mostly gone already.

from here on out, progress will be increasingly difficult, with greater pushback at every step and a perception of diminishing returns along the way.

in a just society, Trump's approval rating would be 0%. his current political viability stands as a milestone marker of how far we still have to go.

[Elwood P Dowd]

42. Do they call cell phones for any of these polls?

I keep hearing some of them do, but in all the years I've owned a cell phone I have NEVER received ONE freaking call relating to a political poll. I get them them all the damn time on my land line.

[Kablooie]

45. Conservative minds have been under attack for decades and it's finally paying off.

They've been fed a heavy, constant diet of lies, fear mongering and hatred every day for the past 25 years.
Their minds have been macerated so thoroughly that now they've lost touch with morals, logic and basic reality.

It sounds like hyperbole but I believe it's actually true. They've really lost touch with basic mental functioning.

[njhoneybadger]

48. That's it Kablooie

[Demovictory9]

46. 40% experience a different reality. Talk radio - the day of the convictions, topic were Socialism

and "Hillary did worse", "Obama did x, y z" and weren't convicted. Every time Trump has a big jackass moment, Talk radio
either ignores it or does the "hillary did this" show.

There is never a "OMG, Trump is an ass" segment. if the host offers the gentlest rebuke of Trump's behavior the callers are outraged. "you are helping them..."

[fescuerescue]

47. The Russians have infiltrated all the polling firms and media.

Someday, we'll learn just how many Russians are on American soil and actually control us.

[dalton99a]

50. They must be outnumbered in November. GOTV!

[Pachamama]

53. Sadly, I keep asking myself this question everyday....

It is seriously sobering and depressing if these "Polls" are correct....The polls accuracy being a possible explanation.

But also as pointed out by other replies above, we are a large geographic Nation and vary greatly all over. The viewpoint of someone in a rural area in a red state who watches nothing but Fox News and reads conspiracy theory website info and has a limited world view and knowledge of actual facts, is going to see the world far differently than someone who lives in a fact based world.