Oh please! Comparing a mere $50K political donation, split between a party and a candidate, by an owner of a hedge fund that happens to own a newspaper to actually putting people on the board of a newspaper whose mission includes determining coverage and influencing editorial policy is not even a close analogy. Besides - unlike the Sun-Times, which still has local reporters covering actual local news - the former self-proclaimed World’s Greatest Newspaper is largely just a forum for reprints from the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Associated Press today.
They appear to be in the business of making money. They don't seem to have any particular ideological leaning. They seem to think they can make a decent return on investment for a long time, based on the size of the media group they continue building. I wonder if they think print news is permeant. If not, do they think they have a path to profitable digital news?
If they want to be profitable with digital news, they are going to have to improve the product. Compared to the NYT or Washington Post, the digital Tribune pretty much sucks.
Actually, the board of a newspaper has little to nothing to do with determining coverage. How much influence they have in influencing editorial policy remains something of a mystery to me after more than 40 years in newspapers. Who, exactly, is speaking when "the newspaper" speaks? I know it's not the staff. I know it's not always the majority of the editorial board. All I know is that people trumpet the view of "the newspaper" when that view agrees with their views and they sneer and scoff when that view differs from their own.
LOL. Perhaps I am more high-minded, but the older I get the more misanthropic I get, so I try not to advocate executing people just because they are effing irritating.
I would really like to meet the guy who came up with that Council of Nicea tweet, however.
I dunno whether or how the election might have been stolen. The logical conclusion to Joe Biden’s response to the question as to whether the 2022 election will be valid (i.e. not unless the Leftist voting rights bill is passed) implies his belief that all past elections were rigged. I and most thinking people wave away Trump’s foolish assertions about voting machines and servers in China and etc. But we do believe that mail-in voting, indiscriminate and unsolicited mailing of ballots to addresses (not people), unsecure drop boxes, ballot harvesting et al subvert chain of custody and auditability. If you think mail-in voting is secure, then you should start paying your bills thru the US Mail in cash with “Cash Enclosed” written on the envelope. When the money is stolen you will have no way to prove that you ever sent the cash.
Was Jan.6th led by Leftists? You and I can agree that notion is indeed certifiably insane. That “democracy” could be overthrown by those fools is also indeed certifiably insane. Could we agree that the Leftists in Seattle, Portland, Minneapolis, Chicago et al had as their objective a desire to subvert government authority and law and order in an attempt to undermine our government and that they were much smarter to play the long game toward that goal?
The Brownshirts and Nazi’s in 1930’s German were expressing “growing anger and frustration” with those who they believed were responsible for all the things they feared. Good Germans who supported them did too, or at least they looked the other way, Good Germans didn’t think what happened could happen but totalitarianism starts small.
Regarding vaccinations, as I have said in the past, look at the data. The data support the “goofy, selfish unscientific belief” that healthy people, and particularly those under 50, have very little to fear from Covid. Children especially. And deeper analysis of the data also show that the data itself has been unobjectively reported in order to scare people and achieve desired ends. Even Supreme Court justices are quoting false information.
You seem to believe you are the only non-partisan person around. Mandatory vaccines for polio, a devastating disease that strikes the healthy and unhealthy indiscriminately with much lower recovery rates? Yes. For Covid? No.
You say these measures won’t be enacted. You may be right. But similar measures were enacted in Australia. Lots of German Jews never left Germany because they didn’t believe what was being said would ever happen.
I like your Picayune, Eric. I will continue to subscribe. You have a right to your opinions, and I respect them. And I respect and will abide by your right to edit and censor what you post. But my comments seem to hit a nerve and bring out impatience and pejorative name-calling in your responses. With my WSJ excerpt I was trying to point out, without comment, that there is an attitude among our fellow citizens that is disturbing and dangerous. Your reaction was “whataboutism”, where I expected something more akin to your final paragraph. Maybe that’s what I got. Neither side has clean hands. But I had to endure the insults along the way.
The Capitol rioters seemed bent on murdering Democratic politicians along with Mike Pence and any other Republicans who supported the election results. This is so much closer to an actual overthrow of democratic rule than anything those street protesters were even hoping for that it's comically ignorant to suggest otherwise. And I'm not insulting YOU, snowflake, so don't act wounded. I'm not saying YOU are ignorant. I'm saying your suggestion is ignorant.
The protesters in Portland "share some intersecting grievances and common goals, such as cutting police budgets and installing more civilian oversight of the police," according to a New York Times report. To the feverish on the right this is an effort to "undermine the government," but in no way was it comparable to an effort to throw out the results of a presidential election and install the loser.
Healthy people under 50 contract and spread COVID to more vulnerable populations. Unvaccinated people are being hospitalized and dying far more often than vaccinated people, putting a strain on the health-care system and society in general. Waving away that reality is, yup, selfish.
Anti-vaxxers in ONE Australian state were subject to a FOUR DAY lockdown after a significant spike in infections. So please don't bring your bullshit Holocaust analogies to this conversation.
Finally, mail-in voting has been done for years and the security issues with it have been minimal. You Republicans used to champion it and promote it and embrace it when mail-in voters tended to be older, white Republicans. Only now you've ginned up your fretting and hand-wringing. And I, for one, don't wonder why.
Wait a minute, here, Eric. I thought when I became a paying inaugural subscriber that I was signing up for some informed civil political discourse, not an immature flame war in which people hurl names like “snowflake” and indulge in fantasies like the notion that the January 6 protesters were out to “murder” anybody. That’s just crazy talk. I’ll give it a while yet, but if this turns out to be just a paid subscription to Facebook-style name-calling and flame-throwing I’ll definitely not be renewing and will just go back to reading the Sun-Times.
Yes, the gallows they had out front and the cries of "hang Mike Pence" were purely metaphorical. The protester who said on video she wanted to shoot Pelosi "in the friggin' brain" was just funnin'. Those who carried bear spray and fought cops with cudgels in order to get into the Capitol offices were hoping for a peaceful colloquy. The people who chanted "“Execute the traitors!” were speaking figuratively. Crazy talk, right.
I will respond to informed opinion in a civil manner, but my tolerance for nonsense is fairly low, as I don't think it contributes to moving society forward. If you're looking for a place to equate the Jan. 6 effort to overturn a presidential election with defund-the-police BLM riots, I'm sure there are many places online that will welcome you and cheer you on. Sorry it's not here.
Eric, you just jumpd the shark. C'mon, man. You think a guy in a Viking hat and shorts could lead a group of morons and overthrow the government?
No one was bent on "murder". I believe if the Attorney General under a Democrat administration could have had the evidence to indict any of the protesters on Jan. 6th for attempted murder, intent to commit murder or insurrection he most surely would have done it. And yet none were charged as such. None of the protesters had guns and the only person murdered was Ashlee Babbitt, who was unarmed.
Mail-in voting rules were liberalized in several states in 2020 and I don't believe unsolicited ballots were sent to everyone on the voting roles in certain states in the past. And signature verification on a maiin ballot without verification of the ballot against an accepted state ID is no control. I stand by my comments re chain of custody and auditability of mail-in ballots.
In "Marathon Man", Zell hit the nerve that caued Dustin Hoffman to cry out in pain. I feel I have hit that nerve with you. You seem to be violating your own rule regarding profanity and insults on the Picayune. Chill out, Eric. Set aside the emotuon and indignation. Respect other opinions without insulting your dinner guests.
I will let other subscribers either assault or defend me at this point.
As a B cell blood cancer survivor who has been vaxed and boosted, I would like to see everyone vaccinated. Because of the chemo and stem cell transplant I had 14 years ago which compromised my immune system, I have no antibodies from the vaccines, and would be seriously I’ll if I got Covid. So I have to give up my freedom to go to indoor gatherings, restaurants, anywhere the unvaccinated are - so they can exercise their freedom to be unvaccinated. My question is when did Americans become so self centered? Do these unvaccinated people understand that the longer Covid is out there, the more it will mutate?
Heather Cherone interview is interesting and helpful. Just the kind of info I want to know so I can guide my middle school students. Thank you for emphasizing her educational career.
Re: your exchange with Joe P where you both cited polls. I'm so tired of polls being pointed to as something meaningful when IMHO they only serve to inflame or influence people and/or cause hand wringing. Very seldom are the actual number of people surveyed revealed or where they were drawn from. When I dug down to the "About the Study" section of the Ipsos Reuters poll you linked, the sample was 2007 people randomly from "online panels" and then Ipsos extrapolates. Where do these people come from, how do they find them? Personally, I've never been asked to participate in any political poll and if 2016 showed us anything, it's that polls are irrelevant.
Polls are certainly accurate enough that they nearly always forecast election results within their margins of error and politicians of all stripes not only rely on them but commision them, often for internal use only. Yes, when asked at his news conference how he'd win back independent voters whom polls show are drifting away from him, President Biden said he doesn't believe in polls. But at the same news conference he insisted that many of his Build Back Better initiatives are very popular with the American people. At least Trump was honest when he said he believed in polls that gave him good news and discredited as "fake news" polls that gave him bad news. What you look for is consistency across polling organizations and over time and compare those results to results that can be quantified. Over and over we see the GOP in the mental clutches of would-be autocrat and incurious dope Donald Trump. Are ALL those polls wrong? Is Adam Kinzinger crazy to think the polls tell him that a Trump critic has no freakin' chance in a Deranged Old Party primary?
Of course Democrats are partisan, Joe. But they're not in the thrall of an amoral would-be dictator who did his best to steal the presidential election. So that's kinda the difference. I know you don't see it, so I'm not really addressing you.
Correct. They are in thrall of Leftists like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, the Squad, BLM, teacher unions, CRT proponents and the people pulling the strings of a cognitively impaired president whose handlers are so afraid to expose to the public that he has been allowed only two press conferences in a year. Packing the Supreme Court, killing the filibuster, control of the media and academia, speech codes, debunked accusations of collusion with foreign powers et al might point to would-be attempts at a dictatorship of the Left.
You have TDS, Eric. I don't like the guy that much either and I won't defend a lot of what he says and how he says it but I liked his policies and his transparency. Seems like everything with you leads back to "But Trump!".
Your attempts to "both sides" this are pathetic. Not that YOU are pathetic, but your attempt here is pathetic. The Democratic party is NOT in thrall of that which you list in your bill of particulars. That's why its voters nominated moderate Joe Biden, who would kick your ass and Trump's ass in a civics test, a history test, you name it. There is, alas, no serious effort to kill the filibuster (though I have no doubt that the GOP will do so should it come across an issue its voters consider urgent) or to add justices to a Supreme Court where presidents elected by a minority of voters have installed a suffocating conservative majority. But keep on shrieking your false equivalencies and fearmongering slogans. You only prove my point!
Is this Eric Zorn I am speaking to or has someone hacked his account to pose as him? What happened to the desire to host a forum to discuss issues and generate reasoned dialogue?
I don’t think anyone objectively keeping up with current events can doubt, given the pressure and abuse Manchin and Sinema are being subjected to, that there is a serious effort to deep-six the filibuster. Recall Reid started the boulder downhill by nixing it for judicial appointments causing McConnell to retaliate with SCOTUS appointments. They mean what they say, Eric. And I am not fearmongering.
I submit that the Democrat party is indeed dominated by if not in thrall to the Left and nominated Biden as a Trojan horse to hide their intent to pass Leftist policies. He doesn’t seem to be backing up with his actions any of the rhetoric he ran on.
“Kick my ass”? My opinions are “pathetic” but I am not? Nice try but a disingenuous way to hurl insult. Eric, this is beneath you, and I will not demean myself by responding.
I have tried to present other points of view, reasonable ones that are held by many reasonable and respected people. I have not used insulting or obscene language and have not resorted to personal attacks. I had hoped for fact-based debate without invective. I am disappointed.
I agree that most polls and reporting on polls is of little value. Polling is a tool. As you say, what is important is who funded the poll, the objective of the poll, and how the results are used. Polls can be used to gauge public opinion, at a point in time, to support decision making. These polls may be for objective information gathering or for testing marketing/political positions. Polls can also be designed to elicit specific responses (by the order and framing of questions) in order to create the appearance of support for a position or attitude. The results can then be used to elicit an emotional or political response from different groups. The media rarely provides any information on the background of a poll and are happy to pass on the highlights and interpretation from the pollster.
As you say, the response pool is also important. Response rates are typically less than 10%, so a large number is required to get a reasonably sized pool. All things being equal, 2000 people should provide a random sample of the population. But all things are not equal. Respondents are self-selecting and there is no reason to believe that they are representative. At a minimum they are people that are more concerned about the topic than the average person. This is skewed even more when sourced from 'panels' which are already topic oriented. Politicians try to get objective information to help guide their campaign messages, activity, and spending. But they don't share those polls. There are some polls commissioned by news organizations and some by philanthropic and academic organizations that attempt to provide objective information on topics of public interest, but none is completely free of bias. Aggregating across these more objective polls provides a snapshot of opinion across people that are willing to respond to polls. Sometimes it is better than nothing.
Eric, whoever said bad things come in three’s must have seen Spencer. Three times critics have lauded must-see films this year and three times I’ve been burned. First the Lost Daughter (self absorbed woman with angst, kids who get the shaft and a lot of closeup’s to make up for lack of plot.). Then The Last Duel (i live John Williams and trusted his recommendation on Mincing Rascals. Why???!!!I Then Spencer (self-absorbed woman with angst, kids who get the shaft, and closeups to make up for the lack of plot). See Encanto. Weak plot but beautiful animation and incredible Lin Manuel Miranda music.
Thanks for the Cherone interview -- heard/saw her many times, nice to "meet" her via PS. I had similar journalistic dreams -- same age. I too watched Kurtis and Jacobson as a kid and read the papers and thought all that was exciting and interesting and romantic. I subsequently got a little taste of the life -- Medill cherub program (cover the parade!), Daily Northwestern (school board meetings! arraignments! will they build the parking garage?!), lady friend interning at the Toledo Blade (Toledo!) -- and got less of a taste *for* the life. I've always admired journalists' work ethic and professionalism in the face of not very much money and less thanks.
Incidentally, "Assorted Misdeeds in the Suburbs" would make an excellent title for something, I'm thinking true crime podcast?
I found the poll response on 'stay at home' orders for the unvaccinated interesting. Eric believes that the poll respondents are reasonable, concerned people that were expressing anger and frustration and were using their response to send a message and not in support of an actual policy. A very likely and nuanced interpretation of a group one identifies with and are in sympathy with. But the poll numbers and Eric's interpretation also made me think about who the respondents imagined to be isolated. Hicks, rubes, and Trumpian crazies are appealing targets of anger and derision. But would the response have been the same if they had been told the policy would fall disproportionately on Blacks and was therefore racist? Blacks have the lowest vaccination rate (40%), followed by other POC's, then whites, with the highest rate for Asians. What did they envision in the word 'unvaccinated'? 77% of Americans have one shot, 64% are fully vaccinated, 40% are fully vaccinated and had a booster - so did the respondents imagine confining 23% of the population or 60%? 55% of 12–17-year-olds are fully vaccinated and 20% of 5-11-year-olds. Did they imagine isolating 80% of grade schoolers? A very large percentage of the unvaccinated children must have vaccinated parents. Maybe we should just accept the fact that people don't have a common risk assessment, and don't have a common perception of the 'obviously' correct behavior. And trying to group them as Democrat or Republican is not very useful. Finally, the rate of acceptance for the covid vaccine is no different than it has been for past vaccines. The measles vaccine, 1963, took twenty years from introduction to reaching 90% of the population and has stayed at that rate since. Measles was hoped to be 'eliminated' by 1982, but was not 'eliminated' until 2000. Expecting covid to be contained in one or two years is optimistic to say the least.
Excellent newsletter today , Eric. And brief!
Oh please! Comparing a mere $50K political donation, split between a party and a candidate, by an owner of a hedge fund that happens to own a newspaper to actually putting people on the board of a newspaper whose mission includes determining coverage and influencing editorial policy is not even a close analogy. Besides - unlike the Sun-Times, which still has local reporters covering actual local news - the former self-proclaimed World’s Greatest Newspaper is largely just a forum for reprints from the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Associated Press today.
Happens to own a newspaper?! Understatement of the week. I am interested to know what Alden's actual endgame is.
They appear to be in the business of making money. They don't seem to have any particular ideological leaning. They seem to think they can make a decent return on investment for a long time, based on the size of the media group they continue building. I wonder if they think print news is permeant. If not, do they think they have a path to profitable digital news?
If they want to be profitable with digital news, they are going to have to improve the product. Compared to the NYT or Washington Post, the digital Tribune pretty much sucks.
Actually, the board of a newspaper has little to nothing to do with determining coverage. How much influence they have in influencing editorial policy remains something of a mystery to me after more than 40 years in newspapers. Who, exactly, is speaking when "the newspaper" speaks? I know it's not the staff. I know it's not always the majority of the editorial board. All I know is that people trumpet the view of "the newspaper" when that view agrees with their views and they sneer and scoff when that view differs from their own.
LOL. Perhaps I am more high-minded, but the older I get the more misanthropic I get, so I try not to advocate executing people just because they are effing irritating.
I would really like to meet the guy who came up with that Council of Nicea tweet, however.
NEVER imagined a LOL moment related to the Council of Nicea. Thanks for brightening my day.
Hi Eric,
I dunno whether or how the election might have been stolen. The logical conclusion to Joe Biden’s response to the question as to whether the 2022 election will be valid (i.e. not unless the Leftist voting rights bill is passed) implies his belief that all past elections were rigged. I and most thinking people wave away Trump’s foolish assertions about voting machines and servers in China and etc. But we do believe that mail-in voting, indiscriminate and unsolicited mailing of ballots to addresses (not people), unsecure drop boxes, ballot harvesting et al subvert chain of custody and auditability. If you think mail-in voting is secure, then you should start paying your bills thru the US Mail in cash with “Cash Enclosed” written on the envelope. When the money is stolen you will have no way to prove that you ever sent the cash.
Was Jan.6th led by Leftists? You and I can agree that notion is indeed certifiably insane. That “democracy” could be overthrown by those fools is also indeed certifiably insane. Could we agree that the Leftists in Seattle, Portland, Minneapolis, Chicago et al had as their objective a desire to subvert government authority and law and order in an attempt to undermine our government and that they were much smarter to play the long game toward that goal?
The Brownshirts and Nazi’s in 1930’s German were expressing “growing anger and frustration” with those who they believed were responsible for all the things they feared. Good Germans who supported them did too, or at least they looked the other way, Good Germans didn’t think what happened could happen but totalitarianism starts small.
Regarding vaccinations, as I have said in the past, look at the data. The data support the “goofy, selfish unscientific belief” that healthy people, and particularly those under 50, have very little to fear from Covid. Children especially. And deeper analysis of the data also show that the data itself has been unobjectively reported in order to scare people and achieve desired ends. Even Supreme Court justices are quoting false information.
You seem to believe you are the only non-partisan person around. Mandatory vaccines for polio, a devastating disease that strikes the healthy and unhealthy indiscriminately with much lower recovery rates? Yes. For Covid? No.
You say these measures won’t be enacted. You may be right. But similar measures were enacted in Australia. Lots of German Jews never left Germany because they didn’t believe what was being said would ever happen.
I like your Picayune, Eric. I will continue to subscribe. You have a right to your opinions, and I respect them. And I respect and will abide by your right to edit and censor what you post. But my comments seem to hit a nerve and bring out impatience and pejorative name-calling in your responses. With my WSJ excerpt I was trying to point out, without comment, that there is an attitude among our fellow citizens that is disturbing and dangerous. Your reaction was “whataboutism”, where I expected something more akin to your final paragraph. Maybe that’s what I got. Neither side has clean hands. But I had to endure the insults along the way.
The Capitol rioters seemed bent on murdering Democratic politicians along with Mike Pence and any other Republicans who supported the election results. This is so much closer to an actual overthrow of democratic rule than anything those street protesters were even hoping for that it's comically ignorant to suggest otherwise. And I'm not insulting YOU, snowflake, so don't act wounded. I'm not saying YOU are ignorant. I'm saying your suggestion is ignorant.
The protesters in Portland "share some intersecting grievances and common goals, such as cutting police budgets and installing more civilian oversight of the police," according to a New York Times report. To the feverish on the right this is an effort to "undermine the government," but in no way was it comparable to an effort to throw out the results of a presidential election and install the loser.
Healthy people under 50 contract and spread COVID to more vulnerable populations. Unvaccinated people are being hospitalized and dying far more often than vaccinated people, putting a strain on the health-care system and society in general. Waving away that reality is, yup, selfish.
Anti-vaxxers in ONE Australian state were subject to a FOUR DAY lockdown after a significant spike in infections. So please don't bring your bullshit Holocaust analogies to this conversation.
Finally, mail-in voting has been done for years and the security issues with it have been minimal. You Republicans used to champion it and promote it and embrace it when mail-in voters tended to be older, white Republicans. Only now you've ginned up your fretting and hand-wringing. And I, for one, don't wonder why.
Wait a minute, here, Eric. I thought when I became a paying inaugural subscriber that I was signing up for some informed civil political discourse, not an immature flame war in which people hurl names like “snowflake” and indulge in fantasies like the notion that the January 6 protesters were out to “murder” anybody. That’s just crazy talk. I’ll give it a while yet, but if this turns out to be just a paid subscription to Facebook-style name-calling and flame-throwing I’ll definitely not be renewing and will just go back to reading the Sun-Times.
Yes, the gallows they had out front and the cries of "hang Mike Pence" were purely metaphorical. The protester who said on video she wanted to shoot Pelosi "in the friggin' brain" was just funnin'. Those who carried bear spray and fought cops with cudgels in order to get into the Capitol offices were hoping for a peaceful colloquy. The people who chanted "“Execute the traitors!” were speaking figuratively. Crazy talk, right.
I will respond to informed opinion in a civil manner, but my tolerance for nonsense is fairly low, as I don't think it contributes to moving society forward. If you're looking for a place to equate the Jan. 6 effort to overturn a presidential election with defund-the-police BLM riots, I'm sure there are many places online that will welcome you and cheer you on. Sorry it's not here.
It is because of stances like this that I am proud to be a founding member of the Picayune Sentinel. Thanks EZ.
My tolerance for nonsense is quitelow as well. Thank you David.
Eric, you just jumpd the shark. C'mon, man. You think a guy in a Viking hat and shorts could lead a group of morons and overthrow the government?
No one was bent on "murder". I believe if the Attorney General under a Democrat administration could have had the evidence to indict any of the protesters on Jan. 6th for attempted murder, intent to commit murder or insurrection he most surely would have done it. And yet none were charged as such. None of the protesters had guns and the only person murdered was Ashlee Babbitt, who was unarmed.
Mail-in voting rules were liberalized in several states in 2020 and I don't believe unsolicited ballots were sent to everyone on the voting roles in certain states in the past. And signature verification on a maiin ballot without verification of the ballot against an accepted state ID is no control. I stand by my comments re chain of custody and auditability of mail-in ballots.
In "Marathon Man", Zell hit the nerve that caued Dustin Hoffman to cry out in pain. I feel I have hit that nerve with you. You seem to be violating your own rule regarding profanity and insults on the Picayune. Chill out, Eric. Set aside the emotuon and indignation. Respect other opinions without insulting your dinner guests.
I will let other subscribers either assault or defend me at this point.
If you want objective news, don't listen to WBEZ. Or at least balance it out by listening to FOX News and The Onion as well.
As a B cell blood cancer survivor who has been vaxed and boosted, I would like to see everyone vaccinated. Because of the chemo and stem cell transplant I had 14 years ago which compromised my immune system, I have no antibodies from the vaccines, and would be seriously I’ll if I got Covid. So I have to give up my freedom to go to indoor gatherings, restaurants, anywhere the unvaccinated are - so they can exercise their freedom to be unvaccinated. My question is when did Americans become so self centered? Do these unvaccinated people understand that the longer Covid is out there, the more it will mutate?
Thanks, Eric. Love your newsletters.
Heather Cherone interview is interesting and helpful. Just the kind of info I want to know so I can guide my middle school students. Thank you for emphasizing her educational career.
Re: your exchange with Joe P where you both cited polls. I'm so tired of polls being pointed to as something meaningful when IMHO they only serve to inflame or influence people and/or cause hand wringing. Very seldom are the actual number of people surveyed revealed or where they were drawn from. When I dug down to the "About the Study" section of the Ipsos Reuters poll you linked, the sample was 2007 people randomly from "online panels" and then Ipsos extrapolates. Where do these people come from, how do they find them? Personally, I've never been asked to participate in any political poll and if 2016 showed us anything, it's that polls are irrelevant.
Thank You Marilyn.
Polls are certainly accurate enough that they nearly always forecast election results within their margins of error and politicians of all stripes not only rely on them but commision them, often for internal use only. Yes, when asked at his news conference how he'd win back independent voters whom polls show are drifting away from him, President Biden said he doesn't believe in polls. But at the same news conference he insisted that many of his Build Back Better initiatives are very popular with the American people. At least Trump was honest when he said he believed in polls that gave him good news and discredited as "fake news" polls that gave him bad news. What you look for is consistency across polling organizations and over time and compare those results to results that can be quantified. Over and over we see the GOP in the mental clutches of would-be autocrat and incurious dope Donald Trump. Are ALL those polls wrong? Is Adam Kinzinger crazy to think the polls tell him that a Trump critic has no freakin' chance in a Deranged Old Party primary?
Yes, of course the problem is the GOP. Dems are not partisan.
No one has clean hands, Eric.
Of course Democrats are partisan, Joe. But they're not in the thrall of an amoral would-be dictator who did his best to steal the presidential election. So that's kinda the difference. I know you don't see it, so I'm not really addressing you.
Correct. They are in thrall of Leftists like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, the Squad, BLM, teacher unions, CRT proponents and the people pulling the strings of a cognitively impaired president whose handlers are so afraid to expose to the public that he has been allowed only two press conferences in a year. Packing the Supreme Court, killing the filibuster, control of the media and academia, speech codes, debunked accusations of collusion with foreign powers et al might point to would-be attempts at a dictatorship of the Left.
You have TDS, Eric. I don't like the guy that much either and I won't defend a lot of what he says and how he says it but I liked his policies and his transparency. Seems like everything with you leads back to "But Trump!".
Neither party has clean hands.
Your attempts to "both sides" this are pathetic. Not that YOU are pathetic, but your attempt here is pathetic. The Democratic party is NOT in thrall of that which you list in your bill of particulars. That's why its voters nominated moderate Joe Biden, who would kick your ass and Trump's ass in a civics test, a history test, you name it. There is, alas, no serious effort to kill the filibuster (though I have no doubt that the GOP will do so should it come across an issue its voters consider urgent) or to add justices to a Supreme Court where presidents elected by a minority of voters have installed a suffocating conservative majority. But keep on shrieking your false equivalencies and fearmongering slogans. You only prove my point!
Hi Eric,
Is this Eric Zorn I am speaking to or has someone hacked his account to pose as him? What happened to the desire to host a forum to discuss issues and generate reasoned dialogue?
I don’t think anyone objectively keeping up with current events can doubt, given the pressure and abuse Manchin and Sinema are being subjected to, that there is a serious effort to deep-six the filibuster. Recall Reid started the boulder downhill by nixing it for judicial appointments causing McConnell to retaliate with SCOTUS appointments. They mean what they say, Eric. And I am not fearmongering.
I submit that the Democrat party is indeed dominated by if not in thrall to the Left and nominated Biden as a Trojan horse to hide their intent to pass Leftist policies. He doesn’t seem to be backing up with his actions any of the rhetoric he ran on.
“Kick my ass”? My opinions are “pathetic” but I am not? Nice try but a disingenuous way to hurl insult. Eric, this is beneath you, and I will not demean myself by responding.
I have tried to present other points of view, reasonable ones that are held by many reasonable and respected people. I have not used insulting or obscene language and have not resorted to personal attacks. I had hoped for fact-based debate without invective. I am disappointed.
Ok, but I still think polls are given too much weight.
Yes, me too.
I agree that most polls and reporting on polls is of little value. Polling is a tool. As you say, what is important is who funded the poll, the objective of the poll, and how the results are used. Polls can be used to gauge public opinion, at a point in time, to support decision making. These polls may be for objective information gathering or for testing marketing/political positions. Polls can also be designed to elicit specific responses (by the order and framing of questions) in order to create the appearance of support for a position or attitude. The results can then be used to elicit an emotional or political response from different groups. The media rarely provides any information on the background of a poll and are happy to pass on the highlights and interpretation from the pollster.
As you say, the response pool is also important. Response rates are typically less than 10%, so a large number is required to get a reasonably sized pool. All things being equal, 2000 people should provide a random sample of the population. But all things are not equal. Respondents are self-selecting and there is no reason to believe that they are representative. At a minimum they are people that are more concerned about the topic than the average person. This is skewed even more when sourced from 'panels' which are already topic oriented. Politicians try to get objective information to help guide their campaign messages, activity, and spending. But they don't share those polls. There are some polls commissioned by news organizations and some by philanthropic and academic organizations that attempt to provide objective information on topics of public interest, but none is completely free of bias. Aggregating across these more objective polls provides a snapshot of opinion across people that are willing to respond to polls. Sometimes it is better than nothing.
Thank you, that was very informative for me.
Eric, whoever said bad things come in three’s must have seen Spencer. Three times critics have lauded must-see films this year and three times I’ve been burned. First the Lost Daughter (self absorbed woman with angst, kids who get the shaft and a lot of closeup’s to make up for lack of plot.). Then The Last Duel (i live John Williams and trusted his recommendation on Mincing Rascals. Why???!!!I Then Spencer (self-absorbed woman with angst, kids who get the shaft, and closeups to make up for the lack of plot). See Encanto. Weak plot but beautiful animation and incredible Lin Manuel Miranda music.
Thanks for the Cherone interview -- heard/saw her many times, nice to "meet" her via PS. I had similar journalistic dreams -- same age. I too watched Kurtis and Jacobson as a kid and read the papers and thought all that was exciting and interesting and romantic. I subsequently got a little taste of the life -- Medill cherub program (cover the parade!), Daily Northwestern (school board meetings! arraignments! will they build the parking garage?!), lady friend interning at the Toledo Blade (Toledo!) -- and got less of a taste *for* the life. I've always admired journalists' work ethic and professionalism in the face of not very much money and less thanks.
Incidentally, "Assorted Misdeeds in the Suburbs" would make an excellent title for something, I'm thinking true crime podcast?
I found the poll response on 'stay at home' orders for the unvaccinated interesting. Eric believes that the poll respondents are reasonable, concerned people that were expressing anger and frustration and were using their response to send a message and not in support of an actual policy. A very likely and nuanced interpretation of a group one identifies with and are in sympathy with. But the poll numbers and Eric's interpretation also made me think about who the respondents imagined to be isolated. Hicks, rubes, and Trumpian crazies are appealing targets of anger and derision. But would the response have been the same if they had been told the policy would fall disproportionately on Blacks and was therefore racist? Blacks have the lowest vaccination rate (40%), followed by other POC's, then whites, with the highest rate for Asians. What did they envision in the word 'unvaccinated'? 77% of Americans have one shot, 64% are fully vaccinated, 40% are fully vaccinated and had a booster - so did the respondents imagine confining 23% of the population or 60%? 55% of 12–17-year-olds are fully vaccinated and 20% of 5-11-year-olds. Did they imagine isolating 80% of grade schoolers? A very large percentage of the unvaccinated children must have vaccinated parents. Maybe we should just accept the fact that people don't have a common risk assessment, and don't have a common perception of the 'obviously' correct behavior. And trying to group them as Democrat or Republican is not very useful. Finally, the rate of acceptance for the covid vaccine is no different than it has been for past vaccines. The measles vaccine, 1963, took twenty years from introduction to reaching 90% of the population and has stayed at that rate since. Measles was hoped to be 'eliminated' by 1982, but was not 'eliminated' until 2000. Expecting covid to be contained in one or two years is optimistic to say the least.