The Liberal Levers Of Control Aren't Responding Like They're Supposed To

One of the fundamental liberal levers of control, the tools for shaping public opinion and thus acceptable public and political discourse, has always been the tendentious use of polling. In short, fake polling, in which the demographic sampling skews heavily to the Left. It’s painfully obvious—well, delightfully obvious?—that liberals have been caught totally flatfooted by the highly organized and focused Trumpian onslaught. So, over the weekend, they deployed what they hoped would be a tactic to buy themselves some time—a CBS poll that would “demonstrate” that Americans rejected Trump’s first three weeks and the unraveling of funding for the trans-formation of America. The fundamental transformation that Barry promised back in 2008. Only the CBS poll, despite being heavily weighted, backfired. You can read about it here, First CBS News Poll Of Trump Stuns Democrats, but I’ve pasted in an edited list of snapshots of the results for your enjoyment. Obviously what has the the Dems so stunned is that they know that an honest poll would have proved far more devastating, but that this one shows how shaky the ground they’re standing on has become.

The first snapshot strongly suggests that the public’s view of Trump is exactly what Trump wants it to be. How good is that? Very, very good.

Given that highly positive perception of Trump, you’d almost expect Trump’s overall approval to be even higher than it actually is. What explains the seeming discrepancy? I can only guess, but my guess is that women in particular—speaking generally—aren’t crazy about some of Trump’s rhetorical excesses. The approval is very encouraging—especially given the weighting of the pollig sample—but some nuancing of Trump’s rhetoric may be in order. That’s what internal polling and focus groups are for—to pinpoint issues that can be addressed with a bit of tweaking. Not a massive overhaul, because you don’t want to try to fix what’s not broken. Trump is nothing if not a perfectionist, so I suspect he’s aware of this. This may explain his more empathetic throwaway lines in recent days.

Now, from general approval we get back to a specific issue—one that liberals have done all in their power to turn into a hot button anti-Trump issue and one on which Trump’s rhetoric has been frequently pilloried. The results are quite remarkable and suggest—if my guess is correct—that most Americans can distinguish between rhetoric and substantive issues. That, again, is very good news for Trump.

These next two snapshots regarding Palestine are interesting. To me, taken together, they suggest that any significant blowback will hurt Trump’s approval. This probably extends to all foreign policy issues and is probably a reminder to Trump that Americans really are fed up with forever wars and foreign entanglements. They like Trump’s peace rhetoric, but they want real follow up.

This, too, is interesting. After years, even decades, of relentless China bashing, 44% of Americans oppose the tariffs on Chinese imports. This again, taken in combination with enormous concern over rising prices (see the previous snapshot again), suggests that if the tariffs—including those on Chinese goods—leads to higher prices, then Trump’s approval will suffer.

That last snapshot suggests that at this point trying to demonize Musk doesn’t look like a winning strategy. The Dems know—better than most—that the revelations are going to keep coming and, likely, will intensify. If it’s this bad for them now …