The following is a news analysis.
We all know that a lot is at stake for each side depending upon the outcome of the 2020 election.
But this is a key event for something that is even larger than one campaign: the polls and pundits.
The narrative after 2016 was that the polls were actually accurate; they just picked the wrong winner. The truth is, most people understand that the way the polls were reported in 2016, they were used as narratives to try to give the appearance that— as many experts incorrectly claimed— Trump could never win. Obviously, the opposite was true.
There was already simmering mistrust of polls after past big misses. It would seem 2020 will be make or break for the polls and pundits.
If Biden defeats Trump, it could well be that some measure of self-correction was done by those crunching and reporting on polls. That could begin a restoration of confidence in the polling system, although many will likely remain circumspect until more proof of accurate polling is in the rear view mirror.
If, on the other hand, Trump wins, it will be impossible for many people to any longer trust in the system of polling and pundits we’ve relied upon for so long. If that happens, those responsible will be forced to evaluate and do a wholesale renovation of their industry if they hope to have any meaningful relevance in the near future.
Visit The Sharyl Attkisson Store today
Unique gifts for independent thinkers
Proceeds benefit independent journalism
It’s a sad fact that you can’t trust any of the media in today’s environment
They make the polls say what they want for ratings and they are trying to influence the voters to elect their choice
This started with Clinton and had gotten steadily worse
Sooner or later we as a nation will half enough and it is not going to be pretty but the media just keeps pushing ( including fox) they are all in bed with each othe
That’s a very fair analysis from both perspectives.
Another essay to put on paper, then nix it
from this page for its excessive length :
©1999
Why Bother
to
Vote
If
You Elect
Only
Socialist/Communist Dictators?
Clever (or ignorant) elites on both the left and right try to convince you that democracy is “mob rule”—that your elected representatives in Congress are to do their bidding, not yours, in voting to influence outcomes for “your” nation’s future.
Do you know that America isn’t really a democracy? Do you know that this democratic republic isn’t really democratic? Do you know that the idea “majority rule” in a democracy is a greater tyranny than minority rule or rule by dictatorship? Do majorities rule here? Do you wonder why elites are befuddled by low voter turnout? Are you an informed voter? Why?
Some elite politicians and pundits like to use we-can-fool-’em rhetoric, such as “this is government of, by and for the people” or “democracy is the best form of government” or “exercise your democratic right to vote” whenever the popular opinion matches their own, but will resort to warning you about “mob rule” or “tyranny of the majority” or they tout your “representative’s right to a vote of conscience” when it doesn’t. This is rule by dictator.
Washington Post columnist David Broder believes that elected politicians in Congress are to vote their will, not yours—as do talk-show host Rush Limbaugh and columnist George Will (Limbaugh often warns his listeners against “democracy” and “mob rule” and “populous movements.” Isn’t that very, very curious?).
In a recent column on the issue of unicameralism, George Will makes this stunningly wrong assertion: “The people do not decide issues, they decide who will decide [for them]” [Richmond Times-Dispatch, “Let Us All Now Give Praise to Gridlock,” November 5th]—such as on the issue of immigration, the elites decide.
So when you vote, do you care if your would-be congressman agrees with your views on domestic and foreign matters?
When you vote, do you think that your would-be congressman will follow his campaign promises regarding those matters?
Why would you vote if you knew that representatives are morally free to disregard all campaign positions and vote their own conscience, against the majority’s wishes?
Why would you vote if you elect only “representative” dictators who decide matters apart from constituents’ views?
And why would you need to be an i n f o r m e d voter if your representative decides for you? This is rule by dictator.
Blame Founder and Framer James Madison for Will’s dangerous view, whom he paraphrases to support his majorities-are-tyrannies position: “Minimize the likelihood of durable oppressive majorities by maximizing the number of minorities — factions — that will coalesce only into unstable, transitory majorities . . . Democracy, far from requiring a small, homogeneous, faction-free society, will flourish in an ‘extensive’ society with a saving multiplicity of factions,” which argument Will uses to decry unicameralism in favor of bicameralism in Minnesota, and which argument applied to any “democratic” society amounts to saying that the more factions among its people and in its deliberative bodies the more can be accomplished—and more correctly so. No! That is rule by chaos. It’s hogwash!
Increasing factionalism is sign of civilization in decline, not ascent. Reducing differences and conflict is the purpose of virtue, of reason, of civil society, of community, of majority rule, and of democratic nationhood!
What the m a j o r i t y of Founders truly believed can be summed up not with Madison’s words but Thomas Jefferson’s: “The first principle of republicanism is, that the lex-majoris partis [the law of the majority] . . . is the first of all lessons in importance, yet the last which is thoroughly learnt. This law once disregarded, no other remains but that of force, which ends necessarily in military despotism.”
Thomas Jefferson knew that the far greater tyranny is minority rule, having seen laid out behind him millennia of despotic dictators and cabals oppressing the majority for evil ends, and which kind of oppression America’s white Christian majority – America’s founding race and culture – has suffered under m i n o r i t y cabals of progressive Jews, liberal “Christians” and atheistic humanists in the New Left Movement’s Special Rights Cause for women and blacks, strong in the Fifties – boosted by Left-controlled entertainment industries and publishing houses – and all-powerful by the late Sixties, directing white popular culture away from its high-culture/Judeo-Christian civility towards savage, anything-goes Marxist/socialist/feminism; a savagery effected by despotic, anti-white/anti-male/anti-Christian/anti-American/anti-Western federal courts and leftists in education, entertainment and media—mainstreaming, by their utter stupidity, drug abuse and gambling and pornography and sexual deviancies and STDs and abortion and broken families and out-of-control immigration and kids having kids and kids killing kids.
Ponder the stupidity of touting the idea “democracy” while at the same time decrying majority rule. That’s what evil elites do!
From kids’ secret clubs to town hall meetings to congressional committees to national elections the Majority Vote rules, yet those we-know-what-is-best-for-you elites would have you believe that representatives are to dismiss majority opinion when their conscience (Or, say, a whim or money or treason) directs them to decide for you what’s best for “your” country.
This scribbler shot down David Broder’s stupidity in a ’97 essay, “America: A Democracy or an Oligarchy of Corrupt and Powerful Men?”: We, the people, suffer the distortion that our representatives are to exercise our majority will when they vote; we suffer the misperception that this is government of, by, and for American citizens.
Again, according to Broder, ours is supposed to be a government by elected elites who can ignore the majority’s will. Broder believes that those holding political office are to exercise their own conscience, rather than the will of the people.
How many hard-working and middle-class Americans would be surprised by that view—that America is not a democracy nor democratic republic?
What defines the idea “democracy”?: majority rule.
What defines the idea “republic”?: quoting Webster’s dictionary, “a state or nation in which the supreme power rests in all the citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by representatives elected by them.”
What part of that definition is hard to understand—that the “supreme power rests in all the citizens” or “is exercised by representatives elected by them”?
What does “supreme power rests in all the citizens” mean if not the majority opinion of the citizenry, exercised by “representatives elected by them”?
It is clear that our representatives are sent to do our – the majority’s – bidding and not their own conscience. Our representatives are elected to do the majority’s will or suffer what Thomas Jefferson gave us strong warning to avoid: “The first principle of republicanism is, that the lex-majoris partis [the law of the majority] . . . is the first of all lessons in importance, yet the last which is thoroughly learnt. This law once disregarded, no other remains but that of force, which ends necessarily in military despotism.”
There are scoundrels who fear democracy in America since democracy subverts the tyrannical machinations of dictatorial, minority elites—and America is in steep cultural decline because she hasn’t been democratic for decades. Tyrannical anti-democracy socialist/communist elites rule here!
-Rick
For many years we’ve had two sides of the same coin. The Left/Right paradigm has only functioned to walk us to the edge of the cliff. But now, God has stepped in, and has raised up Trump for such a time as this. God chooses the foolish things of the world, to confound the wise. But those who truly have the Spirit of God in them, recognize that God is doing a new thing. There is no room for useless cynicism.. We need to reject career politicians who have been compromised. Everything is going to change. The best is yet to come.
Democrats in Pennsylvania are already cheating their arses off. As we knew they would…and STILL failed to safeguard against.
Polls and pollsters are primarily the domain of the former mainstream media, which has, in the past 3 decades, particularly the last decade, become a propaganda machine for the Democratic Party. We no longer have a mainstream media. Why? My opinion is that the Democratic Party and the former mainstream media have been taken over by global socialists – which could also be the communist party – determined to make the US a socialist, totalitarian state.
D3F1ant, you are correct :
“Poll Worker In Erie, PA, claims to have trashed ‘Over A Hundred’ Pro-Trump Ballots On Instagram’ “ :
https://100percentfedup.com/breaking-poll-worker-in-erie-pa-admits-to-throwing-away-over-a-hundred-pro-trump-ballots-on-instagram-video/
Let’s be clear, the polls are an extension of the media. The media are an extension of the socialist party. The polls are made skewed to favor the socialist to drive voters away from the opponent. The media cites these polls in their propaganda to lead the sheep. End of story.