Why We Have No Idea Which Party Will Triumph in the 2022 Mid-Term Elections
(The American public is deftly molded and shaped by politicians and media outlets who play the people like a yoyo)
Some people are convinced that the Republicans will win because of inflation and other assorted ills. Others are convinced that the Democrats will win because of the draft Supreme Court decision overruling Roe v Wade. I have been following politics for far too long to make any prediction. I can remember that in the immediate aftermath of Gulf War One, George Bush had an approval rating of 90 percent, and heavy hitters in the Democratic Party, such as Mario Cuomo, declined to challenge him in 1992. In November 1992, Bush garnered only 38 percent of the popular vote. Likewise, Richard Nixon’s approval rating was in the low 40’s through much of 1971. However, in November 1972, he slaughtered George Mc Govern, winning every state in the nation save Massachusetts. (Which always makes me remember the Bee Gees singing “Massachusetts.”)
Most people don’t realize just how immensely malleable public opinion is. Just a few breath-taking examples.
1) America’s Roller Coaster Ride on Illegal Drugs:
A) In the Summer of 1989, polls showed that about 10 percent of the American people thought that drug use was the biggest or one of the biggest problems facing the country.
B) In the Summer of 1990, polls yielded similar results, showing that about 10 percent of the American people thought that drug use was the biggest or one of the biggest problems facing the country.
C) However, at the end of 1989, and the beginning of 1990, polls revealed that 60 percent of the American people thought that drug use was the biggest or one of the biggest problems facing the country.
Why did so many Americans get hysterical about drugs at the end of 1989 and then forgot about drugs in March and April of 1990 ? Did 50,000,000 Americans start doing crack in November of 1989, and begin to engage in all of its concomitant vices such as theft and bouts of histrionic whoring, and then, in February of 1990, did these 50 million Americans suddenly, in unison, find religion and quit drugs. You can believe that if you believe that Trump really got more votes than Biden.
In fact, the American people were “treated” to an avalanche of T.V. Specials about Drugs at the close of 1989. Barbara Walters – or whichever female newscaster was best at exuding contrived warmth, sisterliness and matronly dismay over political malfeasance – told us that our children were becoming a horde of dastardly drug addicts. After one network got particularly fantastic ratings for a “drug special,” another network followed suit with its own special. A slew of specials were put together in record time. It’s not as if these TV specials, sometimes given the label “documentary” to anoint them with a patina of thoroughly undeserved intellectual legitimacy, had the slightest measure of journalistic excellence. The producers of these specials simply hired people to cry on cue over what drugs had done to their lives.
2) The first debate between Bush and Gore in 2000.
Polls conducted within 30 minutes of the end of the debate showed that most viewers said Gore had won. For the next few days, talking heads said that Gore was immature because he allegedly had yawned during the debate. Within 72 or 96 hours of the debate, polls showed that most people believed that Bush had won the debate. They learned from the TV’s talking heads that people who yawn are immature and are definitely not “presidential material.”
Speaking of Presidential Material, or whatever that means:
Several years back, one of the grey-haired eminences on one of the network news shows said that Romney would be a good presidential choice because he looked very “presidential.” Within a week, the only Republicans I knew, my friend Everett and my Uncle Herb, both told me that they thought Romney would be a great president because he looked presidential.
What, pray tell, does it mean to look presidential. I guess it means not looking like Bozo the Clown or Rudy Guiliani. So I suppose it means looking as square as President Eisenhower, but ideally with a touch of class and color, sort of like sharpening-up the classic blue suit with muted but striking green stitching. It means having a deep voice but enlivening it with a musical timbre so women in my age bracket can fantasize about John Lennon or Tom Jones and young women can imagine that they are listening to one of today’s asinine heartthrobs.
3) The press, pols and corporate America laughingly rejoice at the ease with which they con us.
One or two days after the Iowa Presidential Caucuses in 2004, an article, starting on the bottom of the front page of the NYTimes, reported that on the night of John Dean’s defeat (He was famous for his candid, courageous expose of the inanity of the Iraq war), News Reporters congratulated themselves on how their slanted, biased reporting ripped John Dean apart. Because of those reporters, many of whom were supposedly liberal, John Kerry became the Democratic nominee, and he ran such a lily-livered campaign that he waited until a year after he lost to Bush to counter Bush’s attacks which, with innuendo and rank falsehood, tried to discredit Kerry’s service in Vietnam.
4) We formulate opinions and policies on the basis of 30 second snippets of film footage
A) November 1991 to January or February of 1992: We see starving people in Mogadishu
B) We send in troops
C) Our troops are attacked
D) Our troops are withdrawn before the first buds of Spring appear.
We make political decisions on the basis of a few minutes of film footage. We gyrate like a weathervane, and the weathervane goes haywire in the slightest breeze. What if we were to endure what England endured in 1940, when Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium and France fell from March or April of 1940 to June of 1940. Hell, the Senate and the House would livestream sessions in which senators and congressmen would cry and openly discuss their increased consumption of psychotropic medications while Marjorie Taylor Greene would say our setbacks were the result of Jews attacking us with lasers based in outer space.
5) 1984: First the media loved Gary Hart, then the media hated Gary Hart. (He was seeking the Democratic Presidential nomination)
In large measure, the news of the campaign centered on a fast-food restaurant’s advertisement. In the ad, a customer, dissatisfied with her small hamburger, complains, “Where’s the Beef.” In a debate, Mondale scorned Gary Hart’s policies by asking “Where’s the beef.” The media told us that Mondale showed that he was just as hip and youthful as Gary Hart because he could borrow his lines from television ads. And the public, like obedient puppies, dutifully frowned on Gary Hart.
6) For at least 50 years, Republicans have scored points by claiming that Northern cities are the most crime-ridden part of America and that this crime is the result of “failed liberal permissiveness.”
However, for the past 50 years, homicides have been more prevalent in the states of the Old Confederacy that in states like Massechusetts and New York.
However, facts have little to do with perceptions, which are made on the basis of political or editorial whim. For decades, Johnny Carson got lots of applause by telling us that in New York one got mugged, in California one suffered exotic harms owing to West Coast fads in spirituality and drugs and that in the sweet land of Mayberry, North Caroline one was served Aunt Bee’s sweet potato pie while Gooper and Gomer Pyle did an oil change on the car.