Are We Heading for a Repeat of 2016?

Between “He’s Too Old!”, “He Supports Israel!”, & the Media’s Amplification of Biden’s “Troubles”….Hello Trump!!

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

I’m not sure who I’m writing this for. Those who I most want to “reach”—the Democrats and undecideds who “don’t approve” of Biden and the mainstream media who continue to amplify anti-Biden complaints and poll numbers—are almost certainly unreachable—by me, anyway.

The mainstream media doesn’t want to hear criticisms that, if taken seriously, would require some major soul-searching and revamping of the way they do everyday business. And If the young (possibly first-time) voters who have decided they can’t “in good conscience” vote for an administration that supports Israel haven’t been paying attention to what the alternative offers (hint: it’s not legal and accessible abortion, the protection of voter’s rights, or any of the positions you value as self-identified “progressives”) then nothing I say is going to wake them up. And those Democrats who have decided that “too old” is a disqualifier for leadership, apparently haven’t noticed that those running on the other side don’t think so—and I doubt would be convinced otherwise by a 76 going on 77 year-old writer. (Yeah, I’m the same age as Trump—and Hillary Clinton. Our generation took some vastly differing paths….)

In 2015-16, I watched (in anxiety/dismay/fury—take your pick or all three) as Bernie Sanders’s branding of Clinton as a Wall Street lackey and the media’s obsession with her emails brought Hillary down and installed Donald Trump in the White House.¹ Neither Sanders or the media has ever owned up to it. Yet it’s clear that without the hostility of those young voters who came to see Hillary, under Bernie’s tutelage, as at best “the lessser of two evils” (and thus, not worthy of a vote) the third-party and stay-at-home factor would almost certainly have been diluted enough to put Hillary over the top.²

In 2023, the same “lesser of two evils” craziness is the word on Biden among what appears to be a very similar demographic, but now it’s not the “working class” (a term always very vaguely employed by Sanders) but “the Palestinians” who are being (as one young voter put it) “thrown under the bus.” (Surely that metaphor is too tepid to describe a humanitarian crisis—but then, words aren’t always used with precision when one is all steamed up with self-righteous zeal.)

I’m not going to get into a discussion of the war itself in this post, so please don’t respond by accusing me of being a war-mongerer or oblivious to the plight of the Palestinians. What I want to focus on here is the plight of our democracy, which is in danger of being handed over to a totalitarian maniac in much the same way as we handed it to him before: via the splintering of Democratic support, lack of perspective (to put it mildly) at what was at stake, the reckless ambitions of sanctimonious competitors for power, and—always, always—the mainstream media’s repetition and recycling of tropes and narratives that enhance ratings rather than thought.

Commentators, now speculating about 2024, like to reflect on Trump’s appeal. But they rarely think back to 2016, before MAGA became the cult that it is today and the GOP had not yet entirely lost its mind. They don’t seem to recognize (or don’t want to recognize) that Trump wasn’t so much elected in 2016 as Hillary was defeated (and even then only because of the insanity of the electoral college)—and they played a huge role in that. Yes, I know: Russia, Comey, Benghazi, the Right-Wing Hillary-hate machine, etc. But none of that would have become so bubbling hot among ordinary voters were it not the mainstream media, who served as a conveyor-belt and mass disseminator of everything that got thrown onto the radar screen, no matter how ill-founded.  Giving “bad optics” the prominence of established fact, lazily fitting every news story into the narrative of “untrustworthy Hillary,” paying more attention to the content of every leaked email than the much more significant story of the Russian origin of the leaks, continually declaring “momentum” for Sanders and Trump and “lack of enthusiasm” for Hillary (who did, after all, overwhelmingly win the popular vote,) and giving enormous free air-time to the big rallies and big crowds rather than Clinton’s more low-key campaigning—these are some of the ways in which the mainstream media, both networks and cable news, helped make Trump happen.³

I think about the media’s contribution to the disaster of 2016 every time some commentator or other complains about Biden’s “poor messaging.” Are they so clueless that they haven’t yet noticed that politicians no longer have a direct line to voters? Sure, there are rallies and town square meetings and debates. But most voters (except perhaps the rabid MAGAS for whom Trump can do no wrong) learn what to take away from these events (what the “message” is) from headlines, chyrons, and media commentators.

The word is “media,” get it? From mediate. Meaning “to stand between” (also mediated: “not direct or immediate,”)

Do you really think “Biden’s age problem” would be such a formidable issue if commentators hadn’t seized on it as a “story” and rattled on endlessly about it? And then, of course, questions got put on polls. And then commentators rattled on endlessly about the results, asked about it in every interview, wrote opinion pieces, etc.—turning it into what Daniel Boorstin called a “pseudo-event”: a reality created by, made “real” by constant repetition in the media.

Liberal media mavens like to blame Fox for supplanting fact-based reporting with “alternative realities.” But although Fox has clearly been the abuser-in-chief, MSNBC, CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other “responsible” news outlets, while not as fast and loose with the facts, embed and garnish those facts—with words, images, headlines—that perpetuate some realities and “disappear” others. The words they use suggest how to see events. The images they choose to proliferate tell a story all on their own. Events that are headlined, dramatized, and repeated slyly segue into the category of believability, while those that are deemed less gripping slip into the purgatory of inattention. And if the chosen Big Story is ultimately proved groundless (as frequently happens) it’s easy to bury the retractions on page 10 (television reporters often just ignore their misreports.)

With such high stakes as the 2024 election, I don’t think the journalists are “just doing their job” when they raise the issue of Biden’s age over and over, imagining that “all” they are doing is querying “opinion” on its “significance.” No, they are making it significant— just as they made Hillary’s emails significant. And why do they not feel obliged to mention Trump’s age when they raise the issue? He’s just three years younger than Biden. But “Biden’s age” are the words that are continually thrown out there—and circulating wildly and repeatedly, they are not innocent.

Often, the items that make headlines come from poorly constructed polls.. I don’t know who creates these things, but I’ve done something of a deep dive into several of them, and they are chock-ful of category mistakes, misleading wording, over-general questions (like “are you doing better or worse now than….” or those ridiculous queries about who you “approve” of) and “leading” questions. Take some questions, for example from a recent Wall Street Journal Poll (my comments are in italics)

1. Do you favor or oppose Congress impeaching Joe Biden?

As far as I know, the House hasn’t got a proposal to impeach on the table, but rather a (totally groundless) vote to investigate. And if the poll is going to include as-yet unsettled “investigations,” why not also ask about less ridiculous ones, like “If Donald Trump is convicted of any of the crimes for which he has been indicted, do you favor or oppose him running for President?” But there’s no question anything like that on this particular poll.

2. Which of the following best describes how aware you are about corruption allegations against Hunter Biden and how closely are you following the stories?

Hunter Biden? Why not also any of Trump’s colleagues against whom allegations (and in many cases, indictments) have been made? Why is Hunter Biden the only other person named in the poll except for Trump and Joe Biden?

3. Do the allegations against Hunter Biden make you more or less likely to vote for Joe Biden, or have no impact on whether or not you would vote for Joe Biden?

More Hunter Biden. As far as I know, he and his father are two separate people. But you wouldn’t know it from GOP talking points.

4. Which comes closest to your view of Joe Biden and the allegations against Hunter Biden? Do you think Joe Biden…? (Choices: Has done something illegal; Has NOT down something illegal, but has done something improper; Has NOT done anything illegal or improper; Unsure/Need More information; Refused; Not aware of allegations.)

Still more Hunter Biden. The allegations against Hunter, remarkably, occupy as many questions as Trump’s indictments!

These poll questions are (“quite honestly,” as the media mavens like to pepper their points with) Republican talking-points transformed by the alchemy of the authority of “the polls” into crucial concerns for voters. And what do you know? It turns out that the survey was conducted by Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio, who not only works for a super PAC supporting Trump’s candidacy but was the chief pollster on Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. And there’s more: Since the start of 2023, Trump’s super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., has paid Fabrizio’s company more than $567,000, according to FEC filings.

So perhaps these aren’t just “neutral” questions. And perhaps the mainstream media should stop reporting the results as though they are. They aren’t just “reports” of what people think. They are covert instructions in how to think: in what’s important, of concern, of relevance. (Source: The Roger Ailes playbook. Say the words often enough and whether or not they are true, they will embed themselves in people’s brains as firmly as established fact.)

Hunter Biden. Hunter Biden. Age Problem. Age Problem. Impeachment. Impeachment.

Neck and Neck with Trump. Neck and Neck with Trump. Neck and Neck with Trump..

And then there’s the whole “inflation” inflation. “Biden’s biggest problem remains inflation.” How often have you heard media commentators say this? Sometimes, they go on to note that the facts (you know, those hard little nuggets that don’t always make great talking points) dispute that there is such a problem, as inflation is at 2%, and for quite some time has been lower than any other country. But they rarely lead with this remarkable achievement of the Biden presidency. No, they lead with “Biden’s big problem is inflation.” Which turns out to be a problem of perception. Which they reinforce every time they use the phrase. Pseudo-event alert! (Yes, I know it’s almost impossible to buy a house. But that’s a specific, whereas “INFLATION” is a big bad wolf that scares the shit out of us.)

And the “economy” conundrum: “Why do people think the economy is doing so badly when it’s actually doing so well?” How about occasionally leading with the good economy itself rather than the dissonance between the facts and people’s answers to a question on a poll? And actually, why is it necessary to always mention this dissonance? It’s a thing, sure. But does it always have to be the main thing? And maybe if the polls asked more specific, “kitchen-table” questions (like maybe about the cost of groceries) the answers would be more informative.

The mainstream media hasn’t done Biden any good when it comes to the Israel/Gaza war, either. (I’ve written about this elsewhere⁴ , so won’t repeat it here.) And the stakes are much higher now, too, because we know what Trump is capable of, how much more anti-democratic his aspirations are, and what he plans to do if elected. And student protesters are threatening (yes, threatening) to withhold their vote from Biden unless he “changes his stance on Gaza.”

“We write to you to issue a very stark and unmistakable warning: you and your Administration’s stance on Gaza risks millions of young voters staying home or voting third party next year.”

“There is no way for a Democratic presidential nominee to win without significant youth voter enthusiasm and mobilization. Young people are a cornerstone of a winning Democratic coalition, and the vast majority of young people in this country are rightfully horrified by the atrocities committed with our tax dollars, with your support, and our nation’s military backing. We did not spend hours upon hours knocking doors and making calls to turn out the vote so that you could support indiscriminate slaughter of civilians and violations of international law. We fear that it will not be possible for those committed to turning out the youth vote this election to recruit the volunteers, organizers, staff, and donors needed to deliver the margins for Democratic victory down the ballot.”

“You cannot win this election by only telling our generation that you are the lesser of two evils. The position of your administration is badly out of step with young people and the positions of Democratic voters, whom have been shown to support a ceasefire by supermajorities in multiple polls. This is already becoming an issue we are hearing about from thousands of young people across the country. We cannot explain your position to the people of our generation.”

“The decisions you have made thus far surrounding Gaza have made it harder for us to convince our communities to organize and get out the vote in 2024. We urge you to reverse course as quickly as possible. No more innocent people should be killed. We deeply understand that America and the world cannot afford another four years of far-right leadership. However, that is the path you are risking. Stand on the right side of history. Your legacy hangs in the balance.” ( open letter sent to Biden by the leaders of 10 Millennial and Gen Z voter outreach groups).

Of course, it’s not only younger voters who are turning away from Biden over the war. As in 2016, “progressive” politicians, high-visibility celebrities, and faculty mentors are offering a blueprint for virtuous engagement that is not just calling for a ceasefire (legitimate) but that is generating (or perhaps enhancing) hostility toward Israel as a nation. Not just in the context of the war. Not just Netanyahu’s policies. But Israel as a nation and the Israelis as a people. And from there, a quick trip across the sea to Biden as the enemy. You’re either with us or against us, right? I used to hear that back in the sixties. It wasn’t true then and it isn’t true now. It’s a formula for non-thinking.

Perhaps older critics of Israel only see themsevles as protesting the war. I can only say that I’ve heard a lot more than that leaking out of their rhetoric. And in any case, for the young people they are leading, informed mostly by what inflames them on TikTok or in the speeches at protests, knowledge of the middle east begins and ends with Israeli’s current bombing of Gaza.

I’m not a fan of polls, as you’ve seen. But when all the polls tend in a certain direction—and that direction is born out by other evidence—I take them more seriously. And with the exception of one recent poll, there appears to be a very similar generational splintering among Democrats as the one that was so beneficial to Trump in 2016.⁵ That was eight years ago. So—think about it—a first-time voter in 2024 might have been as young as 10 when Trump was elected. How many of them (or those young voters that were 11 or 12) are aware of everything that election ushered in? The Supreme Court that took away Roe V. Wade. The gutting of the Voting Rights Act. The total mismanagement of the COVID epidemic. How many “Free Palestine” poster-bearers are aware of Trump’s Islamophobia? I could go on for pages, but surely I don’t need to with those of you who are reading this.

Biden needs support from younger voters. And that’s eroding. Voters under 30 (who voted for Biden by a 24-point margin in 2020) favor the president over Trump by only a single percentage point, according to a Sunday New York Times/Siena poll of voters in six battleground states. And virtually all the polls indicate the Israel-Hamas war is a huge issue for younger voters, who are more likely to disapprove of Biden’s pro-Israel stance than voters in any other age bracket.

Chillingly, it may not just have to do with Palestinian casualties, but a more general anti-Israel attitude. According to a Quinnipiac University poll taken October 12-16, after Hamas’ October 7 invasion of Israel, the majority of voters ages 18-34 disapproved even then—that is, shortly after the atrocities of October 7— of the U.S. sending weapons and military aid to Israel, while the majority of voters ages 35 and up approved. A recent Times/Sienna poll shows even more anti-Israel fervor among voters between 18-29, and not just over the way Biden is handing the war (nearly 3/4 disapprove of that) but over Israel’s motivation and intent:

Most young voters…responded to question after question with answers showing that they see the worst in Israel. Few of them believe Israelis are serious about peace with the Palestinians. Nearly half say Israel is intentionally killing civilians….

….Evan Crochet, a 30-year-old video producer in Cary, N.C., who supported Senator Bernie Sanders, the left-wing independent, in the 2016 Democratic primary, said he saw Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump as “two sides of the same coin.”

If pushed to choose, he’d reluctantly opt for Mr. Trump, he said, though he’s leaning toward Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist running as an independent. He said he wanted Mr. Biden to be punished.

“We’re at a point where I think all of this needs to stop,” Mr. Crochet said of the Gaza war. “I think Biden needs to be accountable for this. I think he should be held liable for crimes.”

Israel still retains healthy allegiances in the United States. But the future of such sentiments is unclear. Among young voters, 46 percent sympathize more with the Palestinians, against 27 percent who favor Israel.

Only 28 percent of those between the ages of 18 and 29 said Israel was seriously interested in a peaceful solution to the broader conflict; half of them said the Palestinians were. Older voters had far more faith in Israel’s intentions and less in the Palestinians’.

Some of those who support Israel may be a problem for Biden, too. My evidence is only anecdotal, but several of my Facebook friends have told me that friends of theirs who had previously voted Democratic are moving toward the Republicans because the GOP is more supportive of Israel. Not my favorite source, but The New York Times reports that “a partisan divide is emerging that could affect some Jewish voters’ comfort within the Democratic Party: 76 percent of Republicans said they sympathized with Israel over the Palestinians. Among white, evangelical Christians, whose theological emphasis on Israel is at the core of the G.O.P.’s unquestioning support, sympathy with Israel is even higher, at 80 percent. Democrats show no such consensus: 31 percent said they sympathized more with Israel, 34 percent with the Palestinians and 16 percent said their sympathies lay with both.The split among Democrats could alienate Jewish voters who overwhelmingly chose Mr. Biden in 2020 and are anxiously watching a rise of antisemitism that has accompanied anger at Israel’s war effort.”

This could become much more of a problem if—by some miracle—Trump is not the Republican nominee, but Nikki Haley. Not only is Haley staunchly pro-Israel, but has many attractive features that Trump lacks. I plan to write a separate stack about Nikki should things move in her direction, and in preparation for that possibility, have read both of her books, which are disarming in many ways. She’s the little “brown” girl whose father always wore a turban and who was disqualified from a children’s pageant because she was neither Black nor white. She writes forcefully about the need to protect human rights, and doesn’t see the United Nations as doing a very good job of it (which supporters of Israel would agree with.) She proudly writes about standing up to various members of Trump’s administration (never Trump himself, of course) and frequently talks surprisingly feministy—a label she neither avows or backs away from. (She’s the “right kind” of feminist, you see.) She’s done a great job at the Republican debates and managed to position herself as a “moderate” on abortion—just because she’s not in favor of a national ban! (Pretty slick) And I truly believe—to be argued in more detail if it becomes a real possibility—that the GOP, believe it or not, has less of a “woman problem” than the Democrats. Of course, she has to be the right kind of woman.

And, oh yes, Nikki Haley is young. And crafty. And probably as unscrupulous as the rest of them. And a lot of people remember how she took down that confederate flag. (Although just this week she seems to have forgotten that slavery figured a bit in the confederate cause.) I’ve been worried about her for a long time. But at the moment, Trump still looms.

Now that I’ve expressed my concerns to a bunch of people who probably didn’t even need to hear them, let me tell you my wishes (for the 2024 election; I’m not going to tackle world peace.)

I wish the other contenders for the Democratic ballot would drop out.There are more important things than their ambitions.

I wish Bernie Sanders, who still has legions of supporters—who threatened to abandon him when he intitially didn’t support a ceasefire, and then “changed his mind” and got them back—would give Biden the rousing support that he never managed to muster for Hillary, even after she got the nomination. Don’t be a grumpy old almost-won-once, Bernie. You can keep whatever position you want on the war. Just tell the kids that whatever they think about Israel or Palestine, they should vote for Biden. And don’t do it begrudgingly, the way you always did with Hillary. Make the argument!! Get them fired up!! We know you can do it. So do it when it counts. Like now.

I wish Netanyahu would resign, right now. And tell the world that Biden helped him see the light.

(I said this was a wish-list, not a prediction.)

I won’t even begin to say what I wish for Hamas.

1. For the full Monty on 2016, see my books, “The Destruction of Hillary Clinton” and “Imagine Bernie Sanders as a Woman”

2. Marcy Swerlick Simon, a Facebook friend of mine who is an actuary and expert on data/modeling/analysis, tells me that even overestimating the impact of the Bernie/Comey/Stein/non-vote, it’s still clear Hillary would almost certainly have won. She lost by about 100k votes split among 3 states, so it didn’t need for that many votes to be different for the results to end in her favor: “PA 50K, MI 11K, WI 27k (all less than 1% of votes), so a shift of half from Trump to Hillary would have meant Hilary won. Or smaller shift from Trump to Hillary plus some combination of people not throwing away their votes. Or little shift from Trump and more from not throwing away their votes. So many scenarios that are very easy to come up with and so many would have lead to Hillary winning.”

3. See my stack “How the ‘Liberal’ Media Helped Make Trump Happen”. The most famous media contribution was, of course, the email “scandal.” Even after James Comey announced that she had broken no laws, polling showed that 56 percent of Americans believed that Clinton had. That number is ghastly but unsurprising, given the overwhelming negative attention that network and cable news paid to the emails. Thus, as Mathew Yglesias commented, “a story that was at best of modest significance came to dominate the US presidential election,” creating a misleading impression of Clinton’s character and competence and vastly overshadowing coverage of both her accomplishments and her policy proposals.

For more on the “email scandal,” see my stack “Hillary Clinton’s Emails and Media Power”

4.

5. An exception is the Economist/YouGov poll — conducted via web-based interviews Dec. 16-18 — in which more than half (53 percent) of registered voters under 30 said they would support Biden, and less than a quarter (24 percent) said they would support Trump.

Among registered voters 30–44 years old, Biden still leads but by a slimmer margin; 49 percent support Biden, and 38 percent support Trump.

The trend reverses for older age brackets. Among registered voters ages 45–64, 39 percent support Biden, and 47 percent support Trump. Among registered voters 65 and over, 36 percent support Biden, and 53 percent support Trump.

This poll departs from other polls released this week that showed Biden more popular among older Americans. A New York Times/Siena College poll released Tuesday showed Trump ahead of Biden by 6 points among registered voters under 30. ((https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4369951-young-voters-right-now-prefer-biden-poll/)