in all of the chatter about candidates, did not one interviewee mention stuff like survival of the planet, war crimes, corruption, and other reasons to want a good senator representing you?
might they consider not voting for a party in thrall to a guy who fires off hundreds of moronic posts at his enemies at three in the morning and seems to be making a lot of money from his various public crimes ... who just said he doesn't care if the war takes food out of their mouths?
just not getting through, huh? c.t.e., lead pipes, learned helplessness ... has mary trump explained her uncle's thought damping field?
Sigh. Nothing is more depressing than the Trump voter focus groups. If you want to enter the gates of utter despair, listen to one of these and marvel at the utter lack of critical thinking skills.
Democracy relies on an informed citizenry. On the facade of the Boston Public Library are these words: “THE COMMONWEALTH REQUIRES THE EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE AS THE SAFEGUARD OF ORDER AND LIBERTY.”
JVL we love you. Yes, the people are frustrating. I consider the Focus Group podcast mandatory listening, because it is the best way to understand what is going on in our political landscape. But I love to listen to your frustration with the people. When knocking on doors in 2024 I spoke with a registered Democrat, a nonwhite immigrant, in a kind of down at the heels condo development in Central PA. To my surprise he told me he was voting for Trump. I asked if I could ask why. And he readily answered it was because Trump was going to give him a tax cut. I said, he's not giving you a tax cut, he's giving one to his billionaire friends. The guy didn't believe me. I wonder if he does now.
In 1969, the Rolling Stones already understood this. You can't always get what you want. But sometimes you'll get what you need. (also see Billie Eilish and Lord Huron).
Fantastic piece JVL. I would simply add a touch of hope to this. The Founders didn't look around their country and see a bunch of well informed geniuses to whom they could bestow self-governance. They knew the limits of the average voter, and they knew that the system they designed had to be responsive to their needs without being hostage to their whims.
Any time you feel despair at the cognitive shortcomings of your fellow Americans, remember this quote from James Madison: "Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob". We have over-democratized and the result is voters getting what they want instead of what they need.
Now that we have to lie in the bed we've made, how do we fix it? Lincoln can light the path here. By appealing to the better angels of our nature. Or, as he put it in his address to the Temperance society: if you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. This is why I like listening to you and love listening to Sarah. You see voters for what they are, which is why you are always right. Sarah sees them for what they could be. And that's what this country needs right now.
Those Trump voters interviewed in the focus group are unable to explain their reasons for liking or disliking politicians. Other than "feelings" there appears to be no rational explanation. Feeling like someone votes in favor of DEI behind closed doors has led to the more dangerous situation with a President "feeling" his way through a war he started and for which he has no rational explanation. Perhaps they deserve one another. However, the rest of the voting community does not. They, and he, place the entire community in great peril.
I read an article by an evangelical minister a couple years ago. He wrote that what God wanted for people in marriage counseling was often exactly what they wanted for themselves, Sarah's focus groups may be drawing from the same pool of subjects.
Most of the suggestions about covid were evidence based and correct. Thats probably why he supported them . This was a disease that was knocking certain subsets of people off like flies. It killed well over a million people. It killed 1 in 70 old people in NYC in a few months. I am able to have conservations w a broader range of patients about this stuff now. But usually there is limited time. But what I say is that there was no agenda. People were doing the best they could with what they had. At certain points it was just about slowing the velocity of transmission down as much as posible and masking, distancing, isolations all contributed to this.
We are dealing with people who live in their own alternate reality JVL. It’s very frustrating and makes you wonder how we are ever going to deal with the many problems the country faces. Ugh.
I listened to the whole of that wincing Louisiana Focus Group piece with Sarah & Tim.
And today ordering half doz more "JVL is always right" stuff. God Bless Her, as I've said before Sarah has not one but two better angels forever perched on her shoulders. And a cheery optimism that somehow/something [usually something the Opposition/Dems are too shoe-laces untied to execute]... well, bit by bit, 'bite by bite' the intellectual troglodytes that are Trump's bastion will ...see the light? Or, that cushion of Trumpian squishes will awaken and realize they're standing shoulder-to-shoulder with, err... troglodytes. And take a step away?
Dear Sarah, as evidenced by the Louisiana panel, the sad - nay, tragic - fact of the matter is that whether it's Bush-line level or Donald's level arguably a third of the participating electoral are SO cognitively disabled - and egregiously mis-informed about the world they occupy - they ought be disqualified on grounds of mental incapacity from the electoral franchise. ...An undemocratic thing to say - but a common sense one, too.
I'm mindful the drooler problem has always been a handicapping feature of the American Experiment. The Founders wrung their hands over its perils. Mark Twain had wonderful, wry fun with it. Legions of itinerant "rain-makers" and liver pill salesmen made a living off it across the Prairies. More darkly, it's been behind countless internecine bloodbaths scarring our history... over immigration scares; slavery; states' rights; religion; "Godless Communism"... you name it. It is the Achilles Heel in American democracy. And Trump stumbled upon it.
It's not as though people were any more intelligent or better informed in the days when the constitution was written. That's why the Founders designed a system that gave the public a voice, but limited their power. There's nothing wrong with saying things that are "undemocratic", you can't possibly say anything worse about democracy than was said by Madison or Hamilton. But it's important to remember that the cause is democracy itself, not the quality of the individuals that matters. As Madison put it, "Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob". We don't need better voters, we need to roll back some of the creep of democratization that gives people what they want instead of what they need.
It's funny if you recall that Hamas guy that was taken out at gunpoint a couple years ago by IDF troops in the Gaza apartment they had just blasted the hell out of (I can't recall with what). They filmed it with a drone, I think. There the guy was, covered in dust, in shock from the blast, sitting in his Barcalounger, awaiting eternity inside a 25 by 5-mile strip of land sandwiched between Israel and the Mediterranean Sea, probably two years after Oct. 7th.
And then you think of our Genius Commander, thinking we'll eliminate the Iranian regime with bombing runs over an area of 636,000 square miles and 92 million people over 6,000 miles from DC with an American populace that wanted no part of it and hasn't shown the will for what would truly be required to do it since December of 1941. See, there are models, guys. Patterns. But he just keeps sitting there, bloviating, with the look and sound of an overly patronized 55 IQ, waiting for Iran to surrender.
We are truly governed by imbeciles. And now they're off to China. This should go well.
A lot of folks here got mad just hearing how other folks like Platner. And I'm sorry they wanted to kill you, the messenger, JVL. I know you know this unfortunate tendency about human nature. When you're mad enough, you throw the vase at the first thing in your line of vision. But most of us do understand we can't control 90% of what other people feel. But what a fiasco in Maine. All the rest of us can do is watch, kind of in horror.
Sorry, Steve. Everyone sure has an opinion here, it seems. The column generated quite a hot debate. My own feelings about Platner are pretty much as I stated. Sorry to disagree. I completely respect your views on the guy, but I don't share them. It'll be really interesting to see what happens.
Well said all round JVL. When trump got reelected I thought it was going to take decades to somehow detoxify the political landscape. Now with the current situation in Iran intensifying instability, it is going to be even harder to calm the waters...
Thanks for covering this focus group JVL. I listened to it in the car over the weekend and was hoping it wouldn’t get lost in the weekend shuffle for people. One of the things I notice with a lot of TFG participants is the assumption that they can’t really know about candidates, which leads them into judgments about style. And in this particular TFG we got to see that paired with a lot of suspicion. It was a great illustration of what you guys have been talking about with the influence of conspiracy thinking among the electorate. You could so clearly see how their uncertainty fueled the suspicion, which led to judgment as opposed to research or consulting resources. Granted TFG is asking for their opinion but it’s as if they’re substituting conspiratorial thinking for critical thinking. And thinking their opinion has to come entirely from within. I really wonder sometimes if there are people in these focus groups who are able to see apparently conflicting traits in candidates and realize that’s the human condition. Do any of the embrace complexity or is that filtered out from what we’re hearing?
Wrt the Platner discussion and people’s reaction to JVL’s analysis… I think there’s a natural tension between the analyst aspect of what you do for a living and the influencer aspect. You probably see yourself more as a political analyst and writer, and have the Bulwark audience in mind when you write, while the community responds as if you’re more of an influencer with a broader audience. My 2 cents for whatever that’s worth and assuming you read this. 🙂 Now on to today’s Triad for me…
in all of the chatter about candidates, did not one interviewee mention stuff like survival of the planet, war crimes, corruption, and other reasons to want a good senator representing you?
might they consider not voting for a party in thrall to a guy who fires off hundreds of moronic posts at his enemies at three in the morning and seems to be making a lot of money from his various public crimes ... who just said he doesn't care if the war takes food out of their mouths?
just not getting through, huh? c.t.e., lead pipes, learned helplessness ... has mary trump explained her uncle's thought damping field?
Sigh. Nothing is more depressing than the Trump voter focus groups. If you want to enter the gates of utter despair, listen to one of these and marvel at the utter lack of critical thinking skills.
Democracy relies on an informed citizenry. On the facade of the Boston Public Library are these words: “THE COMMONWEALTH REQUIRES THE EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE AS THE SAFEGUARD OF ORDER AND LIBERTY.”
JVL we love you. Yes, the people are frustrating. I consider the Focus Group podcast mandatory listening, because it is the best way to understand what is going on in our political landscape. But I love to listen to your frustration with the people. When knocking on doors in 2024 I spoke with a registered Democrat, a nonwhite immigrant, in a kind of down at the heels condo development in Central PA. To my surprise he told me he was voting for Trump. I asked if I could ask why. And he readily answered it was because Trump was going to give him a tax cut. I said, he's not giving you a tax cut, he's giving one to his billionaire friends. The guy didn't believe me. I wonder if he does now.
In 1969, the Rolling Stones already understood this. You can't always get what you want. But sometimes you'll get what you need. (also see Billie Eilish and Lord Huron).
Fantastic piece JVL. I would simply add a touch of hope to this. The Founders didn't look around their country and see a bunch of well informed geniuses to whom they could bestow self-governance. They knew the limits of the average voter, and they knew that the system they designed had to be responsive to their needs without being hostage to their whims.
Any time you feel despair at the cognitive shortcomings of your fellow Americans, remember this quote from James Madison: "Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob". We have over-democratized and the result is voters getting what they want instead of what they need.
Now that we have to lie in the bed we've made, how do we fix it? Lincoln can light the path here. By appealing to the better angels of our nature. Or, as he put it in his address to the Temperance society: if you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. This is why I like listening to you and love listening to Sarah. You see voters for what they are, which is why you are always right. Sarah sees them for what they could be. And that's what this country needs right now.
Those Trump voters interviewed in the focus group are unable to explain their reasons for liking or disliking politicians. Other than "feelings" there appears to be no rational explanation. Feeling like someone votes in favor of DEI behind closed doors has led to the more dangerous situation with a President "feeling" his way through a war he started and for which he has no rational explanation. Perhaps they deserve one another. However, the rest of the voting community does not. They, and he, place the entire community in great peril.
What can this possibly mean?: It’s one face for the media and then it’s another face for the public.
I read an article by an evangelical minister a couple years ago. He wrote that what God wanted for people in marriage counseling was often exactly what they wanted for themselves, Sarah's focus groups may be drawing from the same pool of subjects.
I cannot with “The People” the loss of critical thinking will damage us for decades if not a generation.
Most of the suggestions about covid were evidence based and correct. Thats probably why he supported them . This was a disease that was knocking certain subsets of people off like flies. It killed well over a million people. It killed 1 in 70 old people in NYC in a few months. I am able to have conservations w a broader range of patients about this stuff now. But usually there is limited time. But what I say is that there was no agenda. People were doing the best they could with what they had. At certain points it was just about slowing the velocity of transmission down as much as posible and masking, distancing, isolations all contributed to this.
We are dealing with people who live in their own alternate reality JVL. It’s very frustrating and makes you wonder how we are ever going to deal with the many problems the country faces. Ugh.
I listened to the whole of that wincing Louisiana Focus Group piece with Sarah & Tim.
And today ordering half doz more "JVL is always right" stuff. God Bless Her, as I've said before Sarah has not one but two better angels forever perched on her shoulders. And a cheery optimism that somehow/something [usually something the Opposition/Dems are too shoe-laces untied to execute]... well, bit by bit, 'bite by bite' the intellectual troglodytes that are Trump's bastion will ...see the light? Or, that cushion of Trumpian squishes will awaken and realize they're standing shoulder-to-shoulder with, err... troglodytes. And take a step away?
Dear Sarah, as evidenced by the Louisiana panel, the sad - nay, tragic - fact of the matter is that whether it's Bush-line level or Donald's level arguably a third of the participating electoral are SO cognitively disabled - and egregiously mis-informed about the world they occupy - they ought be disqualified on grounds of mental incapacity from the electoral franchise. ...An undemocratic thing to say - but a common sense one, too.
I'm mindful the drooler problem has always been a handicapping feature of the American Experiment. The Founders wrung their hands over its perils. Mark Twain had wonderful, wry fun with it. Legions of itinerant "rain-makers" and liver pill salesmen made a living off it across the Prairies. More darkly, it's been behind countless internecine bloodbaths scarring our history... over immigration scares; slavery; states' rights; religion; "Godless Communism"... you name it. It is the Achilles Heel in American democracy. And Trump stumbled upon it.
It's not as though people were any more intelligent or better informed in the days when the constitution was written. That's why the Founders designed a system that gave the public a voice, but limited their power. There's nothing wrong with saying things that are "undemocratic", you can't possibly say anything worse about democracy than was said by Madison or Hamilton. But it's important to remember that the cause is democracy itself, not the quality of the individuals that matters. As Madison put it, "Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob". We don't need better voters, we need to roll back some of the creep of democratization that gives people what they want instead of what they need.
It's funny if you recall that Hamas guy that was taken out at gunpoint a couple years ago by IDF troops in the Gaza apartment they had just blasted the hell out of (I can't recall with what). They filmed it with a drone, I think. There the guy was, covered in dust, in shock from the blast, sitting in his Barcalounger, awaiting eternity inside a 25 by 5-mile strip of land sandwiched between Israel and the Mediterranean Sea, probably two years after Oct. 7th.
And then you think of our Genius Commander, thinking we'll eliminate the Iranian regime with bombing runs over an area of 636,000 square miles and 92 million people over 6,000 miles from DC with an American populace that wanted no part of it and hasn't shown the will for what would truly be required to do it since December of 1941. See, there are models, guys. Patterns. But he just keeps sitting there, bloviating, with the look and sound of an overly patronized 55 IQ, waiting for Iran to surrender.
We are truly governed by imbeciles. And now they're off to China. This should go well.
A lot of folks here got mad just hearing how other folks like Platner. And I'm sorry they wanted to kill you, the messenger, JVL. I know you know this unfortunate tendency about human nature. When you're mad enough, you throw the vase at the first thing in your line of vision. But most of us do understand we can't control 90% of what other people feel. But what a fiasco in Maine. All the rest of us can do is watch, kind of in horror.
Sorry, Steve. Everyone sure has an opinion here, it seems. The column generated quite a hot debate. My own feelings about Platner are pretty much as I stated. Sorry to disagree. I completely respect your views on the guy, but I don't share them. It'll be really interesting to see what happens.
Well said all round JVL. When trump got reelected I thought it was going to take decades to somehow detoxify the political landscape. Now with the current situation in Iran intensifying instability, it is going to be even harder to calm the waters...
Thanks for covering this focus group JVL. I listened to it in the car over the weekend and was hoping it wouldn’t get lost in the weekend shuffle for people. One of the things I notice with a lot of TFG participants is the assumption that they can’t really know about candidates, which leads them into judgments about style. And in this particular TFG we got to see that paired with a lot of suspicion. It was a great illustration of what you guys have been talking about with the influence of conspiracy thinking among the electorate. You could so clearly see how their uncertainty fueled the suspicion, which led to judgment as opposed to research or consulting resources. Granted TFG is asking for their opinion but it’s as if they’re substituting conspiratorial thinking for critical thinking. And thinking their opinion has to come entirely from within. I really wonder sometimes if there are people in these focus groups who are able to see apparently conflicting traits in candidates and realize that’s the human condition. Do any of the embrace complexity or is that filtered out from what we’re hearing?
Wrt the Platner discussion and people’s reaction to JVL’s analysis… I think there’s a natural tension between the analyst aspect of what you do for a living and the influencer aspect. You probably see yourself more as a political analyst and writer, and have the Bulwark audience in mind when you write, while the community responds as if you’re more of an influencer with a broader audience. My 2 cents for whatever that’s worth and assuming you read this. 🙂 Now on to today’s Triad for me…
I find those Louisiana voters utterly terrifying.