Here Comes The Polls

[Silent3]

87. "The fact that you even thought that I ever said that you did is perhaps telling?"

No, I never thought you literally said that I was defending misinformation or selective use of polls.

You are, however, bringing up, and keep bringing up, the very same arguments you'd employ against someone who was doing that. Why? Why do you insist on talking cross-purposes to the issue of MEANING that brought me into this conversation?

Your high-horse is firmly established, understood, and standing there tall and proud. The fate of democracy does not depend on you reiterating it.

This has been like talking to a politician who doesn't want to answer direct questions or deal with specific issues, but who merely wants to use anything asked as a launching point for pre-established talking points.

Here is INFORMATION and MEANING that I can reliably extract from current polling, even if that polling doesn't end up being highly predictive of election results in November:

There is a lot of ignorance and apathy, not to mention lack of empathy, in the American public. Without these big problems, nearly every poll would show Biden way, way ahead.

As divisive as the Gaza issue has been among Democrats, we should be so completely comfortable with Democrats' chances in November as to have little concern about that issue tipping the election the wrong way, because a better educated, better informed, less apathetic and disconnected public would damn well know Trump and Republicans are not only dangerous, but don't even offer any solutions to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, or any other problems most Americans have with the state of things in this country.

Even if Biden wins in November, Democrats keep the Senate, regain the House, and do well in state and local elections all over the country, I can be pretty damn sure from what polling shows that it's not going to be by margins wide enough to properly express the appropriate disdain and disgust for Trump and the current state of the Republican party that is required.

Unlike the way many people respond in a binary win/lose way to the results of an election ("Yay! The people were wise and chose Biden!" or "How could we be so stupid as to let Trump get power again?" ), this is how I see it:

If Biden wins by anything but a landslide, we lucked out and were just barely smart enough to make the right choice. If Biden loses, the stupidity and nastiness that's been growling at the door for a long time finally broke in.

What polling tells me is that we're a long way from out of the woods from the danger to democracy that Trump and the Republican party pose.

What this country needs, and polling meaningfully tells me we are unlikely to get, is the kind of total repudiation of Trump and a thoroughly corrupted Republican party that would finally trigger a collapse of and/or major reform of that party. Republicans, even if they lose, will probably do well enough to merely lick their wounds and keep trying the same old shit in the next election and every election after that until either a true reckoning occurs, or Republicans finally win using that strategy, leading to a possibly very long and dark age for America that will be very hard to break out of.