MAGA fatigue and the "exhaustion of outrage addiction"
MAGA fatigue and the "exhaustion of outrage addiction""Tucker Carlson being summoned to Moscow is not a show of strength. It’s evidence of weakness"
By CHAUNCEY DEVEGA
Senior Writer
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 16, 2024 5:45AM (EST)
(Salon) Last weekend the American mainstream news media, especially its elite agenda-setting outlets such as the New York Times, had a choice to make. They could repeat and amplify the nakedly partisan, inaccurate, unprofessional, editorializing, “report” by former Trump regime member special counsel Robert Hur about President Joe Biden’s non-existent classified documents “scandal” and his supposed “memory problems,” or they could instead focus on how Donald Trump is continuing with his threats and promises to be a dictator, create a concentration camp system and engage in illegal mass deportations of hundreds of thousands of black and brown undocumented residents that will involve martial law and an invasion by the military of “blue states” before giving Vladimir Putin permission to attack Western Europe.
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In an attempt to gain some clarity about this increasingly bewildering “longest election ever," what the early public opinion polls mean and how many political observers are deeply concerned that the 2024 election is increasingly feeling like a repeat of the disastrous 2016 election, I recently asked a range of experts for their thoughts and suggestions.
Matthew Dallek teaches at George Washington University and is the author of “Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right.”
I struggle to understand how 47/48 percent of voters can continue to support Trump and, by extension, his cruelty, conspiracy theories, and criminality. Tens of millions of Americans believe the big lie that 2020 was stolen from Trump, and they have such scant faith in the judicial system that they buy Trump’s baseless conspiracy theory that Democrats orchestrated a plot to put him in jail. My feeling that I’m out of touch is worsened by my belief that Joe Biden has been a good president. He has passed emergency COVID aid, infrastructure reform, landmark climate change legislation, the CHIPs Act boosting US manufacturing, achieved some student debt relief, appointed the nation’s first African-American woman to the Supreme Court, and inflation has come way down, while the US has enjoyed the best post-Covid economy of any advanced industrial country. His leadership on Ukraine has been resolute, measured, and grounded in values like national self-determination and anti-authoritarianism. I’ve heard the knocks against him, but the perils of a second Trump term – to democracy, the rule of law, mainstreaming political violence and Trumpian vengeance—are far more dire than any of Biden’s defects, real or perceived. “The longest election” in U.S. history is a trope that doesn’t hold much explanatory power for me. The primary is likely to be over soon, but Trump has never stopped campaigning, and Biden has long spoken of the risks Trump poses to democracy and stability. I think the “longest election” is likely shorthand for a jaded sense among some in the press corps, and affirmed by polling, that the country has to endure a Trump-Biden rematch.
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Investigative reporter and author Heidi Siegmund Cuda writes about U.S. politics and culture for Byline Times and Byline Supplement.
As a practical matter, what does this “longest election” mean? There will be staged horror events daily, forcing Biden to fight too many fronts, but this is because Trump does not have the votes. So, these are not signs of strength. Tucker Carlson being summoned to Moscow is not a show of strength. It’s evidence of weakness. From Kansas to Ohio, it is clear that voters are waking up to the stakes — overwhelmingly showing that women’s health care rights matter, as people quietly exit MAGA. The dark money villains who cynically fund organizations that weaponize people to destroy their own democracy now realize they overshot the mark when Roe was overturned. So, they find new targets, new boogeymen, to take over from the diabolical plot that turned people into single-issue voters. They take aim at trans people, immigrants, books, Taylor Swift, whatever sells in the much coveted 18 to 49 demo. But they’re failing, as the exhaustion of outrage addiction has given way to a fatigue and desire for some semblance of democratic normalcy. ...............(more)
https://www.salon.com/2024/02/16/maga-fatigue-and-the-exhaustion-of-outrage-addiction/
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Especially after the Iowa and NH caucus/primary events, that there aren't really all that many magats as there used to be. The actual voter count was pretty tiny, you can pull a stat from a very small number of cases so percentages are deceiving at best when you don't know the initial sample size.
So, what = n when it comes to magats and magats who actually vote? All these reports show a percentage of n so we really don't know how many actual voting magats are out there in the real world.
I suspect this is done on purpose to obscure the actual size of the base these days. I saw a tabulation last night, I think it was on The 11th Hour, showing in percentages, even those numbers have declined by double digits which gave me the impression that the actual number of voting magats could be far less than we are being told by a no-so-much-on-our-side media.
Something to keep in mind when we're being shown poll numbers in percentages, you also need to know how big the sample size was for the survey. Otherwise, you're being prompted to respond emotionally, don't take the bait. Take a moment or two and ask the question, "...and just how many is that in real numbers?" because too many still assume that it's a third of our population which I think is a mistake. Those numbers I saw last night showed that a possible 30% has declined to a probable 20% or less overall number of actual magats out there. Could be more drastic than that. If it's gone from an estimated 1/3 has shrunk to 1/5, we're making progress even if that just means more of us have survived magatwerld than the true magats.
