By A.J. Liebling
Meta-content Generator
Things are looking bleak for Biden, at least according to genius bloviators on cable news and op-ed pages.
But are they really? Let's take a look at a recent example purporting to share the hopes, dreams, and fears of 14 supposedly “independent” voters jabbering away in a “focus group.”
The headline wasn't promising:
That's not good. If 14 mainstream independent-minded voters feel this way, that's a very bad, albeit not statistically-significant, sampling of mainstream opinion.
So what do we know about these “independent” voters? For starters,
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| One independent voter in the Times group |
The focus group was made up of people who had voted at least once for President Barack Obama and at least once for President Donald Trump.
Let's just stop there. We are being asked to take seriously the political opinions of 14 people who voted for an obviously demented and proudly ignorant, bigoted, and corrupt Russian-owned rapist.
Your correspondent would like to make sure that this point is not overlooked.
We are being asked to take seriously the political opinions of 14 people who voted for an obviously demented and proudly ignorant, bigoted, and corrupt Russian-owned rapist.
That's better.
Also, we are supposed to accept that the views of 14 people who voted for an obviously demented and proudly ignorant, bigoted, and corrupt Russian-owned rapist are somehow representative of a broad middle ground of “independent” voters.
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| He seems quite representative |
Who persuaded the Times editors that this assemblage of angry bigots constituted a representative sample of the great middle ground of the American polity? It must have been someone whose reputation for political independence and integrity is beyond reproach. No way the Times would rely on a Republican hack who cohabits with the Republican Minority Leader of the House and 1/6 liar and hyperpartisan collaborator Kevin McCarthy, right?
Um...
with guidance from Times Opinion, Mr. [Frank] Luntz chose the participants and led this discussion. (Times Opinion paid him for the work, and he has done similar work over the years for political candidates and partisan groups.)
This Frank Luntz?
Frank Luntz is a polling expert and consultant who often works for Republicans. He has also worked as an analyst for Fox News and CBS News and frequently failed to disclose that he had worked for politicians he discussed.
What else do we know about this jamoke?
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| What did this independent voter think? |
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) confirmed on Tuesday he rented a room from GOP pollster Frank Luntz during the coronavirus pandemic, news that was first reported by Fox News host Tucker Carlson the night before.
"I didn't know how this was controversial," McCarthy said on "Fox and Friends." "Frank has been a friend of mine for more than 30 years. I met him with Newt Gingrich back when they were working on the Contract with America," he added, referring to the former GOP Speaker from Georgia.
He could room with Matt Gaetz and Alan Dershowitz for all we care, but that wouldn't give us much confidence in the unbiased judgment of “GOP pollster Frank Luntz.” Burying his decades of bag carrying for Republicans as working for “partisan groups” doesn't give us much confidence in the judgment of Times Opinion editors either.
Maybe the Times was unaware of Luntz's reputation, because learning the facts would have required about 0.01 seconds of searching on any search engine:
So what did a sample of 14 far-right extremists hand-picked by a lifelong Republican hatchet man have to say? If you guessed a bunch of crap they heard on Fox Noise, you win a dream date with Chicken Fried Steak and Gravy Tucker Carlson's hot green M&M. Here's a typically coherent perspective on a pandemic covered up by the Tangerine-Faced Grifter they all voted for:
He doesn't care about a disease that claimed over 3,000 lives yesterday alone. Lest you think that there might be some value in asking Jules why he wants to junk two of the three most effective measures to stop the reign of suffering and death, well,
As is customary in focus groups, our role as moderators was not to argue with or fact-check the speakers, and some participants expressed opinions not rooted in facts.
That of course is utter bollocks. Focus groups are always probing the basis for a speaker's statement, especially when it is bats**t crazy, but if you're the New York Times, you get to make up your own rules. Or have a Republican flack dictate them to you.
The Times could have hired a nonpartisan polling firm or political science department to bring together real undecided voters, drawn perhaps from the one-third of the electorate that didn't vote for anyone in 2020. But that would have required more work than hitting the no. 1 favorite on your Republican quote machine list.
Or it could have assembled a focus group from the 57% of the electorate fearful about the future of our democracy as Dan Froomkin has suggested.
Lest you think that we're the only curmudgeons daring to question the integrity of this particular focus group and the process that generated it, here's Eric Boehlert and Mehdi Hasan weighing in:
“independents” in a Frank Luntz focus group are….Republicans
— Eric Boehlert (@EricBoehlert) January 21, 2022
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| How did she get into the independent voter focus group? |
Just one last tip for you political junkies out there. If you're trying to figure out how Biden is perceived by independent voters, don't ask 14 people who voted for an obviously demented and proudly ignorant, bigoted, and corrupt Russian-owned rapist.
And don't ask Kevin McCarthy's roommate to convene a nonpartisan focus group.
Finally, at the risk of repeating ourselves, don't ask 14 people who voted for an obviously demented and proudly ignorant, bigoted, and corrupt Russian-owned rapist.
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