The flat "Biden bump" and retconning rural rage (03-13-2024--Hour3)

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[00:00:27] support. Alright, it turns out that the Biden bump after the state of the union speech was

[00:00:35] a little bit smaller than anticipated and by smaller I mean negative didn't quite did

[00:00:44] not quite work out how they were hoping it would. This is from, yeah, from Yehu News dot com.

[00:00:53] From Yehu News dot com, Yehu dot com, pundits have may have fond over President Biden state

[00:01:00] of the union address on Thursday praising it as a home run and the best speech ever.

[00:01:10] They called it a fiery powerful vigorous speech that should erase or at least ease the

[00:01:17] nagging fears about his age and vitality, but voters barely noticed a new Yehu News slash

[00:01:30] you gov survey of 1,482 US adults. Now again these are not likely voters here. These are just

[00:01:36] US adults. So it's just a it's just a popularity contest. Right? It's just a poll just among

[00:01:42] everybody like, hey, what do you think? Right? It was conducted in the days immediately after

[00:01:47] the state of the union speech and it shows zero improvement in perceptions of the president

[00:01:54] or his standing against former president Donald Trump. Now actually that's not I mean,

[00:02:01] it's within the margin of error. It's like one point down, one point. It's like give

[00:02:04] me one point. So it's basically no change. Okay? So the bump is just a flat line before

[00:02:12] the state of the union speech, Trump and Biden were statistically tied in a head to head

[00:02:18] matchup, according to the previous Yehu News you gov poll from late January. That was

[00:02:24] a 45 44 poll. But again, these are just adults. These are not likely voters. Okay? So he's

[00:02:31] got to keep that in mind. Again, I'm just bringing this to you because it's a trend line and

[00:02:35] it might indicate something larger. Right? They remain tied today. Trump picking up one point

[00:02:42] Biden remaining at 44% a gap that's still within the polls margin of error, which is 2.8%.

[00:02:50] The four-the-speech 40% of Americans approved of the job that Biden was doing as president

[00:02:55] 56% disapproved. Today, those numbers are instead of 40% approval. It's down one point to 39%

[00:03:06] and his disapproval number is also down one point. Now keep in mind, those numbers I just gave you

[00:03:15] did not come from a poll of people who actually watched the speech. Right? So that's just

[00:03:23] people's sentiment. So it kind of makes sense that there would not be a change, right? Because

[00:03:28] they didn't watch it. Maybe they just saw some headlines. They saw some TikTok videos or whatever.

[00:03:33] Biden who would be 86 years old at the end of his second term,

[00:03:38] delivered the state of the Union speech and all of the media and Democrats, but I repeat myself,

[00:03:45] we're like, yeah, such an energetic display. However, when you start looking at

[00:03:51] the people who watched it, it appears to have had no effect. What did I say? The day after

[00:03:57] the speech, what did I say? So if you're a Democrat or media, but I repeat myself,

[00:04:01] then you thought he did a fantastic job and if you are a Republican or you're not a fan of

[00:04:05] Joe Biden's, this did not allay any of your concerns. And I don't know if anybody who had doubts

[00:04:12] about Joe Biden like legitimate doubts, they were not sure. Like they're not partisan,

[00:04:17] right? They don't follow politics, but they figure you know what I need to watch the state of

[00:04:22] the Union because you know, it's an election year or whatever. So you watch a little bit of it

[00:04:28] and you're like, hmm, this is kind of weird. Like who are those people and where they persuaded?

[00:04:34] And I said after watching that speech, that that speech was not delivered to me. That speech was

[00:04:41] not for me, that speech was not for Trump supporters, that speech was not for anybody except

[00:04:46] Democrats and his base. And I said that it's because he has not shored up his left wing base yet.

[00:04:56] He is trying to get everybody back in line so he can go into the general,

[00:05:02] not having to worry about his left flank, not having to worry about college kids and

[00:05:07] homos supporters, not turning out to vote for him, right? In the anti-Semite, sorry, the anti-Semite

[00:05:13] demographic as well and some of the Democrat party. Only 30% of Americans say that Biden has been

[00:05:21] quote, mostly in charge as president while 53% say he's been mostly passive. Now this stat to me

[00:05:31] out of this polling like I'm not really sure what to make of it because there are a lot of people

[00:05:37] on the left that want him to do more. So when they say he's been mostly passive and he's not really

[00:05:42] in charge, like they could think that that's because the Jews are running it all right?

[00:05:48] Or we want him to pack the Supreme Court. How is he and why isn't he doing it? That kind of stuff.

[00:05:56] You also have a bunch of people on the right that are saying he's a puppet, right? Obama is really

[00:06:02] pulling the strings. Romoclaine's pulling the strings so they would say he's not mostly in charge.

[00:06:07] He's mostly passive, right? So I don't really know what to make of that. They highlighted that

[00:06:11] stat but I got questions about it. So they asked though in this piece at Yahoo News what's holding

[00:06:17] Biden back? It may be that the public has made up its mind about his age or that he'll need more

[00:06:23] than a single speech to shake things up. Right. Well, there's another possibility that Biden could do

[00:06:30] to kind of write the ship here and address the concerns of his mental acuity because as I keep

[00:06:36] saying it's not his age that's the issue. I know the media keeps saying it's his age. Maybe some

[00:06:41] of them are saying it has like a shorthand that, you know, oh he's just, you know, senile.

[00:06:46] It's not his age because if he's sharp as a tack at 86 nobody's going to care, right?

[00:06:52] But if he's not then people do. But there is a third option here which is for him to reverse his aging

[00:07:01] process. Right. So I go full cocoon, you know, go that way. Look, I'm just throwing out ideas here.

[00:07:11] I mean, the campaign probably needs some ideas. So that's one of the ideas. Get yourself a

[00:07:16] will for Bremley without the diabetes and start kicking cans around, you know. Anyway,

[00:07:25] either way, the state of the union address was not the reset that the White House was hoping it

[00:07:32] would be. Have you called Hillary Clinton? Oh no, the Russian guy that she gave that reset button to.

[00:07:41] Maybe get that back. See if you can get that reset button back or maybe she's got another one,

[00:07:46] she probably does actually remember because she wrote something in Russian that didn't say reset.

[00:07:51] It said something else. So it said like surrender or something and the Russian guy mocked her

[00:07:56] and she was like, oh well, we'll have to fix that so they may have an extra one laying around

[00:08:00] with the wrong wording on it. You can borrow that one. Anyway, just 17% of Americans who watched the

[00:08:07] state of the union or followed news about it say Biden seemed quote, not as old as they expected.

[00:08:15] 17% that watched it say, oh he didn't seem as old as I expected him to be. 51% said, yeah,

[00:08:22] that's about the same. 51 and another 24% said, wow, he seems way older than I expect it. So

[00:08:29] let's combine those last two numbers. 51% and 24% you are now at 75% of the voters

[00:08:37] say he is as old as I expected or older. That is no bueno. Again, think about the idea of the

[00:08:46] reversal of the aging process. Think about it. Asked whether the speech made Biden seem more fit

[00:08:55] to be president or less fit, 32% said more fit. 35% said less fit and 28% said that the state

[00:09:06] of the union speech did not alter their opinion of Biden's fitness. The most shocking finding,

[00:09:15] you ready for it? Most of the positive reviews of Biden's speech came from Democrats.

[00:09:23] I know. I should have told you to sit down for us. My apologies. Well, you wouldn't hear it

[00:09:27] because you probably fainted. Sorry, my apologies. Have you heard about this book called,

[00:09:34] what is it about white rural rage? Have you heard of this thing?

[00:09:39] A new book on white rural rage. Argus said, rural Americans are the most racist, stop me if you've

[00:09:48] heard this before by the way. They're the most racist xenophobic conspiracist, anti-democratic

[00:09:54] and violent geodemographic subgroup of Americans out there. The authors, Tom Schaller

[00:10:03] and Paul Waldman say their book is driven by data and science, and that even if you don't like

[00:10:12] their conclusions, the evidence is clear. By the way, in case you were wondering why I sing those two,

[00:10:18] it's not really a song, it's more of a chant, you know? As all religious chants kind of sound,

[00:10:25] that's the whole point. This is what I learned during the year of our COVID

[00:10:36] with the branch COVIDians, took over all of the spaces and such and as long as you appealed

[00:10:43] to the higher authority with the incantation of science and data, science and data, then it is true.

[00:10:52] Right? That's what makes it true. You make an assertion, so it says, hey, wait a minute,

[00:10:57] how do you know that and the response is? Science and data, and you just keep saying that,

[00:11:03] and the more people join in, it becomes like this kind of, like harmonious thing, everybody's

[00:11:13] like vibing on it, grooving on it, you know? And then you just forget what you were even asking about.

[00:11:20] Okay, so Schaller and Waldman misused data though to support their claim according to Nicholas Jacobs.

[00:11:30] Nicholas Jacobs is an assistant professor of government at Colby College, Big Fan of their

[00:11:36] Cheese, and the co-author with Daniel Shea of a book called The Rural Voter, the Politics of

[00:11:43] Place and the Disuniting of America. This was published by the way at a website called The Daily

[00:11:50] Yonder, which their slogan is, Cabinette Rural. So yeah, The Daily Yonder. But these guys are legit,

[00:12:03] they've written a book, they've spent years focusing on rural voters, the rural way of life,

[00:12:10] rural society and that sort of thing. And so they've now taken a look at this new book that's making

[00:12:15] all the rounds on the lefty circuit. And, you know, and look, it's being used to denigrate people

[00:12:22] who vote for Trump. That's the point, right? That's the point. And so you've probably heard about

[00:12:28] this book. I don't, I think it's, I think it is called white rural rates. I think it's,

[00:12:33] I think that is what it's called, but whatever. That's the way it's framed.

[00:12:37] And the point is to denigrate all Trump supporters. And to kind of label them all the same way,

[00:12:45] based on science and data, right? Unfortunately for them, if you do a dive into the data,

[00:12:53] you realize that it actually doesn't support their conclusions. So we'll take a look.

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[00:14:09] Email is peat at thepeatcalendershow.com got a message here from Jan as a white man raised in a

[00:14:17] very rural area of the country I thought this was an anti Yankee book. The only rage I have seen

[00:14:24] in rural white America, at least here in the south deals with the folks that talk funny.

[00:14:30] Those are Bostonians. Okay, I'm coming over this piece here at the daily yonder by Nicholas Jacobs

[00:14:41] who wrote a book called along with Daniel Shay wrote the rural voter, the politics of place and

[00:14:46] the disuniting of America. And they are just dismantling this new book that's hit the shelves and you

[00:14:52] probably seen these authors making well you probably haven't because there were an MSMBC and all

[00:14:57] of the other legacy outlets they're making the rounds talking about how racist and xenophobic

[00:15:01] and anti-democratic and violent rural white Americans are. He says I've reviewed every publicly

[00:15:08] available survey and poll used in this book. They used to stereotype marginalized and ultimately

[00:15:16] demean the lives and beliefs of rural Americans. The book reeks of telltale signs of being written

[00:15:25] first and finding facts second. Only after they settled on a salacious title did they go out

[00:15:32] and try to find what they already agreed to see it seems with little to no attention paid to

[00:15:38] whether any of it was even true. Although they are sure to sell some books their selective use

[00:15:44] of sketchy data is going to worsen our efforts to rebuild rural communities and close a rural urban

[00:15:52] divide that threatens our democracy regardless of where you live. This is not normal academic

[00:16:02] quibbling over numbers and definitions. The faults that the author here describes

[00:16:13] led the authors to drastically different conclusions that more rigorously conducted research

[00:16:21] demonstrates where rural politics scholars are increasingly attentive to the idea that quote

[00:16:27] rage is not the same as economic anxiety. They're not the same things rage is not economic anxiety

[00:16:38] rage is not community pride rage is not having a sense of place

[00:16:48] these two guys that wrote this white rural rage book simply want us to write off rural America as

[00:16:55] the land of radical extremism. The first problem and there are a bunch of problems with this book but

[00:17:02] the first problem is that the vast majority of the data lacks any consistent definition of what

[00:17:08] they even mean by the word rural which seems to be that seems to me to be a bit of a problem right

[00:17:15] like in the title of your book and you don't even define it consistently across all of the data

[00:17:23] this then of course gives the authors all of the license they need to pick and choose various points

[00:17:30] from whatever surveys that they want in order to advance whatever premise they wish to advance

[00:17:38] first he takes a couple of examples here but the first example is this polling from ipsos

[00:17:44] it defines rural as anybody living in a county that's not part of what's called an msa metropolitans

[00:17:53] statistical area okay we are in the Charlotte MSA I don't even know so it's now let's Charlotte

[00:18:00] because they kicked one out where now is it Charlotte York County Cabarras or is it Charlotte

[00:18:06] Gaston because it used to be Charlotte Gaston York do you remember that yeah but they moved

[00:18:11] to one of the counties anyway these are msa's okay the census though they estimate that 54%

[00:18:17] of all rural people live inside these msa's so which is it because an msa has a dense urban center

[00:18:27] of 50,000 people or more so they're saying oh well this is uh this ipsos data says uh

[00:18:35] any resident living in a county that's not a part of an msa but half of rural residents live in an

[00:18:40] msa so what are you even talking about second sample sizes are too small the sample sizes in their

[00:18:48] data sets are too small it's and so what happens is when you start trying to extrapolate out

[00:18:55] like okay well i you know i surveyed 10 people and one person said x so now if i want to

[00:19:02] extrapolate out to what a hundred thousand people would say that one person saying x now turns into

[00:19:09] 10,000 people saying x when in fact you might have just gotten that one guy out of a million

[00:19:15] that said x you know and so any kind of uncertainty and error creates a larger problem in the

[00:19:24] larger extrapolated data the larger the margin of error so small sample size big problem third

[00:19:31] because most surveys are done to get a representative picture of the national population

[00:19:36] even when they do have the adequate sample sizes seldom do the rural respondents in the poll

[00:19:42] actually represent the demographics of rural america head down east in north carolina

[00:19:51] you have majority minority districts down there counties rural

[00:19:56] in the last seven years the author of this piece says i've surveyed over 25,000 rural residents

[00:20:04] and my experience is that the first to respond and fill that rural quota are older and more conservative

[00:20:15] than average right so when you are putting a survey out into the field the people that first respond

[00:20:20] to it are older conservatives getting young rural folks to respond to surveys is difficult

[00:20:32] most surveys might only actually have a handful of young people answering and so the vast majority

[00:20:38] of studies that these two guys who wrote the white rage book cite they do not report out demographic

[00:20:45] statistics on their rural population so you don't know who they're even talking to

[00:20:50] and again in a small sample size you get one young person and there one

[00:20:57] expression of a particular attitude and now that's going to be ascribed to tens of thousands of

[00:21:03] other people at the same age only two surveys in the entire book conform to basic standards of

[00:21:11] survey research and even attempt to try and present an accurate picture of rural america the first

[00:21:17] is a 2017 study from the washington post and kaiser family foundation the second is a 2018 report from

[00:21:24] pew a study by the way that shows that majorities of rural americans believe that quote white people

[00:21:31] benefit from advantages in society that black people do not have which doesn't really sound like a

[00:21:36] white supremacist view also there are still significant obstacles that make it harder for women

[00:21:41] to get ahead than men which doesn't sound like a sexist view and that there are indeed quote situations

[00:21:48] in which abortion should be allowed oh and they reject the idea that a non white majority country

[00:21:54] would be bad for america that's one of the surveys cited to call rural voters racist exist

[00:22:03] and conservatives but not even these are perfect all right do the current world events have you

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[00:22:58] these guys wrote a book about white rural rage and luckily enough a fellow by the name of

[00:23:04] Nicholas Jacobs did a deep dive into their book any research all of their footnotes read through it

[00:23:10] all and basically dismantled the in their entire book it's just garbage and this is a guy who is

[00:23:16] actually an expert in the field he says once you account for the margin of error which these two

[00:23:22] authors never report once in the book the margin of error but once you account for it rural residents

[00:23:28] actually believe the same thing as suburban residents do indeed one question down the survey shows

[00:23:38] that rural residents are just as likely as urban residents to say that the most to say quote most

[00:23:45] immigrants coming to america in the last ten years are doing enough to adapt to the american way of

[00:23:50] life urban people rural people think the same thing on that question rural people suburban people think

[00:23:59] the same thing on most questions the final problem is the worst one because it exists even if you

[00:24:06] account for problems of defining what is rural what is not and even if you get large representative

[00:24:11] samples which these authors did not do that either but even if you had addressed all that nowhere

[00:24:17] in the book is there any attempt to understand why what motivates rural people in particular

[00:24:25] what motivates them to think one thing or another 24% of residents are queuing on that's disproportionately

[00:24:33] higher than the 17% of americans who are rural right so 70% of americans live in rural areas

[00:24:41] 24% of rural residents are queuing on believers so obviously like they're way more queuing on

[00:24:46] e you know wasn't that the guy who played the saxophone nevermind they conclude that rural is

[00:24:53] extremist than rural is a hotbed of queuing on rural is danger land but the vast majority of rural

[00:25:00] residents don't believe in queuing on conspiracies right and there are over three times as many queuing

[00:25:06] on believers in urban and suburban america by numbers there's more of them that makes rural

[00:25:14] america the threat to american democracy really they're fewer of them consider the same fallacy as

[00:25:22] it relates to something like vaccines black americans are the least likely to have the covid vaccine

[00:25:29] whatever the reason for this phenomenon no one would jump from that finding to say that the real

[00:25:33] threat to public health comes from black americans refusal to take the vaccine right we know that

[00:25:39] claim is nonsense because unvaccinated black americans represent such a small percent of the

[00:25:44] unvaccinated population just like rural people do also low vaccine rates might actually have little

[00:25:52] to do with race per se but instead be the consequence of other factors factors that we know are

[00:25:59] associated with vaccine uptake and race i don't know things like maybe income maybe education

[00:26:06] maybe fear of government right instead the way we would really test why groups believe something

[00:26:14] be a conspiracies or vaccines is to compare individuals within and between the groups so that we can

[00:26:19] account for the differences that they may have in common but the authors of this white rage rural

[00:26:27] rage book they never dig into that right he says i got some of their data so i did the work

[00:26:33] i tested their claims that rural residents are xenophobic and then he at a group level

[00:26:41] 57% of rural residents compared to 35% of urbanites agree that a growing number of new

[00:26:46] comers from other countries threaten traditional american customs now you may disagree with that thought

[00:26:52] but your disagreement is not with rural people it's with republicans because that's what republicans think

[00:27:00] right rural residents are statistically no more likely to think xenophobic beliefs on account of their

[00:27:06] rurality it's their politics and that's the point here of the book obviously right that's the point

[00:27:14] the idea is to say that it's the gop so you are these things if you are rural which is a heuristic it's

[00:27:21] just a it's a surrogate word the white rural rage the goal of the book is to say that the threat

[00:27:28] to american democracy is emanating from the heartland if that's the point though the data does not

[00:27:35] support that idea all right that'll do it for this episode thank you so much for listening i

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