Don't shoot the pollster
Biden won't stop being unpopular if the NY Times just stops reporting on it.
According to WebMD, “object permanence” refers to the knowledge that a particular item still exists even when you can no longer see it. A young baby might legitimately believe Daddy has vanished from the face of the earth when he hides his face while playing “peekaboo,” and needs a while to finally figure out that he never went away.
Eventually the child figures out that just because you can’t see Daddy doesn’t mean he no longer exists, and surely he’ll be back any minute even if his trip to the corner store to buy cigarettes has taken a few years longer than usual.
I assumed most functioning adults had caught on the idea that something continues to exist even if you aren’t aware of it. But then I saw these tweets from Jeff Jarvis, whom I remember as being quite a reasonable center-left commentator in the 2000s blogging era but whom, like far too many of the best and brightest from his generation, has succumbed to a terminal case of Twitter Brain:
The New York Times poll in question shows Biden trailing Trump, 48% to 43%, eight months before the Presidential election.
There are many ways a reasonable person can deal with this information. One may dismiss it as a rogue poll with some eye-popping and implausible findings (Trump leading among Latinos and over 20% with African-Americans? I’m calling BS). It may be overstating Trump’s support, in line with polling the last few election cycles and this year’s GOP primaries.
And, of course, there are still eight months before the freaking election.
Or you can be like Jarvis and denounce the Times for being part of a plot, apparently hatched by Rupert Murdoch when he was a teenager, to rig the election for Donald Trump.
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