Below is my column in The Hill newspaper on how the media seems confused by polls that not only fail to show former Vice President Joe Biden surging but some showing Trump pulling ahead with voters. The problem is that the media has never shown any real interest in understanding Trump voters, preferring to stereotype them as racists, as done in a recent Washington Post column. The truth might be found in a famous Stanford experiment called “Bobo the Clown.”
Here is the column:
Various media outlets are struggling with recent polls that not only show President Trump at the same popularity as this time last year but actually rising in states like Ohio. When one poll found him leading by 7 points in battleground states, John King cautioned viewers to “be careful not to invest too much in any one poll” especially amid the coronavirus. It was a CNN poll and, while Biden leads in other polls, it is not unique.
The media seems honestly confused. It was not supposed to work this way. With unrelentingly negative coverage of an impeachment, a pandemic, and an economic collapse, voters were supposed to be angry. There is even a psychological model for such social cognitive learning or conditioning called “Bobo the Clown” and, while this experiment by psychologist Albert Bandura focused on children, these polls suggest that conditioning does not work nearly as well in politics as it does on playgrounds.
In 1961, Bandura used a goofy inflatable clown named Bobo and had children watch adults as they acted aggressively toward it. Soon the children followed the adults’ example and beat the clown. Conversely, when children watched the clown being treated without aggression, they were less aggressive toward it.
For many voters, Donald Trump and Joe Biden are not so funny clowns, and voters are being conditioned by some in the media to treat one aggressively and the other not aggressively. It is not the first attempt at media conditioning: In 2016, when every poll indicated that voters wanted outsider candidates, Democratic leaders pushed through one of the two most unpopular presidential candidates in history, Hillary Clinton.
She was beaten by the other most unpopular figure on the Republican side, Trump. Yet, after largely positive treatment of Clinton and correspondingly negative coverage of Trump, the election results stunned experts who predicted an easy win for Clinton — and why not? Voters had been exposed to unyielding, continual media conditioning against Trump.
The conclusion of the media today appears to be that the scathing treatment in 2016 was not aggressive enough. Trump is routinely called an actual clown by some in the media. More importantly, there are now consistent attacks on Trump supporters. Washington Post “conservative columnist” Jennifer Rubin has declared that Trump supporters as a whole are racists. That common stereotyping of Trump supporters is uncontested, even as the media objects to Trump’s generalizations about other groups.
Columnist Leonard Pitts wrote a recent column entitled, “No, it’s not the economy, stupid. Trump supporters fear a black and brown America.” The narrative has moved beyond Clinton’s description of Trump supporters as a “basket of deplorables” to now portraying all Trump supporters as open racists. “Make America Great Again” hats are denounced by academics as the symbol of “modern day hitlerjugend” and hate speech.
It is all part of media-cognitive learning, and it is working in a curious way. Recent polls show Trump at the exact same spot as he was last year, with roughly 43 percent support. In Ohio he actually is ahead by 3 percentage points in a survey from Emerson College and Nexstar Media; he and Biden are in a statistical dead heat in Wisconsin. In other words, as in 2016, the media campaign is forcing Trump supporters into the closet, but not away from Trump.
Meanwhile, the media has been working hard at non-aggressive treatment of Biden. His frequent gaffes are quickly dismissed; when he was accused of sexual assault, the media reluctantly noted the story. Even when Biden recently espoused a conspiracy theory that Trump was going to halt the November election, the media called it a “prediction” and ignored that it was based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the Constitution.
At the end of last year, the Media Research Center found that network evening news was 96 percent negative against Trump. The drumbeat has only increased with impeachment and pandemic coverage this year. Despite such saturated messaging, polls show that the number of voters expressing strong “enthusiasm” for Biden is wallowing at just 24 percent, while Trump remains at 53 percent. Biden is just 3 points ahead of Trump in the most recent polls, actually behind where Clinton was in 2016. The reason may be that the anti-Trump narrative is so overwhelming that voters feel they are being played like the kids in the Bandura experiment.
Consider again the recent attack of the Post’s Rubin on most Republicans. Rubin lashed out at the immigration freeze ordered by Trump during the pandemic; however, she was not satisfied with denouncing the policy as a political stunt to appeal to the unemployed. She declared: “No doubt Trump’s base is primarily motivated by racism. This is why Trump does this.” The statement captures the accepted, unhinged bias against all Trump supporters in the mainstream media.
I did not vote for Trump, and I have regularly criticized him in columns and blog posts. However, I have watched the stereotyping of Trump supporters at media conferences for years. It suggests that roughly 63 million people in this country who voted for Trump in 2016 are knuckle-dragging racists. It ignores the fact that Hillary Clinton had record negative polling before the nomination and was widely viewed as pathologically inauthentic.
Recently, polls show 85 percent of Republicans support Trump. Thus, according to Rubin, 85 percent of Republicans (and roughly 10 percent of Democrats and 47 percent of independents) — in other words, almost half of America — are primarily motivated by racism. Does that track with any sense of reality? There are a host of reasons for these voters to support Trump other than racism.
What is not being discussed much in the media is that people might have non-racist reasons for supporting Trump. The fact is that Trump has a curious record: He has been repeatedly (and correctly) chastised for untrue statements, and yet he has one of the best records for actually keeping campaign promises — the crackdown on immigration, building of the border wall, pro-life policies and appointments, selection of conservative jurists, tax cuts, regulation rollbacks, opening up areas to oil drilling.
These and many other aspects of his administration are the most controversial but also are the long-held wish list of conservatives going back to Ronald Reagan. Indeed, while 85 percent of Republicans support Trump, a new poll shows that 23 percent would like to see someone else as their nominee. Yet, Rubin and others simply dismiss all Trump supporters as monolithic, pathological racists.
Thus, polls indicate that the unending attacks on Trump and his supporters in the media are not conditioning but, instead, are repelling voters. They are fulfilling his narrative that voters cannot trust the media. Many voters may still view both Trump and Biden as over-inflated clowns, but they resent being continually conditioned to hit one clown and hug the other. Indeed, if Trump is reelected, he may have the media to thank.
A lot of past Presidents were glorified. The Roosevelt’s both got high glory from media and historians. I watched the PBS show about George W. Bush and they really denigrated him. The commenters were all jerks.
The rocks thrown at Trump are a bit much.
I am for Harry Truman. The Man From Missoura. Others I like are: Lincoln, Ike, Jefferson, and L.B. Johnson.
I also watched the ‘American Experience’ episodes about George W. Bush. What struck me was the people the producers chose as ‘talking heads’. There was virtually no-one who presented the Bush Administrations from the latter’s perspective, particularly in defense and emergency response matters. One thing I will say: I was impressed by the even-handedness displayed by Eugene Robinson.
I stopped following major news outlets in early 2106, having found excellent sources of unfiltered information and dispassionate commentary.
Your tax dollars at work PBS and NPR are fraudulent.
They will try to play both ends, both sides the floor and roof against the middle then wonder why the roof leaks. Not for nothing did the Stupid Party hire the Daily Stupid and DUUH Network.
There is all this yak about what the Poles say. There are not many Polish American voters. What about the Irish?
So the argument that media influences the mind of people, like conditioning, cannot be held. It is more like the “whiner” is being dismissed or “cry world”? We’ll see in November.
Why would anyone believe the Left’s concerns over racism — any more than their “concerns” over norm-breaking, as they trample every norm going after Orange Man Bad?
Racism is the Left’s stock-and-trade: stoking it with fake hate crimes (Jussie Smollett, Mike Brown, The Hammer-Carrying-House-Stalking Jogger), the ideological hatred of (and desire to “replace”) “European stock” (see Joe Biden’s “unrelenting wave of immigration” speech), the revisionism that casts every facet of American history as genocidal and slavery-enabling, the seething hatred of “white privilege” — seen in everything, at all times.
If you still believe in the Left’s sales pitch: that it stands for social justice, anti-racism, civil liberties, freedom of speech, etc, after all we’ve seen these last 30 years — you have an unhealthy capacity for selective truths. These Oikophobic subversives despise this society, and cover themselves in the names of noble values, while undermining and trampling their substance.
Anyone who falls for the rhetoric of the “resistance” while ignoring their actions is Bobo the Clown.
Writers like Jennifer Rubin and Leonard Pitts and papers like The NY Times and WaPo are sounding more and more desperate. Their own fear beside on racism and intolerance are showing. They reflect the current temperature of the Democrat Party.
In 2016, I watched as the constant drum-beating of the MSM against Trump and his supporters, turn many people into Trump voters. I believe this will continue. People can only be told so many time they are worthless before those become “just words” rather than the poisoned daggers they were intended to be. And those same people will fight back the only ways people can – by withholding dollars (stop buying papers, cancel cable tv) and by voting for Trump.
Wa Po recently published an article describing Stacey Abrams as a genius with the looks and style of a supermodel to go with her brains.
Melania Trump, on the other hand, is so ordinary that she does not merit a mention in most publications other than to deride her.
Abrams = Super Model
Melania = Mehh
And they wonder how they have squandered their credibility and influence.
Young, I agree with your observation. I subscribe to several women’s magazines and they’ve virtually ignored Melania Trump while presenting liberal politicians as being beautiful such as one who looks decidedly male and will be unnamed (sorry to those who find her so “becoming”), are dog-pony faced (again, will remain unnamed), etc.
She doesn’t look male.
A different color and she would look like a Jack O Lantern balanced on a watermelon.
He’s referring to Michelle Obama, and, no, she does not look like that.
There are actually real criticisms you could offer of her, but people get sidetracked into retailing stupid insults. They aren’t amusing insults because they don’t riff on her real flaws.
Absurd–
I was referring to Stacey, the person in my original post.
Look at her head when she smiles looking directly into the camera.
Defintely a gap-toothed Jack O Lantern. The barrel body beneath it completes the ensemble.
Wharever else she may be, she is no super model.
Not particularly smart, either.
Michelle is no beauty but she isn’t as funny looking as Stacey is.
Absurd-
The reason for pointing out that Stacey Abrams is really pretty funny looking is because the media portrayed her as a genius super model.
The media did the same with Michelle. She isn’t very pretty and not very smart but, at least she is not as peculiar looking as Stacey Abrams is so the media got away with their deception for years.
Time to stop pretending.
Mooch looks fine. She’s 56, doesn’t have excess weight, doesn’t have skin damage, doesn’t have dental decay, and usually wears her clothes well. The one curio is that she has her hair cut military-length and prefers wigs. If you look at photographs (taken in middle age) of the 18 women who’ve occupied that position in the last century, she compares favorably to all but 2-4.
Sometimes Michelle dresses like she is in a circus act, but as a matter of taste, which differs from person to person, I don’t think she is very attractive.
In any event, she is not the glamour girl most-beautiful-ever first lady the media has been selling us for years.
A first lady is not required to be beautiful. It is a lying media selling us a bill of goods on her appearance that has made it an issue.
Finally they have gone too far pretending a really funny looking Stacy Abrams is a genius super model. Even some lefty journos are gagging or laughing at that one.
Why has the media persisted in this? Probably for the same reason that so many dramas these days are stuffed with black physicists and the low-life criminals are invariably white.
Meanwhile, back in Chicago….
I don’t read women’s magazines, so I haven’t noticed anyone extolling MO’s looks. I run into pointless insults directed at her. You want to cut up Mooch, there’s ample material. No need for distractions.
I am not really interested in cutting up Michelle. You miss the point.
I am interested in cutting up a dishonest media that for years has pretended she is gorgeous and branded everyone who disagrees as a racist.
Finally they have gone way too far selling the same nonsense about Stacey Abrams and even the prefer-to-be-deluded can’t quite get it down.
The subject isn’t really Mchelle or Stacey; it is a dishonest media that believes they can tell us anything and get away with it.
I am interested in cutting up a dishonest media that for years has pretended she is gorgeous and branded everyone who disagrees as a racist.
I think you’d have to scrounge to find many examples of the former or any examples of the latter.
Are there any more puny souls on this board than Young?
Sadie Mae doesn’t count.
The MSM has become Peter and they continually call Trump the wolf. But if Trump has been exposed, he’s probably more like Rumplestiltskin . . . so one tends to think the MSM is completely clueless and ignore anything they “report.”
Voters are angry all right, but not at Trump. We’re angry at the media and at the Democrats who are using COVID-19 as a political weapon. As for Jennifer Rubin, that woman is no more conservative than Chuck Schumer. She’s just another leftwing Jew who claims to be “conservative” when she’s really a “progressive.”
For those of you in quarantine, do your exercise & don’t look under the bed.
A clown called Uncle Joe is waiting there
“TAKE THE RED PILL”
I had a Bobo and it was very therapeutic. 😉
Still plenty of media conditioning out there. Fear-mongering is one of their favorite ways to steer people but it isn’t the only way to manipulate people.
30:30 mark in The Century of the Self, part 1 lays bare the effect Edward Bernays and his fellow PR men/women have had on self-governance.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://m.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DDnPmg0R1M04&ved=2ahUKEwjO4rCJ0L3pAhWRYDUKHZ3-DmsQFjAAegQIAhAB&usg=AOvVaw3H6Kky2—_4fu4KSw6-Jd
30:27 rather.
The whole video is worth watching.
JT: “Indeed, if Trump is reelected, he may have the media to thank.”
I would also like to thank the many shills and their multiple alter-egos that come here:Peter Shill, ByTheBook, Natacha, Commit, etc.
“Columnist Leonard Pitts wrote a recent column entitled, “No, it’s not the economy, stupid. Trump supporters fear a black and brown America.” The narrative has moved beyond Clinton’s description of Trump supporters as a “basket of deplorables” to now portraying all Trump supporters as open racists. “Make America Great Again” hats are denounced by academics as the symbol of “modern day hitlerjugend” and hate speech.”
A comment from a pitts. Who the hell is he to say that It’s not the economy, while he has his cushy $200k+ salary to vomit his unsupported BS. Yes, the media did make MAGA hats a rallying point.
And for that THANKS pitts for giving us true rebel Americans something to rebel against.
Ruined. The country is ruined.
Blaim the wall streeters?
Maybe– They are mostly Democrats.
“Washington Post “conservative columnist” Jennifer Rubin has declared that Trump supporters as a whole are racists.”
So, there is this WP ho that doesn’t know 99% of Trump Supporters, but she calls us all Racists. OMG, what a ho.
A good read. Many people are keeping their heads down. Keeping clear of the Democrat manure show. They will quietly vote for President Trump when the time comes. Many others are loud and proud. Despite the Kung Flu President Trump is nowhere near down, let alone out. The Media have lost their collective minds, all to no avail…
It always will be the economy. The difference is stark. You are either a maker or a taker and that is where the election will be decided. All this “pandemic” exercise did was show in real time just how important the makers are and how irrelevant the takers are to a healthy nation.
Add that they media has not yet realized that now they are Bobo the Clown.