The Doom Poll

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

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337
Supporters of former President Donald Trump buy campaign souvenirs at the Turning Point Action USA conference in West Palm Beach, Florida, on July 15, 2023. (Photo by Giorgio Viera/AFP/Getty Images)

Do you guys ever think about dying?

As in Barbie, so too in life: Read through today’s New York Times survey of the Republican primary and you might find yourself suddenly thinking about dying.

Or feeling like you’re dying, even.

The pros will remind us that it’s just one poll but in this case the pollster enjoys an A+ rating from FiveThirtyEight. And the topline number happens to reflect the national polling average almost exactly. The Times has the race 54-17 for Trump over DeSantis; the RealClearPolitics average has it 54-18.3. The frontrunner has tripled the vote share of the only opponent who seemed to have a chance of defeating him. No candidate in the history of modern presidential polling has lost a lead of as much as 20 points at this stage of a campaign, let alone 37.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Anne W (Raw5254)

    Okay, I’m a conservative, and just looking at that photo says it all. These are not my people, and this is no longer my party. And, yes, it is depressing.

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  2. Mike Giamalis

    "It might not surprise you that, according to the doom poll, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is now more popular among Republicans than Mike Pence is. The former VP enjoys a 44-45 favorability rating; for RFK it’s 53-23."

    Wow that is so depressing

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  3. Avatar photo
    Gibby

    Abandon hope all ye who enter here

    I feel like I should insert a gif of denethor saying “flee for your lives”

    That’s where we are

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  4. Cindibadia

    Well that was, depressing.

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  5. Avatar photo
    M2-D2

    I know David (French) is no longer an official contributor to The Dispatch, but I wonder where he's at with voting in a Trump v Biden matchup. I for one align closely with him and his metric of character and competence, and so haven't voted in the past two elections - but I'm seriously considering a vote for (gulp) Biden purely in the hopes that if enough people do the same, and Trump truly gets shellacked, maybe he won't come back in 2028? But then I remember that Biden doesn't meet the character / competence test either... Is this the best we can do?

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    1. GenZConservative

      I'm leaning Biden right now because it looks like he would be able to do less damage to the country than Trump. Neither Biden nor Harris are any sort of competent leader and they would be unable to midwife the kind of fundamental change Obama aimed for. Whereas Trump is basically a charismatic Democrat wearing Republican racing colors.

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    2. Jackson Condrey

      Do it. Vote for Biden. Save America from Trump.

      Your country needs you.

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    3. Avatar photo
      Anne W (Raw5254)

      I don’t think he will be able to run in 2028, just due to age. However, looking at things right now, nothing would surprise me. Still, I have to think that someone is going to figure out how to beat him by then, and maybe a lot of the idiots who idolize him now will be in nursing homes. I’m saying that as someone who is 71.

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  6. Avatar photo
    Some Viking

    No way! Never! Far too engaging to see how our collective drama will unfold!

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  7. Chuck Almdale

    Nick:
    This is a bit late to the comment game, but as you mentioned brainwashing and cults, I thought I'd share this with you as it covers both.

    For over 40 years psychologist Margaret Thaler Singer studying the phenomena of mind control, beginning with American prisoners of war “brainwashed” by Korean and Chinese Psyops personnel during the Korean War, followed by decades of working with former cult members.

    Her Six Conditions of Mind Control are:

    1. Gradually Mislead: Keep the person unaware of what is going on and how they are being changed one step at a time.
    2. Control the Environment: Control the person’s social and/or physical environment; especially control the person’s time.
    3. Render Powerless: Systematically create a sense of powerlessness in the person.
    4. Inhibit Former Identity: Manipulate a system of rewards, punishments and experiences in such a way as to inhibit behavior that reflects the person’s former social identity.
    5. Promote New Identity: Manipulate a system of rewards, punishments, and experiences in order to promote the learning of the group’s ideology or belief system as well as group-approved behaviors.
    6. Dictate: Put forth a closed system of logic and an authoritarian structure that permits no feedback and refuses to be modified except by leadership approval or executive order.

    A few years back I used the above as a lead-in to a piece on "Woke" indoctrination in Diversity Training Sessions.

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    1. Avatar photo
      Kizedek

      Your application of it to “woke” is interesting. That assumes that inclusivity, diversity, multi-culturalism, etc. are somehow questionable or bad things, or somehow “un-American” (which many do in fact take as a given). Indeed, one wonders if the preceding 100 years wasn’t an example of some fairly serious mind control the other way.

      The very fact that Trump was president and Obama is hated for being accomplished negates the whole idea that anything was ever, or is, merely about merit or qualification.

      But, suddenly, the “anti-woke” want to pretend it’s all about merit and qualifications, when it’s obviously mostly access in the first place *in order to be able to have the chance to prove capability and competence that is already assumed of others who blatantly are neither capable nor competent.*

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      1. Chuck Almdale

        When I was researching the piece, I ran across a number of DEI session-giving outfits that avoided an approach from "wokeness," although they didn't use that term (it wasn't yet popular as a pejorative). So the piece was more about "Ten Signs your Diversity Training Session is Critical Social Justice Indoctrination."

        In short, a DEI seminar need not be indoctrination, but sometimes it is, and here's how to tell.

        The things you list are not inherently questionable or evil. When they turn into mind control using fear and social approval, suppression of free speech, firing and persecution for dubious thought-crimes, valorization of internal feelings over external reality, required virtue-signaling (loyalty oaths, etc.) and punishment for their lack, and many other unsavory characteristics, then society begins turning into the fear and punishment-laden hell-hole that communism nearly everywhere and fascism in Germany became. Quasi-religious theoretical systems like Communism or Wokeism may look wonderful on paper, but when in the hands of real people (many of whom have personality disorders) and applied to real life they can and usually do quickly turn evil.

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  8. Avatar photo
    Rboard

    Pretty convincing. So what do we do now? Form a third party? Or wait for the Republican Party to crash and burn, and try to rebuild something from the rubble?
    Are the MAGA folks too far gone to ever recover their sanity? Will they live in their fantasy world forever, even as they lose every election?

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  9. Avatar photo
    M2-D2

    Unfortunately, Nick is right. I've become a bit of a political Epicurean - live life sort of checked out of politics, because tomorrow our civic union might die (and I really don't have a party or politician who represents my views anymore). My dad is firmly in that unmovable Trump base - and it's hard to even have conversations because he literally doesn't believe anything written by the "New York Slimes" or "liberal Dispatch" - he only "reads" (?!) Breitbart, NotTheBee, and the venerable Epoch Times. So how do you debate issues when the very ground rules or facts are not agreed upon?

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    1. Chuck Almdale

      Check out Braver Angels.
      https://braverangels.org/
      You never know what'll work.

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      1. Avatar photo
        M2-D2

        Thanks for that Chuck. I actually read about them here at the Dispatch. I like the idea a lot, just not sure it works when the basic facts can't be agreed upon - but I'll look again.

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        1. Chuck Almdale

          The short version is that Braver Angels-type confrontation may (probably will) change you more than it or you will change anyone else. In order to allow that to happen, one probably first needs at least a slight feeling of discomfort with your own positions - at least a feeling that they may be imperfect or incomplete.

          Also: You find yourself exploding less with you hear the other side's "insanity." A lot of it is performative - expressed primarily to irritate those they hate (which means you).

          What this sort of confrontation can do for (or to) you is make you a bit more aware of whatever echo chamber you may now be in. I found that I was unwittingly deeply embedded in a left-wing progressive echo chamber. It's discomfiting to discover that. Freeing oneself seems to (for me) bring a bit more acceptance of what previously were loathed viewpoints; some of them aren't so nuts/dumb/insane as I previously thought. For example, I now actually send The Dispatch a subscription fee; three years ago that was unthinkable, as Jonah Goldberg (IMHO) was a far-far-right wing wingnut. He's obviously changed (joke).

          A good book is Monica Guzman's "I never thought of it that way."
          Good luck. This journey is at least interesting.

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  10. Gbm311

    The populist crowd is willfully blind to Trump's legal indictments and literally does not see or hear the facts. He is likely to have trouble getting unified support from either chamber of Congress. He will have trouble getting quality individuals to serve in his cabinet. It would be a disaster for the USA. The first thing he will do is alienate our NATO partners and try to negotiate an end to the war with Putin one on one. NATO will not recover and he will lambaste them irresponsibly. China will likely call his bluff and he will continue his courtship of Kim Jung Un in North Korea, all for naught. Disaster.

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