September 27, 2023
Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.
“Outlier” Poll Showing Trump Dominating Is Mocked by Media but Multiple Other Polls Support Its Findings
By Manzanita Miller
A new Washington Post ABC News poll is shaking the left to its core showing Former President Trump beating President Joe Biden 51% to 42%, Trump’s largest margin in any poll this election cycle. While the mainstream media is furiously dismissing the poll as an “outlier”, its findings on Biden’s cratering support with swing voters is backed up by plenty of other data.
In a monumental blow to “Bidenomics”, the poll found 44% of Americans say their finances are worse under Biden than before he took office which translates to the worst marks any president has gotten in 38 years of polls. Biden’s overall job approval rating is nearly twenty percentage points underwater, 37% to 56%, and his marks on the economy and immigration are even worse.
Two-thirds of Americans have a negative view of Biden’s handling of the economy, compared to just 30% who approve. On immigration, 62% of Americans have a negative view of Biden’s immigration approach, compared to just 23% who give Biden positive marks.
Source: ABC News Washington post
While the poll has been harshly criticized as an outlier, the Post says it didn’t deviate from standard sampling, and asked a normal group of the public their views. “In terms of sampling, this survey was conducted using the ABC/Post poll's longstanding methodology,” writes the Post. “Demographic results are typical. So are partisan preferences; 25% of respondents identify themselves as Democrats, 25% as Republicans and 42% as independents.”
The sampling used was standard and it isn’t as if the poll over-sampled Republicans or those who lean Republican. In addition, the voters who were sampled who voted in 2020 say they supported Biden over Trump by 50 to 46%, which is nearly identical to the 51% to 47% margin each supposedly got in 2020.
Other mainstream news outlets have not taken the poll well and are unwilling to entertain the concept that Biden is indeed slipping underwater, particularly with swing voters. Esquire responded to the poll saying, “you'd have to be on mushrooms” to believe Trump’s numbers with young people are accurate. The Independent echoed this sentiment, calling the Post’s finding about young people, “the most ridiculous” finding in the poll.
The most controversial findings in the poll are those on young people and minorities losing support for Biden, but this has been a glaring reality for the past several years. According to the Post, Biden has the support of 50% of minority voters, after winning them 71% to 26% in 2020. Taken another way, Biden has lost nearly twenty percentage points with minorities compared to his 2020 numbers.
Are these findings truly “outliers”? The Post poll is far from the first to show cratering support for President Biden among swing voters. Americans for Limited Government Foundation has repeatedly reported on Biden’s slippage with swing voters including women, young people, and minorities.
Among young people, the Post shows Trump leading with Americans aged 18 to 35 by 15 percentage points, 53% to 38%, which is higher than some other recent polls, however, many polls calculate young people as under aged 30. The Post poll includes those between age 30 and 35 in its metric for young people, which could account for part of the difference. Other polls have shown a steep decline in support for Biden among voters under 50.
Let’s recall a recent New York Times poll showing Biden’s lead over Trump in comparison to 2020 exit polls had dropped by 14 points among women, 30 percentage points among Hispanics, 16 points among Blacks, 14 points among voters under 30, and 8 points among Independents. Those numbers are close to what the Post has found, but the Times found even worse support for Biden among minorities.
According to the Times analysis Biden’s standing in the polls against Trump is shrinking across all major racial groups when compared to his lead over Trump in 2020. For instance, Biden leads Trump among Blacks 71% to 11% after winning them 87% to 12% in 2020, a 16-point decline in just three years. Biden leads Trump among Hispanics by a narrow 47% to 35% in the poll, after winning them 65% to 32%. This translates to a loss of 18 points with Hispanics in just 3 years for Biden.
What about younger voters? There is mounting evidence that younger voters are increasingly reluctant to identify as Democrats, and Republicans have been peeling off gerater shares of young voters in recent elections.
The GOP gained 7 points with 18–29-year-olds and 15 points with 30–44-year-olds between the 2018 midterms and the 2022 midterms. Democrats also lost voters 40–49 outright after winning them narrowly in 2018.
Former President Trump has also seen a huge upswing in popularity among young people in the past year. Trump’s approval rating has surged 14 points among Gen Z and 10 points among Millennials compared to last fall according to YouGov surveys.
While the recent Post poll is being dismissed as an outlier, other relatively reputable polls have echoed its findings that swing voters including young people and minorities are fleeing the Democratic Party in droves. Pundits asking how this could happen would do better to reflect on how it couldn’t happen. With barely a third of Americans supporting him and some of the worst economic marks in modern history, how is Biden holding onto the little support he still has?
Manzanita Miller is an associate analyst at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2023/09/outlier-poll-showing-trump-dominating-is-mocked-by-media-but-multiple-other-polls-support-its-findings/
Video: Indictments BACKFIRE As Trump Jumps to 9-POINT LEAD Against Biden!
To view online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0mjdq2XYWM
Two Trillion More in Debt*
By Rick Manning
The professional point-missers in official Washington, D.C. are focused this week upon the supposed “looming government shutdown” declaring apocalyptic doom to anyone who will listen. Fortunately, those who take these prognosticators of the status quo seriously are becoming few and far between.
A September 3, 2023 Washington Post article by Jeff Stein headlined, “U.S. deficit explodes even as economy grows” outlines the shock that liberal economists have that the supposed full-employment of Bidenomics has generated neither a savings on social welfare spending nor an increase in revenues.
And even with the splash headline of the deficit “exploding”, few people in institutional D.C. or academia as a whole get the problem – America is on an unsustainable spending path and it is irresponsible to just kick the can down the road for even another year.
The 2011 Medicaid expansion under Obamacare is just one example of why the deficit continues to balloon counter to liberal economist expectations. The consequence of expanding eligibility for what was intended as an indigent health insurance program from a 200 to 300 percent of poverty level in all but seven states, is that the number of enrollees have increased from 56.2 million to 84.7 million (2021.) This is more than a 50 percent increase in eligible participants, and this does not count Covid caused increases which the Kaiser Foundation estimated brought the rolls to 92.3 million at the end of 2022.
The end of the COVID emergency will result in some of the new enrollees being removed from eligibility as the income standards that were suspended in 2020 were restored in April of this year, but the Biden administration is already hassling states which are seeking to enforce these income eligibility standards with threatened lawsuits.
Medicaid was supposed to provide safety net health coverage for the poor. Instead, due to the decade old change, now a family of four making $90,000 annually is eligible, and the pressure is on for the seven holdouts to join the spending party.
The cost of this one program has skyrocketed to an estimated $608 billion, an $87 billion increase since 2021. (Note that the increase is not solely related to Obamacare created increased eligibility standards.)
This is just one program, but it is emblematic of the increased dependency society and the resulting federal fiscal damage wrought by them.
But the poison built into the system is the escalating interest payments on the debt which are expected to top $660 billion for 2023 when all the bills are paid.
Every American is aware that interest costs are going up on consumer spending, whether it be mortgages, car loans or personal bank loans. The interest that the market demands to be paid to purchase U.S. Treasury bills is also increasing, creating a self-fulfilling financial tsunami for the future.
To put this into perspective, we currently have a $33 Trillion national debt. Federal government accounts (social security trust fund for example) along with the Federal Reserve make up an estimated $13 Trillion of this debt, meaning that $20 Trillion is the approximate debt held by the public (other countries, banks and savings bonds/T-Bills.) In an April of 2023 report, the St. Louis Federal Reserve analyzed the make-up of the current debt and estimated that higher interest rate costs will increase the amount owed by $98 billion in calendar year 2023.
Believe it or not, this estimate is likely low as the overall national debt grew significantly larger than their projections driving interest owed upward with it.
For perspective, the federal Office of Management and Budget projected the entire Department of Homeland Security to spend $100 billion in Fiscal Year 2023. The increases in the interest payments on the debt effectively equal the entire expenditure for Homeland Security. And the Congressional Budget Office projects that interest payments on the debt will climb from a projected $663 billion this year to $1.4 trillion in a decade if nothing is done.
Rather than being ridiculed, those fighting to get federal spending under control should be hailed as heroes.
In a fiscal world where failure is not an option, most of our federal elected representatives would prefer to kick the can down the road until there is nowhere to kick it.
At the very least, Congress should commit to additional cuts to federal spending by the equivalent of the next year’s interest payment increase. Maybe they would understand the corrosive nature of the escalating budget deficit and do something about it, before the only solutions are default or massive cuts to Social Security and other massive automatic pilot spending programs that consume about 70% of the current federal expenditures.
*(Note on headline – the federal government will spend approximately $2.1 Trillion more than revenues received in FY 23, however, reporting may claim that the deficit number is $1.7 Trillion due to the Supreme Court reversal of the Biden student loan debt cancellation of $400 billion that was counted in the FY 2022 deficit as an expenditure and is now an FY 23 accounting credit.)
Rick Manning is the President of Americans for Limited Government.
To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2023/09/two-trillion-more-in-debt/Video: Congress Delivers DEVASTATING Blow To Communist China
To view online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-OpwyMnt4Y
Video: Sen. Cruz Drops Major Truth Bomb
To view online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccoL6k_tijM