JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Donald Trump vs. Joe Biden: Should We Trust the Polls?

Polls conducted months before an election can be valuable in identifying trends in voter preferences, and in sending signals about where trouble lurks — as they have for Biden in key battleground states, where the Electoral College may be decided in 2024.

According to polling conducted last month for Bloomberg media, Biden trailed Trump in states that typically are competitive, such as Arizona and Georgia, and was tied in Wisconsin.

Outcomes in those and other swing states in November could determine who wins the presidency — much as they did in 2020. Biden carried Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin, but a well-distributed shift of 43,000 votes would have given Trump victory in those states, producing a 269-269 tie in the Electoral College.

The election was that close.

It’s certainly “a live issue” whether the polls will get it right in 2024, as an academic journal article noted not long ago.

The pressure is on pollsters to avoid a recurrence of the misfire in 2020, when overall they understated Trump’s support. To that end, many of them have tweaked or altered their methodologies following the 2020 polling embarrassment.

As Glenn wrote at his Substack: Time for Consequences. The “Cabal” who bragged about rigging the 2020 election stuck us with an incapable president at a time of crisis. Examples need to be made.

I’M SO OLD, I REMEMBER WHEN BIDEN WAS GOING TO RESTORE TATTERED RELATIONS WITH OUR ALLIES: Senior Biden Admin Official Refused To Meet With Israeli Ambassador During 2021 Hamas Conflict, Internal Emails Show.

Samantha Power, the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), was asked to meet with then-Israeli ambassador Gilad Erdan in May 2021, when Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups were attacking Israel with missiles in protest of a court ruling that evicted six Palestinian families from an East Jerusalem neighborhood.

Power declined the meeting, internal government emails show, saying that Israel must first reach a ceasefire with the Palestinian terror groups before being granted a sit-down. The behind-the-scenes diplomatic drama reveals how the United States used back channels to pressure Israel into stopping its siege on Hamas militants—tactics that once again may be in play as the Biden administration pushes Israel into ending its current war on the terror group.

“The Administrator [Power] would like to take the meeting with the Ambassador [Erdan] but wants to hold until there is a ceasefire or resolution to the currently [sic] escalation of the conflict,” a scheduler in Power’s office wrote in a May 18 email to USAID colleagues working in the region, according to a cache of internal documents first obtained by the Center to Advance Security in America (CASA), a government watchdog group.

In recent weeks, the Biden administration has begun to walk back its robust support for Israel’s war against Hamas, with Biden saying on Thursday that the Jewish state’s response to the worst terror attack in its history is “over the top.” The administration has also reportedly considered slowing down arms sales to Israel to pressure the Israeli government into reaching a ceasefire with Hamas.

It’s increasingly clear that the only reason the Biden Cabal hasn’t already put a serious squeeze on Israel was the horrific nature of the Hamas October 7 terror invasion.

But as October 7 fades from public memory, that will change.

YEP, THEY JUST CAN’T COVER IT UP ANYMORE: Documented: Biden’s memory loss dates to 2015, 25th Amendment territory.

Flashback: The ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency.

STACY MCCAIN: Joe Biden’s Punch Line Presidency. “As several commentators have noted, this finding — and the fact that Hur recommended no criminal charges, despite the clear evidence of Biden’s guilt — raises questions about the federal effort to prosecute former President Donald Trump for very similar offenses. When you consider the extent to which ‘get Trump’ has been the organizing principle of the Biden administration since Day One, this is a significant setback to that aspect of their agenda. But that wasn’t the worst of it. . . . That Biden has ‘diminished faculties and faulty memory’ is not really news to anyone who’s been paying attention, but having it stated so clearly in a Special Counsel’s report? ‘Republicans pounce!'”

He was diminished and faulty when he ran in 2020, they just covered it up. Now they’ve stopped, pretty much in unison across the entire establishment.

Flashback: The ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency.

I’M SURE THEY WANT TO PULL A TORRICELLI, BUT IT’S TOUGH: Could Democrats replace Biden as their nominee?

Both parties have moved away from the era when insiders in proverbial smoke-filled rooms could be kingmakers at the national conventions, and Biden has dominated every primary he’s competed in thus far. . . .

Still, the DNC Charter does make provisions in case the party’s nominee is incapacitated or opts to step aside, and an anti-Biden coup at the convention is theoretically possible, if highly unlikely. So how would it work?

Biden has said he will remain in the race and there is no indication otherwise, but the only plausible scenario for Democrats to get a new nominee would be for Biden to decide to withdraw.

He could do so while serving out the remainder of his term in the White House, as Lyndon Johnson did in 1968.

If Biden were to drop out between now and August, it would most likely create a free-for-all at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August.

If Biden calls it quits before he wins the majority of the Democratic delegates, it likely wouldn’t make a difference. Any new candidate who tried to enter the race would be unlikely to get on enough of the remaining ballots and therefore couldn’t win enough delegates.

Ultimately the decision would likely come down to the convention delegates who were initially pledged to Biden.

It takes a majority of the roughly 4,000 pledged delegates to win the party’s nomination. Under recent reforms, the party’s more than 700 superdelegates — Democratic lawmakers and dignitaries — are allowed to vote only if no one wins a majority of pledged delegates on the first ballot, so their votes could be crucial in a contested convention.

Related: “Jill Biden and his other advisers come up with ways to obscure signs of senescence — from shorter news conferences to almost zero print interviews to TV interviews mainly with fawning MSNBC anchors…. [T]he Biden crew clearly has no plan for how to deal with the president’s age except to shield him and hide him and browbeat reporters who point out that his mental state… is a genuine issue.”

But it is, and they can’t hide it anymore.

It was an issue in 2020 too, but they could hide it. Flashback: The ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency.

TOO KIND: Biden’s Unannounced Nighttime Speech an Absolute DISASTER.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN):

Maybe old man Biden is past blame but surely institutional Washington, by this monstrous act of elder abuse, is guilty of foisting a fraud on the voters without parallel since Woodrow Wilson governed from a coma. How the hell was Joe going to make it to 2028?

— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) February 9, 2024

Flashback: The ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency.

Plus:

Kamala Harris watching Biden tonight. pic.twitter.com/1vsMM8wscI

— Dustin Grage 🇺🇸 (@GrageDustin) February 9, 2024

Or maybe it’s not Kamala: Michelle Obama may have notified people in ‘22 of her White House ambition: ‘I plan to run.’

HE WON’T LEAVE UNTIL AND UNLESS THE CABAL THAT INSTALLED HIM TELLS HIM TO: So Many Democrats So Want to See Slow Joe Gone. “If Biden is salvageable, the Democrat-Media Complex will do what it can to push him across the finish line in just one more race.”

BECAUSE OF COURSE: Biden Won’t Refreeze Iran’s $6 Billion.

As I guessed last night, the Biden Cabal won’t let anything derail their resurrection of Obama’s Iran Deal.

ACCOUNTABILITY IS FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE:

The national security expertise sought by the Biden Cabal is how to secure the nation from conservatives and other undesirables. And say what you will about this White House, but with Brennan, Clapper, and Kolbe they’ve chosen experience and expertise in the matter.

LOS ANGELES ADMITS THAT GAS PRICES ARE OUT OF CONTROL AGAIN:

So, Los Angeles, how is Bidenomics working out for you? To listen to either Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, you would think that everything is just going swimmingly. ‘Bidenomics. It’s working!‘ But Angelinos are experiencing a very different reality and all of the political ad campaigns in the world aren’t going to change that. Even the local CBS News outlet was forced to confront the truth this week and they picked one of the most visible indicators that a majority of voters have to confront each and every week. Gas prices are once again going up. And they’ve been going up for months. In fact, they have now reached levels not seen in almost a year, with the average price in Los Angeles County now sitting at more than five and a half dollars per gallon, seemingly destined to break the six-dollar mark before very long.

The average price of a gallon of self-serve regular gasoline in Los Angeles County rose today to its highest amount since Oct. 28, increasing 3.1 cents to $5.65.

The average price has risen 49 times in 54 days, increasing 67.4 cents, including 3.2 cents Thursday, according to figures from the AAA and Oil Price Information Service.

The average price rose 30 consecutive days, making it 19.1 cents more than one week ago, 39.2 cents higher than one month ago and 22.3 cents above what it was one year ago.

But for most California voters, isn’t this all good news? In September of 2019, after CNN’s seven hour “climate change town hall,” Bryan Preston wrote, “Seriously, if you see all of the above — which is just a sample — and vote for any of these people for any office at any level, it’s on you. If you like Venezuela, voting for any of them will bring you a whole lot of Venezuela.”

And as Kate of Small Dead Animals wrote after the CNN horror show, “Don’t make the mistake of thinking they don’t mean it.”

● Aren’t California’s High Gas Prices What The Left Have Wanted?

● NBC, the Washington Post, and the New York Times in lockstep call for higher gas taxes.

● 2008 L.A. Times headline: “The joy of $8 gas.”

● “Under my plan, energy costs will necessarily skyrocket…”

In other words, Obama administration retreads are following the same playbook as the original Obama administration: “We’re going to keep at it to ensure the American people are paying their fair share for gas,” is the perfect Kinsley Gaffe for an Obama administration retread like Biden:  As Steven Chu, Obama’s then-incoming energy secretary, told the Wall Street Journal in the fall of 2008: “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”

So despite Biden claiming today that high gas prices are Putin’s fault, is it fair to ask if Biden is on the payroll of Putin? As Walter Russell Mead wrote in 2017:

If Trump were the Manchurian candidate that people keep wanting to believe that he is, here are some of the things he’d be doing:

Limiting fracking as much as he possibly could
Blocking oil and gas pipelines
Opening negotiations for major nuclear arms reductions
Cutting U.S. military spending
Trying to tamp down tensions with Russia’s ally Iran.

“Yep,” Glenn added in late 2019. “You know who did do these things? Obama. You know who supports these things now? Democrats.”

● Biden praises high gas prices as part of ‘incredible transition’ of the US economy away from fossil fuels.

● Team Biden might be purposefully grinding down the middle class.

● The ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency.

Related: Biden tormented by Republican guerrilla campaign and ‘I did it’ stickers.

Also: 100Pcs I Did That Biden Funny Car Stickers. #Resist #CommissionEarned

MEH. IT MIGHT BE CHANNELED THROUGH THE OBAMAS. BUT IT’S THE USUAL CABAL OF INTERNATIONALISTS AND WOULD-BE TECH LORDS:  Megyn Kelly says Obamas — not Biden — are really in charge: ‘Shadow puppet situation’.

JUST ONE OF MANY HEADLINES LIKE THIS: $278 billion and 170,600 jobs: How Biden’s landmark climate bill changed the economy.

The press jumped right on board the Biden cabal’s rebranding of the Inflation Reduction Act as a kind-of jobs-and-climate-change law. That tells me inflation is probably gearing back up as another trillion or two in funny money starts working its way through the economy.

Meanwhile: Not So Fast With The CPI Celebrations: Rents Are Surging Again And Back To Record Highs. “In other words, not only are surging commodities about to blow away hopes for moderation in headline CPI, but economists are once again dead wrong, and instead of looking at the moderation in YoY rents – which they correctly see as indicative of a slowdown in the CPI basket-heavy OER index – what they should be looking at is the real-time actual rental index, which has been rising for 6 months now and is about to take out all time highs at a time when the Fed is supposedly pausing its rate hikes and if anything, is already planning its next easing cycle.”

CRISES BY DESIGN: ‘Bidenomics’ Has Been A Disaster.

By the time the “American Rescue Plan” was passed, there was already too much money chasing too few goods. Tons of people warned about the consequences of dumping more money into the economy. Even when inflation began inching up, Biden dismissed it — “no serious economist” is “suggesting there’s unchecked inflation on the way,” he said. Democrats, of course, wanted to cram through a $5 trillion progressive agenda spending bill. So when inflation became a big non-transitory political problem, the Biden administration began arguing that more spending would help ease inflation.

Again, the vital to remember about “Bidenomics” is that it makes absolutely zero sense.

Only after inflation became a political issue did the Democrats rename “Build Back Better” the “Inflation Reduction Act.” It still contained all the historic spending, corporate welfare, price-fixing, and tax hikes, but, more importantly, it also still had absolutely nothing to do with mitigating inflation.

Let’s not forget that “Bidenomics” also helped initiate the highest gas prices in history. The president signed a slew of executive orders pausing government leases on public lands, shutting down the Keystone XL pipeline, and stymieing drilling in the Gulf of Mexico over concocted “social cost of carbon” externalities, among other restrictions. Despite the uncertainty of the post-pandemic economy, all of this was done in the first weeks of his administration.

Gooder, and harder, America: The ghost of Milton Friedman is haunting President Biden.

Flashback: The ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency.

SERIOUS, BUT SHORT: We need a serious conversation about Joe Biden’s brain.

Although many journalists did a fine job this week highlighting the president’s apparent confusion regarding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, one can’t help but feel as if the news industry as a whole is avoiding the obvious follow-up question. Namely, “Is Biden okay?”

It’s not an unfair question, either, considering the Iraq/Ukraine gaffes were not an isolated series of incidents. They are simply the latest in a string of bizarre, confused and mostly unintelligible statements from Biden in the much longer string of bizarre, confused and mostly unintelligible statements that have come to define the Biden presidency.

“We have plans to build a railroad from the Pacific all the way across the Indian Ocean,” the president said this month during an address before the League of Conservation Voters.

There is no such plan, of course, to build a railroad from the Pacific coast to the Indian Ocean. According to his White House handlers, the president was referring to a plan that would connect railroads across the African continent, linking ports on the Atlantic Ocean to ports on the Indian Ocean. Atlantic, Pacific. Tomato, tomahto.

On June 19, the president promised to conserve 30 percent of U.S. lands and water by — the year of his inauguration?

“I’ve committed to — by 2020, we will have conserved 30 percent of all the lands and waters the United States has jurisdiction over and simultaneously reduce emissions to blunt climate impact,” he said.

No, Biden is not “okay.”

Flashback: The ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency.

WITH REASON: 2 in 3 concerned about Biden’s mental, physical health: survey.

He’s not fit to be president. He wasn’t fit when he ran for election. The press and the Democratic Party — but I repeat myself — colluded to conceal that fact.

Flashback: The ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency.

CAROL ROTH: Joe Biden learned nothing from overseeing the last US debt downgrade.

In the summer of 2011, an ugly economic event that had never happened in the United States’ history came to pass: The sovereign debt of the United States received an official credit downgrade. Standard & Poor’s cut the debt rating from the crème-de-la-crème AAA rating down to AA+, due to concerns over growing debts and deficits.

Who was the vice president when this historic credit downgrade came about? None other than our current president, Joe Biden himself.

You would think that stern and unprecedented warning would have been a learning moment. At the time, the U.S. public debt stood at around 95% of GDP and was less than $15 trillion in the aggregate. If the U.S.’s fiscal standing was a concern then, Biden might realize the dire situation the U.S. is in today with public debt sitting at 125% or so of the GDP and rapidly approaching $32 trillion in total.

The Biden cabal isn’t in Washington to learn or lead or anything like that, but to raid the Treasury for everything they can.

HUGH HEWITT: Expect An LBJ 1968 Withdrawal From Biden Next Year.

“Gallup came in at 38% approval. So the ABC/Washington Post poll at 36 does not sound like an outlier. You got the money quote. It’s the one I have written down. I have a hell of a lot of wisdom and I know more than the majority of people. That’s not how one runs for the presidency. And I ask myself what does General Secretary Xi, what does Vladimir Putin, what does the Ayatollah Khomeini think about Joe Biden and I think they think he is infirm because that’s what I see and that’s what I hear. And I think the American people coming to the recognition he really can’t do this,” Hewitt said.

“I’m expecting an LBJ ’68 exit sometime next year,” Hewitt said.

“You are?” Baier asked.

“Yes,” he said. “I don’t think can he do it. I don’t think his wife is going to let him do it and his friends certainly should be counseling him not to do it.”

I think Hewitt might be underestimating the callousness of the cabal that installed Biden in the first place, and particularly Jill Biden.

‘BRUTAL’ POLL REVEALS THE TRUTH ABOUT JOE BIDEN:

The latest poll from the Washington Post and ABC News sent shockwaves through America’s media commentariat over the weekend, with numbers that are absolutely dire for President Biden. “This poll is just brutal”, announced former Democratic spokesperson turned ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos. He’s correct: with approval ratings at just 36 percent, and lagging far behind Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis in potential general election matchups, the voting numbers are terrible. But the personal ratings are somehow even worse than that — 68 percent of those polled, including 48 percent of Democrats, believe Biden is too old for another term. And just 32 percent think he has the mental acuity to serve as president — including 69 percent of Independents.

The numbers jarred Stephanopoulos and commentators across the spectrum. But they’re also a wake-up call for the media about their limitations in selling certain ideas to the American public, well after they’ve seen enough evidence to the contrary.

Flashback: The ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency.

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Joe Biden’s 5 Biggest Mistakes As President.

This excerpt was just a brief parenthetical, but is a real tell about how the Biden cabal puts politics and power over absolutely everything else: “I was so open to a Biden presidency that I even did a one-time consultation with the Biden team on space policy at the start of his presidency only to discover, much to my horror, that they were planning to go after SpaceX.”

BELIEVE AND RESPECT ALL WOMEN, UNLESS IT WOULD HURT DEMOCRATS:

On Monday, Hunter Biden will finally make it to Arkansas. The Natural State is not a Biden family favorite but there is one thing that would ordinarily be an attraction: Biden’s daughter Navy Joan. In the Biden family, the four-year-old girl remains “she who must not be named” literally. Not only has President Biden refused to refer to her as a grandchild or even include a Christmas stocking with the other children, her father Hunter is fighting to prevent her from using the Biden name. Indeed, the only reason that Hunter is coming to the same state with his daughter is to seek to limit his child support.

The viciousness of the Biden family in dealing with this little girl is only matched by that of the media. Reporters who profess to support women and denounce deadbeat dads have either ignored this story or belittled her mother, Lunden Roberts.

Roberts is widely dismissed as a “former stripper.” That appears [to be] how she met Hunter, but it is often used to paint her in the same way that the media gleefully reported Hillary Clinton denouncing women involved with her husband as mere “bimbo eruptions.”

The media ignores Roberts because it wants to ignore what the Bidens have done collectively. This is one single mother’s story that is not considered fit to print.

Yes, Roberts was an exotic dancer. She used that job to go to one of the most expensive colleges in the country, George Washington University where I teach. When she became pregnant, she decided to have her child and raise her on her own. She has raised this child without a father and fought one of the most powerful families in the world.

When Navy Joan is older, there is every reason for her to be proud of the struggle that her mother went through in seeking a college education and raising her against all odds.

Despite Joe Biden long campaigning against deadbeat dads, his son refused to acknowledge that he was the father of Navy Joan and, after a court forced him to confirm his paternity through DNA testing, he continued to fight support for his child. Hunter’s delay and evasion of filings and depositions led a court to repeatedly threaten sanctions.

However, the effort to bar this child from using the Biden name has moved this scandal from the realm of hypocrisy to monstrosity.

To be fair, the Biden family is genuinely monstrous. And so are its media enablers, who know exactly what they are doing.

Related: The ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency.

JONATHAN TURLEY: Antony Blinken and the ‘made men’ of the Biden administration.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken would really, really prefer to talk about grain in Ukraine this week. But many people are less interested in what Blinken is doing as secretary of state than in what he did to become secretary of state.

This week, Blinken was implicated in a political coverup that could well have made the difference in the 2020 election. According to the sworn testimony of former acting CIA Director Michael Morrell, Blinken – then a high-ranking Biden campaign official – was “the impetus” of the false claim that the Hunter Biden laptop story was really Russian disinformation. Morrell then organized dozens of ex-national security officials to sign the letter claiming that the Hunter laptop story had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

Morrell further admitted that the Biden campaign “helped to strategize about the public release of the statement.”

Finally, he admitted that one of his goals was not just to warn about Russian influence but “to help then-Vice President Biden in the debate and to assist him in winning the election.”

Help it did. Biden claimed in a presidential debate that the laptop story was “garbage” and part of a “Russian plan.” Biden used the letter to say “nobody believes” that the laptop is real.

In reality, the letter was part of a political plan with the direct involvement of his campaign, but Biden never revealed their involvement. Indeed, over years of controversy surrounding this debunked letter, no one in the Biden campaign or White House (including Blinken) revealed their involvement.

Of course, the letter was all the media needed. Discussion of the laptop was blocked on social media, and virtually every major media outlet dismissed the story before the election.

That was also all Biden needed to win a close election. The allegations that the Biden family had cashed in millions through influence peddling could have made the difference. It never happened, in part because of Blinken’s work.

Related: Bidens’ corrupt web unraveling before our eyes.

Also: The ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency.

VDH: The Biden 10-Step Plan for Global Chaos.

Why is French President Emmanuel Macron cozying up to China while trashing his oldest ally, the United States?

Why is there suddenly talk of discarding the dollar as the global currency?

Why are Japan and India shrugging that they cannot follow the United States’ lead in boycotting Russian oil?

Why is the president of Brazil traveling to China to pursue what he calls a “beautiful relationship”?

Why is Israel suddenly facing attacks from its enemies in all directions?

What happened to Turkey? Why is it threatening fellow NATO member Greece? Is it still a NATO ally, a mere neutral, or a de facto enemy?

Why are there suddenly nonstop Chinese threats toward Taiwan?

Flashback: The ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency.

TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! Biden Admits How Unpopular He Is, and Response of Vegas Audience Confirms It:

“It’s a hell of a lot more popular than I am!” Biden admitted. I agree. Most of his budget is probably unpopular but at least the left will like the radical parts. That already makes it more popular than old Joe who is unpopular across the board.

But if there was any sign of how unpopular he is and how people don’t like his policies, listen to the reaction here when he promises, “There’s a lot more coming.”

In a room full of a likely friendly audience, it sounds like one person claps. That’s what people think of his agenda. Not a good look for him for 2024. Indeed, you can hear far more in the silence — that’s the people who know “a lot more coming” from Joe Biden is something to be feared and concerned about.

Earlier: The ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency.

VIDEO: Biden Stumbles, Barely Makes It Up the Stairs to Air Force One as He Leaves Poland.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Related: The ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency.

81 MILLION VOTES! Joe Biden’s Lie-Filled SOTU Was Lowest Rated In Three Decades. Perhaps Americans Wanted To Watch A Non-Fiction Program Instead.

Related: Only 33% would vote to reelect Biden if presidential election was held today: poll.

More: The ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency.