I was a bit struck by this from an article on Crooks & Liars about a poll that found that Trump has not had much luck painting Biden (of all people) as a dirty fucking hippie:
There is at least one cause for hope for Trump in the poll: Forty-one percent of voters agreed with the statement that Biden is “more liberal than me,” and 20 percent didn’t know or had no opinion on the matter, meaning that they may be persuadable.
Okay, first let me say that I am going to skip any rant about this question presuming that “liberal” is a pejorative term, understood by all in that sense, even though literally everything we have in this country that’s any good was a product of liberalism, such as, by way of a microscopically small partial list:
- Public schools
- The end to child labor
- Workplace protections and legalized unions
- The New Deal
- Social Security
- Medicare
- The 13th through 15th Amendments
- The 19th Amendment
Okay, now that I’ve skipped that rant, let me get to the math lesson. Trump has a solid base consisting of the 41% of the most stupid people in this country. They all watch Fox News and all consider liberals to be evil. They will never vote for Biden under any circumstances. Since they consider themselves to be the chosen people and conservative, by definition, to them, all Democrats are more liberal than them. All this question proves is that the nutcases are the only people with a (presumably) negative opinion of Biden’s liberalism. Biden more than likely has a bigger problem with people who don’t consider him liberal enough. You know, the Bernie dead-enders. We all know one or two of them.
This question might have some upside value for Trump if it could be shown that somehow a significant number of the same people who told the pollster they were voting for Trump also felt Biden was not more liberal than they. What are the odds that any Fox viewing nutcase thinks he or she is more liberal than Biden, or even as liberal as Biden?
As to the 20% with no opinion or didn’t know, the overwhelming likelihood is that these are people who don’t think in ideological terms. As the article points out “ roughly the same percentage of voters said they didn’t know or had no opinion on whether Trump was more liberal or conservative than them”. We don’t know for sure, but I’d lay odds that almost everyone who “didn’t know” about Biden also “didn’t know” about Trump. Some people just don’t think in those terms. It’s unlikely that Trumpian name calling is going to make much difference to them.