Wednesday, September 16, 2015

My bad


Well, this is a little embarassing.

Saw an interesting Tweet from the estimable Eric Boehlert this morning, and as is my wont went to add the missing link for the information it conveyed:
Cute line, huh? It almost instantly received a lot more acclaim than I'm used to and from some very classy people, as The Donald would say: Neera Tanden of the Center for American Progress and the economist J. Bradford DeLong! I'm huge!

Alas, the Times chart didn't say exactly what I, or possibly Boehlert, thought it said. It refers only to same-party primary voters; that is, it tells us what Republican primary voters think of The Donald's honesty and trustworthiness, and what Democratic primary voters think of Hillary. And if we turn to the poll itself, we find that, alas, America in general still (marginally) trusts Trump more than Clinton, 35/55 to 32/62. This is not good news for America. (Of course it's good news for John McCain, but what isn't?)

I've been inclined to doubt the significance of the honest-and-trustworthy numbers in the past, partly just because that lovable rascal Bill Clinton is so deeply mistrusted and so very popular at the same time. I'm still not clear what it all means, but I'm sorry to find myself in the position of helping to spread a narrative that isn't true.

A better contrarian Tweet that's gotten no attention at all is this one:

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