Why Are The Lizard People Allowing These Polls?

News about two sets of polls over the weekend brings me back to the question I raised a week ago, in which I cited Rush Limbaugh's often-expressed view that the polls aren't meant to report the news, they're meant to shape it. So in that context, what are we to make of the weekend's new polls showing Trump trending ahead of Joe once again? For CNN:

Former President Donald Trump has opened his biggest lead ever captured in the CNN poll of the American electorate, enjoying a six-point advantage over incumbent Democrat President Joe Biden.

Trump, at 49 percent, is six percent ahead of Biden’s 43 percent when the two are polled head-to-head.

For Gallup,

President Joe Biden averaged 38.7% job approval during his recently completed 13th quarter in office, which began on Jan. 20 and ended April 19. None of the other nine presidents elected to their first term since Dwight Eisenhower had a lower 13th-quarter average than Biden.

. . . Jimmy Carter is the only other president with a sub-50% average in his 13th quarter. Three of the four prior presidents who had 13th-quarter approval averages below 50% lost their reelection bids, with Obama the exception.

On April 19, I quoted Sean Trende, the supposedly Republican-leaning Senior Elections Analyst for RealClearPolitics, for the conventional take on how the polls were going for Joe:

There’s little doubt at this point that President Biden’s standing in the polls has improved. In late January of this year, former President Donald Trump led Biden in national head-to-head polls by as many as 4.3 points. As of today, Trump’s lead sits at just two-tenths of a percentage point. Why might we be seeing this?

My view at the time, expressed in the post, was that several outlier polls showing Joe wildly ahead had come out in recent days, and National Authority Sean Trende (or his munchkins) simply cranked them into their average -- and voila, Trump led by just two-tenths of a percentage point. As of yesterday, Trump was back ahead by a full point, but that's still an average. Recent commentators have been handicapping polls by the 3% overestimate of Biden's 2020 popular vote results, so a 1% lead in the RCP average might be closer to a 4% lead in the real world, except of course, the popular vote doesn't elect the president, so this is all an elaborate fantasy no matter what.

But why are the polls even allowing us to see this development if Limbaugh's theorem is true? Why not just keep Republicans in the doldrums, at least until the actual election outcome proves them wrong? I can think of several reasons. One, an election analyst on Fox several weeks ago whose name I can't remember, suggested that in February and March, the lizard people senior Democrats had been pressuring Biden to drop out using poll numbers showing him trailing Trump, but it hadn't worked, Joe stayed in, so they reverted to cooking the numbers in Joe's favor in hopes of swaying the electorate anyhow.

Certainly this has had its effect on Joe's outlook. Via NBC News, as of just this past Saturday,

Over the past several weeks, President Joe Biden has privately expressed confidence that he’s going to win the November election, according to three people familiar with his comments, in a shift from the frustration with the status of his campaign that he was venting to aides just a couple months ago.

The turnabout in Biden’s mood has been propelled in part by recent polling that shows him gaining ground against former President Donald Trump, these people said.

Well of course, even Republican Sean Trende said this is happening! The piece goes on,

The president’s positive outlook on his re-election prospects is a significant reversal of his views for much of the past year since his campaign launched. For months, the president has privately expressed frustrations, which at times have boiled over into anger and outbursts at staff, over his diminished standing with voters.

. . . [Meanwsile,] Trump now has been in a criminal courtroom in Manhattan stewing in unflattering courtroom sketches and scandalous headlines over allegations he paid off a porn star during his 2016 presidential run.

Biden himself referred to this view in his remarks at the Saturday evening White House correspondents' dinner:

“Donald has had a few tough days lately. You might call it stormy weather,” Biden quipped, referencing Trump’s current hush money trial.

But Limbaugh also understood the need for pollsters to preserve an aura of credibility, especially if their predictions turn out to be wildly out of line. On October 17, 2016, in the runup to Trump's upset victory over Hillary, he said,

Here we are three weeks out and the ABC/Washington Post poll shows Hillary leading Trump by four. Even if that were outside the margin of error, stop and think of this now. This is four points. Here’s what the Washington Post says.

“The poll was conducted during one of the most tumultuous periods of Trump’s candidacy, after the release of a video in which he spoke about taking sexual advantage of women and during a time when numerous women have accused him of sexual misconduct. … Nonetheless, the controversy appeared to have had only a minimal impact on his overall support.”

. . . In other words, if Trump is at four points after withstanding this barrage, then they have to be scratching their heads. Now, I want to remind you of one more thing. We’re getting close now to the period of time where the pollsters are going to have to start showing the race as it is. Now, I’m of the opinion they’re not yet. I’m of the opinion that they’re still using their polls to make news, to shape public opinion, rather than reflect it.

But as we get closer to the election — we’re not there yet, by the way. But as we get closer to the election, all of these polling companies are gonna want to be right when it’s all over.

Limbaugh went on about the evidence of enthusiasm at Trump rallies and the mood of the electorate that contradicted the conventional poll results:

But there still is this professional reputation. So we’ll see if other polls start to tighten and get closer as we near Election Day. But the conventional wisdom is that Trump’s toast, he’s had it, he’s unhinged. He won’t stop talking about these women. He won’t stop reacting. He won’t stay on issues. Except when you go to one of his rallies he’s totally on issues. And the people are as revved as they’ve ever been, and more people are showing up at Trump rallies than ever before, and more people are being turned away because they can’t fit in than ever before.

And everybody tells you, “You can’t judge it by that, Rush. That’s not scientific data. That’s anecdotal. That’s just people talking.” Well, it’s not just people talking; we see it.

So I think if Limbaugh were still talking now, he'd be pointing out that the New York trial is backfiring, the Atlanta trial was backfiring, and at minimum, the the pollsters can't keep enabling the media to sustain a narrative that Biden is gaining ground, and they're worried about damaging their franchise. I've got to imagine that if any senior Democrats were ever serious about getting Biden to drop out earlier this year, they've lost hope, so that can't be behind the latest unfavorable polls. So here's Gallup commenting on its own poll results:

In this election year, when Biden is hoping U.S. voters reward him with a second term, he is needing some positive momentum to put him in a stronger position to be reelected. However, that didn’t occur during the past three months, with Americans no more positive about how Biden is doing his job than they were in his prior quarter, or for most of the past three years. This is the case even after Biden delivered his election-year State of the Union speech in March, a chance for him to sell his accomplishments directly to the American people.

With about six months remaining before Election Day, Biden stands in a weaker position than any prior incumbent, and thus faces a taller task than they did in getting reelected.

I've got to think this is more about sheer survival, but also, let's keep a couple of other developments in mind:. First, the New York Times isn't happy:

The New York Times issued a scorching statement on Thursday blasting President Joe Biden for avoiding media interviews as establishing a “dangerous precedent,” as liberals criticized the paper in response to a POLITICO report detailing friction between the Times and the White House.

Second, William Barr, the deep state mole, son of an upper-class prep school headmaster, who did all he could to undermine Trump as Attorney General, has done a 180:

Former Attorney General Bill Barr, who previously said that Donald Trump shouldn’t be near the Oval Office, told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Friday that he would vote for the former president over President Joe Biden in the 2024 election.

Limbaugh, if pressed, would probably say that the lizard people establishment will get their way no matter what. Of Trump in the dark days of his 2016 campaign, he said,

I think a lot of people would have crumbled by now if they had been dished the treatment Trump has gotten. I think a lot of people would have caved and said, “You know what? I’ve got a life after all of this is over and I don’t want these people destroying what I’m doing here.” They would have caved. They would have quit. They would have ceded or what have you.

Trump has not done that and I think the establishment is kind of surprised and shocked and a little not sure what’s going on here. Because the one thing they know is that their hold on power is, as this is demonstrating, they are a minority.

The lizard people may even be recalibrating. As I've been saying, Joe's a puppet, everyone understands that -- but he came with factory defects. You pull a string and expect his hand to move, instad, his knee goes out of joint. Some people may be starting to think even Trump is a better choice than Biden.