Russiagate: It's not working

Rasmussen may be a more conservative of the pollsters, but it isn't fake.

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Friday shows that 50% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of President Trump’s job performance. Forty-nine percent (49%) disapprove.
This is the president’s highest job approval rating since mid-June of last year. President Obama earned 45% approval on this date in the second year of his presidency.

You read that right. Trump is more popular than Obama was at this time in his presidency.
You would never know this from reading DKos.
But it gets more interesting when you dive down into the poll.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe has resulted in 13 indictments against Russians for meddling in the 2016 presidential election, and half of voters now think it’s possible this alleged interference cost Hillary Clinton the presidency. But slightly more think the U.S. government also interferes in the elections of other countries.
The indictments handed down to the Russians involved using stolen identities from American citizens to promote mostly pro-Trump political activist campaigns through social media. Interestingly, though, 79% of regular social media users say their political opinions are not significantly influenced by postings on social media, including 40% who say they are not influenced at all.

There's the problem for the ScaryRussia! supporters.
If you don't think that Twitterbots and Facebook memes could have effected your vote, and you don't know anyone who would be effected, then it's hard to get excited about Russiagate.

The Dem establishment, represented by the ScaryRussia! people, consistently treat the voters as children. We must be protected from what we see because we can't be trusted to make up our own minds.

Americans don't trust the news media, and they rightly see a bias at every outlet.
Pushing an idea that doesn't make sense on a personal level, like Russiagate, is only going to increase the mistrust.

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backlash

Attacks on Jeremy Corbyn by the rightwing press are leading to large spikes in his support base immediately after negative newspaper articles, according to data seen by the Guardian.

Figures from Momentum come days after Labour went on the offensive over reports in the Daily Mail, the Sun and other newspapers that Corbyn met a Czechoslovakian spy in the 1980s.
...
Momentum, the Corbyn-supporting group, said its numbers not only supported this assertion, but indicated that high-profile press attacks had become a “seal of approval”.

With 37,000 members and additions of more than 1,500 newcomers a month, Momentum insiders said the group’s membership was estimated to exceed that of the Conservative party in less than two years. It is already larger than Ukip and will overtake the Green party’s membership later this year.

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@gjohnsit Warning: DKos link

Taibbi's story is about Goldman and it's also a story about him, as a journalist, too. He says that the price of standing with Russia skeptics is persecution and martyrdom.

Taibbi is masquerading as a sort of Saint Sebastian of Journalism. He shares his halo with a few other Russia skeptic journalists. All of them are White males with so much privilege that they see themselves as persecuted when anyone disagrees with their opinions.

Speaking for all journalists, Taibbi says, "It's our job to be skeptical."

Agreed, but where was the skepticism during the campaign? Was it evenly applied all around without bias? No.

He says that he and his pals "have been asked continually to accept major assumptions on faith" and that it's "an article of faith to trust that Mueller has something more than what he's shown."

Welcome, Matt. You've joined Greenwald.

This diary was #2 on the wreck'd list

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Azazello's picture

@gjohnsit

All of them are White males with so much privilege ...

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We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Azazello I'm not male. And that argument is disgustingly biased against POC who dissent from the party line. Like, they don't exist.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

Only Russians would disrespectfully and in an UnAmerican fashion point out documented and already often relatively well-known facts about the mindboggling corruption, deceit and ruthlessness of The Fracking, TPP-Pushing, Mad Bomber, dare to suggest that Black Lives Matter, or want public services for public money, a government consisting of, rather than destructive corporate/billionaire predators, public servants serving the public interest, having a sane and healthy respect for human rights and the natural life support system or a Justice system interested in pursuing actual justice, in other words Ebil democracy! of all things - or, especially, even dream of claiming that your vote and money isn't owned by the owners of the Two-Faced Corporate Parties you're allowed to 'choose' between.

Ponies are for rich kids, you silly wabbets!

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Azazello I'm not saying that I think YOU believe it, by the way, Azazello.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

@gjohnsit

How many blogging Democrats can there still be? Between those that left the party and got woke to all the propaganda, there must be all of ten people left.

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

@dkmich
dkos_1.PNG
Selection_008_2.png

But it still gives me pleasure

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CB's picture

@gjohnsit
They went from less than 1500 to over 4000 in a little under 2 years. With a tad more effort, they can hit 5000 before the 2018 mid-terms come around.

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@CB
Not for a partisan political site.

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@gjohnsit Makes me happy too; check in there maybe 2 or 3 times a month when it used to be a day. Looking for the occasional good piece on climate. But there's nothing but apparatchik spiel there for the most part.

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Orwell: Where's the omelette?

CB's picture

@dkmich
Trump got elected. Her Heinousness lost. DKos was part of the reason she lost.

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Wink's picture

FPers stayed, as did most if not all of the regular and semi-regular contributors.
@dkmich
None, of course, Dare say a word against the Kos Doctrine, lest they be gone.

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the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.

@dkmich

Yes, but they must have multiple internet personae, so they don't feel so lonely blogging away out there... probably write themselves complementary posts under various alias all over their threads.

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

snoopydawg's picture

@gjohnsit

Did you notice that? I read his article a few days ago and thought that he was spot on.

Skepticism of any kind has become verboten, which is a problem for reporters because it's our job to be skeptical

Nope. One either has to believe the shit they are shoveling or you are labeled a nut job. This is black or white. No grey area is allowed.

I'm sure that Matt and Glenn are having a fine laugh over this. I know I have been.

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Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?

OLinda's picture

Thanks, gjohnsit.

Still, pretty depressing that "half of voters now think it’s possible this alleged interference cost Hillary Clinton the presidency."

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@OLinda
Anything is "possible".
Hell, I can't 100% rule it out.
It's sort of like asking if it's possible that space aliens are secretly living among us.

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Bollox Ref's picture

@gjohnsit Indeed they are.

You'll find them over at DailyKult.

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Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.

CB's picture

@Bollox Ref

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Bollox Ref's picture

@CB

Now you're banned from the KosDome.

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Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.

CB's picture

@Bollox Ref
We were beginning to believe there were no intelligent life forms in this sector.

You have no idea how close this planet you call "Earth" came to becoming a sanitary waste disposal site for the galaxy.

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Bollox Ref's picture

@CB

and given the dirt on Planet Lord Trump (All Highest!), I can see why you might mistake the place for a galaxy-wide waste disposal unit.

Crap is what we do well.

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Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@gjohnsit Thanks, gjohnsit. You made me feel a bit better.

Still, that number used to be a lot lower.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Wink's picture

Does he look human?
@gjohnsit
I suspect and expect he'll tear off his human suit and expose his reptile true self as soon as Trump is dumped.

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the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@OLinda @OLinda Just keep repeating it. People will believe it eventually.

Yes, it's disheartening.

Even people I know who believe that Trump and Russia have something shady going on don't believe that Russia cost Hillary the presidency. Because there's no credible evidence that they did. It's plain disgusting that this is working. But I guess persistence pays off.

It took a year for it to start working. People used to be very skeptical about that charge. Mainly because they know why they didn't vote for Hillary Clinton, and it had nothing to do with Russia.

One more thing that's disheartening: this number means 50% of Americans believe that expressing an opinion on the internet is election rigging.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Lookout's picture

you can attack anyone who disagrees with the narrative as a Putin puppet. Quell all dissent.

Worked pretty good in the 1940's-80's...not so good after the fall of the wall. But like many cons...it recycles well.

boris and natasha.jpg
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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Wink's picture

crowd even has a clue who those characters are?
@Lookout
Still funny after all these years.

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the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.

Lily O Lady's picture

of his high melanin content. His rather conservative politics should have made him attractive to many who condemned him and made nasty racial slurs against him.

Trump is a disgusting clod who has managed the most horrendous tax “reform” in history mainly by just being a Republican stooge. It’s hard to think of him as “better” than Obama no matter the latter’s faults. Ultimately, I suppose, they are just two heads of a coin that never flips in our favor.

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"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

Shahryar's picture

not just "take it with a grain of salt". More like "disregard it". They're just like any outlet that likes Hillary, the DNC, etc. Absolutely biased and unreliable.

CNN's new poll (probably unreliable, too) says Trump is at 35%. While CNN is known to be anti-Trump I'd think the real number is closer to theirs than Rasmussen.

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@Shahryar
You are right that Rasmussen is the outlier.
But I still believe that 79% of people think that social media doesn't effect their vote.

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Shahryar's picture

@gjohnsit

"I hate Congress...but my Congressperson is ok". That kind of thing. "Too many people were suckered into voting the wrong way because of the Russians....but not me." Them.

People who were "affected" by something they saw on social media were only agreeing. They already thought something like it.

Logic must be dead in this country.

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@Shahryar That puts Trump at 42.5 still a surprising number, shit 35 is surprising in itself.

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Russia-gate is a smokescreen, designed to fog out the real undeniable election rigging/meddling from the Obama DOJ and FBI, by not revoking Hillary's security clearance (which at the very minimum should have happened for doing State Dept business on a private server), which wrongfully allowed her to stay in the race.
This is the real election meddling/rigging. Russia-gate is a smokescreen designed to fog out the real election meddling/rigging of the Obama DOJ and FBI.

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Mike Taylor

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Mike Taylor And then there's the intrusion into the servers used on Election Night--which has been traced back, not to Russia, but to the DHS.

Maybe Hillary should add DHS to her list of scapegoats for why she lost.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

is nothing meaningful gets covered. Looking forward to months of things like Putin's Aluminum Tube purchases (but with no mention of buying yellow cake and uranium).

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Orwell: Where's the omelette?

Strife Delivery's picture

Rasmussen were generally high in their 2016 polling for Trump, so no surprise that they would be high again.

There are many, many things to hate about Russiagate, but one I hate is this condescending infantilizing of people.

"Clinton is a warmonger."
"You were just a useful idiot, a dupe for Russia. You're not smart like I am."

What? No...

Every negative about Clinton becomes propaganda from scary Russia. Just pathetic.

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While people may believe in some Russian conspiracy to alter the election, will they vote based on that belief. Well, dems and the media are really pushing that actual tallies were flipped, but state election officials are pushing back against that.

Russiagate is too much of an abstraction for most people to vote solely on the issue. As pundits have noted, Russiagate has simply not affected people's lives in ways they can identify. Even now enough people are saying the investigation is hurting the US. Food, jobs, healthcare, retirement, etc nothing to do with Russians.

And even if some deep state actors say attack a Russian jet somewhere, the gop will win any mud slinging over defense and patriotism.

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Fionnsboy's picture

...Dems are tone-deaf, uncaring, increasingly irrelevant. The 'NPR Crowd' of Dems, all with health care, good jobs, kids in legacy schools and living in the pretty cities, still can't believe Her Heinous lost, and have grasped onto this ludicrous Russian narrative rather than admit that HER was almost universally loathed from coast-to-coast, mistrusted, a warmonger, a liar, a regime-changer, a grifter de luxe, one half of the cancer that came upon the American Body Politic in general and the Dem Party in particular from out of Arkansas that I call Clinton Inc. These 'progressive' Dems (ha!) have gladly abandoned any rationality and rushed into a new McCarthyism, a startlingly dangerous sabre-rattling aggression, that betrays the very word Liberal. One almost doesn't know what to make of it. I am thinking of Hafiz, "There is danger in taking the cub from the she lion, and danger in snatching an illusion from a person." Other Dems, working folks (a shrinking group) are choosing between food and medicine, burying their children from opiate overdoses, and watching the only industry in town (the building of prisons) with hopes of future employment, however grim. A New Deal of Medicare for All, tuition mitigation, millions of new jobs to rebuild our imploding infrastructure and to Go Green (in other words, Bernie's platform) would sweep repugs from office come November so fast, one's head would spin. Not only are they NOT proposing that, they're actually opposing true progressives in upcoming Dem primaries!!!!! It is they who have given us Trump and Ryan and McConnell in all their hideous wretchedness; they, and they alone. That truth must never be subverted.

And speaking of hideousness-- I have to laugh at the media's legitimization of Trump's idea that teachers should be armed; all I can picture is Plato at the feet of an Uzi-bearing Socrates. Contrast that with the outright dismissal of Bernie's platform during the Dem primary-- one statement was the result, parroted by talking heads and Clinton mouthpieces from coast-to-coast: "Pie in the sky, who's going to pay for it?" and END OF CONVERSATION!!!! No talk shows asking listeners to call in and weigh in; no polls; no debates. But since that absurd idea was floated, all I've heard is call in shows, "Listeners, what do YOU think? Should we arm teachers?" The idea should be laughed out of the public plaza. Instead, it's being legitimized.

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Semper ubi sub ubi