Day: May 6, 2019

Real Clear: 44. Fivethirtyeight: 42.7. No, these are not great numbers given where the economy is now. But to read my twitter feed, you’d think that Americans are going to jam the streets, clamoring for impeachment (hint: nope.)

Paul Krugman argues that some of this comes from the “enforced austerity” that Obama had going away.

Yes, many are left out of this economy and yes, much of the hard earned progress on health care is in peril (yes, people might like their current insurance…but the problems occur if/when someone gets deathly ill..(e. g. cancer).

Meanwhile: Joe Biden leads the polls, while many of the others talk to the “woke Twitter” liberals..who really aren’t that big of a part of the Democratic electorate:

Judging by the conventional wisdom on Twitter, the publication of the Mueller report should have been the defining event of the Trump presidency. If Mueller found Donald Trump guilty of obstruction of justice, the president’s approval ratings would tank. Conversely, if Mueller exonerated Trump, there would be a broad backlash against Democrats; Trump would then be well on his way to reelection in 2020.

Instead, the most anticipated news event of the year has barely left a trace in public opinion. According to Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight, the government shutdown, which affected the lives of millions of Americans, had a clear and immediate impact on Trump’s popularity; the Mueller report did not. In fact, 42 percent of people approved of Trump at the beginning of March, before Mueller delivered his report to Attorney General William Barr, and 42 percent approved of Trump at the beginning of April, after Barr released a summary of the report that seemed to exonerate Trump. Now that much of the report is public, the number stands at, yes, 42 percent.

According to just about every study that has been conducted on the question, Twitter is not representative in the slightest. The Pew Research Center, for example, has found that less than a quarter of Americans log on to Twitter with any regularity. And as The Atlantic’s Alexis Madrigal points out, those regular users differ from the wider population: “In the United States, Twitter users are statistically younger, wealthier, and more politically liberal than the general population.”

Politics Twitter is a bubble in itself. Among the minority of Americans who regularly use Twitter, a majority never tweet about politics. According to a 2016 study, fewer than one in five active Twitter users—which is to say about one in 20 Americans—report posting about politics “some” or “a lot” of the time.

But hey, it feels good to get those likes and retweets, right?