October 27, 2024

"Voters prefer Harris’s agenda to Trump’s — they just don’t realize it. Take our quiz."

You're not in reality until you're for Harris, The Washington Post informs you before you've even taken the quiz. 

But I'll supply you with a free link anyway: here. Let them prove to you what you really want.

Is it anti-democratic to believe that voters don't really know what they want? There's some higher knowledge of what is really wanted that is beyond the reach of the voters... but not beyond the reach of The Washington Post.

Hey, this quiz is 5 days old! Why is it in the top right corner of the WaPo home page?

Is there so little new news that can work to encourage readers to vote for Kamala? Searching the entire front page, I find "See how people like you vote," "Polls are tied, voters dig in and Harris, Trump scratch for any advantage," "Michelle Obama implores men to support Harris to protect women’s health," "To understand the U.S. economic success is to love Harris’s plan," and — my favorite — "Harris talks increasingly about her faith but walks a careful line."

85 comments:

Paddy O said...

Not even The Washington Post prefers Harris's agenda. That's why they're in trouble from the democracy loving folks.

Skeptical Voter said...

There is a reason why the WaPoo has lost two thirds of its subscribers over the last 15 years. There's a spiral at work. The young "journolists" on the staffs of the NYT, the WaPoo and the Los Angeles Times want to inject their opinion and or preferred narrative in every story. Readers get disgusted and cancel subscriptions. Revenue drops and "reporters" are laid off. Diminished staff numbers means that real reporting on local or regional news disappears. The survivors sit in their cubbyholes and write fantasies to support the narrative. No need to go out and dig up actual news.
So the WaPoo continues to post a five day old poll.

Democratic Paychecks for Perks/ Dems for Demolition of Democracy/ fake-cares 4-U said...

The headline is so... cringe inducing.
Harris' agenda is to "regulate" free speech. Nothing else really matters after that.

Achilles said...

They are pining for a fascist Regime. They cannot be honest about anything they want to do.

Mason G said...

I did a google search on "protect women’s health". Every result on the first page was a link to a website talking about abortion access.

Original Mike said...

Voters really support rampant, uncontrolled immigration, they just don't know it.

I'm tempted to give them a fake email address so I can see how they can justify "Voters prefer Harris’s agenda to Trump’s — they just don’t realize it."

Democratic Paychecks for Perks/ Dems for Demolition of Democracy/ fake-cares 4-U said...

Reminder: The paid patsy who shot and killed Corey Comperatore - once appeared in an advertisement for investment firm BlackRock.
Not suspicious or creepy at all!

hawkeyedjb said...

"to protect women’s health"

Presumably this means "abortion." Trump is not opposed to abortion, and has certainly never proposed nationalizing its legality. There is nothing in his agenda that is anti-abortion. Perhaps those who support Harris want a national law making abortion available until birth, but that will not happen, any more than a law outlawing abortion. If abortion is important to you, then you need to work at the state level to protect it. I intend to do so in Arizona, where there is a proposition on the ballot to ensure the legality of abortion. But my choice for federal offices will have absolutely no effect on abortion, nor will anyone else's.

Kate said...

You can give me a poll of pie-in-the-sky proposals and I might say I like them a lot. Now ask me if those proposals can be enacted and if their side effects will make things better or worse.

Whiskeybum said...

Hey, this quiz is 5 days old! Why is it in the top right corner of the WaPo home page?

It, along with all of the other pro-Harris shill pieces on the front page, are a stand-in for this election’s lack of a Democrat endorsement from WaPo. It’s a way for the rank-and-file ‘journalists’ at WaPo to stick it to the (Bezos) man.

Jersey Fled said...

Wouldn’t let me take the quiz without opening an account. I’m guessing I’m still for Trump.

FullMoon said...

"Michelle Obama implores men to support Harris to protect women’s health," "

Don Draper re-defines abortion as Reproductive health care. Makes it more palatable, and popular.

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

The Washington Post would have us believe that Kamala Harris is the Pepsi of presidential candidates, apparently.

FullMoon said...

Beyonce gonna give a free concert for Harris supporters. Oh, wait, another lie. Beyonce spoke for a few minutes, then went home. Attendees expressed disapproval.

Whiskeybum said...

"Harris talks increasingly about her faith but walks a careful line."

Imagine how far behind Kamala thinks she is that she would have to stoop to talking about “her faith” (in what)? But make sure to walk that line very carefully lest you step off slightly and the Progs think you are going full alt-Right crazy!

tcrosse said...

How much traction does the "protect women's health" pitch get in states where abortion is legal and likely to remain so?

policraticus said...

If people voted strictly according to their agreement with the candidate's platform, maybe this poll would mean something.

Sebastian said...

"To understand the U.S. economic success is to love Harris’s plan" This should have been the Dem pitch. The economy is doing relatively well; keep it going. Dems have been hamstrung by weak candidates.

"Harris talks increasingly about her faith but walks a careful line." So the tactic is to make the vacuous phony look even more vacuously phony? If it's a play for the undecided women vote ("Kamala is so nice! she prays every day! so different from Trump!"), AA's response suggests it isn't working.

AMDG said...

I was less aligned with Harris and neutral on Trump. The neutrality on Trump due to tariffs in which I assigned him a 1 for both being wrong on the issue (belief in broad based tariffs is retarded) his rational (that tariffs can both be the key to solving the deficit and to bringing production back to the US) is not consistent.

Breezy said...

That headline is Orwellian. Not gonna bite. I’m not asleep here wrt the issues.

Narr said...

The more a pol talks about faith, the less I like them. I didn't like Harris to begin with, though, so she doesn't have much to lose with me.

Achilles said...

Tariffs are taxes. You would rather tax Americans than tax Chinese or Europeans.

You are just admitting you are stupid in public.

Good work.

Achilles said...

Quite a bit in the target demographic.

That target demographic is not very bright.

Sally327 said...

A journalist named Thomas Frank wrote a book almost 20 years ago, "What's the Matter with Kansas?", where he set out to answer the question, Why do people vote against their political and economic interests? As I recall his conclusion was basically that there is a lack of knowledge about financial matters and too great an emphasis on social issues/cultural connections, which makes people vote for a politican who isn't going to delliver what they really need or should want.

I don't know if it's anti-democratic to believe that voters don't know what they want but I think that politicians --especially on the left-- do operate from that assumption. For example, we don't know that what we really want is for the federal government to go to third world countries in the most deprived areas on the planet and scoop up millions of people and bring them back and drop them off in small towns and cities all around America.

Gusty Winds said...

voters...just don't realize it The arrogance and condescension is a repellant. The journalists are delusional. If Trump wins, hopefully we see their influence diminish further. Thank God for Elon and X.

As Trump and Rogan discussed, it's really only the boomers that get their news from MSM. Everyone else has moved on.

IamDevo said...

Honestly, I never knew women were so goshdarned sickly. I mean yeah, by all means let's get them healthy again so they can start having babies and... What? That's not what they mean when they ask men to "protect women's health"? They want us to help them kill their babies? Oh.

Gusty Winds said...

1) Did anyone see how pissed Kamala's crowd was in Houston when they realized Beyonce wasn't going to preform (lip syncing equipment is probably expensive to set up), and 2) the white coated abortion "doctors" looking around for someone to help as and audience member had a seizure? Not ONE of them moved.

Both a perfect representation of Kamala's campaign and supporters.

AlbertAnonymous said...

More of the theme (not unlike Hillary) that we’re all too stupid to realize we should be voting for Kamal. If only we realized Trump is hitler. If only the right wing news wasn’t so biased and using misinformation to trick us. If only we sheep listened to Brian Stelter and Joe and Mika….

gilbar said...

if a person WANTED "news" (information, data, details, etc..); why the HELL would you go to the WaPoo?
If i want "news" i go to X.. Like EVERYONE ELSE (including the WaPoo) does.
I have a subscription to the WSJ.. for the Opinion section and the crosswords..
I've had a subscription to the WSJ since about 2005.. i DOUBT that i will renew it next year

Aggie said...

Now isn't that interesting? Every time you hit the 'refresh' button, a different set of questions pop up? Isn't that interesting?

gilbar said...

me too.. Could a courageous soul copy and post the questions?

Lem Bive Bandit said...

If the Harris agenda is better than Trump's why can she make a political ad and not articulately answer questions about the substance of those ads?

Could it be that the ads aren't reality based, and she can't bring herself to pull off the bait part, the first part of a bait and switch? Which would be a relief, at least for me, to know that a fellow human being struggles to sell a fraudulent version of herself/themselves.

Maybe that's what's going on. Harrys struggling because she is being told she must sell what the handlers, professional political class tells her she needs to sell to get elected. Meanwhile, Harris really wishes she could make a Bernie Sanders, or Malcom X speech. Who knows really.

I give Harris the benefit of the doubt, not enough to change my vote and vote for her, but to understand a little better maybe, what the compromises are.

Understand things as they really are is the most elusive thing.

Eva Marie said...

Took the quiz. Came out pro Trump.

Shoeless Joe said...

You like apples? Voters also prefer (by a huge margin) to get their news from sources more reliable than the Washington Post. How do you like them apples?

hawkeyedjb said...

Both Harris and her running mate are strongly opposed to free speech. After that, not much else matters to me.

Dixcus said...

Kamala Harris, on her faith: "You're in the wrong rally."

Her faith is the anti-Christ.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

This is related to the "reality" pleas. "You can't disagree with us. Not really. If you disagree it means you haven't really thought about this. Here, let us explain it AGAIN how every thoughtful person JUST HAS TO agree with us. (How are you all so stupid? Didn't you hear us call Trump a fascist? What more do you need to know?)"

Dixcus said...

It's not a poll. It's an unscientific sampling of self-selected people ... people who subscribe to the Washington Post are overwhelmingly Democrat.

Dixcus said...

50% of women in America have a venereal disease. They are very, very sick.

Lazarus said...

If you actually make things for a living, you have to worry about how increased taxes and regulation will affect the ability of the firm you work for to sell its products. If you have investments or if you're a government employee or you work for a non-profit or you're in the legal, financial, or entertainment sector, you don't have to worry about losing your job because your product is priced out of the market. That's what Frank didn't understand. People in the heartland didn't want to get things from the government (at that time). They wanted it to leave them alone.

Jupiter said...

Althouse, when the WaPo tells you that it will let you give your readers a "free link", the WaPo is lying. Did you imagine that the WaPo briefly stops lying when it addresses you? Sorry, no. All lies, all the time.

Old and slow said...

I took the quiz. Yeah, no, I'm solidly pro Trump policies...

Lazarus said...

Libertarians have a lot of online political quizzes, asking whether government should be involved in this or that field or matter. They rely on the emotional response that government has no reason to get involved in those things. In fact, the federal government is involved in everything. The real questions are how it should use its power and whether we want the government to get more involved, more powerful, and more controlling.

Government does a lot of stuff. That's not going to change. The question is do you want it to do a lot more stuff. The other problem is whether we can afford to have government do more things. Aren't we massively in debt already? Harris's proposals seem to be more about secondary matters. Do you want "job training and substance-abuse care for former prisoners, and a national database tracking police misconduct"? Sure, that would be nice, but do you want to pay a lot more in taxes, pay a lot more for food and fuel, and have to worry about illegal immigrant crime and the drain on the welfare system? Yet another problem is what constitutes "Trump's proposals?" The death penalty for drug offenses? Is that in the platform? Does even Trump seriously believe that.

There's also a problem with "Harris policies" that are "falsely attributed" to Trump.

Restricting exports to China of advanced technologies with military applications

Shutting down the border to new entrants if an average of more than 5,000 migrants per day try to cross unlawfully in a week

Funding detection technology to intercept fentanyl and other drugs at the border


Does anyone seriously think that Trump is going to be softer on China, the border, or fentanyl?

Christopher B said...

I've seen several comments like yours, and some quotes/summary of what Harmeet Dillon (who knew Harris in SF) told Tucker that align with this. I've been thinking the same thing for a while. When Harris is speaking about topics she really believes in she's articulate and composed but when she has to give the focus-grouped answers she gets tongue-tied due to the dissonance, and she isn't good at riffing off those statements.

Dixcus said...

" The survivors sit in their cubbyholes and write fantasies to support the narrative. No need to go out and dig up actual news. "

Journalism today consists of "journolists" getting their "narrative of the day" at the morning meeting, then scrolling through Twitter, Tik-Tok, Reddit, GoFundMe, etc. looking for any posts that OTHERS create that supports the narrative of the day, and then stealing that content.

It's like the guys on YouTube who do "react" videos: They're stealing content that others create and doing it tangentially legally because they're "reacting" to it by putting their mug in the bottom corner.

That's "journolism" today.

AMDG said...

Achillies is quick to call people stupid but he claims that consumers don’t hear the burden of tariffs. Sorry tRump Swab that is an idiotic claim. The idea that you can increase the cost to producers and they won’t consider that in pricing decisions is delusional. But then again you believe that Trump is a man of character and integrity so your delusion and abject stupidity is out there for all to see.

Dixcus said...

So did the second guy.

Christopher B said...

I would be interested in seeing how, or if, they justified claiming what particular proposals belong to each candidate. Who gets 'no tax on tips'? What did they say Harris's position on fracking is?

(I'm not registering my email with the WaPoo just to look at them)

Dixcus said...

Question 4: "On a scale from Moussalini to Hitler, how bad is Donald Trump in your mind?"

Dixcus said...

She is the Bud Light of presidential candidates.

Dixcus said...

Her agenda is to ELIMINATE free speech, BY regulating ALL speech and deleting that speech she deems unfit for people to say.

They have no idea what would hit them if they ever got what they wanted.

Dixcus said...

Makes me wonder why Republicans who control the House of Representatives keep funding their efforts to do this.

Dixcus said...

But your position gins up exactly zero hysteria.

Mason G said...

"The other problem is whether we can afford to have government do more things."

If it's up to the Democrats, the people getting "more things" won't be the ones paying for them. You will. How much are the illegal aliens they're currently bringing into the country paying for their healthcare, do you suppose?

Dixcus said...

That's what every black man really wants ... to be harangued by Mike.

Mary Beth said...

Same. I kept thinking there has to be a catch or that they're going to try telling me the things I think are important are ones that Harris is saying she is for (this week).

Former Illinois resident said...

Let me rewrite the news article headline: "You must vote Harris regardless".

Seems Harris entire campaign has deteriorated to one single issue: "not Trump". And MSM message is "either vote Harris, or we hate you".

Half of our population agrees that "not Trump" is single most important criteria to them. I've listened to lots of folks explain their support of Harris/Walz ticket, to hear "not Trump". Without explaining exactly why Trump is so repugnant. Harris/Walz seem to have plenty of sex scandals, plenty of political corruption and cronyism, plenty of inexperience and plain stupidity, but that's all OK to these folks.

Then there are the women who insist "unrestricted access to abortion" is the hill to die on, even though it's not a Federal regulatory or US Constitution resolution to make it so.

So Wapo tells us: "vote for Harris, or be repugnant".

Mary Beth said...

They show 8 different questions, but not the same set of 8 each time. You rate the questions from strongly oppose to strongly agree with "not sure" as the center choice.

These are some, but not all:

Reducing regulation on cryptocurrency
Allowing public school teachers to carry concealed weapons
Creating a commission to audit the federal government and suggest spending cuts
Expanding business tax credits, including deductions for equipment and research
Expanding digital access in Africa through public-private partnerships
Making it easier to involuntarily institutionalize people diagnosed with severe mental illness
Requiring asylum seekers to establish a reasonable possibility that their asylum application will be approved
Banning managers of retirement accounts from making environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investments
Banning homeless encampments and arresting people who refuse to leave
Preventing some kinds of militarized equipment from being sold to local police agencies
Arresting and deporting thousands of illegal immigrants
Upholding U.S. commitments to Taiwan’s defense against China
Shutting down the border to new entrants if an average of more than 5,000 migrants per day try to cross unlawfully in a week
Increasing the federal government's preparedness for climate-related disasters
Giving police officers full protection from personal liability in civil suits
Banning travel to the U.S. from certain Muslim-majority countries
Upholding U.S. commitments to international agreements and alliances, including NATO
Funding efforts to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza and to support reconstruction
Ending teacher tenure in K-12 public schools
Repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act
Penalizing cities that don't cooperate with federal immigration enforcement
Requiring criminal and mental background checks for all gun purchases

You do need to enter an email address and PW, but if you use FireFox, it will make up an email address to mask your real one.

Big Mike said...

Does anybody know whether they check the Emails? If I entered the Email for a deceased person would it still allow me access? (At my age I have far too many Email addresses for deceased friends and distant relatives.)

narciso said...

we hate them right back,

gilbar said...

thanx Mary Beth! i appreciate it!

gilbar said...

most are on psychoactive drugs

Rabel said...

"But my choice for federal offices will have absolutely no effect on abortion, nor will anyone else's."

That ignores the possibility of Supreme Court appointments that could reinstate federal abortion law.

boatbuilder said...

Frank was a lefty. His default was that lefty policies were good for everybody. He was obviously wrong, but it formed the basis for the proposition that those morons from Kansas didn't know what was good for them.
(He used to write as the house lefty on the WSJ editorial page. His opinions are as predictable as you would expect.)

rehajm said...

She is the Jonestown Kool Aid of presidential candidates.

tcrosse said...

I suppose it's possible to favor Harris' stated agenda but not to favor Harris herself.

Dr Weevil said...

AMDG:
A bit of advice:

It's been 10 or 20 years since I noticed that I'd never seen any blog, comment, tweet, or other communication that used terms such as 'Democrap' or 'Demoncrat' or 'Repugnican' or 'Rethuglican' that was worth reading. I mean even if you ignored the stupid insults, the rest of the statements were invariably stupid, boring, demonstrably wrong, or some combination of the three. After the first few hundred such communications, I learned to skip over them without reading.

The term 'tRump Swab' makes you look like a foul-minded and foul-mouthed (or rather foul-fingered in this case) moron, and anything you write after that is unlikely to convince anyone except fellow morons, if they even bother to read that far.

loudogblog said...

In other words, you plebs are too stupid to actually know what to think, so we'll tell you what to think.

Emily Monroe Norton Kane: Really Charles, people will think...
Charles Foster Kane: What I tell them to think!

who-knew said...

As I recall, the premise of Frank's book was: Why don't Kansans have the same priorities as I do, the damn fools?

loudogblog said...

Big Mike, they're losing money hand over fist. They don't have any money to actually check things out. email addresses, facts, ect.

loudogblog said...

You can tell they're a true supporter when they'll say a few words to the crowd but won't play unless paid. No freebies. The Harris campaign needs to pay the piper.

who-knew said...

As usual, false framing of the questions. For example "Shutting down the border to new entrants if an average of more than 5,000 migrants per day try to cross unlawfully in a week" No context that this means almost 2 million illegals a year before any action is taken. It implies that disagree means unlimited numbers when disagree can easily mean the number should be zero and that stronger enforcement should be immediate. It also leaves out that the president can refuse to implement the stronger enforcement if he/she feel like it.

loudogblog said...

They're trying to scare voters in blue states to vote Harris by falsely saying that Trump wants to ban abortion nationwide.

loudogblog said...

You're right that supporting tariffs and solving the deficit sounds inconsistent but think about this: If there are no tariffs, then the Government gets zero dollars in tax or tariffs from overseas companies. If a tariff forces more overseas companies to start production to happen domestically, then the government gets taxes from those domestically produced goods and it creates domestic jobs. And something is better than nothing.

Big Mike said...

And not even all of us Boomers. A lot of us do not display Gell-Mann Amnesia. But those of us Boomers who do get news from the likes of the New York Times or CNN or CBS can be pretty stubborn that their news sources would never lie to them. And there are plenty of Gen-X and Millennials who feel the same.

Quaestor said...

Kamala Harris has no agenda, just word salad with orange dressing.

MadisonMan said...

I've also noticed that absolute lack of Harris Front Page coverage in the Journal Sentinel. There is no reason to vote for her, and "journalists" know that the more she is covered, the less people like her.

Yancey Ward said...

To which I reply:

"Stop selling me on Trump- I am a buyer!!"

MadisonMan said...

Agreed. Then I saw that ad from MAHA about Atty General Harris going after parents -- gleefully! -- who had kids being truant. Repellant.

narciso said...

ah yes Hearst is portrayed as the only press lord who dictates stories, whereas well the Schultzbergers the Grahams to cite two dynasties that have dominated events for the better part of a century,

Paul said...

Oooohhh so "they just don't realize it"!!! Yea that will make a great last week campaign slogan for Kamala!!!

Or as Taylor Swift would say,

"Cause the losers gonna lose, lose, lose, lose, lose
And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate..."

Come one Kamala... say it.. "And the fakers gonna fake, fake, fake, fake, fake."

Sean Gleeson said...

I wanted to see the article, but your ostensibly free link didn't let me. The story was still paywalled. I tried on both Firefox and Chrome. Just thought you should know.

Joe Bar said...

They were wrong. Turns out I DON'T favor Officer Harris's policies.

rosebud said...

Flavor-aid. Wound up going under due to Jonestown.

AMDG said...

Loudogblog -

Comoanies do not pay taxes (or tariffs), only people do, whether it is through higher prices or lower wages. Government does get a cut of imports because of sales taxes, income taxes from the people who’s livelihoods depend on imports, and corporate income taxes from the companies that rely on imports to make money.

Trumps view that tariffs are some magic elixir that can painlessly raise money is ridiculous. I am stunned that people actually believe this.