On the menu today: Credit those snot-nosed punks frothing at the mouth on America’s college campuses for one unlikely accomplishment: They’ve managed to fool President Joe Biden, his campaign team, the White House staff, and apparently a significant portion of the national media into believing that they represent a teeming mass of America’s young people, and that the biggest problem Biden faces in his reelection bid is the perception that he’s too pro-Israel. Everybody pays attention to the students building tent cities and harassing their Jewish peers on the quad; nobody remembers all the kids studying for their exams in their dorms. The numbers in the latest New York Times poll illuminate just how tiny a minority is out there screaming about “Genocide Joe,” but even the accompanying article in the Times leaves a false impression that Israel and Gaza represent a top-tier problem for the Biden campaign. This misperception is like a Terminator — it can’t be bargained with, it can’t be reasoned with, it doesn’t feel pity or remorse or fear, and apparently it absolutely will not stop, ever.
And read to the end because today’s edition features a very special, long-awaited announcement.
Biden’s Misreading of the Electorate
Perhaps the single biggest advantage that Donald Trump and the Republican Party enjoy in 2024 is that many in the Democratic Party’s leadership cannot distinguish between their personal top priorities and the top priorities of the electorate.
In poll after poll, when you ask Americans what issue is most important to them, the economy is the most common answer. Immigration and the border come in second. Behind that come abortion, “saving democracy,” and other issues. Israel and Palestine rarely come up.
Yesterday’s New York Times/Siena poll of six key swing states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin — conducted in cooperation with the Philadelphia Inquirer, offered the familiar list of priorities. When asked, “What one issue is most important in deciding your vote this November?” 21 percent answered the economy, jobs, or the stock market; a separate 7 percent said “inflation/the cost of living”; and 12 percent said immigration. Eleven percent answered abortion.
In that open-ended question, of all the 4,097 people surveyed, just 2 percent said “the Middle East/Israel/Palestinians” was their most important issue.
The New York Times also asked, “In the dispute between Israel and the Palestinians, which side do you sympathize with more: Israel or the Palestinians?”
In the state of Michigan, which the Biden team is treating as if it is a hotbed of anti-Israel sentiment, 37 percent said Israel, 22 percent said the Palestinians, 22 percent volunteered the not-listed option of “both,” and 20 percent didn’t know or refused to answer the question. Now, maybe you can argue that some percentage of those “both” and “refused to answer” folks are quietly pro-Palestinian.
Then again, how many quiet, shy, reticent, self-proclaimed “anti-Zionists” (wink, wink) do you run into?
In every state, more respondents answered that they were more supportive of Israel than of the Palestinians. Ironically, the least pro-Israel state and most pro-Palestinian one was . . . Nevada, where 36 percent said they supported Israel more, and 27 percent said they supported the Palestinians more. In Arizona, the split was 45 percent for Israel to 21 percent for the Palestinians; in Georgia, the split was 44 percent to 19 percent; in Pennsylvania, the split was 44 percent to 22 percent; and in Wisconsin, the split was 42 percent to 22 percent. You notice that the closest gap is nine percentage points, and the widest is 25 percentage points. It’s not all that close!
The anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian, functionally pro-Hamas protesters on college campuses are loud and can be intimidating, but they represent an exceptionally small minority. Just 8 percent of surveyed college students said they had participated in a protest for or against Israel. “Students ranked the conflict in the Middle East as the least important issue facing them out of nine options.”
The strongest argument for the pro-Palestinian movement in this Times survey is that among voters 18 to 29, 44 percent say they’re more supportive of the Palestinians, and just 23 percent say they’re more supportive of Israel.
But those under-30 voters represent just 16 percent of the total electorate! The largest age group, from age 45 to 64 (roughly Generation X), is twice the size, representing 31 percent of the total electorate in the Times survey. This age group splits in favor of Israel, 50 percent to 13 percent. The next largest age demographic, those age 65 and up (roughly the Baby Boomers), represents 26 percent of the total electorate. They split in favor of Israel 53 percent to 15 percent! And those from age 30 to 44 (roughly the Millennials) represent 23 percent of the electorate and narrowly favor Israel, 30 percent to 28 percent.
You do have to hand it to those protesting college kids; they’ve hoodwinked President Biden, his campaign team, the White House staff, and apparently large chunks of the media into believing that they represent a teeming mass of America’s young people. The television cameras capture the students cosplaying Intifada on the quad; they don’t capture all the kids studying for their exams in their dorms.
Biden is alienating the majority to win back votes among a small minority that has chosen to nickname him “Genocide Joe.”
And yet, the subheading of the Times article about the poll reads, “A new set of Times/Siena polls, including one with The Philadelphia Inquirer, reveal an erosion of support for the president among young and nonwhite voters upset about the economy and Gaza.”
This assessment is contradicted by figures in the 27th(!) paragraph of the article:
Around 13 percent of the voters who say they voted for Mr. Biden last time, but do not plan to do so again, said that his foreign policy or the war in Gaza was the most important issue to their vote. Just 17 percent of those voters reported sympathizing with Israel over the Palestinians.
Those are not big numbers! The loyal Democrats who choose not to vote for Biden because of Gaza exist, but they’re few and far between. They’re not the pivotal swing voters of this election. The pivotal swing voters of this election are more like this guy, spotlighted in the Times article:
The Biden administration’s insistence that the economy is faring well has fallen flat for many voters, including Jacob Sprague, 32, who works as a systems engineer in Reno, Nev. He says that he voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 but will not be doing so this time.
“It is concerning to me when I keep seeing press come out of the White House where they keep saying the economy is good,” Mr. Sprague said. “That’s really weird because I’m paying more on taxes and more on groceries and more on housing and more on fuel. So that doesn’t feel good.”
As I have noted a few times this year, Trump’s lead in the polls in Nevada has been so consistent and so large that I am skeptical that Nevada really counts as a swing state anymore. My assessment of North Carolina is similar.
Quite a few Democrats believe that the electorate might be frustrated with Biden at the moment, but between now and November, they’ll remember why they voted for Biden over Trump back in 2020, and Biden will surge ahead.
That could still happen, but the Times article subtly notes that a couple of things that were supposed to drag down Trump’s numbers haven’t done that yet:
The findings are mostly unchanged since the last series of Times/Siena polls in battleground states in November. Since then, the stock market has gained 25 percent, Mr. Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan has started, and the Biden campaign has unleashed tens of millions of dollars in advertisements across the battleground states.
The Trump trial, so far, appears to be either a nonfactor or a minimally influential factor in the presidential race. Lots of voters really don’t care about falsifying business records to hide an affair with a porn star when they feel like they must buy the generic brand at the grocery store.
Maybe a conviction will change that . . . but maybe not.
ADDENDUM: And now, the big announcement: The fourth book in the Dangerous Clique series, Dueling Six Demons, is now available for pre-order from Amazon and will be shipping out in mid June.
For those who don’t know, I write thriller novels in my spare time, in part because they give me a way to explore the world, it justifies my uncontrolled book-buying addiction, and it’s enormously cathartic to write about wisecracking government agents who set out to blow up the bad guys.
Readers of this newsletter are likely to remember that in the past year, I have traveled to Ukraine (twice), into the neighboring strange “Soviet Disneyland” of Transnistria, and to Taiwan. And perhaps unsurprisingly, Dueling Six Demons features sections set in Ukraine, Transnistria, and Taiwan. I’m really pleased with this one; you could say that this year’s nonfiction reporting informed and shaped more of this fiction book . . . or maybe as I get older, I’m just living my life a bit more like those of my characters.
Q: Do I need to read Between Two Scorpions, Hunting Four Horsemen, and Gathering Five Storms to understand Dueling Six Demons?
A: No, but you may enjoy D6D more, or pick up more of the jokes and references, if you’ve read the other ones. I try to write my novels so that you don’t have to know what happened in the earlier stories, but the events of each book shape and influence the characters. For example, their attitude toward the use of deadly force is often directly influenced by their encounters with foes in the recent past.
With that said, a lot of people really liked Between Two Scorpions, arguably my most frightening premise, a terrorist group that actually understands how Americans think, and sets out to spread paranoia and suspicion. Abyss and Apex wrote a nice review.
Saving the Devil was a Kindle-only short story featuring the characters and is just 99 cents for those who want to try the series on for size.
Q: Why do the numbers in the titles of your book go 2, 4, 5, 6?
A: Books zero and one will be prequels. Book three was written and then Covid hit; it featured a hunt for the stolen diary of the protagonists’ legendary CIA mentor, full of “secrets” that are little-known real-life “conspiracy theories” that turned out to be true — the Dalai Lama worked for the CIA; the Stasi tried to recruit Angela Merkel; the CIA did research into “remote viewing”; cult leader Jim Jones wanted to work with Moammar Qaddafi to poison the water supply of San Francisco; etc. It’s a good story, but the stakes felt small when the world was facing a global pandemic that brought daily life to a halt. Covid — and the lab-leak investigation — led to a lot of thoughts about the potential threat of an ethnic bioweapon, which led to the writing of Hunting Four Horsemen.
Q: Can I get it anyplace besides Amazon?
A: The book is published by Amazon, so ultimately no, but many bookstores, large and small, will happily order any book for you if you request it.
Q: Hey, didn’t the price go up?
A: Bidenflation, man. It hits everybody.