I’m all kinds of disgusted these days. But this new Yahoo poll disgusts me all over again.
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This Yahoo News/Yougov poll measures who Americans believe, Trump versus Bolton, and whether or not they want to hear Bolton testify in the Senate trial. The top-line numbers:
Trump has denied the allegation, tweeting that he “NEVER told John Bolton that the aid to Ukraine was tied to investigations into Democrats.” Yet when the Yahoo News/YouGov poll asked registered voters who they believed, 45 percent said Bolton and only 39 percent said Trump.
The poll found that a clear majority of registered voters (55 percent) now want to hear Bolton’s testimony, up two percentage points from the previous Yahoo News/YouGov poll, which was conducted before the Bolton news broke. Only 29 percent of registered voters say they don’t want to hear from Bolton.
But it’s an especially interesting poll because it offers an apples-to-apples comparison. They had actually polled the same people before the revelations about Bolton’s book. So they could document how beliefs have changed. Largely, the poll moves in the right direction, as sane people would expect it to: more people now want to hear from Bolton. Though some people have moved in the other direction. Some people now do not want to hear from Bolton. And this is what has me disgusted afresh:
Yet the poll also found that the Bolton revelations have polarized views on impeachment witnesses. Last week, 43 percent of Republicans said the Senate should not call new witnesses; 35 percent said new witnesses should be called. In the wake of the Bolton news, 56 percent of Republicans now say the Senate should not call witnesses while only 20 percent say new witness should be called. That’s a nearly 30-point net shift among Republicans against new witnesses in a single week.
So, basically, now that it’s become clear that Bolton will provide a first-hand account of Trump’s guilt, a massive number of Republicans who wanted to hear him testify before have suddenly swung over and do not want not want him to testify.
The conclusion seems obvious, unavoidable: it’s not just Trump who is corrupt, and not just the Republicans serving in the House and Senate. It is also a massive number of Americans who identify with the Republican party. Trump and the Republican Senators and Congresspeople are simply accurately reflecting their electorate.
I don’t believe we, Democrats, are like this. I don’t believe we put party over country, and partisanship before our morals, integrity, and dignity. If these statistics are an accurate representation of a large part of the American electorate, how can we go on as a country without some kind of awful reckoning? Is Democracy compatible with this kind of willing subversion of truth?
Ugh. I think it’s time for me to go to bed.