Despite George W. Bush railing against the “soft bigotry of low expectations” nearly 20 years ago, look at the recent poll on the GOP webpage. The standard grades of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor are now reduced to Great, Good, and Okay, with a dubious fill-in-the-blank “Other” being the only option that even hints at Trump’s being a lousy fascist.
I guess when it comes to being a president named Donald Trump, everyone gets a trophy!
Do you see how this ensures that Trump will come away being able to say the GOP considers him “great” when that’s likely not the case?
Most people tend to vote in extremes. Just look at the Yelp reviews for your favorite vape shop, for example, and you’ll notice that the store’s aggregate 3 star rating actually consists of a lot of fives and ones: people who had a good interaction with the shop will give it five stars, and people whose vape broke and couldn’t get a free replacement, even though the instructions clearly said “not for smoking crack” on the packaging, will give the shop one star.
That means that for the GOP’s new poll, a good chunk of people will want to vote for him as “Great” but a large portion (likely over 50%, even within the GOP) would probably want to say he is worse than merely “okay.” But unless they all get together and agree to choose the exact same fill-in-the-blank “OTHER,” there will be no possibility of their voices being heard.
People also tend to stack rank options from highest to lowest, so that the same people who select “Good” on this list because it’s the second from top might have selected “Okay” if the list was Good, Okay, Not So Great, and Other.
Then, of course, there’s the part where to even fill out this survey, you have to agree to let the GOP continue to send you more information in support of Trump. I have to admit that even I could not stomach the thought of that… and so my “OTHER: Terrible!” vote will go unregistered.
So why should we even care about this poll, when we’re just going to vote the bastard out in 2020?
Really, I think we should care because it might just help us keep the peace between ourselves and any Republicans we know. Just take it with a grain of salt if an article comes out in USA Today in the near future saying “Republicans Say Trump Is Totally ‘Okay!'”