On Friday’s Battleground State Report with Michael Patrick Leahy and Doug Kellett – a one-hour radio show from Star News Digital Media in the early stages of national weekend syndication roll out – Leahy welcomed special guest Ben Cunningham of the Nashville Tea Party to the show and discussed current polling results from Quinnipiac, USA Today, and The Economist showing Biden in the lead.
Further on into the show, Leahy and Cunningham discussed the accuracy and purpose of polling created to encourage a potentially false narrative. They also laughed at the fact that folks who voted for Hillary Clinton still haven’t gotten over the loss two and half years later.
Leahy: Ben Cunningham sitting in for Doug Kellett today. And Ben polls, polls, polls. And of course, you know, 15 months before the November 2016 election there wasn’t a single poll that said Donald Trump would win.
Cunningham: Hmm-hmm.
Leahy: And again polls are not really used for the purpose of giving you a snapshot of where everybody is at a certain point in time. But part of the media plan to create this momentum. And of course, this momentum is “Donald Trump can’t win.”
Cunningham: Yeah.
Leahy: We’ve seen this story before Ben.
Cunningham: It’s a silly narrative. The man’s President. He’s got tens of thousands of people showing up at his rallies. The polls are pretty meaningless this time last go around. So I think you’re right. It’s all about creating a narrative. The liberal media does that. Thank goodness for Star News Digital Media, it gives us another voice.
Leahy: Yeah. Yeah.
Cunningham: It’s just so critical because the liberals really want to drive us off the political stage. They call us all these names. And they say basically, ‘You’re not worthy of being on the political stage.’ You’re all this litany of things. All the names we here. The list seems to be getting longer every day.
Leahy: Racist! Racist! (Cunningham laughs)
Cunningham: Homophobic, sexist, misogynist.
Leahy: Xenophobic!
Cunningham: Xenophobic. They just love it. I mean there is some pleasure center in their brains that just kind of goes off.
Leahy: We’re so bad. We’re so mean.
Cunningham: It’s just silly. It’s always been their tactic. I don’t know why they think that it works now and didn’t work before. Anyway, that’s what it is. It’s part of the narrative. The news media has gotten much worse. I don’t see how anybody can watch CNN for more than 30 seconds without hating Donald Trump and his supporters.
Leahy: No, no, no, no, no. I think you watch it and you either stick to it and you hate Donald Trump or you say, ‘These guys are nuts!’
Cunningham: Right.
Leahy: And the ratings show more people say, “These guys are nuts.” We’re talking about polls. We got a couple of polls to talk about Ben. We’ll start off with sort of the national polls. Last week we had the Quinnipiac and the USA Today poll and The Economist. How they are looking at the Democratic race for the nomination there. So, the Quinnipiac came out and they show Biden at 52. Warren at 19. Bernie Sanders at 15.
Cunningham: Wow.
Leahy: Kamala Harris at 7. Buttigieg at 5. And the rest, you know lower. Yang’s ahead of Spartacus Booker. Beto, ‘I really hate being a white guy O’Rourke.’ (Laughter) Tulsi Gabbard. They’re all at 1. Julian Castro at 0. Klobuchar at 1. Bullock at 1. Williamson. Marianne Williamson, aren’t you going to miss her? She adds a little comic relief.
Cunningham: I am. I’m going to miss DeBlasio. Red Bill. All of them.
Leahy: So that was Quinnipiac. USA Today has Biden, this seems very interesting. It’s a little different. Biden’s still showing up as the leader in these polls and he’s so awful on the campaign trail. But they show Biden at 32. Warren at 14. Sanders at 12. Harris and Buttigieg tied at 6. Yang again holding strong at 3.
Cunningham: Surging into fourth place. (Laughs)
Leahy: You think we’ll see a vice president Andrew Yang?
Cunningham: Could be could be. I think there’s still an awful lot of people in the Democratic primaries entering these polls who are holding their nose. Joe Biden is probably their last choice. In a quiet contemplative moment and if you got him alone and said, ‘Hey, what do you think about Joe Biden?’ They’d probably gag.
Leahy: Do I have to? (Cunningham laughs)
Cunningham: Yeah exactly.
Leahy: The Economist had Biden at 25. Warren at 21. Not too far behind. Probably within a statistical margin of error I think. Sanders at 14 and Harris at 8. Buttigieg at 5. Yang at 2.
Cunningham: It’s so interesting that so many of the candidates have taken Bernie’s message you know? Bernie used to be the flag carrier carrying the Soviet flag into the primary. Holding it high. Waving it proudly. The other folks have basically said, ‘Hey, we want to be socialists too!’ It’s amazing Bernie has suffered as much in the polls and it’s basically because everybody’s adopting his message.
Leahy: Now, just a reminder, in the general election the popular vote is not how we pick a President. It’s the electoral college. There are 50 separate battles going on. The ones that matter are the 17 battleground states. Maybe six we’ve talked about before that are the six to watch. Which would be Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Florida, and Ohio probably.
But going back to the national polls, the polls show where Trump lost by two points and yet won the election because he won the electoral college pretty significantly. He lost the popular vote 48 to 46. But he won the electoral college 306 to 232. A pretty significant defeat for Hillary Clinton. I’m so sad.
Cunningham: As you went through that list it just takes me straight back to 2016. And of course, you can go back to YouTube and see all these predictions. (Laughs)
Leahy: The best moment of all was at one o’clock on election night and you see the guys at CNN.
Cunningham: Yes.
Leahy: (Whispers) Donald Trump is President.
Cunningham: Rachel Maddow.
Leahy: About to cry. It was just such wonderful television.
Cunningham: The Young Turks spewing expletives.
Leahy: And all of the Hillary Clinton supporters in New York just tears. Crying, crying, crying. It was just so much fun.
Cunningham: And they’ve never gotten over it. It’s amazing.
Listen to the full show:
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Tune in every Friday morning or listen online to The Battleground State Report with Michael Patrick Leahy and Doug Kellett.
Photo “Joe Biden Campaigns” by Kyle Tsui CC2.0.
