Somebody the other day asked me what I thought of this stuff with Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. (To follow the standard joke template, one of them is a politically connected sex offender and the other spent a lot of time at the MIT Media Lab.) I replied that, whatever’s in these Epstein files, it can’t really much worse than things that Trump is already known to have done. So in that case, what’s the big deal? Except that it’s always been a big deal.
And then I thought about the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, which has been considered to have been a key moment in the decline of Joe Biden’s approval. The statistical evidence on that sort of cause and effect from N=1 event is never going to be so clear, but this descriptive summary seems accurate: “Republicans’ already very low approval of Biden, and independents’ divided approval, dropped during the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the polling shows, and hasn’t rebounded.” Again, though, it’s not clear why this would be such a big deal. It’s not like staying in Afghanistan would be such a winning decision; indeed under the usual conventional wisdom it’s best to do the difficult but necessary things early in your term of office.
One way to look at it is that the Epstein thing for Trump, and the Afghanistan thing for Biden, count as the sort of news that could give voters permission to disapprove. That is, in both cases the president was at an unnaturally high level of approval, and some subset of people just needed some reason to drop their allegiance. That’s how their popularity could be shifted by a major news item that actually provided no real new information about the president.
This is all speculative. Maybe Trump’s poll ratings won’t continue to slip during the next few months. But I thought the analogy was interesting, with the connection being the ways in which public opinion can change. I don’t see much of analogy between what Biden did (withdraw military forces in a way that resulted in some chaos, and not communicate this well to the news media or the general public) and what Trump did (hang out with a criminal and then issue a bunch of contradictory statements on the topic). They’re completely different things; it’s just that in both cases it could be that some subset of the population was looking for an excuse to let go.
Afghanistan was a big deal because although the press was covering up Bidens dementia, the Kremlin was well aware of it and the Afghanistan pullout debacle was proof Biden was out of it in practicle terms. So they invaded Ukraine and three years later there’s at least a million casualties.
The epstein files debacle is a big deal because it proves to Trump’s true believers that he’s not some outsider, third way populist type, but very much an old school corrupt elite insider. Perhaps that’s obvious to some, but it’s news to them because they don’t belive what the press says (see Biden dementia above).
Joe Biden’s mental state was not responsible for the complete inability of the American military to build an Afghan army that could actually stand up and fight.
I didn’t say it was, but it was responsible for Biden claiming days before the collapse that the Taliban had zero chance of success.
Biden was repeating what his generals told him, and no, the Russians didn’t invade Ukraine because of it.
The decision on how get out of there and to “believe the generals” were very much affected by his dementia. And there is clear indication that Biden’s dementia and the botched pullout was decisive for Putin.
But while we’re focusing on accuracy let’s revisit your claim:
“…complete inability of the American military to build an Afghan army that could actually stand up and fight”
The American military prepared them to fight many, many times over. They didn’t loose because couldn’t fight the Taliban successfully, they lost because they refused to fight them. At the end of the day, the Ukrainians are willing to fight for their country, the Afghanans were not. They lacked the one thing we couldn’t physically give them: the will.
“The decision on how get out of there and to “believe the generals” were very much affected by his dementia. And there is clear indication that Biden’s dementia and the botched pullout was decisive for Putin.”
Oh, that’s utter tosh. Every American president since Afghanistan started had “believed the generals,” including Bush, Obama, and Trump. Biden did what the treaty (signed by Trump) required him to do. The complete collapse of the Afghan government was not something he could control. Knowing about it would have…wait for it…required him hearing from the generals that this was the case. He didn’t.
“The American military prepared them to fight many, many times over. They didn’t loose because couldn’t fight the Taliban successfully, they lost because they refused to fight them”
I love how massively contradictory your first and last sentence is. Part of preparing someone to fight is *motivating* them to fight. Yay, the American military created an Afghan army that ran away at the first chance! That’s a great achievement for the United States.
Isn’t that unfair to Biden. Biden was just following through on the commitments of the deal that Trump had signed in Doha to withdraw NATO troops from Afghanistan. It generally was convention, way back then, that a president would follow through on agreements that previous presidents had made in the name of the country.
Even if you say Trump was ignorant about planning a withdrawal, Biden hailed himself as being better, so it is baffling why he didn’t plan anything either. Mark Milley, who continued from Trump to Biden, certainly is expected to know the situation and know better.
Biden blundered himself by making fresh declarations about the Afghan Army and that the Taliban could not win. Assuring that the situation at Kabul was secure, just before a suicide bomber killed 13 soldiers and three people fell off an airplane as it was taking off, is quite bad. It’s just partisan blinders to say Biden had no fault.
“he didn’t plan anything either”
Uh, Biden was not responsible for the on the ground planning — that was the military. You’re criticizing the person taking an Uber for not knowing that the Uber driver hadn’t filled up his gas tanks.
Total, this may be news to you but the commander in chief, like any other commander, is responsible for everything that happens, or fails to happen, under their command. If Biden wasn’t able to shoulder that burden, then he should have stepped down to a non-leadership position.
“Total, this may be news to you but the commander in chief, like any other commander, is responsible for everything that happens, or fails to happen, under their command”
Love it when people start doing the “Name, this may be news to you…” formulation. It means they’re losing the argument.
What you say sounds tough and lovely and all alpha-maleish, but I’m wondering: if an Afghan soldier decides he’s had enough and deserts, that’s Biden’s fault? If a maintenance person doesn’t put quite enough fuel in a C-17 and it can’t do an extra evacuation load, leaving people behind, that’s Biden’s fault? How about in time — if a previous President signs a treaty that essentially hands Afghanistan to the Taliban, that’s Biden’s fault? If the US military fails to follow up its 2001 invasion with effective alliance building in 2002-2003, that’s Biden’s fault?
Basically, my point here is that what you’re saying is the kind of utter tosh that people burble on with when they have no real argument. Next up, you’ll invoke Truman and “the buck stops here” and I’ll point out that Truman was quite happy to blame other people when he felt like it and then you’ll wibble incoherently about something else.
Biden was presented with a horribly untenable situation and had the courage to make a decision that multiple previous Presidents had ducked. It went badly, which is what happens when you’ve lost a war. It was still the right and a courageous decision on his part.
Hey Total: remember when Harry S. Truman had the “The Buck Stops Here” sign on his desk?
Maybe Biden should have had one which read: “the buck stops wherever some blog commentator finds it convenient”.
“Hey Total: remember when Harry S. Truman had the “The Buck Stops Here” sign on his desk?”
Excellent! You’re progressing nicely with your incoherency.
“although the press was covering up Bidens dementia”
That claim doesn’t stand close scrutiny: https://www.thebulwark.com/p/did-the-media-hide-bidens-aging
Unless I misunderstand, the idea seems to be that the survey question elicits some kind of reasoning process. Alternatively, that some reasoning process has already occurred, the result of which can be retrieved from memory when confronted with the survey question. On this account, ”some chaos”/”hanging out with a criminal”* could constitute a verbalisable justification for approving/disapproving. As such, it can also constitute an ”excuse for letting go” for individuals who lacked such a justification and thereby lead to a shift in popularity.
A reasonable alternative idea would be that, actually, approval rating questions elicit ”mere” attitudes. I.e. individuals update some running estimate of their like/dislike of some political entity as and when they receive information. (Cf. delta-rule learning). When asked the approval rating question, they report the current estimate (or a binary response derived from it) with very little contemplation. In this view, justifications (and, thus, ”excuses”) play no part.
Instead, a shift in popularity could be due to the frequency of exposure (both Afghanistan and Epstein were/are in the news a lot) and genuine disapproval (many genuinely perceived the withdrawal from Afghanistan/Epstein to be awful).
Whenever we speculate in the ”why” of polling results, I think we necessarily invoke some (at least rough) cognitive theory of their origin! I suspect that these theories often can provide helpful constraints on our speculations.
* Because I don’t trust my ability to express sarcasm online, let me clarify that I think both of these are understatements in the extreme.
Your describe public opinion as an exogenous force that these events may shift. But great efforts are expended to frame these events and influence “public opinion.” Perhaps all those efforts are wasted – or might they play a role? Afghanistan was seized by the Republicans to paint Biden as inept, out of it, and a prime example of his disastrous performance (as portrayed by Trump and others). Epstein provided the Democrats with the opportunity to activate Republicans (and even some MAGAs) against Trump. I see the public opinion in both cases as being actively managed, or at least attempted to be managed. The press does not just play a passive role to report “public opinion.” It sometimes feels like public opinion is what the press is used to make it so.
This fits with what you have said – some subset of the population (perhaps some influential party members) uses these opportunities to “let go.” What I wonder is whether this has always been the case. Is the ability to mobilize such events different than it was in the past? Certainly the role of the press seems to have changed – while it was always political, the days of the network news (a la Cronkite) seems different in today’s fractured media environment than when I was growing up (of course, I am different as well – much older at least). When nobody can be trusted, or even pretended, to deliver “truth” are such events able to influence “public opinion” differently than in the past? It feels that way to me. And I think it might parallel the way financial markets respond to news. Has that changed? Somebody must have researched this, but I’m not aware of it.
Biden and Afghanistan is n=1, but Trump and sex scandal is n=quite a few. Few of his supporters pulled back after each of the previous ones– he’s been, in this respect, another Teflon Don. In the Epstein case, we would need to inquire why this one (n=1) did have an effect, given that the others (n=quite a few -1) did not. (If, indeed, it does have an effect. It’s too soon to know if this will not blow over like the others.)
“Trump and sex scandal is n=quite a few. Few of his supporters pulled back after each of the previous ones– he’s been, in this respect, another Teflon Don.”
Right, the pattern does not fit with a universal disgust of sexual exploitation, with children or otherwise. Something else is going on here.
In MAGA world, Trump is (somehow!) the quintessential alpha male. Alphas are entitled to what they can get, even if 13-year-old girls are involved. The real outrage is when betas – which includes all Democrats – partake of the pleasures that only alphas deserve.
Despite all the current furor, it is not at all clear to me that the MAGAs actually care whether Trump diddled underage girls. They want the names of the betas because they are the ones that perpetrated the real crimes.
The evidence against Epstein is very thin. There is no proof that he ever supplied underage girls to anyone.
Biden had something of a “honeymoon”–he started with majority approval and it was holding up pretty well before the withdrawal. Trump’s approval was down to around 40% even before Epstein, so it’s a different question: whether the news will cause a loss of support among the hard core. (I doubt that it will).
Biden’s approval dropped and then remained steady for the rest of his presidency, despite high inflation. https://news.gallup.com/poll/329384/presidential-approval-ratings-joe-biden.aspx
It seems to me that the best explanation is that the effect of Afghanistan was transitory (which, if I am not mistaken, is the norm for such events) but that his approval did not rebound because of inflation. Because otherwise we would have to believe that inflation had little effect on his approval rating, which seems unlikely.
I just want to say that my political opinions are based on careful, dispassionate considerations not like the prejudice driven ingrained ideas of the rest of you.
Wins thread.
In this case, I think the relevant permission structure here has less to do with the voters and more to do with the press. Froomkin has the best take on this:
Coverage of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal shows that mainstream journalists still have the capacity to latch onto a story and not let go.
They’ve thrown everything they’ve got at this story, and delivered the goods. Every day there’s something Epstein to report about: New reactions, old reactions, new evidence, old evidence, fresh quotes, old quotes.
They’re reaching out to sources, mining the archives, asking everyone what they think.
Print journalists are not letting this story fall off the tops of their front pages no matter what. Cable news anchors are leading their newscasts with it on the hour, one after another.
It’s impressive.
But now that we know that our top journalists can sustain a major story and stoke public outrage when they choose to, the question arises: Why haven’t they done that with other stories whose long-term significance in many ways dwarfs this sordid sex scandal?
OK, yes, I get it: The Epstein scandal represents the first major split between Trump and his base, which until now has been resolutely behind him. That’s new, and therefore news.
The story also has sex.
But most of all, the reason our top journalists are so excited about this story is because, for once, the criticism of Trump is coming from “both sides.”
The leaders of our top newsrooms are pathologically afraid of being accused of partisanship. So only if people on “both sides” agree does the media consider something a real scandal.
https://presswatchers.org/2025/07/why-cant-journalists-cover-democracy-like-they-cover-epstein/
I think part of it is that it’s very black and white i.e. sex with children bad, and relatable to most people i.e. the majority of people have sex and experience the change in relationship dynamics because of it.
Other stories have more nuance or more background that needs explaining to see why a decision was good or back. And “if you’re explaining, you’re losing”
“But now that we know that our top journalists can sustain a major story and stoke public outrage when they choose to, the question arises: Why haven’t they done that with other stories whose long-term significance in many ways dwarfs this sordid sex scandal?”
*They’re* not sustaining — they’re reacting to the public interest that is sustaining it.
Stop thinking that if only [the press/the Democrats/somebody] says something *just* right, that Trump will be exposed, thrown out of public life, and we’ll all be saved. It isn’t happening, because Trump is popular with a large segment of the American population.
Palko is right on about the media. And, as I remember it, the media were a large part of the anti-Biden shift after the blotched withdrawal from Afghanistan — it seemed as if they decided that he couldn’t do anything right.
The blob (google “the blob foreign policy”) has always had a disproportionate influence on the press and they were furious when Biden went ahead with Trump’s agreement to withdraw.
My assumption is that political operatives and similar types succeed when they establish frames that give meaning to individual news items. For my whole life, a Republican frame has been that Democrats are “soft” on defense: incompetent, indecisive, too prone to compromise. The Afghan thing was spinnable enough to fit into and reinforce that frame, so it had a measurable effect on Biden’s approval ratings. There is no comparable frame consistently pushed by Democrats that the Epstein business will fit into. They may succeed despite this, but it’s a lot more difficult. They’ll need assistance from the media (the ones people pay attention to) and a fair amount of luck.
What needs to be explained is the inability of Democrats to strategically and consistently promote frames for Republicans. They did this once upon a time when they repeatedly attacked fat cats and profiteers who were exploiting the little guy; this was the New Deal line. It largely disappeared with the New Deal coalition, despite sporadic attempts to resurrect it on the left. The kind of frames I’m talking about have to been hammered at, year in and out; they take consistency, perseverance and keeping everyone on message. The Republicans have several such frames, the Dems zero.
I was brought up always to look for the material factors underlying social trends, so the big increase in economic inequality that started with Reagan (actually some of the policies started with Carter) stand out for me. I think that to be successful, frames have to speak so something real. Ordinary people are right to feel that they are being left behind, so if Democrats want a successful frame, it has to speak to that — witness the success of Berne’s Fight Autocracy tours, to which establishment Dems should pay more attention. (Full disclosure — I just bought a couple of Fight Autocracy signs from a company that makes street signs, and hope to have them up and visible from the road past our property before long.)
Peter –
Nice comment (as usual).
I think this may be further complicated in that the Democrats are pulling together more or less mutually exclusive constituencies. A useful framing for progressives (e.g., Trump is Bibi’s puppet) wouldn’t work for mainstream Dems. There are some internal tensions among Republicans also (say support for Ukraine) but my impression is that they aren’t as definitional in nature. But maybe that’s just my own bias talking.
Thanks. Just to be clear, a frame, in the sense I’m using it, is meta. It isn’t about any particular event or decision but the abiding flaws that ostensibly cause the opposition to do the same bad stuff over and over. I get your point about the hodge-podge Democratic coalition, but clever framing can elide that, just as Republicans can elide the differences between libertarians and evangelicals. It helps their cause, of course, that a large portion of their coalition is instrumental in its politics and has little difficulty holding its nose when necessary. The performativity of Democrats really gets in their way.