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Joe Biden
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Joe Biden

President Joe Biden's very good State of the Union showing wasn't just a hit among Democrats. Despite criticism that Biden's address was specifically aimed at rallying Democratic voters, the speech not only tested well with viewers beyond the base, it also significantly improved Biden's standing among those viewers.

As Daily Kos' Mark Sumner pointed out, a CNN quick poll found that 64 percent of respondents viewed the speech positively, with 62 percent saying his policies would move the country in the right direction—a 17-percentage-point bump from before the speech.

Navigator Research posted similar findings from its live-reaction dial group of 33 Phoenix-area soft partisans and independents: 76% had positive reactions, with 64 percent saying Biden's policies would move the country in the right direction.

Biden's favorability rating among the dial group jumped 37 points from before and after the speech, ending at 58 percent favorable to 42 percent unfavorable.

The change in Biden's job approval rating—a tougher sell—was far smaller but still improved six points, to 33 percent approve versus 67 percent disapprove. There's still plenty of work to do in that arena.

According Navigator testing among the 33 speech-watchers, Biden's biggest improvements from pre- to post-speech came in these five areas:

1. Stands up to corporations: net change of +83 points

2. Is a strong leader: net change of +63 points

3. Is up for the job of president: net change of +60 points

4. Represents the U.S. well abroad: net change of +46 points

5. Brings people together: net change of +40 points

Early numbers from Nielsen suggested Biden's State of the Union address attracted nearly 28 million viewers—a slight uptick from last year, despite appearing on fewer networks then. But the final Nielsen numbers were even better: 32.3 million viewers tuned in, a significant 18 percent increase over 2023.

Among those viewers, Biden did himself a world of good not just from a policy standpoint but also from the perspective of: Is this guy up for the job, and are his priorities in the right place?

The Biden campaign has a lot more work to do, but the overwhelmingly positive responses to the president's speech suggest his message is also one that he and his team can sell on the campaign trail.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

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New Poll: Most Republicans Identify As 'Christian Nationalists'

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A new survey from the Public Religion Research Institute reveals that more than half of Republicans don’t understand America and would like either Jesus Christ or Donald Trump to lead us to a God-ordained promised land flowing with milk, honey, unchecked grift, and bottomless cheese fries.

According to PRRI, 55 percent of Republicans qualify as Christian nationalists, per the survey’s criteria, as opposed to just 25 percent of independents and 16 percent of Democrats. At the same time, 83 percent of Democrats can be considered “skeptics” or “rejecters” of Christian nationalism, compared with just 43 percent of Republicans who feel the same way.

Meanwhile, those Christian nationalist views are, as you might have guessed, strongly predictive of support for Donald Trump.

According to PRRI, “Among those who hold favorable views of Trump, 55 percent qualify as Christian nationalists (21 percent Adherents and 34 percent Sympathizers). Only 15 percent of those who hold favorable views of President Joe Biden qualify as Christian nationalists (four percent Adherents and 11 percent Sympathizers).”

In other words, there’s a good reason the current House Speaker Mike Johnson thinks he’s Moses and the Alabama Supreme Court thinks eight-celled frozen embryos are human beings. Republicans are all hunkered down in a hermetically sealed room sniffing the same glue.

PRRI based its survey results on a five-point definition of Christian nationalism. Respondents were asked if they agreed or disagreed—either “mostly” or “completely”—with the following statements:

  • The U.S. government should declare America a Christian nation.
  • U.S. laws should be based on Christian values.
  • If the U.S. moves away from our Christian foundations, we will not have a country anymore.
  • Being Christian is an important part of being truly American.
  • God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society.

The fact that so many Americans agree with even one of these statements means Thomas Jefferson must be rolling over in whatever golf course shed Trump stashed him in after stealing his corpse and wrapping it in top secret nuclear documents like a day-old order of fish and chips.

The fact that a majority of the U.S. population still identifies as Christian does not make America a Christian nation, and it never has—any more than, say, the overwhelming prevalence of white hockey players makes the NHL the KKK.

Nope! We are a religiously diverse country with a Constitution that—in theory, at least—protects the rights of all citizens regardless of creed, and explicitly prohibits religious tests for public office.

But even though U.S. Christian nationalists have a completely (M)ass-backward view of religion’s proper place in a pluralistic liberal democracy, they nevertheless wield outsized influence. And consider the current makeup of the Supreme Court, and the ascent of Speaker Mike Johnson—who’s called the principle of church-state separation a “misnomer”: That influence only continues to grow.

Ja'han Jones, writing for MSNBC’s The ReidOut Blog, noted this out-of-whack power dynamic:

PRRI found “three in ten Americans qualify as Christian nationalism Adherents (10%) or Sympathizers (20%), compared with two-thirds who qualify as Skeptics (37%) or Rejecters (30%).”

So adherents and sympathizers of Christian nationalism make up about 30% of the American population — and evidently about 66% of the Supreme Court bench, if the Dobbs ruling is any indicator.

In other words, because two presidents who were originally elected by a minority of voters have appointed five of our current SCOTUS justices, the majority of Americans—who would prefer to keep the country as Jefferson and James Madison envisioned—are already living under a quasi-theocracy. And Christian nationalism’s enduring popularity only promises to make this tyranny of the minority worse.

That a movement so antithetical to clearly defined and long-held American values has overtaken one of our two major parties is truly disturbing. But as this same survey makes clear, we are still the majority. Which means there’s still plenty we can do to push back, even if the game is rigged against us, thanks to the same Constitution that’s supposed to confer inalienable religious freedoms.

It starts with this November’s elections—but hopefully doesn’t end with them. After all, our own little MAGA Moses remains determined to lead us into a promised land that very few of us ever signed up for.

Needless to say, we can’t let him.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.