Still cool and nice this late-morning Monday here in California’s Central Valley, but it’s just a facade to the boiling-hot shit that’s waiting on the nearby sidelines — yet that’s how it always starts; oh, how nice, ‘then later there’s running and screaming‘ because the parking lot is too scorching.

Anyway, a contextual sense in a similar temperament today was in news off election data last November, which if correct, paints an even worse picture for the mid-terms next year, and even an ominous look at 2024. Democrats have in no-way anything close to a supermajority in the House or the Senate, even worse scattered out in the states, and we might be really fucked if America doesn’t do some heavy waking up.

Despite this:

CBS News poll:

58% of Americans approve of President Biden's job in office

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) July 19, 2021

Via the CBS poll, from yesterday:

Six months into his presidency, President Biden receives mostly positive marks on his approval of various issues, and six in ten like how he handles himself personally. His backers see things as steady, if not very exciting.
A 55-percent majority of Democrats describe U.S. politics over the last six months as “steady” with fewer using words like “inspiring” (39-percent) or “exciting” (21-percent).
Most Republicans describe the past six months as “worrying” (67-percent) or “frustrating” (61-percent).

Six months ago a larger percentage of Americans described their outlook for the next year as scared, and that has dropped now.
The number who are hopeful is about the same.

Mr. Biden’s overall approval rating remains at 58-percent, roughly stable in recent months but not as high as it was at the very start of his term.
Roughly equal numbers — three in ten — strongly approve as strongly disapprove of his job performance.

Nice, but way-weak numbers — screaming comes later. Since the country is way-sharply divided, and will continue to do so for at least the immediate future, going forward politically is going to be a bitch. Voting rights, guns, life-and-death COVID issues, a shitload of democracy-related items, all may be heading for the toilet.
Especially if last November was even closer than figured:

2020 presidential polls suffered worst performance in decades, report says
https://t.co/GrURrONbJK

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) July 19, 2021

This does not portend well for sanity and reality — per The Washington Post, also from yesterday:

Public opinion polls in the 2020 presidential election suffered from errors of “unusual magnitude,” the highest in 40 years for surveys estimating the national popular vote and in at least 20 years for state-level polls, according to a study conducted by the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR).

The AAPOR task force examined 2,858 polls, including 529 national presidential race polls and 1,572 state-level presidential polls.
They found that the surveys overstated the margin between President Biden and former president Donald Trump by 3.9 points in the national popular vote and 4.3 percentage points in state polls.

Polls understated the support for Trump in nearly every state and by an average of 3.3 percentage points overall.
Polls in Senate and gubernatorial races suffered from the same problem.

“There was a systematic error that was found in terms of the overstatement for Democratic support across the board,” said Josh Clinton, a Vanderbilt University political science professor who chaired the 19-member task force.
“It didn’t matter what type of poll you were doing, whether you’re interviewing by phone or Internet or whatever. And it didn’t matter what type of race, whether President Trump was on the ballot or was not on the ballot.”

The polls did a better job of estimating the average support for Biden, with a few exceptions.
In general, support for Biden in the polls was 1-percentage point higher than his actual vote.
…
The task force examined other possible causes for error, such as whether supporters of Trump and Biden told pollsters how they would vote but ultimately did not vote or whether polls included too many people who voted early (a group that favored Biden) and too few who voted on Election Day (a group that favored Trump).
In neither case was that shown to be a problem.

One possible explanation is that Republicans who responded to surveys voted differently than Republicans who choose not to respond to pollsters. The task force said this was a reasonable assumption, given declining trust in institutions generally and Trump’s repeated characterizations of most polls by mainstream news organizations as fake or faulty.

“That the polls overstated Biden’s support more in Whiter, more rural, and less densely populated states is suggestive (but not conclusive) that the polling error resulted from too few Trump supporters responding to polls,” the report states.
“A larger polling error was found in states with more Trump supporters.”

And with all those asshole voting-suppression laws Republican legislatures have either passed or about-to pass, will cause even more poll problems.
A situation like the COVID problem — get vaccinated.
Register and vote…