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Hemmingway Destroys Dem Narrative on Vaccines: 61% of Vaccine Hesitant People are NOT Republicans
Steve Straub By Steve Straub
Published July 19, 2021 at 6:04amDemocrats and their media allies like to claim that the vast majority of vaccine hesitant people are Republicans who get bad information from Fox News or Facebook.
The truth is the exact opposite as Mollie Hemmingway explains to Maura Liasson:
Rather than editorialize further, here’s the transcript of this exchange, it stands by itself:
LIASSON: “Well, you know, what we’ve heard from public health officials who has studied the way to communicate about the vaccine is that people need to hear from medical experts and get their questions answered.
In other words, the vaccine problem is not going to be solved by people calling Fauci a hack or people calling right-wing talk show hosts some kind of — I don’t know what they were calling them, but attacking them for raising questions about the vaccine.
You have to go to people where they are. What I also think is interesting about this whole controversy, it’s a big debate happening without Donald Trump. Donald Trump is proud of what he did to get the vaccines online fast.
A lot of his supporters don’t want to take them. He’s had the vaccine. He’s talked in favor of it. So I think this is kind of interesting. This is a big polarized debate and a it’s missing an element that has been present in almost every polarized debate in the last five years.”
HEMINGWAY: “If I can just point — just really quickly, this is one of the examples that you see, people make it out like it’s the Republicans that don’t want to take the vaccine. In fact, 61% of the people who are hesitant about the vaccines are not Republican. And the more the media make it out that it’s something that’s partisan, that will also going to contribute to the problems.
The more that they fail to remind people that it was President Biden and Vice President Harris, when they were running for office, who said that they didn’t have trust in the vaccine, that also makes people not trust what the media are saying.
So I think we need to be very careful and not have forgetfulness about what was happening during the campaign when the vaccine messaging was very different.”
Mollie Hemmingway really nailed that.
I agree with Mollie Hemmingway that the Biden / Harris team made a major contribution to vaccine hesitancy during the campaign by putting it down if it resulted from a Trump effort.
The administration also continues to contribute via their constant flip-flops, lack of consistency on the benefits of being vaccinated and lately, constant talk of being okay with local mandates.
After all, what ever happened to “my body, my choice?”
The Biden administration would be wise to look inward in trying to figure out why so many are hesitant to take the vaccine instead of blaming Fox News, Facebook and others.
Sadly, we all know by now that the likelihood of that happening is almost zero.
https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/hemmingway-destroys-dem-narrative-vaccines-61-vaccine-hesitant-people-not-republicans
further reading:
https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/americas-vaccine-hesitant-demographics/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-vaccine-hesitancy-presidential-encouragement/
https://www.aei.org/op-eds/if-biden-wants-to-convince-the-vaccine-hesitant-give-trump-credit-for-the-vaccines/
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/democrats-have-become-the-party-of-anti-vaxxers
https://www.wfae.org/politics/2021-04-17/are-covid-19-vaccination-rates-as-simple-as-republicans-vs-democrats
The AP story notes that polls have shown Republicans to be more vaccine-hesitant than Democrats. It doesn’t mention that some African Americans are wary about being vaccinated, although recent polls show vaccine hesitancy is declining among Black Americans.
The five worst-performing states per the AP analysis are also some of the states with the highest percentage of Black residents. Mississippi is the worst-performing state in terms of vaccine performance; it also has the highest percentage of African American residents. Louisiana has the second-highest percentage of Black residents, and it’s in the bottom five in terms of vaccine performance.
And New Hampshire? It’s one of the whitest states in the Union, where less than 1% of residents are Black.
That is not to say that African Americans are the main reason some states are lagging in vaccines. But it could be a factor.
Louisiana residents could be grouped two ways: Black Democrats and white conservatives. There is no significant constituency of white Democrats – the group that’s most enthusiastic about getting jabbed.
If you buy into simplistic CNN and Democrat explanations for vax hesitancy, you are a fool.
(Score: 2) by Socrastotle on Friday July 23 2021, @07:50PM
I didn't notice this post before, and I think it's interesting. Especially "Why wouldn't everyone have these concerns if they were so real?" And I think it can be simply answered with more questions. Why did people think cigarettes were safe? Why did people think mixing up lead into fuel and then breathing in those exhaust fumes was safe? Why did people think DDT was safe? The answer is always the same. Most people do not really think for themselves, instead simply accepting what people in power tell them. This trust has been consistently abused in the past, especially when substantial amounts of money are at stake. And the centralization of the internet has opened up the potential for abuse like never before.
The "Wuhan lab" narrative is the most obvious example of this. One day it's an outrageous conspiracy theory that no rational person should believe, and in fact people were vigorously attacked and censored for even suggesting it. The media ran countless stories claiming that not only was the entire idea completely debunked, but that it was literally impossible. And so only an idiot would ever believe such a thing. The next day? With no silver bullet or anything of the sort ever found, the entire narrative took a 180. Suddenly it was open for discussion everywhere, Jon Stewart was calling the leak blindingly obvious on the corporate media, and the media in general is slowly pushing towards it becoming now the only theory that any rational person should believe. All because some politicians found adopting that narrative to be more beneficial to their geopolitical interests.
This is part of the reason that I think our democracy is likely to go the exact same way as Athenian democracy. The masses are far easier to exploit than to educate, and this is becoming more true than ever before in the age of the internet. How can democracy persist under these conditions?