The fun thing about George Bush was that he was stupid, so very stupid, and so we could all complain all the time about how stupid all the people who voted for him were. Americans are fat, lazy morons who watch Two-and-a-Half Men. But now? Now 53% of voters chose our guy! So it would sure be dumb for the Republicans who spent eight years complaining about how liberal elitists have no respect for the gut wisdom and heartland values of Real Americans to now accuse the majority of people who voted for Barack Obama of being complete idiots, right? Not so much, if you're former talk show host John Ziegler! He has a fun new website about how Obama voters can't "correctly" answer loaded, misleading trivia questions about the candidates, which proves that they're stupid, and he has some data from pollster John Zogby to back him up! The site is called "How Obama Won," and it will surely be the "Fuck the South" of the YouTube Generation, except that "Fuck the South" was at least funny, and this is just dumb. Ziegler "randomly selected" 12 Obama voters and proved conclusively that they are all dumb idiots because they didn't know various Republican talking points but they did have vague recollection of bad things said about Republicans. Media bias! Here are the questions Zogby asked of 512 Obama voters:
57.4% could NOT correctly say which party controls congress (50/50 shot just by guessing) 81.8% could NOT correctly say Joe Biden quit a previous campaign because of plagiarism (25% chance by guessing) 82.6% could NOT correctly say that Barack Obama won his first election by getting opponents kicked off the ballot (25% chance by guessing) 88.4% could NOT correctly say that Obama said his policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry and make energy rates skyrocket (25% chance by guessing) 56.1% could NOT correctly say Obama started his political career at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground (25% chance by guessing).
As a fun example of the level of intellectual honesty we're dealing with, answering that "Sarah Palin" was the candidate who said they could see Russia from their house was considered "incorrect," because Tina Fey said that. What Sarah Palin actually said was "you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska," which is even dumber, because it's for serious. But it's because of the liberal media bias that these people knew the Russia thing, which happened last September, and didn't know about the Joe Biden plagiarism scandal, which happened 20 years ago. Anyways! Shock: voters are not terribly well-informed! You know, the American Electorate didn't suddenly become way smarter or dumber between 2004 and 2008. (The serious dumbening happened a generation or two ago BUT WE DIGRESS.) But maybe this time around, with everything having sucked for eight years and things only getting worse every day, the priorities of the silent moronity shifted. Maybe everyone decided to pick a dude who seemed smart, instead of the dude who just seemed less annoying. Or maybe the Democrats finally nominated the dude who seems less annoying! Which is, like, sorry, suckers—it worked for you for 28 years, now it's our turn. (As FiveThirtyEight says, by the way, this probably counts as a push poll. Zogby? Seriously?)