It’s tempting to think along the lines of that old saying, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
But are they? Really?
It’s not uncommon for a presidential approval rating here in the United States to be below 50%. As of this writing, Biden is hovering around 35% approval, with 62% disapproval – and apparently about 3% of the population is either asleep or doesn’t care. Since Biden is a Democrat, you won’t have to look too far to find Republicans claiming that “the majority are with us.” And lest you think I’m picking on one party, during Trump the situation – and the arguments – were almost exactly reversed.
We have 62% disapproval – but what does “62% disapproval” mean?
All it means is that 62% are unhappy with whatever Biden is doing. That 62% is going to be divided into people that are hard-right, people in the center, and people that are further-left than Biden. This is because agreement isn’t a necessary criteria for being “against” something. Some of those people will vote for Biden in the next election, if for no other reason than they see the alternative as worse.
It absolutely doesn’t mean that there’s a voting bloc of 62% that’s advocating a given policy, or that the 62% agrees with you on any given point. This is the logical fallacy that we see in political party talking points. If there were legitimately a 62% majority voting bloc that was upset with Biden, that would be enough to cost him a second term – and the policies would likely be adjusted to make the disapproval number lower. But there isn’t. There’s just a 62% majority that’s raised their hand and indicated that they were upset in an unspecified way.
Even if you’re doing something rather low-stakes, such as picking a paint color for a living room, the fact that even 100% of the people you’ve asked (you, your husband and your daughter) hate the “dead salmon” paint option doesn’t mean you’re united in favor of any other option.
If your goal is to make a cheap talking point, the disagreement is enough. But if your goal is to actually do something that matters, you need to go a step further and ask, “what is it that you’re actually in favor of?”
Is that a harder conversation? Yes, absolutely. It has nuance. It doesn’t distill well into a several-second sound bite. But ultimately, it’s the question that really matters. And that’s true whether you’re picking paint or politicians.