Greg Sargent tried to get to the bottom of an important political question, What Does the American Public Really Think of the Iran Deal? He took on two recent polls. One, by Quinnipiac, found that by a 57%-28% margin, Americans disagree with the Iran nuclear deal. But an NBC News poll came out the same day that found that by 35%-33% margin, Americans agree with the deal. Is one poll an outlier? Not really. As Sargent pointed out, in the NBC News poll, respondents were allowed a third choice: “don’t know enough.” Another 32% chose that option.

This goes along with an article that Zack Beauchamp wrote that I discussed last week, Public Opinion and the Iranian Nuclear Deal. In that case, the difference was priming. If respondents were give a little information about what the deal was, they were much more likely to support it. Conservatives have cried foul in both cases. They claim that Americans must be polled in their natural state of ignorance and must not be allowed to admit that they do not know enough.

I think that’s hooey. Polls are supposed to tell us something. Snapshots are all fine. But when one-third of the population is fine with admitting they don’t know enough to form an opinion, it tells us that it isn’t an issue that they care much about. Are we supposed to base our policy about what Americans think regarding a subject on which they will only give an opinion if forced? Clearly, the Iran deal is not going to be an issue in the presidential race for a third of the people. And I doubt it will an important issue for the other two-thirds.

Let’s face it: any deal with “Iran” in the title is going to sound bad to Americans. After the deal came out, my father told me that he did not like it. After a heavy sigh, I asked him why. He said, “I just don’t trust those people.” I immediately thought that American media had been completely successful in their propaganda campaign. My father had fully absorbed the idea that the Iranians were some kind of nefarious “other.” So I pointed out that we had made deals with the Soviet Union when we didn’t trust them. And that what is currently said about Iran — “They aren’t rational!” — was said about the Soviet Union.

The big argument against the Iran deal is based on a flat out lie. It took almost two years of intensive negotiations to make this deal. What do opponents think? That everyone was just enjoying the expense account? The P5+1 just came in and gave Iran everything it wanted and then they spent the rest of the time sipping drinks by the pool? The deal itself is actually rather clever, with a mechanism for automatically reinstating the sanctions. All any of the involved countries has to do is accuse Iran. Personally, I find it hard to believe that Iran accepted that. It shows an amazing amount of trust in the other countries.

I think Sargent sums up what is really going on regarding public opinion:

I believe in democracy. But this is not democracy. Clearly, democracy is more than voting. But even just looking at voting, there is a lead up to the vote. People hear from both sides. And in this case, I believe the pro-deal side has a much more compelling argument. But there is also a question of why we have a republican and not a straight democracy. And that is because of issues like this. I know infinitely more about the Iran deal than most Americans. But I haven’t read it. I’m no expert. To a large extent, my support for it is based on broader issues: the fact that war mongers always claim that the enemy can’t be trusted; that we have a long history of these kinds of deals working out; and so on. But I think this deal deserves to be tried. And in a decade, no one will know what the big deal was.

I guess the big news from last night’s debate is that there isn’t any big news. Ed Kilgore provided a great overview of the whole thing in six parts: one, two, three, four, five, and six. But at the end of the second part, he wrote, “Hard to believe there’s another hour of this!” That was just what I thought at the end of the first hour of the Monday forum. And you can see the effect. The later live blogging is less dense, because it all becomes so exhausting. The main thing that comes out of it is that nothing big happened. In fact, reading it, the most consequential moment seems to be one of the few things I saw in passing.

The only real question for the debate was whether Trump was going to do something that really damaged his standing. As I see it, that could have happened in two ways. He could have been caught flat footed and said something that was stupid even by the standards of the Republican Party base. Or he could have been too staid and non-Trump like. Well, he seemed to avoid that. What’s more, The Toronto Star reported, Donald Trump Hogs Airtime at GOP Debate. They noted that, “No clear winner in debate of top 10 Republican candidates for US presidential election, but front-runner Trump kept focus on himself.” Indeed. The Washington Post provided the times. Trump got ten and a half minutes. Bush got less than nine. And the rest all got less than seven — Rand Paul only five!

If you read this blog with any frequency, you cannot be surprised to learn that I think this is all hooey. Regardless of who the Republicans nominate, he will win the general election if the economy tanks. And regardless of who they nominate, he will lose if the economy stays strong. But that’s just an overview. The candidates do matter on the margins. And Democrats have a built in advantage. All else equal, they will win presidential elections. And the worse the Republican candidates, the better it is for the Democrats. So I am interested in what the Republicans are doing to themselves. And I think that it is great for the country — but awful for themselves.

Just after the debate, Brian Beutler wrote, The Republican Party Can’t Escape Its Past. In the article, he noted that the fundamental problem is that the Republican Party has not gotten over Romney’s infamous 47% video. That was where he said that 47% of the people took no responsibility for their lives. This was based upon the fact that they didn’t make enough money to pay federal income taxes. It was an extremely vile thing to say. The problem with it is that the Republican Party believes that it’s true: 47% of the country are “takers.”

This isn’t just the politicians or even the base. The conservative media is totally behind the idea. This is ironic given that the listenership of conservative media is mostly angry people on Social Security and disability. They are the biggest single part of the 47%, but they don’t see it that way. It’s basically just a racist dog whistle: “those people” get it and they don’t deserve it. So is it any wonder that Donald “I’m very rich” Trump is so popular with the base?

But the rest of the party has a hard time countering him, given that what he says in blunt ways is all that they say more carefully. They can’t say, “Donald Trump is wrong about immigration!” They have to say, “Donald Trump is wrong to talk about immigration in that way.” It isn’t the same. In fact, it sounds bad to base voters who think that the only thing wrong with politics is that politicians won’t “tell it like it is.” So it doesn’t look like the debate changed much of anything. And that’s great for the Democrats.