So let’s review. Bernard wants to ask a question to Americans to see if they want “additional” witnesses to the impeachment trial. So he writes the question ; “ Do you want witnesses in the impeachment trial?”
He must depend upon the reader to determine his intention is to ask about additional witnesses beyond the witnesses already part of the trial., many of which have no idea there are already witnesses in the trial.
Instead, other polls asked; “Do you want ADDITIONAL witnesses to the impeachment trial? ”. No need for convoluted distortions to get the reader to infer context that is obscure. Just a clearly worded question that requires no implication.
You need to be mentally challenged to find Bernards contorted position even remotely plausible.
He simply screwed up and is looking to save face.
The question isn't whether it would have been better to add "additional" to the question or not. A more accurate wording is obviously always better.
The question is whether a majority of people living in the US (and I have been told insistently by several of you here that living in the US is enough to have a much better understand of the stakes than mine) could misunderstand the context in which the question "Do you want witnesses in the impeachment trial?" is being asked by not understanding that this is about the upcoming/on-going second phase Senate hearings.
When a trial takes place in 2 phases and when the first phase is already over, when there is a brewing public debate about the need to have additional witnesses during the second phase (the Senate trials), it seems fair to think that a large majority of people
taking the time to answer the survey are reasonnably well informed and will correctly interpret the question as being related to the addition of witnesses during second phase of the trial (the Senate part).
Otherwise, the question would have been phrased "was it right to have witnesses during the Congress trial?". Note the past tense here.
But would it appear that we have a different perception of common sense.
And I find it fascinating that you try this hard to be right about this question. It tells me you understand that having 75% of people unhappy about the way the Senate trials were conducted doesn't mean good things for your camp.
Cheers,
Bernard
