November 4, 2016

This Is the Bleakest Poll of the 2016 Election

Hillary’s right—our kids are watching.

Loren Elliott/ZUMA

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Throughout the election season, Hillary Clinton has used Donald Trump’s record of belittling and rating women based on their physical appearances as evidence that the Republican nominee is a bad role model and unfit to be president of the United States. “Our children are watching,” one Clinton ad from July suggested. Another in September featured young women looking in the mirror, while Trump’s own words disparaging women played in the background.

A new poll from the Upshot published on Friday appears to confirm Clinton’s stark warnings, with nearly half of the teenage girls polled saying that Trump’s disparaging remarks have had a negative effect on the way they view their bodies.

“That hits me hard when people like Trump say people who are skinnier than I am are too big,” 15-year-old Morgan Lesh told the Times. “It makes me feel extremely insecure about myself.” 

“Especially for girls in high school rating girls on a scale of 1 to 10 does not help because it really does get into your head that they think I’m ugly or I don’t look good,” 14-year-old Jordan Barrett said.

The survey’s results align with other anecdotes showing Trump’s inflammatory remarks resonating with children.

Trump, as he’s done with similar lines of criticism against him, has used Clinton’s negative portrayal of him to suggest that she’s the one who is a bad role model for his 10-year-old son. By next Tuesday, we’ll see who America believes.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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