#like you can put a third-party candidate on your ballot but it's the same as voting for nothing

[princesssarcastia]

okay listen. airing a u.s. political pet peeve here.

setting aside the issue of to-vote-for-biden-or-to-not-vote-for-biden in 2024 and the arguments for and against,

please don't lie to people and tell them voting for a third party presidential candidate is a good idea. please....please don't do that. it won't work. it won't help you. if you want to vote for a third party candidate as a "fuck you" to the republicans or the democrats or both, okay. go for it. but don't tell people that will help, don't expect it will help, it will do exactly nothing.

vote third party in your village, town, school district, city, county, state elections! vote for third-party candidates in your u.s. house races! in those kinds of races a third-party or nonpartisan candidate can have a decent chance of winning, depending. but it 100% won't work for president, and outside some very specific circumstances, probably also won't work in the u.s. senate.

the "third-party" presidential candidates running with most actual established political parties (green party, libertarian party) are not your friends any more than trump or biden are.

[decolonize-the-everything]

Hey, just wanna put in the Kamala Harris tag that leftists like me couldn't be convinced to vote for Biden when you had his whole campaign to try and so there's really no way youre gonna convince us to vote for Kamala in 4 months.

No. I don't have a sense of solidarity to fight Trump with democrats.

Nope. I dont. I will not vote for someone who supports genocide. Period. There is no amount of guilt or yelling or shaming that you can do to change my mind. If you justify genocide, an act of ethnic cleansing why would I care to analyze how that's different from advocating for it? Why should I care about your opinion at all?

Your "TRUMP WILL BE WORSE. NOW IS NOT THE TIME TO TRY THIRD PARTY VOTING-" posts are unnecessary. Chill with the caps lock.

"Trump will be worse"

All the more reason why democrats should've spent more time putting protections in place instead of just promising to. Especially when those promises were only going to be fulfilled if their Biden won and he just Dropped Out. Why should I care to analyze how much worse a trump genocide will be compared to a Biden genocide when the deal breaker is genocide. How did you accept genocide so easily?

Why even ask when all that matters is that, like the alt-right, you'd allow a genocide to happen if it benefitted you.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

"So you want trump to win??"

I want fascists to lose. Why spend time analyzing which one?

You really want to try stopping fascism with electoralism? The ACTUAL fucking hard truth is that it'll never happen with the status quo candidates running on the status quo parties that consistently cater to fascist comfort.

That should be common sense, I fear.

And so no. I will absolutely fucking not meet you "in the middle" when you've somehow convinced yourself supporting genocide is a centrist belief and the rational decision to make.

I wont fight fascists with fascists because that sounds like a bad awful terrible and not thought out plan at all but I would vote in solidarity with anti-fascists to make sure neither a Fascist Cop nor a Fascist Reality Tv Star gets elected.

Third party or fucking bust, Democrats. I'm not fucking changing my stance and as far as I'm concerned a Harris admin is the same as a Trump admin so threats about him are gonna fall on deaf ears and so are fear mongering claims about project 2025 (which I've read btw).

I think y'all should call your reps and the DNC and tell them you want Kamala to step aside so that a more left candidate can run on their ticket. It would eliminate ballot access concerns which are really the only issue I ever see come up when it comes to 3rd parties.

Your move. How bad do you actually wanna avoid Trump?

Will you stand with your party or against trump? cuz those aren't the same thing.

[the-badger-mole]

Reaching for Hope

These last few months have been filled with the most horrifying stories and images coming out of Palestine, DRC, Sudan, Yemen, and too many other places around the world. We, in the US, have seen our president- our political leaders- roll over and not only allow the atrocities to continue, but to actually financially support and arm the perpetrators, despite the majority of us screaming for them to stop. To me, there is little difference between the Democrats and the Republicans at this point. Both parties are bought and paid for by the same people. As a new presidential election is coming up, I can't in good conscious vote Democrat. Not after what I've seen. Not as long as they refuse to hear us when we tell them we don't want Genocide Joe Biden or any of his cabinet to run.

But what is the solution?

I hate the feeling of helplessness I feel. I hate watching the horrors being carried out with my tax dollars. I hate that our "leaders" are more concerned with keeping the money from groups like AIPAC than actually representing the people who voted for them. They have put my finger on the trigger and they won't let me let go.

I'm trying to figure out how to make my voice heard. I've reached out to my representatives. I've done what I can to amplify voices that need to be heard more than mine. I can't claim any special effort in following BDS boycotts because the truth is, these aren't brands I have a whole lot of intentional contact with in the first place. As for Starbucks and McDonald's, I don't like either place so, cutting them off took very little for my part. I do encourage you to avoid all of these businesses, though. I don't know what else to do.

I will not vote for Joe Biden if he runs again. I will do my best to find down ballot candidates who's values are more in line with mine, but I will not give my support to a man who sees the atrocities being committed in Palestine and gives billions and weapons to the people committing these crimes against humanity. If the DNC is smart, they will be actively looking for candidates who don't openly support genocide, but let's face it, we ALL know how smart the DNC is. So, barring some drastic change, barring the DNC running a candidate who isn't on the take from AIPAC, who will actually pull support from Israel as they try to wipe out an entire culture for the sake of oil, I will be voting third party. I'm considering voting for Claudia De la Cruz of the PSL party, but there's nearly a year left, so I'm open to shopping around.

I know there are those that will say that pulling votes away from Biden is essentially voting for Trump. I know that there are those that will say that if the Republicans take the office again, they'll gut our rights. To that, I say, a vote for Trump is a vote for Trump and a vote for Biden is a vote for Biden. If the DNC can't come up with a better candidate and a better reason to vote for them than the same fear mongering tactics they've been using for years, then Trump is the DNC's fault. What has the Democratic party done to ensure our rights? What protections for voting rights have they passed at a federal level? What protections for education? For bodily autonomy? How do we have FOURTEEN BILLION to spare for freakin ISRAEL, but nothing for public schools? Nothing for student loan relief? Nothing for public health? Police reform? What good is the Democratic party if their only real platform is "Vote Democrat because we're not that guy"? If your conscious tells you to vote for Biden in November, so be it. As for me, I can't look at the man without seeing the blood of innocent men, women and children dripping off of him.

[monkeywiki]

No I'm sorry, but same for me too. The fact is that we're stuck as a two-party system until we get a voting overhaul, because "majority wins" means that the person the most people can agree upon will take ALL of the votes regardless of anyone else's votes.

As much as I despise the current candidates, the fact is that Trump has a guaranteed 30% of the vote. If any of the non-Trump candidates dip below 30%, he wins. You've seen what he's like; do you really think we'll have the opportunity to have another fair election after this?

We all have better candidates than Biden in mind, but he's the figurehead of the anti-Trump movement by virtue of "20-25% of people always vote for the incumbent, and every other non-Republican is voting for Biden to stop Trump". If you think you can honestly get 40% of people to agree on a single third-party candidate and beat out both Trump AND Biden then I'm all ears, but let's be honest, it's just not happening this close to the election.

However, this is NOT the way it always has to be. We - the people who hate this situation as much or more than you do - are working on getting Ranked Choice voting on our state ballots so we can get out of this shit system and actually succeed in getting a third-party candidate in office. You should join us in doing that so we can actually make it happen!

We all hate the situation we've been put into, but we have to use our control tactfully. Splitting up the anti-trump voting bloc is how he wins, period. It's how he won in 2016 and it's how he'll win again if we don't band together and stop him.

im just really scared that biden's not an appealing candidate strategically and that he'd be better off stepping down and letting at least kamala of all people take his place. i swear that'd up their chance of winning by at least 30%, but his stubbornness and refusing to step down, + top democrats begging for him to do it, whatever the 'super friends' were visiting him to tell him to step down, + calling his own vice president 'donald trump' and the ukrainian president 'putin'... it's just... not looking good.

now i'm really excited to tell you that claudiakarina2024 is getting petitions done with thousands upon thousands of people per state almost every other day, i'm hearing about new states that are now entering vote-able state, which to me stands out significantly because its happening so fast.

what stands out to me, is that she's out there on the ground, she's speaking at protests, she's talking to everyone, she is not afraid to talk to anyone and listen to every day people-- while biden is claiming he's done more than any other president, she's not bragging, she's working.

now, what stands out to me, as someone who grew up a democrat and has become a skeptic, is that i'm seeing real immense growth in this campaign in real time-- faster than i've been able to keep up with. they talk about project 2024. they talk about palestine. they talk about the working class. they talk about a LOT

the truth is they've already reached 20 states this early in their campaign, and they're still working tirelessly-- without corporate funding, to spread the word-- and the reason it works, is because we're all tired. and there's a LOT of us.

just listen to her speaking voice! do not give into the defeatism the two party system sells you! listen to these people who are working their ass off for something we believe in and building a ground roots movement with un-matchable momentum for the working class, take a look around you and your fellow people who believe in the same as you and hear what's being said right now!

what we're not seeing is her on mainstream television, BECAUSE of what she stands for, what she advocates for is an enemy of the corporate state, and it's up to us to learn, listen and boost her messaging so we can reach everyone. it truly is possible, you have to take the first step and listen, and speak up!

[captainjonnitkessler]

haven't people been putting forth cornel west and jill stein from the green party as a third option. making it clear, i'm not talking about how likely it is, because they aren't either of the usual parties known to reign over the us. but the fact that they're considered on the ballot at all means that is also another plan of action, however small the statistics. not on a scale of likelihood or what people consider as 'best', but based on sheer statistical probability, it is there.

on subjective opinion, one can still think 'well, that's unlikely, so there's no point', but because it's an opinion other people will always argue the point. i'm bringing them up simply because i've been seeing a lot of people bringing them up lately as the candidates to bat for, more so than i expected, so i want to see what you think on it.

it's reached my main timeline via multiple people i follow. i follow fandom accounts for the most part, and many usually won't talk politics, so it's interesting to see this unfold. grim given the context, but interesting times is a curse for a reason.

that said, if you read this far, i do want to say you bring a very good point about no one option being perfect. i've even heard criticisms about the third party i mentioned above, however much i hear they're better with policy than others. and when none of the available options are working, those who choose to fight against it anyway so often turn to revolt and revolution, for good or ill. so no matter what, there's going to be an awful consequence of some sort, and choices to a better world too often require stepping on living corpses. it's a hard road.

wishing you well.

I consider the election a binary choice not in that your options are "vote Biden or vote Trump" - because as you say, there are third party options available - but in that your option is "vote Biden (in an attempt to steer the country onto a less destructive path) or do not vote Biden (and let the country do whatever it's gonna do without your input)". "Don't vote Biden" can be accomplished by voting third party or by not voting at all, but the result is the same either way because third party candidates are simply not viable in our current system.

I'm a little jaded about third parties in general because I remember when Gary Johnson ran third party in 2012. Obama being re-elected was a pretty safe bet and Johnson was pushing HARD not for the win, but just to get 5% of the vote, so he would be eligible for federal funding in the next election. It was a pretty big movement, at least in the circles I was in at the time, to try to break down the two-party system and get a toehold for a third party to break onto the scene.

All that energy got him 1% of the vote in 2012, and when he ran again in 2016 against possibly two of the least-liked candidates in recent history he still only managed 3% (while Jill Stein of the Green party got 1%). And maybe they just weren't very good candidates, but there have only ever been about 8 third-party candidates in US history to get more than 10% of the vote, and almost none of those broke 20%. So I'm inclined to think breaking down the two party system is going to have to happen legislatively, rather than being accomplished by voting.

[shyadri]

GUIDE TO REGISTER TO VOTE

As elections are fast approaching, I think it is very important for people to get out and go vote. We are in a dangerous time in history, and we can’t let Trump win this year. I made a guide to help people figure out to register to vote, the different ways they can vote and what to do during the actual date of voting.

Check registration deadlines and voting dates and put it in your calendar.

This is for ALL THE DATES.

Registration deadlines? Put it in your calendar.

Have mail voting? Put it in your calendar.

Early in person voting? Put it in your calendar.

Election dates for primaries and presidential? Put it in your calendar.

Make sure you have these dates saved in your phone or calendar and put MULTIPLE ALARMS.

I recommend:

1 alarm 1 month before date

1 alarm 3 weeks before date

1 alarm 1 week before date

1 alarm 3 days before date

2. Check if you are registered to vote with UP TO DATE INFORMATION and register.

Go to the website https://vote.gov/, pick your home state and check RIGHT NOW if your name is registered.

You need to make sure that your information has your current legal name, address, and other information you might have changed.

If not, register RIGHT NOW by following the states’ instructions. Usually, you need a proof of ID (passport #, same-state driver's license#), your Social Security Number and sometimes 2 or 3 evidence of residence in the state (one most recent electric bill and one most recent water bill are 2 pieces of evidence for example).

NOT ALL STATES HAVE ONLINE REGISTRATION: The website will send you a link to the state website to figure out if you can register by mail or by person and where to go.

Important to consider:

Political Party Preference. This section is important. Here you say whether you are a Democrat, Republican or Third Party. It is so important because for primaries, most states are closed primary elections, where you can pick a primary candidate in your own party.

EX: You are a democrat in a closed primary election state, so while you could have voted whether you wanted Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden to run for president as the Democratic Party Representative in 2020, you can’t affect the Republican Primary to decide whether to pick Donald Trump or another candidate to run for president as the Republican Party Representative in 2020.

Video on Primary Elections: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_95I_1rZiIs

Which State is closed or open primary?: https://ballotpedia.org/Closed_primary

3. Special forms of voting

3.1 Check if you are registered to vote BY MAIL

Now, this is very important, because not all states have vote by mail and/or don’t put you into vote my mail automatically. If your state allows vote by mail, SIGN UP WITH YOUR ADDRESS THAT YOU KNOW YOU WILL STAY ON OCTOBER TO NOVEMBER. That way, you can vote by mail, send the mail back and not lose a work, which most people can’t afford to lose. The vote website will tell you what to do.

NOTE: Many states will require you to have an excuse to vote by mail. Disability, 65+ of age, can’t miss work are all valid reasons, but check with the state website just in case.

Which states have vote by mail?: https://www.businessinsider.com/a-map-of-how-voting-by-mail-works-state-2022-11?op=1

3.2 Check if you are registered to vote EARLY IN PERSON

Some states will give their citizens like a week or more to vote in person before the official voting date. This is useful because

These days tend to be so much calmer and as such faster

Some states could let you vote on the weekend during this period, making it more likely for you to not need to miss work.

So please check if you can do this as well.

Which states can you vote early: https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/early-in-person-voting

4. KEEP CHECKING YOUR VOTING REGISTRATION ONCE A WEEK

This sounds insane, I know. But there have been cases where the system “suddenly messes up” and removes voters from the registration.

Millions of Black Voters Are Being Purged From Voter Rolls, Often Illegally: Report https://www.theroot.com/millions-of-black-voters-are-being-purged-from-voter-ro-1827808612

Study Finds States Purging Millions of Voters in Secret, Often Erroneously

Block the Vote: How Politicians are Trying to Block Voters from the Ballot Box

A tumblr thread alking about it: https://wilwheaton.tumblr.com/post/189832334754/yeahiwasintheshit-fuckyeahtx

I want you to check the damn registration website, I want you turn it into a weekly activity. I want you to go so often that it becomes as ingrained as Youtube or Twitter or Tumblr or whatever. NEVER LET THEM CATCH YOU OFFGUARD.

5. THE DATE OF VOTING

5.1 VOTING TIME OFF

Go to this website: https://www.workplacefairness.org/voting-rights-time-off-work/

Or the state official website to check your right of missing work in election date.

States are a bitch and can be very different in multiple aspects, such as:

How many hours off you have to vote?

Is it paid time off?

Do you need advance notice required?

Do you need proof of voting when returning to work?

For example, Alabama gives you 1 hour of unpaid free time to go vote (unless you start working at least 2 hours after the polls open), you don’t need to show proof of voting,

Meanwhile, Arizona gives up to 3 hours of paid time off (unless employee has three consecutive hours available while polls are open at beginning or end of shift), must give a day in advance of notice.

Now, if for whatever reason you have no paid-time off or the time is not enough. Because lets be honest, there is going to be a line, you might have to sacrifice your pay to stay and vote. Especially if you don’t have access to the mail or early in person voting. It sucks, I know, but it is important to recognize that voting is important. This is why I made this guide, so you can plan ahead and figure out your rights and what will be the potential issues you might face.

5. 2 BE CAREFUL WITH WHAT YOU WEAR TO THE VOTING POLLS

Did you know that some states have rules where if you were anything that alludes to a certain candidate then you are kicked out of the fucking polls?

Any shirt, pants, accessory with a slogan, face, or maybe even color is not safe.

To be safe, I say just wear all black. Avoid red and blue colors, avoid slogans, avoid anything that makes you stand out because some states will do anything in their power to kick you out of the building.

5.3 IF THE VOTING POLLS CLOSE WHEN YOU ARE STILL IN LINE, DON’T LEAVE

You got in line, so it is your right to stay there until you vote. Stuck till 9 pm? Don’t care, stay there, they can’t kick you out. Don’t let anyone tell you that you missed your shot when you are right next to the goal.

Voting is a right, it is a necessary right in a democratic country. Sadly, voting is also a privilege in the US, where people have to be constantly vigil to make sure they can share their voice. It is important to understanding this and fight to make your voice heard.

Do not let officials silence you.

Do not let your job silence you.

Plan ahead and share your voice.

And if anyone tells you that voting is stupid, it won't amount to anything or that you are supporting a monster, block them.

Let them be stupid and waste their right away, because you know better. You know that if voting was stupid then politicians wouldn't be fighting to remove voters' rights and voices.

Let yourself be heard.

[willfrominternet]

a political post: despite the hysteria of the last few days and also the last several years, there is no benefit to voting for anyone other than the democratic party. i hate to tell you this. voting democratic down the ballot is our shot for mitigating fascist bullshit.

your fave third party candidate will not win. yes, it's your choice to vote for who you want. but whether you vote green, libertarian, socialist, or independent, that party does not have a shot in hell of winning the election. they have no representation in congress, no marketing, no nothing. the only person running indie in 2024 is robert f. kennedy, and he's as bad as trump.

speaking of trump: if you're still voting for the guy i don't know what to tell you man. you've been eating the brain worms by the spoonful. yes, he got shot. yes, political violence is bad. yes, i know there's a lot to unpack regarding the previous sentence. whatever. trump winning the election - even if democrats take the house and the senate - gives republican think thanks like the heritage foundation the a-ok to carry out their dark work such as project 2025. it allows trump to fill whatever supreme court seats open up (most likely thomas's and breyer's) with conservative-leaning justices, as well as possibly expand the courts to add even more. all of this means the right-wing advocates can once again threaten the rights of all folks who don't fall into their blueprint of the "ideal american": white, middle-class or higher, heterosexual and cisgender, two kids, two gas-guzzling cars, and one job which dad works because mom's taking care of the home.

ok will maybe that's going a little far. lol. lmao even. did you hear harrison butker's commencement speech?

look things haven't been super under biden and the man is making ronald reagan look like a spring chicken, but if you think things are going to get better if trump gets back in the white house you are sorely mistaken. any quarter we give to the republican party at this point threatens millions and millions of americans. it threatens the country's infrastructure. it threatens our financial and mental health. voting for republicans or any other candidate takes a vote away from the party which might get good things done, or at least not tank our entire country due to greed/cruelty/lack of experience.

and yes i know what you're going to say. the democratic party is not supportive of palestine. they support israel and they will let bibi run tanks over gaza and the west bank and put up condos for israeli and american settlers. friend, i want a free palestine as much as you do. the democratic party has people who want this as well. if the democratic party wins the election, there is at least a shred of hope for it. if the republicans win, there is none.

even if biden crosses the rainbow bridge - whether it's before the democratic convention or after election day - harris will take over and it'll be like a 1:1 swap politically. this is a reminder, by the way, that we could have had nikki haley and kamala harris duking it out instead of the same two octogenarians from last time. this could have been an interesting and historic race and instead we're worrying about a) will the current president or the former one or both die of old age, and b) will the republican candidate win and tank our country even harder than he did last time?

voting democratic down ballot is the only way for us and potentially the world to not get royally screwed over the next four to at least forty years. i mean, a lot of other things will also try to screw us no matter what, but we can try to stop those things as well. we can multitask.

by the way this post was not sponsored by the democratic party. this post was sponsored by the willfrominternet.tumblr.com foundation for some god damn air conditioning.

EDIT: i forgot to address people who straight up won't vote in this election. trust me: you're not making the protest point you think you're making, and your apathetic ass will regret it later even if your candidate wins. also a million demons and dukes of hell will haunt you every night

[phroyd]

WASHINGTON — President Trump has selected Judge Amy Coney Barrett, the favorite candidate of conservatives, to succeed Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and will try to force Senate confirmation before Election Day in a move that would significantly alter the ideological makeup of the Supreme Court for years.

Mr. Trump plans to announce on Saturday that she is his choice, according to six people close to the process who asked not to be identified disclosing the decision in advance.

As they often do, aides cautioned that Mr. Trump sometimes upends his own plans. But he is not known to have interviewed any other candidates and came away from two days of meetings with Judge Barrett this week impressed with a jurist he was told would be a female Antonin Scalia, referring to the justice she once clerked for.

“I haven’t said it was her, but she is outstanding,” Mr. Trump told reporters who asked about Judge Barrett’s imminent nomination at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington after returning Friday evening from a trip to Florida and Georgia.

The president’s political advisers hope the selection will energize his conservative political base in the thick of an election campaign in which he has for months been trailing former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., his Democratic challenger. But it could also rouse liberal voters afraid that her confirmation could spell the end of Roe v. Wade, the decision legalizing abortion, as well as other rulings popular with the political left and center.

The nomination will kick off an extraordinary scramble by Senate Republicans to confirm her for the court in the 38 days before the election on Nov. 3, a scenario unlike any in American history. While other justices have been approved in presidential election years, none has been voted on after July. Four years ago, Senate Republicans refused to even consider President Barack Obama’s nomination to replace Justice Scalia with Judge Merrick B. Garland, announced 237 days before Election Day, on the grounds that it should be left to whoever was chosen as the next president.

In picking Judge Barrett, a conservative and a hero to the anti-abortion movement, Mr. Trump could hardly have found a more polar opposite to Justice Ginsburg, a pioneering champion of women’s rights and leader of the liberal wing of the court. The appointment would shift the center of gravity on the bench considerably to the right, giving conservatives six of the nine seats and potentially insulating them even against defections by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who on a handful of occasions has sided with liberal justices.

Mr. Trump made clear this week that he wanted to rush his nominee through the Senate by Election Day to ensure that he would have a decisive fifth justice on his side in case any disputes from the vote reached the high court, as he expected to happen. The president has repeatedly made baseless claims that the Democrats are trying to steal the election and appears poised to challenge any result of the balloting that does not declare him the winner.

Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, has enough votes to push through Judge Barrett’s nomination if he can make the tight time frame work. Republicans are looking at holding hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee the week of Oct. 16 and a floor vote by late October.

Democrats have expressed outrage at the rush and accused Republicans of rank hypocrisy given their treatment of Judge Garland, but they have few options for slowing the nomination, much less stopping it. Instead, they have focused on making Republicans pay at the ballot box and debated ways to counteract Mr. Trump’s influence on the court if they win the election.

Mr. Trump met with Judge Barrett at the White House on Monday and Tuesday and was said to like her personally. While he said he had a list of five finalists, he never interviewed anyone else for the job and passed over Judge Barbara Lagoa of the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, who appealed to campaign advisers in particular because of her Cuban-American heritage and roots in Florida, a critical battleground state in the presidential contest.

Despite Mr. Trump’s penchant for drama and the intrigue that surrounded his first two picks for seats on the Supreme Court, the selection process since Justice Ginsburg died last Friday has been fairly low-key and surprisingly predictable. The president has long signaled that he expected to put Judge Barrett on the court and has been quoted telling confidants in 2018 that he was “saving her for Ginsburg.”

If confirmed, Judge Barrett would become the 115th justice in the nation’s history and the fifth woman ever to serve on the Supreme Court. At 48, she would be the youngest member of the current court as well its sixth Catholic. And she would become Mr. Trump’s third appointee on the court, more than any other president has installed in a first term since Richard M. Nixon had four, joining Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh.

Judge Barrett graduated from Notre Dame Law School and later joined the faculty. She clerked for Justice Scalia and shares his constitutional views. She is described as a textualist who interprets the law based on its plain words rather than seeking to understand the legislative purpose and an originalist who applies the Constitution as it was understood by those who drafted and ratified it.

She has been a judge for only three years, appointed by Mr. Trump to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in 2017. Her confirmation hearing produced fireworks when Democratic senators questioned her public statements and Catholicism. That made her an instant celebrity among religious conservatives, who saw her as a victim of bias on the basis of her faith.

Judge Barrett and her husband, Jesse Barrett, a former federal prosecutor, are reported to be members of a small and relatively obscure Christian group called the People of Praise. The group grew out of the Catholic charismatic renewal movement that began in the late 1960s and adopted Pentecostal practices like speaking in tongues, belief in prophecy and divine healing. The couple have seven children, all under 20, including two adopted from Haiti and a young son with Down syndrome.

In a 2006 speech to Notre Dame graduates, she spoke of the law as a higher calling. “If you can keep in mind that your fundamental purpose in life is not to be a lawyer, but to know, love and serve God, you truly will be a different kind of lawyer,” she said.

But during her 2017 confirmation hearing, she affirmed that she would keep her personal views separate from her duties as a judge. “If you’re asking whether I take my faith seriously and I’m a faithful Catholic, I am,” she told senators. “Although I would stress that my personal church affiliation or my religious belief would not bear in the discharge of my duties as a judge.” She was confirmed on a 55-to-43 vote, largely along party lines.

As a law professor, Judge Barrett was a member of Faculty for Life, an anti-abortion group, and wrote skeptically about precedent in Supreme Court rulings, which both sides in the abortion debate took to mean she would be open to revisiting Roe v. Wade.

“I tend to agree with those who say that a justice’s duty is to the Constitution and that it is thus more legitimate for her to enforce her best understanding of the Constitution rather than a precedent she thinks clearly in conflict with it,” she wrote in a Texas Law Review article in 2013.

She later criticized Chief Justice Roberts for his opinion preserving Mr. Obama’s Affordable Care Act, saying he went beyond the plausible meaning of the law. As an appellate judge, she joined an opinion arguing on behalf of an Indiana law banning abortions sought solely because of the sex or disability of a fetus, disagreeing with fellow judges who struck it down as unconstitutional.

Conservative and liberal interest groups did not wait for Mr. Trump’s announcement to open the battle over Judge Barrett’s confirmation. Each side prepared multimillion-dollar campaigns to introduce her to the public and frame the debate to come in the Senate, with an eye on the November contest.

Several polls over the past week have shown that most Americans, including many Republicans, believe the next justice should be selected by the winner of the November election, not by Mr. Trump in the meantime.

A survey released Friday by The Washington Post and ABC News suggested the fight may drive Democrats even more than Republicans to the polls. About 64 percent of Mr. Biden’s supporters told pollsters that the vacancy made it “more important” that the Democrat win the election, while just 37 percent of Mr. Trump’s supporters said the same for him.

Phroyd

[boy-and-girl-crazy123456]

saw you mentioned being bored and wanting to discourse. curious for your opinion v mine on american politics. voting is a completely rigged system. it is intended to create an illusion of choice. people who cant register should not be ashamed or hated. it’s not their fault it’s systematically bullshit. but if you can register, you should, and vote for war criminal biden, because he’s *at least* not trump, just

(second ask from same person) “okay i sneezed and sent the first ask too early and then sneezed again writing another and i can’t tell if i sent the second ask or cancelled it. i’m sorry. i have allergies lmao. anyway i have no faith that voting isnt pointless and the results dont matter, but why avoid it if its an option for you. what do you got to lose. that being said if you only vote and nothing else you’re literally doing nothing” I’m actually really glad I got this ask because I’d been considering putting down my thoughts on voting in a post or something for a bit now and this seems like a good opportunity to do so. This is basically all off the cuff and it’s very rambly and long so I apologize if this sucks to read lol

So yeah I think I more agree with you than don’t, I think voting in the US is...if not “rigged” at least systemically ineffectual, it’s controlled by the interests of capital and is set up in a fundamentally undemocratic way; on top of that the US is itself an illegitimate settler-colony and empire and you’re essentially choosing the executor of settler-colonialism and empire (i made a post a while back pushing back against the concept of a “left wing president” for this reason). So I definitely am sympathetic to people who don’t vote or simply choose not to, either for well defined ideological reasons against US empire or just a more general sense of it not mattering or having more important day to day activities living under a harsh dictatorship of capital. I also think you’re right in saying that for many people it’s not going to end up being much of a hassle; for my own part, I was able to apply entirely online and my state currently allows absentee ballots with no justification, so voting for me mostly consists of filling out a piece of paper I’ll get in the mail and be able to send back for free. So if you’re in that situation, then yeah, might as well.

As for voting for Biden, I’m not AS against it as some of the people on here are but I wouldn’t go so far as you do and say people who can get registered should vote for him. I think that voting for him solely out of desire to get Trump out is genuinely a perfectly fine reason to do so. But we shouldn’t delude ourselves about what the presidency is or what the US itself is; again, ultimately you’re just voting for the executor of the interests of capital and empire, and those interests shape the presidency more than the other way around. I think this is most evident in the bellicose attitude displayed by both candidates towards China; during the trade war I think a lot of people attributed this to some kind of pet issue of Trump’s, which isn’t entirely wrong, but it’s clear that great power competition with China has become the general focus of the American bourgeoisie and thus Biden has adopted this position as well.

There’s also third parties, which seem to be popular among the left on here, but honestly I’m pretty pessimistic about them. Many take the position of voting for the Green Party in the hopes it’ll reach the 5% threshold, but I really really doubt this’ll be met and I don’t like the GPUS enough in general to vote for them non-pragmatically. To put it bluntly I think most of the GPUS supporters on here are people who supported Bernie in the primaries and got in the mindset of compromising being a communist/socialist with voting for a social democrat. Where this gets problematic is that with Bernie he actually could’ve won AND he had a large movement to try and radicalize people out of, so the decision to compromise was a lot more understandable (I personally supported him in the primaries for this reason- the larger his share of votes before having the primary stolen from him, which was inevitable, the easier it is to divorce people from the Democratic Party); with an uninspiring candidate like Howie Hawkins and a party with essentially no path to victory, I don’t know why we’re even bothering instead of just going all out and voting for a communist. Speaking of, I also know some people (not really on here but definitely on other platforms) who are voting for the PSL ticket which I think is fine, but PSL does a lot of work besides electioneering (unlike the GPUS, who essentially show up every presidential election and neglect to do any other kind of work), so voting for them or not won’t really affect their overall status as a revolutionary party; they’re not really going for the 5% threshold because running candidates isn’t really what they focus on anyway.

But yeah at the end of the day electoralism at the present time is, I think, not an effective strategy for the left to take because the only viable option most of the time is trying to carve out a space within the Democratic Party, which is just. Not a good idea and hasn’t worked, really. So I agree with your point about just voting and nothing else being useless because I think we need to build a popular movement that doesn’t compromise on issues like settler-colonialism and empire first, and once it’s large enough and has a base we can talk about MAYBE running candidates (although I also think the structure of American government is fundamentally flawed in this respect and it might take some sort of great change first before we can do that; this could be a minor revolution changing the structures, a major one where we take power outright, or a strategy of dual power where we create a separate structure first [my suggestion])

I hope this makes any sense at all and isn’t just unreadable garbage lol I tried to respond to as many points as possible but feel free to send me more asks if any of this needs elaboration or if you have other questions etc. Also take a zyrtec or something

[arlingtonpark]

2020 Election Night Survival Guide

Hey, everyone!

It’s Halloween night, but the scariest night of the year is going to be in a few days on Election Day.

Since everyone’s wetting themselves over this, here’s a quick survival guide for Election Night.

Part I. The State of Play

In the United States, political authority is shared between three institutions: the President, the Senate, and the House of Representatives. Elections for all three will be occurring on Election Night 2020.

The President is elected by the Electoral College. Each state is given seats in the College based on the size of their Congressional delegation.

Candidates for President put forth a slate of candidates to represent their state in the College, which voters choose by popular vote.

This system was chosen because a national popular vote was not possible at the time. 

As of now, Joe Biden is almost certainly going to win the election. He is polling ahead in every state Barack Obama won in 2012 except Ohio and Iowa, and is liable to win Arizona and maybe even Georgia. This will give him a comfortable victory. 

The Senate is composed of two Senators for every state. One third of the body elected every two years for a total term of 6 years for any one Senator. 

The current crop of Senators was last elected in 2014, a very good year for Republicans. 

It was not expected, though, that Democrats could undo those gains since they were made by Republicans wiping out Democrats in Louisiana and Arkansas, and other similar states.

Democrats used to have a strong presence in those states, but that presence was wiped out in the Obama years.

Republicans didn’t make those gains in swing states, but instead in state’s whose voters switched allegiances. It was hard to see Dems making a comeback.

A lot has changed though.

States like Arizona, Texas, Georgia, South Carolina, and even Kansas are competitive now. This was unthinkable in 2014.

Dems have made gains of their own in these states among suburban voters. These people are generally white collar workers who are better educated than average. And they are repulsed by Trump’s basic indecency.

The Dems are now widely expected to win a majority of the Senate -- possibly even a comfortable majority.

The House is composed of 435 Representatives who’re elected every two years. 

The dynamics are the same as the Senate: Dems are gaining in the suburbs, and Republicans are gaining among blue collar workers. 

The Dems took over the House in 2018 and they’re expected to increase that majority by 10 seats or so. 

Part II How to Handle Election Night

Assuming you want to watch the election returns come in live, here’s how to best do it.

Firstly, do not watch the TV news coverage before the actual vote counting starts. 

It’s all drivel and you’ll annihilate your brain watching it.

It’ll mostly be padding to fill up time and make it seem like a lot is happening when not much is.

As well as pundits trying to divine the meaning of this election before it’s actually happened.

And lots of bemoaning of how we can’t all just get along. With no one even trying to think of solutions. 

Don’t waste your time.

You should use the time before the polls close to get up to speed on what the candidates stand for, and how various scenarios might affect you.

To the extent you can stomach such speculation.

Vox is a great news source with a great series of articles on Biden’s platform.

Here.

President Trump...he has no platform.

Literally.

It’s just a copy-paste of the 2016 one. 

Of course, a lot depends on the congressional elections, and I’m not going to get into the nitty-gritty of that here.

There are elections for various governorships up, but you can ignore them, unless it’s your governor up for election. 

The governor of any state that isn’t yours only matter if they’re likely to run for President in a few years. 

There are also some high profile local elections going on.

To varying extents, Dems are hoping to expand their power in Arizona, Michigan, Texas, and North Carolina.

Republicans are hoping to do the same in Wisconsin.

Arizona, South Dakota, New Jersey, and Montana are holding referenda to legalize marijuana.

Oregon will be voting on legalizing mushrooms and decriminalizing all other drugs. 

California has a number of referenda on the ballot regarding rent control, criminal justice, and labor laws.

Florida will be voting to raise the minimum wage to $15, potentially the ninth state to do so.

In any event, feel free to make a party of it.

Order a pizza, have snacks out, beer. Whatever you want. I’d urge you to invite friends over, but, you know...

You can turn the TV news on at 6pm if you like, but I recommend you leave it on in the background and not pay close attention until 8pm. 

I also recommend choosing which network to watch based solely on which one has the most gimmicky, over the top presentation. 

TV news has zero value to you aside from providing real time, unprocessed information. 

Leave the game play analysis to the internet.

Have a laptop open if you have one. Otherwise have a computer handy.

I recommend having three tabs open.

One for the New York Times’ live election night interactive. You know those touch screen displays the networks have their election nerds using to show the state of the race as votes are counted?

The NYT’s interactive is that, but all to yourself.

I also recommend reading the accompanying article explaining how the interactive works. It’s pretty cool what programmers can do these days. 

Lots of news sites will have online interactives, though. Choose whatever you like, but the NYT’s is generally the best. 

The second tab is for Twitter. Twitter is the best place to be for real time analysis. I’ll have a twitter list available for you to use if you like.

The people on this list fall into one of three categories.

The first are the election nerds. These people are adeptly familiar with the United States’ political geography and can tell which side is winning before all the votes are counted.

The second are the pundits. 

Smart ones, mind you.

Political scientists and commentators. I made sure to get a mix of liberal, conservative, and moderate voices. Obviously they provide the commentary on the nerds’ analysis. 

The third and final are a couple of joke accounts for laughs. PixelatedBoat, originator of the milkshake duck meme and the Gorilla Channel hoax, is in there, as is President Nixon’s Twitter impersonator. 

The final tab is for a good quality liveblog. I recommend 538′s, but again, most news sites will have liveblogs going, it’s just that 538 usually has the best one. 

Lastly, as races get called, don’t be afraid to cheer or boo. Election day is pretty sterile, which is a shame because it used to be very rowdy and frenetic. By all means, be emotional.

You’re free to call it a night whenever you want, but there’s no point in carrying on past 1am, so I’d recommend stopping there.

There aren’t any exciting races on the west coast, and California is notoriously bad at vote counting, as they are at ALL things involving government, so the outcome of those races won’t be known for a while. 

Part III The Known Unknowns

Now comes the stuff everyone is panicking over.

Is this the end of democracy?

Eh, probably not.

In theory, Trump could successfully steal the election, but only if it’s a close race.

It’s not a close race.

There is no way for Trump to steal the election. Not through excluding mail ballots, not through the courts. There just isn’t one. 

The Supreme Court won’t help Trump unless they think they can get away with it, but the recent confirmation of Barrett to the Court has put them on notice, and that will restrict what they can do. 

Trump could contest the results by asking Congress to certify his slate of electors as legitimate over the electors the voters chose, but that’s not an issue if Dems control the House. 

That’s really it.

There’s no other way for Trump to win even if he loses the Electoral College.

Even recent buzz about late arriving mail votes not counting probably won’t amount to much.

Most of the people mailing their ballots in late are actually Republicans lol ^^.

Here are some issues to actually look out for:

Trump thugs policing polling places. Voter intimidation is illegal. If someone is intimidating you, report them. 

Hoax ballot stuffing. Don’t be surprised if people fake fraudulent voting to juice Trump’s claims of a rigged election. Treat such allegations with caution.

Violent unrest is unlikely to happen even a little bit, but I won’t be surprised if there are at least some isolated incidents.

While there is some risk, I actually think the danger is overhyped.

The likeliest outcome of this election has always, always been that Biden cakewalks to Inauguration Day. 

Even the talk about not knowing the winner on election night might have been all hype.

Florida, despite its reputation, is actually very good at counting ballots, and the winner of the state should be known on election night. 

A lot can be extrapolated from this, and some news sites might call the race just off of that. 

If who won Florida isn’t known on election night, then you can start panicking. 

Trump will definitely fume about if he loses, but if the outcome is clearly in Biden’s favor, it’ll just be hot air.

It shouldn’t surprise you to know that if Trump loses, he will make no effort to shepherd a economic bailout bill into law in the time between the election and his formal exit from office.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

Also Trump. 

Trump himself has openly floated the idea of fleeing the country if he loses.

He’s over $200 million in debt and will have to sell most of his assets to pay it off. He also faces prosecution for various crimes he committed before and during his presidency.

If he does, he’ll probably try to brand himself a fallen hero in exile, and live off of his supporter’s Patreon donations or whatever. 

Oh, yeah, and the rallies. Trump is planning to keep holding his rallies even after the election, even if he loses, even as the plague is ravaging and the economy is in the toilet.

Don’t be surprised if his supporters are completely blind to the utter failure of leadership in that.

Let’s see, what else to cover...

I guess that just about covers it.

Have fun, kids!

[warsofasoiaf]

Not sure if this is a good time for this ask but I'll toss it out: Your opinions on Trump and Sanders are well established, assuming those are the two nominees what do you plan on doing come election night? Obviously there are down ballot decisions, but when it comes to president what should someone who thinks neither candidate is qualified do? Third party, sit it out, lesser of two evils, etc?

Easiest answer out of the way first. I already plan to have voted come election night. I vote absentee and have done so ever since I was in the military. I dislike the process of physical voting. Standing in a long line of strangers for a long period of time during flu season? No thanks. Unfortunately, that is dependent on the state you live in, so plenty of people can’t take advantage of it. Sure, it’s entirely possible you might change your mind between the day you send your ballot in and Election Day, but the same could be said about casting a ballot on Election Day and wanting a different candidate the next day, or even five minutes later. Although at least if what the evidence I read can be trusted, early voting doesn’t necessarily increase turnout.

Also easy is saying what I will be doing, because I won’t say. My actions are between me and the ballot box. It’s a safe bet, however, to guess that I won’t be casting votes for candidates I’ve done nothing but express disgust towards.

As for the more difficult question, “what should someone who thinks neither candidate is qualified do,” that’s one of the drawbacks to democracy: it requires a lot of difficult effort. Voting is an awesome responsibility that you must bear, that every person who lives in a democracy must bear. It is your responsibility to come to the conclusion that satisfies you as best as you think it can. Don’t let anyone shame you into voting for their candidate if you don’t like them. For someone to say: “you must vote for my candidate because XYZ” is to say that XYZ must be more important to you than what you have decided is more important. If you’ve decided you cannot in good conscience vote for a candidate, then someone telling you that you must disregard your conscience for their sake. 

Personally, I’m not a fan of the “lesser of two evils” idea; I think it promotes the idea that all the parties need to do is run a candidate one iota better than the other guy. Similarly, I’m not a fan of “the party no matter what” because we’ve got a serious accountability problem with politicians already (look at approval ratings vs. incumbency ratings) and publicly telling them that they’ve got your vote no matter tells them that you are not going to take them to task for their bad behavior; they get what they want no matter what they do. Even if that’s what you intend to do, it strikes me as more to your advantage not to advertise it, even if only to enact a phantom watchman. A scarecrow isn’t as good to scare away birds as a human, but it’s better than putting up nothing and telling the crows that you’re not watching.

Vote third party if they have a candidate you like. Stay home and express your disgust online if you want. Or hold your nose and vote for the most palatable garbage the two major parties will deliver. As Dr. Wong from Rick and Morty said, “all of us have the right to choose.” Just be sure that what you decide to do is what you want, and not have your actions decided by someone else who denies you that.

That includes me, by the way. If you want to say “you’re not being practical, I’m not taking your advice,” or even “this threat is too grave to do anything less than ‘x’” then ignore me, and know that I don’t think any less of you for it. As long as you’ve decided what you want to do that’s fine by me.

Thanks for the question, Crowz.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

[anexplanationofunfortunateevents]

Spooky Stories at Camp Quarantine: The Tale of the Swift Boat

Campfire story (n): a ritual where we all sit under the vast darkness of a midnight sky and tell ourselves a story about the big, scary monster that isn’t lurking just out of sight. You know. Probably.

2004 was a dark and stormy year.

The world pulsed with the still-raw trauma of the September 11 attacks. It was an anxious year of denial and bargaining, a desperate search for the loophole after Sirius Black fell through the veil. The twentieth century was dying and the third millennium was struggling to be born. It was the time of the Swift Boat.

The Usurper Bush the Lesser was in a tough place. If you were paying attention, you could see the signs that his stolen presidency was going to end in disaster and disgrace. And it was an election year, so people were about to start paying attention. So he took a lesson from his dear old Dad: he would unleash the hired help to unload a relentless fusillade of lies against his opponent.

Lying was an important part of the strategy because he was up against a strong challenger. John Kerry of Massachusetts was one of the most liberal Democrats in the Senate; he was also a tall, fit, well-educated, impeccably diplomatic, Irish Catholic patrician who didn’t challenge anyone’s idea of what a president looked like. He talked like Barack Obama and looked like Mitt Romney. He was allowed to get pneumonia without anyone losing their goddamn minds, that’s how white and manly he was.

Most critically, though, he seemed to have almost unique standing to campaign against the Bush administration’s spectacular failure in Iraq. At the time, Republicans had – cynically, but effectively – made themselves synonymous with The Troops. Anyone who questioned their lies or challenged their reckless foreign policy was axiomatically discredited as “hating the troops.” Kerry, however, was A Troop, with a track record of telling the hard truth about an unjustified war. He had earned five medals in Vietnam and then used that moral authority to call for an end to the bloodshed. His service gave him a way to connect to a massive group of voters for whom the war had been a generational trauma – and it was a strong contrast to Bush, who had used his wealth and family connections to dodge the draft.

Enter the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. This was a group of Vietnam veterans who, in mid-2004, collectively realized that Kerry had lied about his heroism, hoodwinked the military into giving him an award, not once but five times, and successfully covered up his perfidy for thirty-odd years, despite having been scrutinized by Massachusetts voters and press in half a dozen statewide elections. This fantastical tale was largely spun by Jerome Corsi, now known for spreading birtherism (the racist conspiracy theory that former President Obama was not an American citizen), narrowly escaping prosecution by special prosecutor Robert Mueller, and, most recently, hawking Trump’s favorite quack coronavirus cure. They were, naturally, bankrolled by obscenely wealthy Bush supporters.

Maybe these Swift boat veterans were purposefully lying; maybe they were sad old men whose trauma was manipulated by right-wing propagandists. But they did what they were supposed to do. Kerry’s campaign lost its footing and never quite got it back. Instead of being able to challenge Bush’s lies about about the war in Iraq that was happening at the time, he was stuck on the defensive against Bush’s lies about the Vietnam war, which had ended decades before. In one retrospectively critical moment of priming the conservative base for Donald “I like the people who weren’t captured” Trump, delegates at the Republican convention wore silly purple heart bandaids to mock the wounds Kerry received in combat.

We know how that ended. Bush won the popular vote by around 2%, which back in the day actually used to be enough to win the election. Thus, ISIS rose and New Orleans drowned.

The thing is, the bad guys don’t actually forget the past as easily as they hope you do. When a play works, they run it again. When a play almost works, they run it again but better. When a play doesn’t immediately work, it still rallies the right-wing base and softens up the general public for their authoritarian politics of lies and abuse, so they keep it in their back pocket. So we should probably try to understand the specific elements that made the Swift boat propaganda campaign particularly effective.

Imagine you’re an amoral Republican candidate and I’m your mercenary sociopath of a campaign manager. I’ve just said, “look, you’re getting your ass kicked, we’re going to have to swiftboat your opponent” and you’re like “what’s a swiftboat? Write me a memo!” So, here it is. (You may be thinking “but you don’t know anything about me, and I’d never be a Republican candidate for anything!” Lesson the first: it doesn’t matter, because your swiftboat attack has nothing to do with you.) 

A swiftboat attack is bullshit. We like to think the truth is the most effective political weapon, but what if there really aren’t any disqualifying skeletons in your opponent’s closet? If you’re going to sabotage them anyway, that’s kind of liberating. After all, true stories depend on facts, which can be too boring to stick with people, and don’t have made-to-spec story arcs that conveniently fit with your campaign’s themes. Plus, if you’re relying on some actual truth that exists in the universe, you’re running the risk that there’s some mitigating factor out there, some witness who can give different context or a wronged party who can say they’ve buried the hatchet. Worse, your opponent already knows about stuff they actually did. Campaigns do a ton of background research into their own candidates, specifically so that they’re prepared for a predictable attack. They can’t prepare themselves for literally anything your army of political strategists can imagine, so you will always have the element of surprise.

Swiftboating isn’t an attack on your opponent’s policy. It’s an accusation that they’ve violated some taboo. There’s some sticky detail that people won’t quite be able to forget, even if they are exposed to the eventual debunking. The story, whatever it is, should be most upsetting to a large, important block of voters who are inclined to support your opponent.

The allegations don’t come from you, your campaign, or even a sympathetic journalist. They’re laundered through apparent private citizens who are part of a group of people that the general public tends to find sympathetic. This makes your story seem more credible to at first glance, wrong-foots anyone who wants to defend your opponent against the allegations, and lets you get credit for insincerely denouncing the attack while continuing to benefit from it.

This is a dick-swinging exercise, so be shameless. You’re not just putting your opponent in their place by showing you can get away with lying about them, and maddeningly rejecting responsibility for your lies. You’re showing off an authoritarian contempt for truth itself.

You need a relentless multimedia assault, impossible for people to miss. You might have to bully legitimate media into teaching the controversy, but they’re wimps. You’re not trying to convince most people that this specific story is true, you’re just trying to plant some seeds of doubt, and to sap time and enthusiasm from your opponent and their supporters. Make the election as miserable as possible and voters will reward you for it.

The most important thing is that you want your swiftboat attack to be on some area where you have a real liability and your opponent has a real strength. You want them to have to defend themselves on something they should get to use as a selling point. Even better, you neutralize a totally fair criticism of yourself – no matter how accurate they are or how ridiculous you sound, the press will dismiss it as “both sides point fingers.”

Kerry’s campaign gets used as some kind of object lesson about the futility of primary voters trying to pick a candidate they think will win: “Kerry was supposed to be electable and Kerry lost, so there.” (You’ve probably heard the even stupider cover version, “if Hillary was so electable, why’d she let herself get targeted by all those criminal conspiracies, HMMMM?”) This is 20/20 hindsight spiked with the just world fallacy. John Kerry seemed like a good candidate because he was, in fact, a good candidate, which is why he did significantly better expected, and he came pretty close to beating the odds. If there’s a lesson here, maybe it’s that swiftboating can keep a clearly electable candidate from being elected.

That’s a real buzzkill because it means we can’t treat the primaries like a round of playoffs where we root for the most exciting player and then kick back to watch the finals. But what it lacks in self-gratification, it makes up for with agency. If a swiftboat attack is supposed to affect how people respond to a candidate, then people get to choose whether or not we play along.

Trump, a textbook narcissist who instinctively projects his infinite failings onto others, is almost a swiftboating savant. His campaign is being handled by the professional Republican operatives behind the original Swift Boat campaign. (Literally, some of the same guys.) So as we move into the general election, know that this is in their bag of tricks. If you start to hear alarming stories about presumptive Democratic nominee former Vice President Biden or any other prominent Democrats on the ballot …. give it the smell test, is all I’m saying.

[docsamurai]

Where I say something nice about the Democratic candidates.

I know my last few posts about politics have been furious and relentlessly negative, so I'm going to try and say at least one nice thing about each person who was running for president, past and present. Keep in mind I'm not going to mention bad things about these people, so yeah I know that guy supported awful things or that other guy has utterly toxic followers. That's not what this is about.

My feelings about Liz are well known so I'll just cry about the fact that we lost yet another absurdly talented female candidate, and one who had the power to fucking atomize a billionaire from 30 feet with only her death glare.

I'll actually start though with the people still in the race.

Bernie Sanders: Dude is a progressive powerhouse and has been consistently on the right side of history for decades. He's got energy, he's got plans, he's got a passionate following of young people who, if their candidate actually wins will almost assuredly lead the charge in a new progressive wave in politics. And I'm sure that many of them will be passionate enough to support progressive candidates and fight for real change even when their guy isn't on the ballot.

Joe Biden: This guy is a charisma powerhouse, and honestly even if he himself may be more moderate, with as charged up as the democratic voters are right now we could practically hand him a gift wrapped congress. It frankly doesn't matter that much if he's moderate if Congress keeps sending him progressive legislation to sign. Do you think he wouldn't jump at the chance to do M4A or climate change initiatives or even a green new deal if we just put a stack of paper on his desk to sign? He'd get to go down in history as one of the greatest presidents ever without having to do any of the hard work. And even if we can't take Congress for him, he *is* actually charismatic enough to negotiate deals across the aisle. I'll frankly take a small amount of progress over literally burning the planet down.

Tulsi Gabbard: Forgot she was still in this didn't you? Well that's the nice thing I'm saying, she's tenacious. If we can just get her to fight for the right things then she can be a real asset...

Alright now the people who have dropped out.

Pete Buttigieg: it's not nothing for someone to be openly gay and to have gotten as far as he did in American politics. Like yeah, he wasn't the guy to win but for a long time he was a frontrunner and whether you agree with him or not, every bit of representation matters.

Michael Bloomberg: (yes I'm going to say something nice about Bloomberg). Disregard his policies and track record for a moment. Also ignore the disastrous consequences of what it would have meant to allow someone to effectively buy the nomination of a major political party. If he *had* secured the nomination this guy had literally billions of his own personal wealth to throw at down ballot races. If he were president he would have wanted a cooperative Congress and he would have thrown as much money as he could at making that a reality. And while that probably wouldn't have addressed some very important issues, he probably would have at least addressed climate change which any reasonable person will agree is an existential threat to all mankind.

Amy Klobuchar: She was basically Hillary but with fewer scandals and meaner. And honestly the meaner part is kinda important in modern politics. We need someone who can basically turn Senate Republicans into scolded children on a daily basis.

Tom Steyer: He's been taking out ad space to tell us to impeach and remove Trump since January of 2017. Yeah, he's another billionaire but he's the only one I've heard openly talking about how billionaires need to be taxed more.

Andrew Yang: Yeah another billionaire but he got us to have a national conversation about UBI and that's not nothing. Plus I'll admit that he was pretty fun in a genuine way.

Corey Booker: look there's a reason a lot of people were talking about him back in 2018 like he was the next Obama. Smart, charismatic, well versed in policy and procedure but willing to break the rules when the rules were blatantly unfair. Also as a side note could you imagine First Lady Rosario Dawson? Could you imagine a White House wedding?! Between brilliant, talented, hilarious, literal film and theater star Rosario Dawson and President Corey Booker? It would be an event filled with actual class and glamor happening in Washington DC that would have nothing to do with politics that would rival a royal wedding for sheer opulence and spectacle.

Julian Castro: he endorsed Warren so he's automatically getting points for me, he was fairly progressive in his own right and as someone with a Latinx heritage it's pretty damn likely that we could at least start to undo some of the damage of the last few years.

Marianne Williamson: Not gonna lie, I'd be mildly terrified of what her presidency would actually look like, but you have to admit that seeing her campaign against Trump in the general would have been absurd and hilarious. Plus, let's face it she *would* hold cleansing rituals to purge the White House of evil and who knows, it might work.

Deval Patrick, Rob Delaney & Michael Bennett: I'm lumping them in together because I have the same thing to say about all 3 of them. They're boring without standout policy proposals. Remember back when we had boring presidents? No you don't because even the most boring President we've had in a generation (Carter) was still going out and building homes for Habitat for Humanity at the age of 90. But I'm just saying, if we get some bland, inoffensive white guy in office it's not the worst thing in the world so long as we can shift Congress to a more progressive stance.

So yeah. That's the takeaway from this. It's ok to be disappointed that your candidate didn't win. It's ok to not be enthusiastic about the choices you're left with. What it's not ok to do is to refuse to vote. We are literally up against a fascist regime who is hell bent on kicking everyone out of the government who doesn't agree with them and removing voting rights altogether.

In 2016 we underestimated how dangerous his administration would be and how many people in America would be fine with a failed Reality Show Dictator in office. Think of all the things he's been able to do in the last 3 years alone and realize that he keeps "joking" about running for a third term.

Put a stop to this. Now. Vote in your primary for your preferred candidate and then regardless of who wins, vote a straight Democratic ticket in November. We won't get another chance at this.

[cognitiveinequality]

Once upon a time in the USA...

...you and 99 of your friends and family get together — the first time in like 4 years, yay! — and are trying to pick a place to eat. The way that this particular get-together works is that wherever you guys decide to go for dinner that's where EVERYONE goes. Nobody gets to "have a big day tomorrow" and escape early — it's 100 people joined at the hip, together at the same place for the entire meal.

As everyone chats and catches up it becomes clear that some of you want pizza, some want ribs, and a handful want sushi, including you. You’ve been looking forward to sushi for weeks, the place has comfortable seats, lots of room for everyone, and the prices are amazing.  As far as the other options?

You're ambivalent *at best* about pizza — you've heard *really* mixed reviews about the quality of food and the service — but admittedly it's got a pretty varied menu with one or two vegetarian options and the place is clean.

You've been to the ribs place before. It's... not good. It literally has cockroaches scuttling around in the open, the cook is a guy with open sores on his hands and face, and even if you don't order anything you have to sit there and listen to Nickelback played on repeat at ear-piercing volume for the entire duration of the meal. People get stabbed there on the regular.

"It's time to vote for where we're going!" yells the group leader, but only around 80 people of the original 100 are in the room to vote. "Wait, you think, "oh shit a bunch of my friends and family went to the bathroom a minute ago and they're going to miss the vote..." You suspect this tactic is deliberate and that the group leader is trying to wrangle things so she gets her first choice. That seems insanely shady and unfair but there's no time to go get anyone, and the vote is happening NOW — take your pick, what will it be?

The hands go up and the vote is tallied: 

37 people want ribs

34 people want pizza

9 people insist on sushi

"THE MAJORITY VOTES FOR RIBS!" shouts the vote counter. 

"What the fuck," your best friend fumes at your side, "I go to the bathroom for two seconds and you assholes vote for ribs?" 

You can hear more cries of shock and surprise from other parts of the room as people realize what they're in for. "I couldn't stop puking for 48 hours the last time we went there!!" someone sobs.

"For fucks' sake, I'm a vegan and so are like half the people in this room, how the fuck could you vote for ribs??" she asks you, accusingly. 

"I didn't!" you cry, trying to reassure her, "I don't like pizza but knew a bunch of people were vegan so I voted for sushi!"

"Why the FUCK would you vote for sushi?? We eliminated that option like 45 minutes ago! Thanks a lot, asshole — instead of getting to go order a salad option at the clean and quiet pizza place, now all 100 of us have to go sit and get our eardrums sandblasted out while like 30 people gorge themselves on ribs and the rest of us starve!!"

=========================

In case it wasn't clear by now, this is the 2020 Election in a nutshell, lefties. 

Angry about your candidate not getting the nomination?  Considering "sticking to your guns" for the sake of ideological purity to either abstain, spoil your ballot, vote for a third option? Welcome to an endless loop of Chad Kroeger's raspy screams in your ears at full volume for the rest of your life.

Oh wait, I’m sorry did you say you ✌don’t like Biden ✌? Think he���s full of shit?Past his prime? Are you extremely fucking suspicious of the accusations of assault and other grossness? 

Welcome to the club, motherfucker.

Guess what, kids? November 2nd IS NOT THE TIME for you to “send a message to the Democratic party” — that shit happens between elections. The 2020 Presidential (and congressional!) election is about pragmatism above all else. It’s about amputating a limb before the cancer spreads. It’s about putting an end to a LITERAL. FOUR. YEAR. NIGHTMARE.

[emblem-333]

What-If Richard Nixon won the election of 1960?

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic Ocean, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbin is the last thing standing in the way of total economic collapse of the government. Corbin is their Bernie Sanders, only with more political clout given the parliamentary system. Through years of effective party building, mobilizing and a decaying growth of income inequality worked to provide the Labour Party a large chunk of the seats, though not a majority. Though in the minority the gains of the Labour Party causes massive upheaval in Britain’s power structure. Conservative party leader Theresa May recently left office in disgrace after numerous electoral shortcomings. Right now the Prime Minister of the U.K is Boris Johnson. Basically, he’s mini-Trump. More disheveled, and aligned with the corporate class.

Elsewhere, the French did what the United States electorate couldn’t and bite the bullet and vote for the establishment Neoliberal shill in the face of the rising tide of fascism. Perhaps it was the debacle the Trump presidency only in its infancy managed to cause scared the French into running into the arms of Emmanuel Macron. You’d hope this brush with disaster would humble the centrist in the country. Except, in victory they’re only emboldened that only they know what needs to be done and the filthy unwashed peasants need to understand that. Macron shown hostility towards the Yellow Vest movement whose aims are to raise the poultry minimum wage, in U.S dollars roughly translates to 11.62. Far better than our federal minimum wage of $7.25. But hardly something that can be described as a livable wage.

Macron sits at 70 percent disapproval and his re-election date is 2022.

These three countries have come to the unanimous conclusion that is Neoliberalism is completely useless and only works to facilitate a totalitarian ruler to wrangle enough power to squeeze into power and bring us closer to the apocalypse. However, neither country is truly democratic. So the people, their ideals and concerns don’t matter in the slightest. Though, I’d say the United States is the least democratic of of the three. Two of the last six presidential elections have given us a winner who did not secure the plurality of the popular vote, but their superiority in the electoral college swung them to the Oval Office.

We are still in the early stages of our primary for the out of power party. Democrats are weeding out the competitive field and have three choices apparently to pick from. The candidate of the Hillary Clinton-wing of the Party, made up of aspiring Pod Save America Bros. former vice-president Joe Biden. To his way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way left is elder statesman, self described Democratic-Socialist Bernie Sanders. He is the only candidate marching with labor unions, not crossing the picket line to hold fundraiser with the party’s bigwigs. Somewhere in the middle blowing aimlessly in the wind is Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren. A real Rockefeller Republican. If only that wing of the Republicans didn’t collapse and migrate to the Democrats.

Back when Democrats were the party of the working man (you know, the alliance that allowed them to occupy the White House for all but eight-years between 1933 and 1969) in the middle o the Great Depression recently elected president FDR inherited a country on the brink of succumbing to the same forces that destroyed the Czardom. Luckily for them, the Bolshevik Revolution did anything but wet starving Americans appetites for socialism. The ugliness of the Russian Revolution, and a tinge of antisemitism kept what many in the establishment considered the electorates darkest impulses at bay. The New Deal was designed to prevent a movement similar to Eugene V. Debs from upending the established hierarchy.

In the 1932 election there were four far left candidates. William Z. Foster of the Communist Party, Norman Thomas of the Socialist, Verne L. Reynolds of Socialist Labor, and militant labor leader Jacob Coxey of Farmer-Labor. Together the four pooled 1,029,661 votes, enough for 2.6 percent of the vote share. In Debs’ best showing in his many campaigns for the presidency was 913,693 in the election of 1920.

Suffering Americans wanted the blood of the Wall Street tycoons responsible for the demise of their lives. The wolves were at the gates and Roosevelt went to work to ensure his head wouldn’t be on a pike. The New Deal gave the populist its needed relief and the left wing third parties withered away as the dire situation grew less gruesome. Democrats dominated the White House winning five consecutive elections. Conservatives in the party brought up in the era of States’ Rights and limited government radically had to alter their persona to ensure political survival. Harry S. Truman needed to mend his relationship between the AFL-CIO in order to win re-election in ‘48. Texas senator Lyndon Johnson built upon the New Deal instituting a “War on Poverty” birthing his “Great Society.” This aggressive pro-worker party that was a force at the ballot box brought the rise of the liberal republicans in the GOP. Laissez-faire Republicans like Robert A. Taft, Alf Landon, and Wendell Willkie could only push so far in an age where the voter couldn’t stomach the rich. From 1944 to 1960 the “eastern establishment” wing of the GOP ran on platforms which assured voters worried about giving the reins back to the party of Herbert Hoover their intentions are not to gut the popular social programs such as social security, though they wished government interference would not venture farther than it already had.

Moderates like New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey, and the first presidential attempt of Richard Nixon failed to win the White House. Their only victory was famous war General Dwight Eisenhower, who could’ve ran as the nominee as any party and won by the substantial margin he did in ‘52 and ‘56. The party designed to appeal on the coasts couldn’t muster up the coalition in the Midwest needed to secure victory. Ultimately, Republicans learned the lesson today’s Democrats never will. Running as the lite-beer version of your opponent is a recipe for failure. In 1968, Nixon unleashed his Southern Strategy when the Democrats cast their lot in with the civil rights movement. The effects of the southern strategy are still felt today. The strategy itself still works over fifty-years after its inception.

But back in the early 1960’s neither party truly knew where they stood on the issue of civil rights. Dwight Eisenhower deployed federal troops to Little Rock, Arkansas to ensure the entry and safety of black students during integration. His opponent, Adlai Stevenson, a great man, a forward thinker, picked a Alabaman segregationist for his V.P. While the Democrats had its fair share of activist on their team, Hubert Humphrey to name one, who fought tooth and nail for a civil rights plank to be enacted into the party’s platform for 1948. But by the 1950’s the segregationist have regained control.

Perhaps the liberal republicans could have had more success if they exercised political fortitude in advocating and legislating in favor of civil rights. Rather than seeing leaders like Martin Luther King as a controversial figure, at the very least they could have viewed him as somebody who could get them more votes and be heralded as a hero in the process. The infamous “turnip session” in the heat of the ‘48 campaign incumbent underdog Truman addresses the Congress held predominantly by republicans he dared them to put their money where their mouths were regarding civil rights. Of course, they balked and lost the White House they were supposed to win and both the House and Senate.

Playing as Nixon on the Internet game “Campaign Trail” I tapped New Yorker Nelson Rockefeller to be my veep rather than tread water with actual running mate Henry Cabot Lodge. Other options are Arizona senator staunch Neocon Barry Goldwater, and moderate elder statesman Everett Dirksen of Illinois. I choose Rockefeller because I wanted to run on a civil rights platform. I condemned the arrest of of MLK, endorsed a federal minimum wage of $1.25 and didn’t distance myself when Rockefeller promised further civil rights legislation while on the campaign trail.

Though Rockefeller was the rising star of the party at the time, his efforts did not give me the crucial state of New York. However, I fortunately did not need it to secure victory. (I’ll post my answers at the bottom)

Richard Nixon/Nelson Rockefeller: 299; 32,825,498

John F. Kennedy /Lyndon B. Johnson: 224; 33,806,388

Harry Byrd/Strom Thurmond: 14; 328,017

[Post Game Speech] With luck, you will be able to duplicate the eight years of peace and prosperity under Eisenhower. Unfortunately, the Democrats maintain their majority in both houses of Congress. With luck, they will be good partners in a bipartisan governing coalition. Your first order of business is to mend fences with Lyndon Johnson, who is returning to his role as Senate Majority Leader.

I swept the northeast and cleaned up in the west and by the skin of my teeth, despite losing the popular vote changed the trajectory of U.S history. Butterflying JFK from the Oval Office basically ensures Robert Kennedy’s effect on the political landscape as well. People often forget right around this era both parties took orders from the mob thanks to their heavy influence in organized labor. In 1952, the voters of the Democrats eyed Estes Kefauver. Kefauver won 12 primary contests and made his political bones unearthing the dirty secrets of his own party’s ties to the mafia. He was shut out of the convention and didn’t sniff the presidential ticket. Nixon complains of ballot stuffing in crucial swing like Illinois. Only reason he never brought it to court is because his party was guilty of doing the same thing.

Without a president John, we don’t get senator Bobby prosecuting scumbag apes like Carlos Marcello. They could continue to exercise extreme influence over the parties today.

The trade off is maybe a Republican comes along and flushes the monsters out of the Democratic Party. It have to be Nixon. Anyone else is a far reach. Then again, this column is attempting to articulate Nixon, of all people, championing civil rights. So perhaps nothing is impossible?

A plus in not having JFK in the Oval Office is he isn’t around to bungle the Bay of Pigs and take us to the brink of nuclear annihilation in the subsequent Cuban Missile Crisis. Young John was inexperienced and couldn’t beat back the bloodthirsty members in his cabinet advocating for the removal of Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Castro disliked Nixon - I’m not so sure the feeling wasn’t mutual. But Nixon was craftier than JFK when it comes to foreign policy. Kennedy waffled between caving completely to the pressure of Allen Dulles and standing his ground. Kennedy green-lit a half-assed attempt on Castro’s life, did not supply the CIA-sponsored Cuban exiles the support needed to sustain their offensive and their failure drove Castro right into the arms of the Soviet Union and Nikita Khruschev. By October of 1962 the Russians parked missiles 90-miles off the coast of Florida.

Nixon was far from a pacifist. But at the very least, his decisive nature would’ve warranted a legitimate threat to Castro and possibly dethroned him and turned Cuba into a puppet state for the United States. It’s debatable whether that is a good thing or not. I’m going to say it’s the latter. Cuba has tons of numerous human rights atrocities, but they treat their poor better than we do by giving them decent health care coverage.

The fate of Cuba probably isn’t different than the Dominican Republic in the mid-60’s when the U.S overthrew their democratically elected leader for implanting social programs that angered the church and corporate sectors of the country. Either Cuba becomes a fully impoverished country or succumbs to right-wing theocracy like Iran.

On a brighter note, Nixon likely pushes forward on civil rights and with his victory it vindicates the eastern establishment and sets up Rockefeller to be the face of the party. So we are spared Ronald Reagan. Though, the caveat is Rockefeller was an architect of the War on Drugs in the pre-Reagan era. So despite his superior record on civil rights we can still expect an explosion of the prison population for minor offenses for black Americans.

A Nixon victory in ‘60 keeps the GOP the party of Honest Abe. While the Democrats continue on as the White populist party. Maybe George Wallace gets a crack at the White House in ‘64 and he is the sacrificial lamb for the future trajectory of the party like Goldwater was in OTL for the Republicans. No more coastal or big city elites for the Democrats. They likely run southern gentleman like Wallace or Johnson from here on out.

Kennedy appointed two Supreme Court justices to the bench. It is likely Nixon nominates Warren E. Burger and maybe Thurgood Marshall to the bench. The difference this makes is Nixon probably never runs into Lewis Powell. The justice who would crusade in favor of big money contaminating our elections. If so, our political system is held hostage by the mob, but not by multinational corporations destroying the earth to make a profit.

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Beware: Reading polls can be hazardous to your health. Symptoms include cherry-picking, overconfidence, falling for junky numbers and rushing to judgment. Thankfully, we have a cure. Building on an old checklist from former FiveThirtyEight political writer Harry Enten, here are some guidelines you should bear in mind when you’re interpreting political polling — in primary season and beyond.

What to watch for during the primaries

People who try to discredit early primary polls by pointing out that, say, Jeb Bush led early polls of the GOP field in 2016 are being disingenuous. Should these polls be treated with caution? Sure, but national primary polls conducted in the calendar year before the election are actually somewhat predictive of who the eventual nominee will be. Earlier this year, fellow FiveThirtyEight analyst Geoffrey Skelley looked at early primary polling since 1972 and found that candidates who polled better in the months before the primaries wound up doing better in the eventual primaries. In fact, those who averaged 35 percent or higher in the polls rarely lost the nomination.

High polling averages foreshadowed lots of primary votes

Candidates’ share of the national primary vote by average polling level in the first half of the year before the presidential primaries and polling average in the second half of that year, 1972-2016

First half Second half Poll Avg. Share who became nominee Avg. Primary Vote share Share who became nominee Avg. Primary Vote share 35%+ 75% 57% 83% 57% 20%-35% 36 27 25 25 10%-20% 9 8 9 12 5%-10% 3 7 10 10 2%-5% 5 5 0 4 Under 2% 1 2 1 1

We included everyone we had polling data for, no matter how likely or unlikely they were to run. If a candidate didn’t run or dropped out before voting began, they were counted as winning zero percent of the primary vote.

Sources: POLLS, CQ Roll call, DAVE LEIP’s atlas of u.s. presidential elections

And if we go one step further and account for a candidate’s level of name recognition, early national primary polls were even more telling of who might win the nomination. As you can see in the chart below, a low-name-recognition candidate whose polling average climbed past 10 percent in the first half of the year before the primaries had at least a 1 in 4 shot at winning, which actually put them ahead of a high-name-recognition candidate polling at the same level.

This is why we believe that national primary polls are useful (even this far out) despite the fact that they are technically measuring an election that will never happen — we don’t hold a national primary. For this reason, early-state polls are important, too, especially if they look different from national polls. History is littered with examples of national underdogs who pulled off surprising wins in Iowa or New Hampshire, then rode the momentum all the way to the nomination. And according to analysis from RealClearPolitics, shortly after Thanksgiving is historically when polls of Iowa and New Hampshire start to come into closer alignment with the eventual results.

But don’t put too much faith in early primary polls (or even late ones — they have a much higher error, on average, than general-election polls). Voters’ preferences are much more fluid in primaries than they are in general elections, in large part because partisanship, a reliable cue in general elections, is removed from the equation. And voters may vacillate between the multiple candidates they like and even change their mind at the last minute, perhaps in an effort to vote tactically (i.e., vote for their second choice because that candidate has a better chance of beating a third candidate whom the voter likes less than their first or second choice).

On the flip side, early general-election polls are pretty much worthless. They are hypothetical match-ups between candidates who haven’t had a chance to make their case to the public, who haven’t had to withstand tough attacks and who still aren’t on many Americans’ radar. And these polls aren’t terribly predictive of the eventual result either. From 1944 to 2012, polls that tested the eventual Democratic and Republican nominees about a year before the election (specifically, in November and December of the previous year) missed the final margin by almost 11 percentage points, on average — though it’s worth noting that they were more accurate in 2016, missing by around 3 points.1

Early general-election polls are usually way off the mark

Average error in general-election polls that tested the two eventual nominees in November and December of the year before the election, for presidential elections from 1944 to 2012

Polling Accuracy A Year Before The Election Election Average GOP Poll Lead GOP Election Margin Absolute Error 1944 -14.0 -7.5 6.5 1948 -3.8 -4.5 0.7 1956 +22.0 +15.4 6.6 1960 +3.0 -0.2 3.2 1964 -50.3 -22.6 27.7 1980 -15.5 +9.7 25.2 1984 +7.2 +18.2 11.0 1988 +18.0 +7.7 10.3 1992 +21.0 -5.6 26.1 1996 -13.0 -8.5 4.5 2000 +11.9 -0.5 12.4 2004 +8.7 +2.5 6.2 2008 -0.3 -7.3 6.9 2012 -2.8 -3.9 1.0 Average 10.6

No odd-year November-December polling was available for the 1952, 1968, 1972 and 1976 elections.

Source: Roper Center for Public Opinion Research

In other words, at this stage in the cycle, primary polls can be useful but are by no means infallible, while general-election polls can safely be ignored. That may seem frustrating, but just remember that pollsters aren’t trying to make predictions; they’re simply trying to capture an accurate snapshot of public opinion at a given moment in time.

What to keep in mind generally

There are some guidelines you should remember at any time of the year, however. First, some pollsters are more accurate than others. We consider the gold standard of polling methodology to be pollsters that use live people (as opposed to robocalls) to conduct interviews over the phone, that call cell phones as well as landlines and that participate in the American Association for Public Opinion Research’s Transparency Initiative or the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research archive. That said, the polling industry is changing; there are some good online pollsters too. You can use FiveThirtyEight’s Pollster Ratings to check what methodology each pollster uses and how good its track record has been. (And if a pollster doesn’t show up in our Pollster Ratings, that might be a red flag.)

Another reason to pay attention to the pollster is for comparison purposes. Because pollsters sometimes have consistent house effects (their polls overestimate the same party over and over), it can be tricky to compare results from different pollsters. (For this reason, FiveThirtyEight’s models adjust polls to account for house effects.) When looking for trends in the data over time, it’s better to compare a poll to previous surveys done by that same pollster. Otherwise, what looks like a rise or fall in the numbers could just be the result of a different methodological decision or, especially for non-horse-race questions, the way the question is worded. The order in which questions are asked can matter too; for example, asking a bunch of questions about health care and then asking for whom respondents would vote might bias them to pick the candidate they think is best on health care.

In addition, note who is being polled and what the margin of error is. Polls conducted among likely voters are the best approximation of who will actually cast a ballot, although when you’re still several months away from an election, polls of registered voters are much more common, and that’s fine. For non-electoral public opinion questions, like the president’s approval rating, many polls use a sample that will try to match the demographic profile of all adults in the U.S., and that’s fine, too. As for margin of error … just remember that it exists! For example, if a poll of the 2018 Florida governor race showed former Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum ahead of former Rep. Ron DeSantis 47 percent to 46 percent with a margin of error of plus or minus 4 points, you’d want to keep in mind that DeSantis may actually have been leading at the time. Remember, too, that the margin of error applies to each candidate’s polling number, not to the difference between the candidates. So if both numbers are off by the margin of error, the difference between them could be off by twice as much. In this case, that could mean Gillum dropping to 43 percent and DeSantis jumping up to 50 percent, going from a 1-point deficit to a 7-point lead.

Sample size is important too — a smaller sample means a larger margin of error — but good polling is expensive, so the best pollsters may wind up with smaller samples. And that’s OK. As long as you heed the margin of error, a poll with a sample size of, say, 300 isn’t inherently untrustworthy. That said, don’t dive too much into one poll’s crosstabs — that’s where sample sizes do get unacceptably small and margins of error get unacceptably big. This is one reason not to trust commentators who try to “unskew” a poll by tinkering with its demographic breakdown, or who say that a poll’s results among, say, black voters are unbelievable and therefore the whole poll is too. These people are usually trying to manufacture better results for their side, anyway.

Speaking of which, consider the motive of whoever is sharing the survey. Polls sponsored by a candidate or interest group will probably be overly favorable to their cause. You should be especially suspicious of internal polls that lack details on how they were conducted (e.g., when they were conducted, who was polled, their sample size and their pollster). If you get your news from a partisan outlet, it may also selectively cover only polls that are good for its side. And even the mainstream media might be inclined to overhype a poll as “shocking” or a margin as “razor-thin” because it makes for a better headline.

Next, beware of polls that have drastically different results from all the others. They often turn out to be outliers — although not always (every new trend starts with one poll), which is why you shouldn’t throw them out either. Instead, just use a polling average, which aggregates multiple polls and helps you put the outlier into proper context. We at FiveThirtyEight use averages for that very reason.

And even if a new trend does emerge, wait a bit before declaring it the new normal. Big events — candidate announcements, debates, conventions — can have dramatic effects on the polls, but they are often fleeting.

Finally, come to terms with the fact that polls won’t perfectly predict the final results. Polls are a lot more accurate than people sometimes give them credit for, but polling error is real. Since 1998, polls conducted within a few weeks of the election have missed by an average of 3-10 points, depending on the type of campaign. So trust the polls, but hold onto some uncertainty right up until the moment election results start rolling in.