Day: September 26, 2023

How About A Poll Free Diet?

Yesterday I wrote about a new poll that puts Trump about 9 points ahead of Biden….which means little as there is over a year of polls to look forward to….

As the 2024 election creeps its way into to our lives we are now and will soon be overwhelmed with the constant polling results…..Trump is leading Biden, vice versa, Dems are squeaking by, GOP is running rampant….are just a few of the results we will probably see from this polling group or that….and make no mistake there are hundreds of them and seldom do any of them reflect the same trends.

It has been suggested that we ignore polls for now….go on a poll free diet if you will…

Jennifer Rubin has tried to stay away from “rickety” poll analyses as we inch closer to the 2024 election—a “poll-free political diet” she thinks we all should go on. Writing for theWashington Post, Rubin lays out a laundry list of reasons why, calling the polling field “broken” and the journalism behind it lacking in keeping the electorate in the know with “accurate, reliable information.” Rubin notes that the polls were way off in both 2016 and 2020, as well as in the 2022 midterms, and that voters often offer “contradictory” information on how they’re feeling ahead of elections. The latter suggests that voters “either don’t understand the question, don’t really know what they think, or respond based on tribal loyalty,” Rubin writes.

She also notes how pointless it can be to hold polls way in advance of Election Day, as the political landscape is a fluid, constantly shifting one. Rubin cites a quote from Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg on this point: “At the end of the day polling is only a snapshot into a moment, and cannot predict anything. Things change all the time in politics—change is the constant.” Most important, however, is the role of journalists in this mix, with Rubin noting that the usual “horse-race coverage” isn’t going to do the nation much good. “When the stakes are so high, and the fate of democracy hangs in the balance, continuing to gamify politics with meaningless polls does little to improve journalists’ reputation or inform voters,” she writes. More from Rubin here.

A damn fine idea!

I do not use polls to help me decide who to vote for….I use my principles as a guide.

Polls these days are used to drive news not inform.

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Protecting Democracy From Itself

The Constitution should do just that.

This election will be a trial (of sorts) for the Constitution……

I wrote recently of the problem that former lead man Trump could have with the 14th Amendment to our Constitution…..

Trump’s 14th Amendment Problem?

Now I ask can the Constitution saves us from ourselves?

Winston Churchill once exclaimed that ” democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”  With democracy facing challenges in the US the likes that perhaps not seen since the Civil War, the question is what to do.

This question takes on exceptional salience with the coming 2024 presidential elections and the prospect that Donald Trump could again be re-elected.   This has prompted some to call for some to employ the Fourteenth Amendment to declare Trump an insurrectionist and declare him ineligible for office.  As attractive as this solution may sound, it is a dangerous tool to solve  a pressing problem.

Democracies can produce their own antithesis. The Democratic German Weimar Republic elected Hitler and the Nazis who annihilated the popular government. Across the world we see similar problems in Hungary, Poland, and perhaps Israel.  Our constitutional framers saw this potential too.

Democracy, including that in the US, is an experiment in the people ruling, and it is still not clear if it works.  The American Experiment according to historian James McGregor Burns was that of being the first popular government in history. While one can challenge whether the elite framers who were slaveholders truly were interested  in popular government, let’s assume they were.  For James Madison, perhaps the principal architect of the Constitution and one of the authors of the Federalist Papers the challenge of popular government or what we call representative democracy today is to protect it from majority faction, mob rule, populism, or what others have called the tyranny of the majority.

The fear was that the passions of the people would swell up and produce a majority faction, defined as “a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”

The political solution to the problem of populism was creating a system placing breaks on the mobilization of power through separation of powers, checks and balances, federalism, staggered political terms, and an electoral college. Yet somewhere along the line these mechanisms have failed .

Protecting Democracy From Itself:  Can the Fourteenth Amendment Save the Republic?

This scenario could go before SCOTUS and if it does I have zero faith in their ability to separate good of the country from their personal political leanings.

After all they are trying to re-wrote the first and second amendments what makes us think they will not do so for the 14th?

This is a whole can of manure eating worms waiting to get out.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”