This is a re-post from my other blog, Gulf South Free Press, and it spells out some of my feelings about this election…..an election that I am not happy about at all.
The “Lesser Evil” Lecture
I will be writing more on my decision soon….
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”
We hear almost daily that this election will be about economics…..some call it the “pocketbook vote”….people will vote for the person that they think will improve their income so they can better support their families.
I want to go on record as saying that I do not believe that BS for a moment.
Why would I make such a bold statement?
Let’s look at my state of Mississippi….which by the way is at the bottom of the economic scale….voters on local, state and national level do not vote with their wallets…..if they did this state would be a lot better off than it is today.
Many studies assume that policy issues have little bearing on voting, while the economy has a substantial impact, especially in congressional elections. Yet from 2020 to 2022, congressional voting preferences changed in fundamentally rational ways based on abortion views, thus suggesting evidence of democratic accountability with respect to this particular issue.
“What people tell you is ‘most important’ in determining their vote is likely to be a reflection of their partisanship, rather than a source of change in their vote preferences,” conclude Mutz and Mansfield.
“It could mean that people’s perceptions of the economy are less important than journalists typically imply in their coverage. As a result, lingering effects of the Dobbs decision and general distrust of the Supreme Court may be especially influential in 2024.”
https://phys.org/news/2024-05-conventional-wisdom-americans-pocketbook-voters.html
Do Americans “vote their pocketbooks?” This near-ubiquitous cliche seems at first to pass the test of common sense. Why wouldn’t people vote for the candidates under whom they’ll do the best financially? A wealthy voter should favor the candidate who will lower their taxes. A chronically unemployed voter should support the candidate promising lavish government handouts.
In the most basic economic terms, however, this logic falls apart. If one votes, for example, to maximize the present value of their future income, the answer is to not vote at all. Given the vanishingly low probability of breaking a tie, voting isn’t worth the gasoline used to drive to one’s local fire station and cast a ballot.
Perhaps this critique says more about the limits of economic modelling than it does about voting. Slogans like “It’s the economy, stupid” and “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” suggest a bigger-picture view people can take when voting their pocketbooks. But once again, this view fails to hold water.
The concept of “voting one’s pocketbook” frequently causes partisans who don’t understand the other party’s voters to make strategic errors. It also perpetuates the destructive idea that different groups of citizens are playing a zero-sum game against each other. Finally, and perhaps most insidiously, it creates the myth that the right politician can make our pocketbooks grow.
The Myth of Voting One’s Pocketbook
I ask for your input.
Do you think Americans will vote with their wallets?
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”
It is that time again when people will start looking for their place to vote….in some states it seems to change yearly….most will go on-line but will they get accurate info?
Could AI give bad voting info?
OpenAI’s ChatGPT was caught spitting out false voting information for battleground states, CBS News discovered, in another grim sign of how AI is poised to upend elections.
The errors came to light after reporters at CBS asked for basic information on voting requirements, polling locations, and other questions that a typical voter would ask if they lived in states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Wisconsin — all places that could determine the outcome of the upcoming US presidential election in the fall.
When reporters at CBS asked ChatGPT questions such as the deadline to mail in a ballot in certain states, it would give different but still erroneous outputs on separate devices.
Though OpenAI released a statement in January saying that anybody entering basic voter queries into ChatGPT would be directed to the non-partisan voting website CanIVote.org, reporters at CBS sometimes didn’t get that link to this website when asking voting questions.
“We’ve also developed partnerships to ensure people using ChatGPT for information about voting get directed to authoritative sources,” an OpenAI spokesperson told CBS News. “We are closely monitoring how our technology is being used in the elections context and continue to evolve our approach.”
https://futurism.com/the-byte/chatgpt-bad-info-vote-battleground-states
AI WILL influence voting and we should do all we can to counter it….
2024 will be the first election year to feature the widespread influence of AI before, during and after voters cast their ballots, including in the making and distribution of public messages about candidates as well as electoral processes.
Campaign Legal Center (CLC) has been working hard to help address the impact of AI on our democracy, including educating the public about what to expect in upcoming political campaigns and recommending policy solutions lawmakers should adopt to mitigate the greatest risks to our election system.
CLC has particularly highlighted the danger of political ads that use AI technology to generate deceptively realistic false content — such as “deepfakes,” which are manipulated media that depict people doing or saying things they didn’t say or do, or events that didn’t really occur — to mislead the public about what candidates are asserting, their positions on issues, and even whether certain events actually happened. If left unchecked, these fraudulent and deceptive uses of AI could infringe on voters’ fundamental right to make informed decisions.
In addition to influencing the voters’ perceptions of candidates, AI could be used to manipulate the administration of elections, including by spreading disinformation to suppress voter turnout.
All I can say is ‘Voter Beware’!
If you have question then contact your local election commission directly and get good info….after all it is your vote and it is valuable.
Be Smart!
Learn Stuff!
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”
Pain kept me awake last night and as I was trying to find something to watch on the tube I cam across a Trump ad…..one of his idiot sons is asking for donations….”$5, $10 $25 whatever you can spare”…begging for donations….is the cash running short?
I know the campaigns are weeks away from the official start of the election….but they all need cash…..and a Trump son is begging for dollars.
I recall the days when Trump was an opponent of early voting and mail-in voting because according to him the ripe for fraud.
But was then….this is now….
It appears that Donald the Orange has flip-flopped on his original opposition to early voting….
“You know mail-in voting is largely corrupt,” Donald Trump told a rally last month. But the Republican presidential candidate can’t win without votes, and he’s thought better of that stance. His team has joined with the Republican National Committee to launch a campaign encouraging supporters to cast their ballots by mail for the November election or otherwise participate in early voting, the Hill reports. “You need to make a plan, register, and vote any way possible,” Trump says in a video kicking off the campaign.
The effort is called “Swamp the Vote,” and Trump says he needs a huge turnout to defeat Democrats. “The way to win is to swamp them, if we swamp them with votes they can’t cheat,” he said in a statement. Plans call for providing potential voters with information on how to vote in various ways under their state’s laws. States encouraged voting in ways other than standing in line at a polling place after the pandemic hit. Trump opposed that effort, saying, “I think a lot of people cheat with mail-in voting.” A Washington Post analysis of data from three states at the time found no evidence of widespread fraud.
A Pew poll earlier this year found majority support for early voting and mail-in voting. Democrats supported mail-in options much more than Republicans did, per the Hill. The chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee told the Post that his party needs to get its voters to cast ballots earlier and that he’s pleased by Trump’s change. “President Trump wants to win,” Sen. Steve Daines said. “And this is a winning strategy.”
Quite the turn around…if you recall (hahaha-sorry) the Trump organization sued Nevada back in 2020 over mail-in votes….
A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit from President Trump’s reelection campaign challenging Nevada’s new vote-by-mail law, saying the campaign failed to show how it could be harmed by the law. The campaign, which has filed lawsuits in several states over voting rules, had asked the judge to block the law, which calls for mail-in ballots to automatically be sent to all active Nevada voters.
And now he has a new found desire for these votes.
Is this a good sign that his campaign is struggling to find enough votes?
What else will he flip-flop on as the election draws near?
Any thoughts?
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”
It is 2024 and Biden and the Dems thought they had a magic bullet to help bring in young voters….the student loan forgiveness.
I wrote about this just last month….
The Young Are The Problem
And the news just keeps getting worse for Biden and the Dems….
With the 2024 election just over six months away, President Biden is working with two big thorns in his side that threaten to damage his reelection bid: Israel’s continued war against Hamas in Gaza, and the subsequent campus protests that are roiling colleges and universities across the US. Axios notes that the commander in chief is routinely heckled now at his various public appearances over these topics, but there’s one group in particular that may prove especially worrisome for Biden: young voters from his own party, with support plummeting at an “increasing pace of concern,” Elise Joshi of Gen-Z for Change tells the Hill. More:
- Poll I: It’s not great news for Biden on this front. A Harvard Youth Poll from last month showed that 45% of young adults ages 18 to 29 would vote for Biden, with 37% for Trump. For context, at this point in the 2020 election, Biden led Trump 60% to 30%.
- Poll II: In a CNN poll released last month, Biden trailed Trump by 11 percentage points among voters under the age of 35; the poll does note that “Biden’s deficit with voters in that group is driven largely by those who did not vote in 2020.” Once that group was removed from the equation, it’s Trump 47%, Biden 46%.
- Tweet warning: The Washington Post calls attention to a tweet this week from the College Democrats of America, the DNC’s college arm, which read, “College Democrats’ votes are not to be taken for granted by the Democratic Party. We reserve the right to criticize our party when it fails to listen to us.” The Post notes that this points out another challenge for Team Biden: “Even young people who are Democrats often aren’t super strong Democrats.”
- Still: In a lengthier statement cited by the New York Times, the College Democrats stress that they’re “committed to the reelection of President Biden and Democrats across down-ballot races in every corner of our nation.”
- James Carville: The Democratic strategist concurs that there are red flags. “It’s horrifying our numbers among younger voters, particularly younger Blacks, younger Latinos … younger people of color. Particularly males,” he said in his podcast last month, per the New York Post. “We’re not shedding them—they’re leaving in … droves.”
- Young progressives: Biden needs them in his corner, per NPR, which takes a look back at how Biden teamed up with former presidential rival Bernie Sanders four years ago, after Sanders dropped out of the race, to draw in voters from the Sanders camp. The outlet suggests he’ll have to work even harder to do so this time around.
- Voter chat: PBS talked with four young constituents in the expected swing state of Michigan, with only one of them saying they’d cast a vote for Biden. Check out their conversation here.
Does not look good for Biden according to recent polls….but does the Dems and Biden have another ‘magic bullet’ in their bag of whimsy?
I say they do not….for the young are seeing the Dems as no better than Repubs….both are greedy and very corruptible.
This is a very interesting turn of events….and the Dems are too thick to see the problem.
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”
We have an election coming our way in just a matter of months and I have noticed the interest in it is not very good and seems to be waning daily.
In years past an election was a time for the exchange of ideas and debate….these days it is a time for yawns and head shaking.
I am not thrilled with the choice of candidates but I am old and set in my ways…..but the real problem is the younger voter…..it seems they are turned off by Biden and Trump both….
David Brooks, a shill for special interests, thinks Biden has a problem…..
David Brooks says he still thinks President Biden is the Democrats’ strongest candidate for president, but he’s getting more pessimistic about his chances of beating Donald Trump in November. For starters, Brooks writes at the New York Times, many voters simply prefer Republicans “on key issues like inflation and immigration.” But Biden also has a big problem with young voters, Brooks writes. He cites a recent NBC News poll that found only 64% of voters are highly interested in the election, down from 77% in 2020—and among voters 18 to 34, the figure is just 36%.
That might be partly due to the advanced age of both candidates, Brooks writes, but “part of it is also about Biden’s approach to the Israel-Hamas war,” which has been more strongly criticized by young people than other groups. “I think what we’re seeing at Columbia and on other elite campuses is a precursor to what we’re going to see at the Democratic convention in Chicago,” writes Brooks. He characterizes the clashes between police and leftist protesters at the 1968 Democratic convention as an “early marker of the differences between the more-educated and less-educated classes. They were part of the trend that sent working-class voters to the GOP.”
If there are similar clashes at the August convention, “the chaos will reinforce Trump’s core law-and-order message,” Brooks writes. “It will make Biden look weak and hapless.” Click for his full piece. The NBC poll found that Biden and Trump are “essentially tied” among voters 18 to 34, with Biden at 44% and Trump at 43%. Biden’s problem with younger Americans isn’t just about Gaza, writes Philip Bump at the Washington Post. He notes that YouGov polling of registered voters going back to 2021 shows big swings in support for Biden among younger voters—but Gallup polling of all Americans shows younger people “are consistently less approving of Biden than Americans overall.”
A fearmongering piece….trying to influence people with suppositions.
I can understand why the young have a problem with Biden….for I have a problem with his old ass….but where will the young put their vote that is if they bother to vote?
One tactic was the student loan debacle….trying to get on the good side of young voters.
Will it work?
Will they vote for Trump?
Interesting demographic that could make the difference in this election.
Any thoughts?
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”
We can say a lot of things about the upcoming election…..for me it is a contest between Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dummer….on one side we have a person that spews hatred and bias and on the other we have a spineless tool that makes promises only to work on them just before an election….so for me this election is a lose-lose scenario.
Beyond my personal opinion a dictatorship looms and many Americans say they do not want such and all the while they are helping create the thing they do not want.
Whether a glass is half full or half empty is a matter of perspective. The same can be said about the half of Americans who oppose the idea of allowing presidents to rule unilaterally—an exercise of monarchical power favored by only a fifth of us. I like to look on the bright side, so I take it as a win that those opposing unrestrained executive power far outnumber those who favor it. Still, it would be better if, in a republic established two and a half centuries ago, more than half the population would commit to the proposition that turning the country into a dictatorship would be bad.
“About half of the public think it would be a bad idea if the next president is able to act on important policy issues without the approval of Congress or the courts,” the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research reports of the results of a survey of 1,282 adults conducted March 21-25. “Only 21% think it would be a good thing, and about 30% think it’s neither good nor bad.”
In the poll, 48 percent overall oppose unilateral presidential rule, including 58 percent of Democrats and 45 percent of Republicans. The 21 percent favoring the idea include 17 percent of Democrats and 26 percent of Republicans. Support for unrestrained executive power rises to 39 percent among Democrats in the case of a Biden win in November, and to 57 percent of Republicans if Trump wins.
Interestingly, the AP-NORC results are nearly identical to those found by the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics in 2021. At the time, pollsters reported “roughly 2 in 10 Trump and Biden voters strongly agree it would be better if a ‘President could take needed actions without being constrained by Congress or courts.'” Among Biden voters, 22 percent strongly agreed with the idea, compared to 19 percent of Trump voters (over 40 percent of both at least “somewhat agreed” with the idea of an unrestrained presidency).
Americans Don’t Want a Dictatorship, but They’re Creating One Anyway
Maybe it is time to take a hard look at your political priorities….the thing that you dislike the most may be the very thing you are helping create.
Just a lowly observation….
Pay Attention!
Be Smart!
Learn Stuff!
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”
In a twist of the dagger voters are trying to get the attention of candidates….trying to have them mend their idiotic ways.
The new movement is to vote ‘uncommitted’…..
It all began in Michigan…..
If President Biden thought Michigan’s sizable “uncommitted” protest vote in the state’s primary last month was a fluke, he learned otherwise on Super Tuesday. In Minnesota, for example, about 19% of voters checked the “uncommitted” option, largely in protest of Biden’s support of Israel in the Hamas war. The results “again raised uncomfortable questions” for Biden not only regarding the remaining primaries but the general election as well, per Reuters. The results, as laid out by Axios:
- North Carolina: About 88,000 uncommitted votes, or 12.7%
- Massachusetts: 55,800, 9.4%
- Minnesota: 45,900, 18.9%
- Colorado: 43,400, 8.1%
- Alabama: 11,200, 6%
- Tennessee: 10,400, 7.9%
- Iowa: 480, 3.9%
- Spreading? In Minnesota’s case, the state has a sizable population of Somali residents, but the large percentage of dissatisfied voters suggests anger over Biden’s support of Israel has “spread beyond Muslim Americans to progressives and younger voters,” per the New York Times. The Hill similarly points to a “wave of urgency among progressive Americans” on the issue.
- White House responds: “The president believes making your voice heard and participating in our democracy is fundamental to who we are as Americans,” said campaign spokeswoman Lauren Hitt early Wednesday, per the Times. “He shares the goal for an end to the violence and a just, lasting peace in the Middle East. He’s working tirelessly to that end.”
- Harris’ speech: Another sign that the White House is taking this seriously is that VP Kamala Harris delivered a strong call for a ceasefire in a speech last week. “I don’t think the vice president would have made such a sweeping statement if Super Tuesday wasn’t happening, and we have been seeing the same thing with President Biden,” Asma Nizami, an organizer of Vote Uncommitted in Minnesota, tells Reuters.
Biden and his gang will say and do anything to try and stave off this movement…..they will lie and misinform, the same as any candidate would do, but it is time to cut through the BS and Americans to make their feelings be known and if this is what it takes then I am all for it.
Me? I could not vote ‘uncommitted’ for my state you can only have 2 choices, GOP or Dem, and I think both are as worthless as they come.
This is a great idea and we should carry it forward from these primaries.
Put some fear in these slugs….fear of the people which they have bred out of Americans….time to re-awake our political spirit and time to make government truly….’of the people, by the people and for the people’.
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”
College of Political Knowledge
2024 Election Series
Today will be a day to remember….the bitter biting cold all the way South to Northern Mississippi and the vote in Iowa (that is if people can actually get out of their homes to vote).
With all this adversity what can we expect from the voters in Iowa on such a day?
Today’s the (extremely frigid) day: Iowa caucusgoers will come together at 8pm EST in some 1,500 locations across the state to debate their options and then cast their secret ballots. Aside from the much-discussed weather—the AP reports temps are expected to be the coldest ever recorded on a caucus night—here are the five biggest storylines to watch:
- Just how big will Donald Trump’s margin be: Polling suggests Trump has a win in the bag, meaning the real question is whether he manages to hit 50%. If he does, “the notion that Republicans are hungry for an alternative becomes far less believable,” reports NBC News. “He could head to New Hampshire with an imposing air of inevitability.” If he doesn’t, that could give momentum to whoever places second.
- And could that margin be record-setting big? The AP reports Bob Dole holds the record for the biggest margin of victory for an Iowa Republican caucus. He finished nearly 13 percentage points ahead of his rivals in 1988, a figure that Trump has predicted he will best Monday night.
- Who will take second? The No. 2 position, and whether it goes to Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis, is in many ways the one to watch. NBC News frames it as a “make-or-break” finish for DeSantis, as he’s polling behind Haley in New Hampshire and South Carolina, two states coming down the pike. And as the BBC puts it, “If one of these two opens some daylight between the other … it could elevate that candidate as the top alternative to Mr. Trump in the contests to come.”
- Where will the turnout count land? The record number of Republican caucus participants was set in 2012, when 118,411 of them showed up. Some campaigns had been expecting the caucusgoer count could surge to nearly 200,000 people thanks to the caucuses aligning with a federal holiday. But the weather is proving to be a major wildcard.
- Have the rules of the ground game changed? Candidates have long tried to woo caucusgoers by spending plenty of time in the state, “but, like much else in the Trump-era, that old rule may be out the window,” observes ABC News. While DeSantis did as has conventionally been done, visiting each of the state’s 99 counties and hosting 169 events over 61 days, Trump has made only 35 appearances in 21 days. Vivek Ramaswamy, who is polling in the single digits, has held 326 events over 89 days.
I would not be concerned with the Iowa for Iowa has not picked the candidate since 2000 when they went with GW Bush.
Iowa is for political nerds like me…..other than that it is just another day for most of us.
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”
It’s that magical time again!
Time is closing in for the citizens of America to go to the polls and vote for their choice for president.
And now the opinion pieces will begin for those people that vote outside the two party system.
Some may choose not to vote….and there will be those that will ostracize those people that by not voting they are helping elect this slug over this……and if there is no choice that represents their principles then I say do not vote just because some lay-about wants to chide you into doing something you do not want to do.business as usual no matter the party.
Then there are those voters like myself that could possibly vote for a third party we will not vote for one of the two parties that will do nothing for the country….I do not buy into the popular BS that by voting for a third party you will elect this candidate over that.
Either one of those unpopular options is a personal choice and as such everyone needs to just STFU.
You see my vote is just that…MINE and no one has the right to question what I do with it.
For one reason that I vote other than the two majors…..I feel they have f*cked up our democracy…..
The most compelling theory based on historical patterns of democratic decline is that hyper-polarization cracked the foundations of American democracy, creating the conditions under which a party could break democratic norms with impunity, because winning in the short term became more important than maintaining democracy for the long term.
In order for democracy to work, competing parties must accept that they can lose elections, and that it’s okay. But when partisans see their political opposition not just as the opposition, but as a genuine threat to the well-being of the nation, support for democratic norms fades because “winning” becomes everything. Politics, in turn, collapses into an all-out war of “us against them,” a kind of “pernicious polarization” that appears over and over again in democratic collapses, and bears a striking similarity to what’s currently happening in the U.S.
Why The Two-Party System Is Effing Up U.S. Democracy
It is an older story but it still rings true today.
The theory today is that if there is not a good choice in the two parties then the voter should just hold their noses and vote for the least offensive.
Sorry I do not subscribe to this lunacy.
If one has principles then one should vote for the person that best represents those principles….no matter the party.
To recap…..your vote is your vote please do not piss it away on the ‘hold your nose’ vote.
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”