Sorry We Tried To Assassinate You!

 

The Mind of A Conservative (AKA A TEENAGER)

 

Dear Senate Republicans:

Suck it up, Republicans. Your guy lost. Deal with it.

Check that. He wasn't your guy. He was an elitist New York grifter, failed casino owner and con man who thinks he's better than everyone else, even though he's an ignorant dunderhead. He was a front man for the Russian mob who made a hostile takeover of the Republican party. You never liked him.

Trump's a loser. He's always been a loser. Even when he wins, he acts like a loser, whining about everything, lying about everything, even irrelevant nonsense like inauguration crowd size. 

So why do you want to drag out the unmitigated catastrophe of the Trump years? Why do want to risk him coming back in 2024? 

Senators, you must convict the bastard!

He got lucky and won in 2016 with the help of the Russians, and because everybody hates Hillary, even half the Democrats. James Comey hung her out to dry with his mishandling of the bogus email scandals, and the leaking by Rudy Giuliani's cronies in the New York FBI office of the equally bogus Weiner laptop scandal, just days before the election.

Every Republican knew Trump was a toxic serial rapist before the election, when he was caught on tape bragging about grabbing women by the pussy. He won the primary with grade-school tactics, insulting and spouting ridiculous lies about his Republican opponents, including some of your fellow senators. Remember Low-energy Jeb, Little Marco, and Trump's claim that Ted Cruz's dad shot JFK? 

Ted, how could you possibly support this weasel and carry his lying water for him? Have you no shame?

Trump continued his assault on allies in the Republican Party and his own employees throughout his term, trashing everyone from Jeff Sessions, to John Bolton, to Rex Tillerson, to John Kelly, to Bill Barr. Every time Trump screwed the pooch, he blamed someone else and threw them under the bus. He displayed zero loyalty to his allies. To you, dear senators.

And then, on January 6, he sent a lynch mob to the Capitol to kill Mike Pence. And risked your lives in the process.

Everyone knows Trump lost. Everyone knows why Trump lost. But they're too afraid of him, and the crazies that he's been egging on for the last five years, to admit it. Republican office holders are getting death threats from people in their own party simply for obeying the law and keeping their vow to uphold the Constitution.

Yeah, I know, you're afraid for yourselves and your families. Well, join the club. These nutjobs have been plotting to kill -- and actually killing -- Democrats, Jews, Muslims, Mexicans for the last five years. Literally dozens of Trump supporters, like Cesar Sayoc, have been jailed for terrorist threats and murder.

Why would any sane person want to keep Trump around? The longer he has a voice in politics, the longer he'll rile up these crazies and the more people they'll threaten and kill. Including other Republicans, because Trump and his people want to instill fear and incite a race war.

Trump is a malignant narcissistic psychopath, and by his lights, if he can't be president, no one can. He'll burn the country to the ground if you don't stop him.

This clown has destroyed America's standing as a world power. He drove our trade deficit and national debt to record highs. He's the first president in forever to leave office with more people unemployed than when he came in. He's given over our foreign policy to the Russians and Israel. He's alienated all our allies. He surrendered to Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin and Hafez Assad and the Taliban. He coddled murderous dictators like Saudia Arabia's MBS and Turkey's Erdogan. The Iranians are back to enriching weapons grade uranium.

Almost half a million Americans are dead because he botched the coronavirus response.

Trump is a total failure. He is the biggest loser at all the things that really matter.

And, face it: there's nothing to worry about Biden and the Democrats being in charge. When Democrats come into power after a Republican destroys the economy things improve -- as it did with Roosevelt after Hoover, Clinton after Bush I, and Obama after Bush II. Biden won't be dictated to by the squad and Bernie because most congressional Democrats are moderate. And Trump has been such a disaster that there's just not enough money for the squad's wish list.

Just admit it: Republicans are terrible at running the country. You don't want government to succeed. You only have an opposition party mindset, you're only happy when you're whining and sniping at the "establishment" -- the people who run the government -- even when those people are you. Not wanting to do the job makes you unfit to actually do the job.

Trump losing is the best thing to happen to this country since the Allies won WWII. Businesses crave stability and predictability, but all Trump did was sow chaos, discord and uncertainty. And it's the best thing to happen to you, senators: you don't have to worry about Trump stabbing you in the back at every turn, or issuing some insane tweet in the middle of the night, destroying everything you worked on for the last year and a half.

So, dump Trump's big fat rump. Vote to convict!

Trump Screws His Supporters 10 Times Harder. Again.

Donald Trump loves to brag to about how he doesn't just get even, he hits back at his enemies 10 times harder. But the people he hurts the most are his employees (Mick Mulvaney, Jeff Sessions, Bill Barr, etc.), his business partners, his investors, his political allies, his wives, and his most rabid political devotees.

After Trump incited a mob outside the White House they rioted inside the Capitol. Four people died, one shot by capitol police as she lunged over a barrier.

These people are now screwed. They are facing years in prison for criminal destruction of property, terrorizing members of congress and numerous other charges. And these idiots documented their crimes on social media!

We have to pause to note that these white rioters were treated with kid gloves. Over the summer Black Lives Matter protesters were met by SWAT teams and the military decked out in riot gear, but Trump rioters, who for weeks had openly plotted on social media to invade the capitol building, were met only by a small capitol police force.

What was the FBI doing for the last two months since the election? Aren't they supposed to be tracking threats, foreign and domestic?

These people's lives are now ruined. And where was Trump? After inciting them to riot, he went back to the White House to watch the carnage on television.

And what the hell are these people been fighting for? Why do they want four more years of this clown?

The Trump years have been an unprecedented disaster. Three to four thousand people are dying every day from Covid -- that's eight 9/11s a week!

The economy is mess because of his idiotic tariffs and totally botched response to the pandemic.

Our government and corporate computer systems have been hacked by the Russians. And Trump has yet to say one bad word about Putin.

Kim Jong Un has continued to build nuclear weapons after making Trump look like an idiot for saying that he fell in love with the North Korean dictator.

Iran is back to enriching weapons grade uranium after Trump withdrew from the international agreement that prevented them from doing so. Trump's assassination of a popular Iranian general only made Iran more determined to defy him, rather than getting them to back down. And the Russians openly help the Iranians.

Taliban forces are taking Russian bounties to kill American troops, continuing to attack government officials and kill innocent civilians while Trump's negotiators try to make a "peace deal" with these psychopathic murderers. Trump's exit from Afghanistan will make our withdrawal from Vietnam look like a victory parade.

Russian TV set scenes of Trump's capitol riot to dramatic music, graphically showing how out of control the United States is, and how dangerous democracy is.

Notice how Russia so prominently figures when we talk about Trump. They are, after all, responsible for putting him in the White House. He is undeniably their creature.

Trump loves to claim that the rest of the world is laughing at us. Well, he's right now. The Russians are laughing. The Chinese are laughing. The North Koreans are laughing. The Iranians are laughing. They all think Trump is a joke. He can't even get Dictator 101 right.

Trump is the biggest loser. And nothing is more pathetic than a loser who keeps whining after he's been beaten. Trump isn't a man, he's a childish caricature reminiscent of Trelane in The Squire of Gothos.

But Canada, Australia, Europe, Australia, Great Britain, Japan and the rest of the free world are shocked and saddened by how far the United States has fallen, becoming yet another banana republic where crazies run riot in the capitol building.

Given all this, I still cannot comprehend why anyone would support this absolute scumbag. It has always been clear from the beginning that he does nothing but lie and make false promises that he'll never deliver on. He doesn't give a damn about anyone other than himself. He flushes his allies, employees and supporters down the toilet like yesterday's Big Mac, blaming them for his innumerable failures.

They are the American Carnage Trump promised us.

Some day, we can only hope, Trump supporters will realize they have been played and royally screwed by this animal. He is and always has been the very thing they claim to hate: the cosseted insider who manipulates the system in his own favor, repeatedly screwing over the people who got him there in the first place.

And then instead of rioting in the capitol, perhaps they'll have a few protests at Mar a Lago, or Trump Tower, or his lovely DC hotel, or at his several golf courses.

I Rest My Case

For many years, I've asserted that the right are domestic terrorists, traitors to our nation. Here is the incontrovertible evidence. 

In a couple of weeks, the Democrats will have total control of the federal government. I hope they Gitmo every single one of these fuckwits. 

Defund the Police Is a Bogus Slogan: Let's Fire Bad Cops! Instead

A while back Barack Obama made many Democrats and liberal pundits angry by criticizing the Defund the police slogan employed by many activists after Minneapolis cops murdered George Floyd in cold blood.

Obama said:

“You lost a big audience the minute you say it, which makes it a lot less likely that you’re actually going to get the changes you want done,” Obama told Peter Hamby, who hosts Good Luck America, a Snapchat political show. “The key is deciding, do you want to actually get something done, or do you want to feel good among the people you already agree with?”

Obama is right: Democrats would have done better in House and Senate races if activists had come up with a better slogan, one that didn't require a long drawn-out explanation.

 

The problem with Defund the police is not that it's a snappy slogan, it's a totally stupid slogan. It doesn't really get at the root of the problem, which is arrogant racists who, under color of authority, assault and murder the citizens paying their salaries.

Clearly, someone has to respond when burglars, rapists, muggers, and wife-beaters commit crimes. These responders are called police. These responders have to be paid. 

 

When you say Defund the police you immediately have to explain that you don't mean that police departments will get zero dollars, you really mean that their various functions should be redistributed among other departments, there should be better citizen oversight, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

 

Defund the police as a slogan is therefore stupid, self-contradictory, meaningless and totally impractical from the get-go.

A good slogan is clear, concise and requires no explanation. A good slogan is one that no reasonable person can disagree with. Make America great again doesn't require explanation, and it's not all that disagreeable except through its connection to that loser Trump.

 

Black lives matter requires no explanation. Some disagree with it, thinking that it somehow elevates Blacks above others, and respond angrily with, All lives matter.

 

No justice, no peace, a slogan from an earlier era, is viewed by some as threatening, but it's completely in line with American traditions like the Boston Tea Party, and echoes the words of Martin Luther King Jr.

A better slogan would address the real problem with policing, which is police who aren't held accountable when they abuse their authority. Something along the lines of Fire bad cops, or the rhyming variant No justice, no peace, no racist police.

There's a lot of talk about dismantling the "systemic racism" of police departments, but these days there aren't many laws on the books that explicitly target Blacks, like the old segregation laws.

 

Th real problem is that laws are selectively enforced by officers who act with impunity, protected by corrupt police unions. They target Black and Hispanic kids for smoking weed, while letting white kids off the hook. They patrol "high crime areas" (i.e., Black neighborhoods), stopping Blacks for loitering, vagrancy, and minor traffic infractions like rolling stops, improper lane changes and and burnt-out taillights, while ignoring the same violations in white neighborhoods.

 

Take a couple of recent examples: Breanna Taylor, a Black woman, died when cops broke into her apartment and killed her. Meanwhile, the Nashville bomber's girlfriend told police he was making bombs in his RV, and when cops politely knocked on his door, they just gave up he didn't answer. Is there any doubt that they would have crashed in right then and there had he been Black or Muslim?

Cities pay millions upon millions of dollars each year to citizens whose rights have been violated by bad cops. And these bad cops stay on the job because the police department can't fire them: they have numerous civil service protections and union contracts that tie the hands of city officials.

All too frequently police unions are the problem, rather than police departments. One example is the Police Benevolent Association (PBA) in Englewood, NJ. It kicked out several Black cops after they supported the police chief who cracked down on racist cops who sleep on the job.

The president of the Minneapolis police union, Bob Kroll, illustrates how corrupt some police unions are:

In the wake of George Floyd’s killing by now-former Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) officer Derek Chauvin, few have been inclined to defend Chauvin or his colleagues who stood by and watched as he suffocated Floyd to death. Few, that is, except Bob Kroll.

In a letter to membership, Kroll — the president of the MPD’s police union — referred to protesters outraged by police brutality as a “terrorist movement” and defended the officers who killed Floyd and were subsequently fired, arguing they were “terminated without due process” and lamenting, “What is not being told is the violent criminal history of George Floyd.” (Floyd had a criminal record, but mostly for nonviolent drug and theft charges.)

 

Hey, Bob: it was actually George Floyd who was terminated without due process.

 

Scott Walker destroyed the public sector unions in Wisconsin, but not police unions. That's because Republicans, who constantly do everything they can to undercut the power of the working man by dismantling unions, have made an unholy alliance with the police. 

 

Republicans depend on the police to enforce the racial hierarchy -- that's the real "order" Republicans are referring to when they say "law and order."

So, to all you sloganeers out there: come up with a snappy way to say Eliminate Corrupt Police Unions!

The Religion of the Right

The conservative of 2020 has turned worship of ME into a bona fide religion. They don't get the concept of WE or what it means to be in a society where we have to depend on each other. They have tapped into their inner adolescent rage against authority and made any sort of group work into communism. 

They are the ultimate teenager who DOESN'T WANNA! And BLOWS EVERYTHING OUT OF PROPORTION WITH EXAGGERATION!! Working together as a society becomes slavery in totalitarianism. 

To get a clearer picture of this selfishness on steroids, read this. 

And this. 

This would be why the rest of the world looks at us and wonders what FREEDUMB is...

Do The Hard and Tedious Work

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the outrage crowd on social media and how they consistently are counterproductive to their goal of equity (gender, race, sexual orientation). And, of late, public health. They employ strategies that never work. Why? 

Because their goals are different from what actual woke people want and are willing to sacrifice for. That’s why I call them fake woke. Their core goal is similar to an actor putting on a play. They want to turn out a good performance to impress like-minded people on social media. 

The right chastises this as “virtue signaling” but I think it’s far worse. It’s demonstrably corrosive to the causes I’ve dedicated my life and career to. So, to the “actors” out there, turn your passion into the work you are avoiding that our country needs you to do. 

Become a teacher, run for office, organize a group to lobby and petition the government. It won’t be easy and it will be long and sometimes tedious. But it’s what works.

Election Fraud in Federal Court

Re: Kevin Baker's latest post about election fraud.

If you are someone like Kevin who believes the myth that Democrats stole the 2020 election, please kindly cite your evidence that you would be willing to use in federal court to support your assertion. Remember, you can get in very serious trouble lying in a federal court. It's not a little blog that allows you to spout irrational nonsense. It's where grown-ups do business. 

No evidence? Nothing? Bueller? 

Then you are lying merely because you are butthurt about your guy losing. There is nothing more to this election than this:

Trump was an incompetent buffoon who literally killed Americans and the people voted him out.  

Now, go read Leon Festinger's When Prophecy Fails and learn from your cognitive dissonance. 

The Conservative Case for Abortion

It is high time the Right takes back the abortion issue and stops letting bleeding heart liberals like Pope Francis dictate our agenda.

First and foremost, Big Government should not be dictating what people do with their bodies. Government bureaucrats shouldn’t be able to prevent women from having abortions any more than they should take our guns away.

Second, let us dispense with the idea that an unborn fetus is “innocent.” The doctrine of Original Sin is well-established in Christianity, and it states that all descendants of Adam are as guilty as he was for eating the forbidden fruit. The unborn are guilty as sin, just like everyone else.

Now let us get down to cases.

Pregnancies resulting from sins should be freely terminated.

In instances of rape, you cannot allow a rapist to get away with impregnating a woman and forcing her to bear his child. It’s tantamount to slavery. Children born of such demonseed cannot be loved by their mothers, and society cannot be forced to support such children. And do we really want the children of rapists roaming the streets, destined to repeat their fathers’ sins?

Similarly, in pregnancies resulting from fornication, abortion must always be allowed. You cannot have Big Government forcing your daughters to bear the children of low-life boyfriends who can’t keep their dicks in their pants. And again, do we really want more children in our schools who are genetically predisposed to having casual unprotected sex, seducing our sons and daughters?

This is especially important in “urban America.” We have far too many welfare queens getting knocked up and then coming to Big Government for handouts to support their bastards.

People should be held responsible for their actions, and if they can’t afford to support their children, they shouldn’t have them. There’s a strong case for requiring abortions for unwed pregnancies, but we don’t want Big Government having too much control.

Pregnancies from adultery are even worse. No husband should be forced to support the bastard of a man who banged his wife. It would pile insult upon injury. The husband must be able to demand an abortion if the child is not his. This is literally in the Bible! (See below.)

And even if the child is the husband’s, an unexpected child can totally decimate a family’s finances. Liberals want everyone to have health insurance, but that’s just a Big Government pipe dream. The reality is that not everyone can afford the expense of nine months of pregnancy, which often prevents the wife from working and results in lost income in addition to the expenses, and then an expensive hospital delivery, perhaps requiring cesarean section and a lengthy hospital stay.

Bearing a child to term is far more dangerous than having an abortion: a woman is 14 times more likely to die in natural childbirth than to die from complications of an abortion. It is immoral for Big Government to risk killing a woman — leaving her husband bereft and her children motherless — for an unwanted child. 

Also, bearing children does a number on a woman’s body. It is excruciatingly painful, often requires procedures such as episiotomy, and can cause weight gain and stretch marks. Do you really want Big Government forcing you and your wife to go through that for a kid you never wanted? 

And then there are the expenses of having a child. It costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to house, feed and clothe a child for 18 years. We can’t let Big Government force us to do that if we don’t want to. It is an unfair tax. 

You know, accidents happen. Condoms break. Women forget to take their pills. The rhythm method ain’t perfect. 

Unwanted pregnancies put a huge strain on marriages, often resulting in divorce. Children change everything in a marriage. If a couple isn’t ready for a child, why should Big Government get involved and force them to have it right then and there?  

Another way of looking at an accidental pregnancy is as an assault on your property rights. If a vagrant randomly wanders into your house and starts eating your food and taking your money, you have the right to shoot them.

It’s the same with an unwanted pregnancy: it’s an invader in your wife’s womb, threatening your entire economic future, eating your food and taking your money. You have the right to defend your property from such an invasion with any necessary force, even if it happened by accident. 

Conservatives used to support abortion rights. But then that phony Hollywood actor, Ronald Reagan — who was a Democrat and president of SAG, the liberal actors union — conned conservatives into opposing abortion so that they could leverage single-issue Catholic and evangelical voters. 

Do conservatives really want to abandon their principles for a few votes from papists and religious nut jobs who think the Second Coming is just around the corner? 

Because even the Bible doesn’t prohibit abortion: Exodus 21:22-25 makes it clear that the fetus is not a person, but the property of the husband: “If people are fighting and hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman’s husband demands and the court allows.” 

That is literally the passage immediately preceding “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” 

In fact, the Bible prescribes abortion in cases of adultery: Numbers 5:16-22 describes how a priest should curse a suspected adulteress to force a miscarriage with “bitter water.” The ancients knew how to induce an abortion and approved of doing so.

For too long conservatives have let liberals dictate what we stand for, by our automatic inclination to oppose everything that liberals support. 

Conservatives stand for the right to bear arms. We stand for the death penalty. We have the right to assassinate terrorists wherever we find them. We have the right to defend our homes and property with deadly force. We can’t let Big Government whimper about innocent unborn lives and dictate what our wives and daughters do with their bodies. 

If we can defend our property with deadly force from living, breathing burglars who have wives and children, certainly we can protect our marriages and economic futures from zygotes nobody wants that aren’t even real people.

---

Clearly I do not agree with most of the sentiments outlined here. What this argument demonstrates is that conservative opposition to abortion is not about principle, it's about opportunism.

There is no morality or ethics in modern conservative thought. Their arguments and mindset can be used to justify pretty much anything. 

Conservatives' rabid support for Donald Trump, a man totally lacking in honor, loyalty and concern for the public good and the future of this nation, demonstrate how utterly corrupt they have become.

The right needs to stop falsely claiming that the Nazis were socialists

Great piece by Ronald J. Granieri from last February. It breaks down the complete nonsense of the Nazis being leftists. 

I get it, right-wingers. It's very overwhelming for you when you get upset at the left. You like to create drama. But this is just out and out lying. Further, it obfuscates the actual authoritarianism of the right. Goebbels 101.

Liberals and moderates need to go on offense with this stuff. Pummel the right for being the obvious dictators they want to be. Never let up. More stuff like Moscow Mitch! 

Breaking Down Right Wing Blog Cult Bullshit

The Fucking Hammer

There has been a lot of talk lately about coming together and looking at each other not as liberals or conservatives but as Americans. My interest in doing this begins when conservatives in our country own their insane bullshit. 

The facts are that they are in a cult and have spent the better part of three decades demonizing liberals. They have done a great job of getting people to believe that “both sides” are just as bad and there are such things as “alternative facts.” They have actively worked to erode faith in our institutions for the express intent of holding on to their slipping power. 

If they take responsibility for all this crap, I’m more than willing to address the minor transgressions of the left (cancel culture, partisan spin). Until then, they get the hammer.

Every. Single. Day.

Rudy Melts Down Amid Republican Campaign to Disenfranchise Voters

In trying to steal the 2020 election, the Trump campaign must be getting tired of all that losing. A conservative Republican Pennsylvania judge just tossed out Trump's case, ridiculing Trump's legal team. In particular, Rudy Giuliani is doing an absolutely abysmal job while literally melting down.

The Trump campaign’s main argument challenges an email that Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar sent to county-level voting officials, encouraging those officials to “provide information to party and candidate representatives during the pre-canvass that identifies the voters whose ballots have been rejected,” so that those voters can be notified that they made an error while submitting those ballots, and will have the opportunity to cure that error.

As it turns out, not all counties took this advice. The Trump campaign claims that Philadelphia, a Democratic stronghold, notified voters that they needed to cure errors in their absentee ballots, while county officials in Republican-leaning counties did not. Thus, the campaign claims, absentee ballots cast in Biden-friendly Philadelphia were more likely to be counted than ballots cast in more Trump-friendly regions of the state — and this discrepancy amounts to unconstitutional discrimination.

The judge dismissed this argument as total crap. The Republican officials who didn't allow ballot curing were the ones doing the unconstitutional discrimination: suppressing Democratic votes to steal the election. 

Trump has been doing everything in his power to discourage Republicans from voting by mail, encouraging them to vote in person on election day (and to vote twice, causing even more mayhem and confusion on election day). That means absentee ballots are going to skew Democratic. 

Republican county officials refused to allow absentee ballots to be "cured," knowing that they were more than likely to be Democratic.

There's nothing at all wrong with curing ballots. It's done all the time: when you vote in person your ballot is run through the tabulator, and if there are any inconsistencies the machine spits it out and you get a new ballot. This is almost always innocent: for example, accidentally voting for two judges in the same race, which is really easy to do when there are like 20 judge races, most of which only have one candidate.

Republican officials -- intentionally disregarding instructions from the secretary of state -- prevented voters from fixing erroneous mail-in ballots stole votes from people who made trivial clerical errors.

Those Republican officials should be prosecuted for disenfranchising voters. But, like always, the Republicans are trying to their own crimes to their advantage.

Radical New Democratic Ideas

 

Is this the world that the "far-left" wants? OMGGG!!!!!!! Hide the women and children. Evil is about to reign down on all of us. Soon we will be floating in a boiling pit of sewage...

The Year 2020

2020 has been labeled many things but the simple fact is that it will be remembered for the year that alternative facts literally killed Americans. 

And our national obsession with “both sides” let those responsible (conservatives) off the hook.

What I Wish Would Happen, What Actually Happens

What I Wish Would Happen: 

 

-Facts are presented. 

-People change their minds based on reality. 

-People are more enlightened and humanity progresses 

What Actually Happens: 

-Facts are presented. 

-People experience cognitive dissonance and feel personally attacked. 

-People dig into their beliefs, refused to be enlightened and we don’t progress.

The Guide On The Side

With much of the country steeped in distance learning, an inherent flaw in our education system has been exposed. This flaw is one of perception by the general public and has unfortunately been fueled by many in the field of education. In fact, it's a belief that needs to be extinguished. Here it is... 

The responsibility of education lies solely with educators. In fact, it lies primarily with parents and the scholars themselves. 

If neither takes this responsibility seriously or understand how to assume this responsibility, then school officials face a losing battle. 

This is what we need to teach the families of our country. Teach your children at the earliest age possible to take control of their learning. Devote time to supporting them in this endeavor. Show them successful ways to learn and be good scholars. 

And educators, you aren't the "Sage on the Stage." You should be the Guide on the Side. That's what leads to more successful scholars. They need to own it. So do their parents. Give them the space to do that. 

If we don't burst this myth and change our course, we will have serious problems with people who can't function for themselves in our culture.

The Problem with Polling

There's a lot of handwringing in the press about polls that indicated Joe Biden would win by a larger margin than he actually did:

While the polls generally underestimated Trump, the errors were more acute in some states. In Wisconsin, which has mostly completed its count, Biden won by seven-tenths of a percentage point, 49.6 percent to 48.9 percent. But that’s after taking an 8.4-point lead into Election Day in the FiveThirtyEight average.

Other states where the polls missed: Ohio, where Trump had an advantage of 0.8 points in the FiveThirtyEight average, currently shows an 8.2-point lead for Trump in the vote count. In Florida, preelection polls showed Biden up by an average of 2.5 points, suggesting the Democrat had a slight edge in an election he’s currently trailing by 3.2 points.

There were some polls that hit the mark in those states. Trafalgar Group, which says it tries to account for respondents who lie to pollsters about their support for Trump, performed well in Wisconsin (Biden +1 in their last poll) and Florida (Trump +2). But the firm also released other polls that overstated Trump’s position, like a survey in too-close-to-call Georgia that showed Trump leading by 5 points, and one in Michigan that gave Trump a slight edge in a state he lost by 3 points.

Still, the more common miss for public pollsters was in the other direction. The ABC News/Washington Post poll in October showing Biden ahead by 17 in Wisconsin got a lot of ink as an outlier, but the problems were more pervasive than that. The final New York Times/Siena College polls in Wisconsin and Florida had Biden up 11 points and 6 points, respectively.

There are lots of theories as to why this is the case. Some theorize that Trump voters are "shy;" which is the politically correct way of saying that Trump voters are ashamed to admit they support such a morally and ethically corrupt scumbag.

Others say that Trump voters are just plain liars, trying to screw with the polls. Which doesn't really make any sense, because nothing ticks off Trump more than bad poll numbers.

The most likely reason, though, is what I've been saying for years: likely voters just don't answer their phones when pollsters call. Why would they? It's been at least a decade since I gave up answering the phone when I get a call from a number I don't recognize.

Before VOIP dialing technology made telephone spam calls the plague of the Internet age, I used to answer the phone. And back in the day I answered some political preference polls. 

 

But that brings up another issue: the polls themselves. The problem is that so many polls are dishonest "push polls." They aren't legitimate attempts by a news organization to find out how you plan to vote. They're run by political hacks who ask misleading questions packed with lies in an attempt to influence your vote.

The real question about polls in this election cycle is whether people were ashamed about voting for Trump and lied about it, or whether polling in general is just not working anymore. I think it's the latter, because so many polls got House and Senate races wrong too.

 

News organizations and political campaigns are seriously worried about whether polling is completely broken. Polls are useful for telling the general mood of the country, which is important for business as well as governance. Campaigns definitely need them to decide where to spend money.

 

But because legitimate polling organizations can't get through to a representative sample of the electorate, I think phone-based polling is done for.

It's likely that polling will be replaced by measuring people's online habits: their search engine queries, what Twitter feeds they follow, what Facebook posts they click on and share, what news sites they visit, etc. 

 

Which means the opinions of people who aren't online won't be measured, which includes the elderly and certain minority groups.

 

That also means that our online lives will be under even more scrutiny, and companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter will have even more power. 

Given what havoc Twitter and Facebook have wreaked on our lives these last five years, with all the evil misinformation and outright lies spread through them on the election and the pandemic, this is not a Good Thing.

Unless we all delete our Twitter and Facebook accounts, we are going to be one very unhappy and dysfunctional country.

Dear Democrats...

Democrats, the core goal of Republicans and conservatives is to get you to hand wring through trolling. That’s how they get you to put yourselves in losing positions. It’s a specific strategy. 

So, when you get shit for the lack of a blue wave (even though we still don’t know how things are going to clarify over the next few weeks), don’t fall for it. Be reflective, make changes but don’t fall back into running from a position of apology. That’s just what they want you to do because they know it’s a loser. 

If the Democrats want to fix their problems, they should put the following four people in charge of the party. 

Pete Buttigieg 

Stacey Abrams 

Rachel Bitecofer 

Andrew Yang