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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   21611 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 9, 2023

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Is Kennedy really likely to break double-digit polling and yet still leave Biden and Trump nearly tied? His biggest draw seems to be that he provides a face for vaccine skeptics, who are numerous and who are otherwise weirdly comfortable supporting the ex-President who first announced and to this day expresses pride about Operation Warp Speed ... so if Kennedy manages to win them over he's going to be drawing that population away from the Trump vote, not evenly away from both Trump and Biden.

I had my highest hopes in 2016, when Gary Johnson (a good governor, who won reelection 55-45 against a Hispanic Democrat challenger in a 40%-Hispanic blue state) was going up against the most-unpopular and the second-most-unpopular (as measured by opinion polls) major party presidential candidates ever. These hopes don't pan out. The mathematics of voting are complicated, but everybody has an intuitive understanding that a plurality vote for a non-frontrunner "doesn't count", so if someone's not neck-and-neck quickly or doesn't stay that way up to election day then they might as well be out of the race entirely. Kennedy's best chance lies in actuarial tables; an average 77-80 year old male has a 4-6% chance of dying in any given year.

I had my highest hopes in 2016, when Gary Johnson (a good governor, who won reelection 55-45 against a Hispanic Democrat challenger in a 40%-Hispanic blue state) was going up against the most-unpopular and the second-most-unpopular (as measured by opinion polls) major party presidential candidates ever. These hopes don't pan out. The mathematics of voting are complicated, but everybody has an intuitive understanding that a plurality vote for a non-frontrunner "doesn't count", so if someone's not neck-and-neck quickly or doesn't stay that way up to election day then they might as well be out of the race entirely. Kennedy's best chance lies in actuarial tables; an average 77-80 year old male has a 4-6% chance of dying in any given year.

It was the only time I voted in a presidential election. I was hoping Gary Johnson would at least get 5%. Which is a break even for certain legal thresholds in various places.

Otherwise my only motivation for voting is being able to say "I didn't vote for them" whenever the topic of the president comes up.

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