Go Vote!
[ Posted Tuesday, November 8th, 2022 – 14:14 UTC ]
At this point, there's only one thing left to say:
-- Chris Weigant
Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant
Archive of Articles in the "Elections" Category
Stress Test
[ Posted Monday, November 7th, 2022 – 16:06 UTC ]
The American system of holding elections is about to go through a stress test. I saw this term in the headline of a Washington Post piece today and had to agree it was the correct term to use. A stress test, whether for a piece of software or a new gizmo, is essentially the quality assurance/quality control people beating the living daylights out of it until it crumbles. For online software, this might mean simulating millions of people trying to access it simultaneously (see: Obamacare marketplace website rollout). For a new doodad, it might mean dropping it from increasing heights until it shatters when it hits. The whole idea is to push beyond the limits to find out the breaking point, one way or another.
Friday Talking Points -- Get Out And Vote!
[ Posted Friday, November 4th, 2022 – 16:17 UTC ]
Some weeks, we pre-empt our own talking points here and just deliver a rant (because sometimes the circumstances seem to almost require it). This week, however, we're going to pre-empt the entire Friday Talking Points column. For some reason, we just don't think handing out awards to Democrats (good and bad) or providing talking points is the important thing, this week. At this point, the Democratic talking points are kind of set in stone; new ones wouldn't do much good with such little time between now and Election Day.
What Has Changed In The Past Two Years
[ Posted Thursday, November 3rd, 2022 – 15:47 UTC ]
Two years ago today, we were all glued to our television sets to find out who had won the 2020 presidential election. We didn't find out that night, of course, we had to wait days and days before the final results were in: Joe Biden had decisively beaten Donald Trump, with the exact same Electoral College split as happened in 2016 -- an election Trump had always liked to refer to as "a landslide."
President Biden's Speech On Democracy
[ Posted Wednesday, November 2nd, 2022 – 17:55 UTC ]
In the past week or so, the Democratic Party has been doing an excellent job of getting out on the campaign trail and making a closing political argument. Both Barack Obama and Bill Clinton have made or will make appearances. President Joe Biden's speech today is a part of this full-court press, but one has to wonder why it took the Democrats so long to get so engaged with the process.
A Shift In Storyline?
[ Posted Tuesday, November 1st, 2022 – 15:23 UTC ]
Perhaps things aren't quite as bad for Democrats as the storyline the entire political media universe has been echoing for the past week or so. That's the message today, and it is an interesting one indeed for Democrats to see. For a while now, the political press has had a rather gloomy outlook: "Democrats peaked too early on the abortion issue and the momentum has now officially shifted to the Republicans in the midterm election races." Now, I'll admit I haven't been following the polls as closely as I do during presidential election years, so I didn't notice something that has apparently been happening (but, to be fair, few others had commented on it either) -- virtually all of the polling done in the past couple of weeks has been from Republican pollsters, not independent, nationally-known polling organizations. Which could explain the whole "momentum shift" as nothing more than bias induced into the polls themselves.
Horrifying Hallowe'en Tales For Left And Right
[ Posted Monday, October 31st, 2022 – 16:11 UTC ]
I almost didn't do a Hallowe'en column this year, because it's pretty obvious what both sides of the aisle would be frightened by. Who controls Congress after the midterms would have (as always) been the easy way to go with today's stories. I could have easily written the basic tales in one tweet: "Republicans win, Democrats horrified... or Democrats win, Republicans horrified."
Friday Talking Points -- Election Fears
[ Posted Friday, October 28th, 2022 – 17:20 UTC ]
We have to admit, we're more than a little worried about the upcoming midterm elections. Not about who will win (that's a different subject), but about the elections themselves. Because for the first time in a very long period in American history, one of the major political parties is openly attacking the election system itself. This is a dry run for the 2024 presidential election, and at this point it is impossible to say that Election Day (and the counting of the votes thereafter) won't be marred by intimidation, internal sabotage, and/or outright political violence. And that's a pretty sad state of affairs for American democracy.
Midterms Up For Grabs
[ Posted Thursday, October 27th, 2022 – 15:37 UTC ]
I start with a simple truth: nobody knows what the midterm election results will be. I don't know, you don't know, and the people who get paid to tell you they do also don't know. Of course, this is always true -- nobody can perfectly accurately predict the future -- but it used to be that politics was at least somewhat predictable. Polling would show what the voters were thinking, and it usually played out on Election Day.
Biden Attacks Junk Bank Fees
[ Posted Wednesday, October 26th, 2022 – 17:09 UTC ]
President Joe Biden made an announcement today that few people probably watched, but which will nonetheless help tens of millions of American families out in the future. This is all part of an ongoing effort (the president's "Competition Council") to end abusive practices in pricing by corporations and other businesses. Today, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced a new rule which will ban banks from charging two "junk fees" that are particularly insidious.