Former Vice President Joe Biden’s sure-shot lead over his 2020 Democratic competitors just suffered a major blow, according to a new HuffPost/YouGov poll reported by the Huffington Post‘s Ariel Edwards-Levy.
Make no mistake, Biden is still in the lead by double digits in most polls – although his popularity has clearly taken a big hit since early May, while candidates Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Kamala Harris saw healthy upticks following last week’s debates.
And according to the HuffPost/YouGov poll, Biden is now far less electable than he was in May, dropping from 70% to 57%. While this still places him above the pack, Warren and Harris appear to be within striking distance.
Here’s, I think, the major finding of this poll. Look how the field on electability has shifted since May from a clear Biden lead to a four-way top tier. (Note this is all Dem/Dem-leaning voters, not debate viewers.)https://t.co/CFj7w3TPdnpic.twitter.com/UsY6G2NmXb
According to those polled, Warren was a sharp debater, while Harris was “very direct” in her vision for the country. One respondent said that Harris “smoked Biden like a cheap cigar.”
Warren, who dominated the opening moments of the first debate, stood out because she “clearly articulated, explained, and defended her policy positions” wrote one Texas woman included in the poll. “She was focused, thoughtful, authoritative, and convincing. She seems to have improved her live performance skills and appeared unflappable. And very capable.”
During the second debate, Harris sliced through her rivals’ crosstalk and challenged Biden on his history with racial issues, such as busing. She was ”[v]ery direct in her plans and outspoken,” wrote another woman, who was polled shortly after that night. “To beat the aggressive president we have now the candidate will have to be just as aggressive.” –HuffPo
Below you can see how Democratic voters’ opinions changed for each candidate following the debates.
Of course, there are a few caveats to polls such as this:
In case people don’t feel like reading screenshots of text, the major caution I have is that none of these are horserace questions — a strong performance in the very first debate isn’t guaranteed to swing vote preference even temporarily, let alone for the actual election.
Just as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez shared her latest alarming claim about conditions in detention centers for illegal migrants crossing into the US, President Trump insisted on Monday that his administration still plans to carry out the mass ICE raids of migrants who have been given notices to leave the country.
As the controversy balloons over a Facebook group where border patrol agents reportedly shared sexually explicit depictions of AOC – including a cartoon allegedly showing her sucking off a migrant – AOC accused border agents of carrying out “psychological warfare” against detained migrants, whom AOC claimed were forced to drink toilet water.
There are 20,000 TOTAL Customs & Border Patrol agents in the US.
9,500 – almost HALF that number – are in a racist & sexually violent secret CBP Facebook group.
They’re threatening violence on members of Congress. How do you think they’re treating caged children+families? https://t.co/AfDB50cgHQ
After I forced myself into a cell w/ women&began speaking to them, one of them described their treatment at the hands of officers as “psychological warfare” – waking them at odd hours for no reason, calling them wh*res, etc.
Tell me what about that is due to a “lack of funding?”
Now I’m on my way to Clint, where the Trump admin was denying children toothpaste and soap.
This has been horrifying so far. It is hard to understate the enormity of the problem. We’re talking systemic cruelty w/ a dehumanizing culture that treats them like animals.
AOC’s latest twitter rant follows reports that agents used a secret Facebook group to share lewd posts about her another far-left progressive Democrat. CBP said it was aware of the group and was investigating the matter, while Trump said Monday that he was unaware of the situation.
But “Sandy from the Bronx” wasn’t the only Dem to make the salacious claim about migrants drinking from toilets. California Rep. Judy Chu made a similar claim, while Pennsylvania Rep. Madeleine Dean said conditions at the detention centers were “far worse than we ever could have imagined,” according to Bloomberg.
And just as she can take criticism, AOC proved during this trip that she can dish it out, too. According to a reporter from the Washington Examiner, AOC “screamed” at federal law enforcement agents during the trip “in a threatening manner.”
SCOOP: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., screamed at federal law enforcement agents “in a threatening manner” during a visit to a U.S. Border Patrol facility in El Paso, Texas, Monday afternoon and refused to tour the facility, according to two people who witnessed it.
All three lawmakers traveling with a group organized by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus to visit detention centers in El Paso and Clint, Texas, and do some investigating following a series of reports about the lack of access to “safe and sanitary” conditions in both towns.
During a televised press conference at Clint, AOC was ambushed by Trump supporters.
The uproar has caused border agents in El Paso to warn about the risk of riots by migrants being held in the overcrowded cells. According to Reuters.
Border Patrol agents “remained armed in the holding areas because of their concerns with the overcrowding that potentially could result in volatile situations (riots etc.)” or hunger strikes, the documents attached to the Office of Inspector General report revealed.
Meanwhile, according to CNN, Trump said he expects massive raids to round up migrants who have been issued notices to leave the country will be carried out soon after this weekend’s Fourth of July holiday, which could pair nicely with Trump’s promised but still not fully planned “Salute To America” military parade.
Trump shared his latest thoughts on the crisis at the border during an interview Monday from the Oval Office.
“They spend billions of dollars on the census, and you’re not allowed to ask whether somebody is a citizen?” Trump says on his fight to delay the 2020 census.
“There’s a big difference to me between being a citizen of the U.S. and being an illegal” pic.twitter.com/K61x4yIAvG
In a tweet last weekend, Trump delayed the raids – planned for 10 major American cities – for 2 weeks “at the request of Democrats,” ostensibly to give them time to try and hash out “a solution to the Asylum and Loophole problems” with Republicans.
At the request of Democrats, I have delayed the Illegal Immigration Removal Process (Deportation) for two weeks to see if the Democrats and Republicans can get together and work out a solution to the Asylum and Loophole problems at the Southern Border. If not, Deportations start!
Last week, the House passed a $4.6 billion aid package intended to ease the “humanitarian crisis” at the border, despite opposition from both Nancy Pelosi and Trump.
But once the raids happen, imagine how AOC and her band of far-left progressives will react? This could be the push that sends her over the edge in openly calling for revolution.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/325FKT1 Tyler Durden
Who had school busing in the betting pool for poll-moving Democratic presidential debate controversies? And yet here we are.
Well, if it’s racial discord and school choice that you want to talk about, then that’s exactly what you’ll get on today’s Editors’ Roundtable edition of the Reason Podcast. Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, Peter Suderman, and Matt Welch talk about their own personal histories with school integration, preferred remedies for helping disadvantaged students receive a better education, and what these debates mean for the modern Democratic Party.
Also under discussion today are shake-ups to the Beltway foreign policy consensus, the beating of Quillette writer Andy Ngo, whether it’s healthy for restaurants to deny service to Trumpites, and why Yoko Ono was the most underrated Beatle.
Losing ‘visibility necessary to attract the attention of college recruiters’
Boys are competing in girls’ track and field events in Connecticut, at the direction of the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference, so that transgender students don’t feel invalidated.
They are often winning, and the girls are afraid to publicly object for fear of “retaliation,” according to Selina Soule, one of the female competitors.
That’s why Soule and two of her unnamed female peers are asking the U.S. Department of Education to investigate CIAC for Title IX violations.
They contend CIAC’s new policy allows “boys who are male in every biological and physiological respect—including unaltered male hormone levels and musculature—to compete in girls’ athletic competitions if they claim a female gender identity,” according to the Title IX complaint filed on their behalf by the Alliance Defending Freedom.
The decision to let biological males compete has “deprived many girls of opportunities to achieve public recognition, a sense of reward for hard work, opportunities to participate in higher level competition, and the visibility necessary to attract the attention of college recruiters and resulting scholarships,” states the complaint, filed in mid-June.
This policy already has resulted in negative outcomes for Soule and the other unnamed minors in the complaint.
Two biologically male students, Andraya Yearwood and Terry Miller, have dominated the sport since they were allowed to compete against biological females. The two of them together have won as many women’s state championship titles (15) as did 10 girls who identify as girls in 2016, according to the complaint.
Yearwood and Miller have also “taken more than 40 opportunities to participate in higher level competitions from female track athletes in the 2017, 2018, and 2019 seasons alone.”
Soule shared her frustration with The Daily Signal in May. Two biologically male competitors took the spots ahead of her in the 55-meter dash, preventing her from competing in the New England regionals in front of college coaches.
“Everyone is afraid of retaliation from the media, from the kids around their school, from other athletes, coaches, schools, administrators,” said Soule, who alleges official retaliation against her for speaking out in the complaint.
“They don’t want to drag attention [sic] to themselves, and they don’t want to be seen as a target for potential bullying and threats,” she said.
Coach allegedly threatened to badmouth dissident female athlete to recruiters
The CIAC policy on transgender students differs from the NCAA’s, which requires males to take testosterone-suppressing hormones for at least a year before competing in a female sport. The only requirement in CIAC policy is that a student subjectively identify as the opposite sex.
The complaint features more than a dozen tables listing competition results and times for female athletes, and how biologically male athletes affected their placements. It says these are only “examples.”
It notes that Miller did not place in boys’ track competition in 2017 and winter 2018. Miller went on to great success only after competing in female track events starting that spring.
Biological males took first place in 13 out of 14 events for females, and 23 out of 28 when including second-place awards, in seven state-level competitions. They won “51 opportunities to participate in a higher-level state competition,” compared to 31 for girls.
The girls who filed the complaint also allege that the CIAC has participated in intimidation and retaliation against those who oppose the male-inclusive policy.
One of the mothers of the unnamed complainant repeatedly complained to the CIAC about the “discriminatory impact” that the new policy had on her daughter. The CIAC did not provide a “substantive response,” and Connecticut school officials attempted to dissuade her from filing a Title IX complaint, according to the complaint.
Soule contends that her mother’s outspoken opposition to the policy led her coaches to mistreat her.
Her track coach made her perform workouts that are uncommon for short-distance sprinters like her, “and has forbidden her from competing in any high school track and field event unless she completes them,” the complaint reads.
Another coach told Soule and her father that if a college recruiter asked about her, “he would not be able to give a good report about her.”
The complaint cites an anonymous female student quoted in The Daily Signal on her fear of retaliation for speaking out.
“There’s really nothing else you can do except get super frustrated and roll your eyes, because it’s really hard to even come out and talk in public just because … just immediately you’ll just be shut down,” she said.
The feds already approved transgender policy?
The complaint asks the government to forcibly overturn CIAC’s transgender policy, and ban it from letting students compete in girls’ athletics who are “in all physiological and hormonal respects males.”
Soule and the other two complainants also want records of past races to be revised to retroactively disqualify biologically male students from the female events. CIAC should also be ordered by the government to issue a press release giving credit to every female who would have placed if not for the policy.
Finally, the Department of Education should declare that CIAC’s policy violates Title IX. The complainants asked for a quick investigation so girls do not lose any more opportunities to boys in their competitions starting this winter.
CIAC did not respond to The College Fix’s request for comment. But Glenn Lungarini, its executive director, told The Hartford Courant that it discussed the policy language with both the Boston office of the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights and Connecticut’s human rights commission.
Yearwood and Miller, the biologically male athletes identified in the complaint, attacked the complainants in a statement to the Courant.
“I am a girl and I am a runner,” Miller said.
“I participate in athletics just like my peers to excel, find community and meaning in my life. It is both unfair and painful that my victories have to be attacked and my hard work ignored.”
Yearwood highlighted the “discrimination that I face as a young black woman who is transgender. … Every day I train hard — I work hard to succeed on the track, to support my teammates, and to make my community proud.”
Miller is also black. Their lawyers at the ACLU emphasized their race, which is objective, as well as their gender identity, which is not, in a statement to the newspaper.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2J2Yvid Tyler Durden
Guadalajara, Mexico was struck by a freak hail storm on Sunday, burying vehicles and trapping residents in ice pellets up to two meters (6.5 ft) deep, according to AFP.
“I’ve never seen such scenes in Guadalajara,” said state governor, adding “Then we ask ourselves if climate change is real. These are never-before-seen natural phenomenons.”
“It’s incredible!”
Guadalajara, located north of Mexico City and with a population of around five million, has been experiencing summer temperature of around 31 Centigrade (88 Fahrenheit) in recent days.
While seasonal hail storms do occur, there is no record of anything so heavy.
At least six neighborhoods in the city outskirts woke up to ice pellets up to two meters deep. –AFP
As children threw rock-hard ice balls at each other, Mexican Civil Protection personnel and state soldiers cleared the roads using heavy machinery.
Approximately 200 hopes and businesses reported hail damage, while around 50 vehicles were swept away in mountainous regions. Some were buried completely under the deluge of pellets.
No casualties were reported, however two people exhibited “early signs of hypothermia” according to the Civil Protection office.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2XbmUpK Tyler Durden
Who had school busing in the betting pool for poll-moving Democratic presidential debate controversies? And yet here we are.
Well, if it’s racial discord and school choice that you want to talk about, then that’s exactly what you’ll get on today’s Editors’ Roundtable edition of the Reason Podcast. Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, Peter Suderman, and Matt Welch talk about their own personal histories with school integration, preferred remedies for helping disadvantaged students receive a better education, and what these debates mean for the modern Democratic Party.
Also under discussion today are shake-ups to the Beltway foreign policy consensus, the beating of Quillette writer Andy Ngo, whether it’s healthy for restaurants to deny service to Trumpites, and why Yoko Ono was the most underrated Beatle.
Here is an accurate description of a new study‘s conclusions: “As Donald Trump secured greater support from Republicans and as the 2016 general election neared, pro-Trump content produced by a Russian bot got more attention on Twitter.”
The paper compares the popularity of Trump’s candidacy to the popularity of more than 700,000 English-language tweets sent by various accounts linked to the Russian-based Internet Research Agency (IRA). The study’s authors found that every 25,000 retweets of IRA-run Twitter accounts correlated to a 1 percent uptick for Trump in presidential election polls.
Correlated being the key word there. Because if you ignore the distinction between correlation and causation, you might end up drawing a conclusion like this:
Or like this
Those are good ways to fire up the #Resistance, but both are misleading interpretations of the study, which was published today by First Monday, a peer-reviewed journal dedicated to studying internet phenomena.
The study’s authors themselves point out the limitations inherent in their analysis, which was intended to test “prediction, not causality.” Indeed, they stress that “it seems unlikely that 25,000 re-tweets could influence one percent of the electorate in isolation.
More to the point, they caution that “any correlation established by an observational study could be spurious.” Despite a strong correlation between Trump’s popularity and increased Twitter-based interest in the Russian bot accounts, “There could still be a third variable driving the relationship between IRA Twitter success and U.S. election opinion polls,” they write. “We controlled for one of these—the success of Donald Trump’s personal Twitter account—but there are others that are more difficult to measure; including exposure to the U.S domestic media.”
It would hardly be surprising to learn that more Americans became more engaged in politics as the 2016 election drew nearer, or that there would be a larger audience for pro-Trump content on Twitter as the primaries concluded and inter-GOP opposition to Trump’s candidacy subsided. Indeed, the study find that one major spike in both Trump’s popularity and the attention received by IRA-run Twitter accounts was associated with the 2016 Republican National Convention. Historically, pretty much all presidential candidates have seen an increase in support after being officially nominated.
Now, it’s certainly possible that Russian tweets changed some Americans’ minds about who to support in 2016—though there’s no reason to think those tweets were any more potent than content created by regular Americans or the campaigns themselves.
Blaming Trump’s election on the magical power of Russian Twitter bots is seductive because it gets Americans off the hook for elevating an obviously unqualified candidate to the most powerful office in the world. If understanding Trump’s victory was as simple as adding up the number of retweets on pro-Trump Twitter accounts, we’d be spared the more difficult task of dealing with the political and cultural forces—domestic ones—that put him in the White House.
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If we consider the long term, it’s clear America’s economy and society have been declining for the average household for 50 years.
What if the “prosperity” of the past 50 years is mostly a statistical mirage for the bottom 80% of households? What if whatever real gains (adjusted for real-world loss of purchasing power) accrued only to the top of the wealth-power pyramid, those closest to financial and political power? What if the U.S. economy and society shifted from “everybody wins” to “winner takes all” or at best, :winner take most”?
These are not “what if”, they’re reality. The working class, which as I have recently noted, now comprises the entire working populace other than the upper-middle class Misplaced Pride: Most of the “Middle Class” Is Actually Working Class (June 14, 2019), has lost ground over the past 50 years, from 1969 to the present.
The keys to understanding the concealed crisis of decline are purchasing power relative to wages/earnings–how many goods and services can wages buy? For the average American household, wages have risen modestly while the purchasing power of those wages has plummeted.
Furthermore, the quality of goods and services has in many cases declined sharply, so that even if prices have dropped, what you get for your money has fallen even further, effectively reducing the purchasing power of your wages.
Case in point: appliances were once designed and built to last a generation or longer. Refrigerators, washers and dryers lasted for decades. Now the average appliance fails within a few years, and the electronic board–costing roughly a third of the entire appliance price–fails and must be replaced. With labor, the cost of the repair is so high, consumers often send the almost-new appliance to the landfill and buy a new (and soon to fail) appliance.
Net-net, low quality reduces purchasing power even if price has declined.
Then there’s the big-ticket items: rent, housing, college, healthcare.Anecdotally, I’ve been told a young engineer in Silicon Valley could earn $20,000 a year and rent a modest apartment for $200. Now the young engineer makes $100,000 but rent for the modest flat is $2,500 per month: wages rose five-fold but rent rose 12-fold.
This is a staggering loss of purchasing power.
As for college, tens of millions of students completed their university training with zero debt–student loan debt as we understand it today simply didn’t exist because it was unnecessary.
The scarcity value of that college diploma has fallen precipitously over the decades, rendering most degrees that aren’t part of artificial scarcity schemes essentially valueless.
As for healthcare: we now have $100,000 operations that work miracles on one side and people being bankrupted by costs on the other, and tens of thousands dying of opioid drugs promoted by the status quo as “safe” and non-addictive. Where metabolic disorders (lifestyle diseases such as diabesity) were once a relative rarity, now up to a third of the entire population is at risk of chronic lifestyle diseases that are difficult and costly to manage–but oh so profitable to those delivering the meds and care.
Bottom line: how much housing, higher education and well-being does the average wage buy now compared to decades past? Not much. The statistics are bleak: wages are basically unchanged from the high water mark 50 years ago, which coincidentally was also the high water mark of U.S. energy production until very recently. Adjusted for purchasing power and quality, the average paycheck buys far less than it did 50 years ago.
Wages’ share of the national income has plummeted since the last secular expansion of wages in the Internet boom of the late 1990s.
The average households’ ownership of productive capital, and thus of financial security, has declined. There’s fewer assets within reach and those that are in reach have been reduced to a casino of booms and busts that wipes out all but the most agile gamblers.
If we consider the long term (la longue duree), it’s clear America’s economy and society have been declining for the average household for 50 years.Nobody wants to admit this because it’s politically inconvenient, to say the least. What do we make of a society in which only the top 5% have prospered in terms of their earnings buying more goods and services?
Meanwhile, everyone else has compensated for the sharp decline in purchasing power by going ever deeper into debt while the nation has decayed into a landfill economy.
Here is an accurate description of a new study‘s conclusions: “As Donald Trump secured greater support from Republicans and as the 2016 general election neared, pro-Trump content produced by a Russian bot got more attention on Twitter.”
The paper compares the popularity of Trump’s candidacy to the popularity of more than 700,000 English-language tweets sent by various accounts linked to the Russian-based Internet Research Agency (IRA). The study’s authors found that every 25,000 retweets of IRA-run Twitter accounts correlated to a 1 percent uptick for Trump in presidential election polls.
Correlated being the key word there. Because if you ignore the distinction between correlation and causation, you might end up drawing a conclusion like this:
Or like this
Those are good ways to fire up the #Resistance, but both are misleading interpretations of the study, which was published today by First Monday, a peer-reviewed journal dedicated to studying internet phenomena.
The study’s authors themselves point out the limitations inherent in their analysis, which was intended to test “prediction, not causality.” Indeed, they stress that “it seems unlikely that 25,000 re-tweets could influence one percent of the electorate in isolation.
More to the point, they caution that “any correlation established by an observational study could be spurious.” Despite a strong correlation between Trump’s popularity and increased Twitter-based interest in the Russian bot accounts, “There could still be a third variable driving the relationship between IRA Twitter success and U.S. election opinion polls,” they write. “We controlled for one of these—the success of Donald Trump’s personal Twitter account—but there are others that are more difficult to measure; including exposure to the U.S domestic media.”
It would hardly be surprising to learn that more Americans became more engaged in politics as the 2016 election drew nearer, or that there would be a larger audience for pro-Trump content on Twitter as the primaries concluded and inter-GOP opposition to Trump’s candidacy subsided. Indeed, the study find that one major spike in both Trump’s popularity and the attention received by IRA-run Twitter accounts was associated with the 2016 Republican National Convention. Historically, pretty much all presidential candidates have seen an increase in support after being officially nominated.
Now, it’s certainly possible that Russian tweets changed some Americans’ minds about who to support in 2016—though there’s no reason to think those tweets were any more potent than content created by regular Americans or the campaigns themselves.
Blaming Trump’s election on the magical power of Russian Twitter bots is seductive because it gets Americans off the hook for elevating an obviously unqualified candidate to the most powerful office in the world. If understanding Trump’s victory was as simple as adding up the number of retweets on pro-Trump Twitter accounts, we’d be spared the more difficult task of dealing with the political and cultural forces—domestic ones—that put him in the White House.
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A GoFundMe campaign for a conservative journalist who was beaten and robbed by members of Portland’s Antifa cell has raised nearly 300% of its $50,000 goal within 24 hours – currently standing at $149,590 as of this writing.
Ngo, a journalist and editor at Quillette, was covering a Portland Antifa rally when he was beaten and soaked in liquids which police believe contained quick-drying cement. He was hospitalized after the attack, in which he claims that his GoPro camera was stolen.
The GoFundMe was set up by conservative author and commentator Michelle Malkin.
“There were reports of individuals throwing ‘milkshakes’ with a substance mixed in that was similar to a quick-drying cement. One subject was arrested for throwing a substance during the incident,” according to the Portland police.
Police have received information that some of the milkshakes thrown today during the demonstration contained quick-drying cement. We are encouraging anyone hit with a substance today to report it to police.
That said, BuzzFeed‘s Joe Bernstein says he did not see any concrete being poured into the milkshakes – which doesn’t discount them pouring it in right before the attack.
Anecdotally: I was there and did not see any evidence of this. The milkshakes being handed out (and I believe consumed) were coconut https://t.co/0vXRDMCnQ9
The Portland police would’ve stopped this but a few minutes earlier they got a report that a cafe served a plastic straw and they scrambled all units there. https://t.co/hcuQuPqfuA
