November 26, 2017

Joe Biden and Michele Obama are the most popular politicians in America (KOS diary with links)

https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2017/8/30/1694655/-Polls-show-Joe-Biden-is-most-popular-politician-in-America

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In any event, Tom P. cited a recent Harvard-Harris poll, which showed Sen. Sanders leading the other named Democratic politicians in favorable/unfavorable ratings. As pointed out by several other commenters, the poll neglected to include Vice-President Joe Biden, which is a fairly glaring oversight, since he appears to be strongly considering a presidential run in 2020.
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With that in mind, we might compare the Harvard-Harris poll to other polls over the past year (including one Pennsylvania poll from this month):

PPP (Dec. 2016)

2020:

We took an early look ahead to 2020 and how Trump would match up right now against some hypothetical Democratic opponents for reelection. He trails Joe Biden 54/40, Bernie Sanders 52/41, Elizabeth Warren 48/43, Al Franken 46/41, and Cory Booker 45/42 in head to head match ups. Biden (56/33 favorability) and Sanders (53/36) are among the most popular political figures in the country. Voters are more divided on Warren (42/39) and Franken (34/34). Booker is not as well known nationally as the rest of this group yet, coming in at 27/24.

PPP/PA (August 2017)

The new PPP poll that was released today contained, among other things, new information on the favorability ratings of several people and institutions in the news today. Leading the way were First Lady Michelle Obama and Vice President Joe Biden with 54% and 52% favorability ratings respectively.
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In any event, declaring Sen. Sanders to be ‘the most popular politician in America’ seems, at the very least, not a well-supported contention.
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More polls cited in the diary. None of the polls that have both Biden and Sanders have Sanders ahead of Biden

November 25, 2017

Time Magazine Person of the Year is most influential person for "Better or Worse"

Several horrible people have been given that award for influencing global events for the worse, as wikipedia notes:

However, Time magazine points out that controversial figures such as Adolf Hitler (1938), Joseph Stalin (1939 and 1942), Nikita Khrushchev (1957), and Ayatollah Khomeini (1979) have also been granted the title for their impacts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Person_of_the_Year

Based on that, I can see an argument for Trump. He has paralyzed the federal government of the US, ruined the western coalition of nations or at least temporarily has thrown it into disarray, has made unprecedented attacks on the US media, attacked net neutrality, attacked efforts to combat global climate change.

Trump's effects on the globe over the last year have been catastrophic.

Has anyone affected the globe for the better or worse more than that?

November 12, 2017

Real or Parody?

https://twitter.com/stevenleser/status/929542594031480833

So my fun for tonight was replying to a Twitter account parodying Steve Bannon (thinking it was the real thing) and having a bunch of GOP’ers find that funny. And I was thinking to myself, we have a Republican US President who sides with the Russian President’s side of events on Russian meddling in our election over our intelligence agencies findings and a Republican party running a child molester for US Senate. The line between real and fake/parody has been pretty well blurred GOP trolls, and not by me and Democrats.

November 8, 2017

If Roem can win her district, Buttigieg can win the Presidency

Just sayin’