Bernie Sanders dropped a music video/campaign ad to Simon and Garfunkel’s “America” and people love it. Personally I think Paul Simon’s video for “You Can Call Me Al” featuring Chevy Chase is more entertaining. Yes, it’s nice to see a political ad with uplifting music, no negativity, and shots of Americans working and living together. But it’s even nicer to see two celebrities who have a drastic difference in heights dancing around together and pretending to play instruments. So kudos to Senator Sanders for making an ad that some people like, but if any candidate really wants my vote they’ll bring in Fletch to win me over.
If campaign ads don’t interest you maybe you’ll be fascinated by newspaper endorsements! The Des Moines Register decided to throw their weight behind Hillary Clinton and Marco Rubio. Honestly I don’t really like the practice of newspaper endorsements. In the United States, journalists and editorial boards (much like HeadCount) are supposed to be independent, unbiased sources of truth. So why get behind candidates? And why get behind candidates in both races? It seems counter-intuitive for these papers to support candidates, it puts all their previous work into question, and it feels a bit outdated. Plus I can’t imagine many folks in 2016 who value media input so much that it’ll change who they support. So feel free to reach out to me and let me know if you ever cast a vote based solely on a newspaper endorsement and I will issue a formal correction.
My former mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg, has started publicly flirting with a third party run for president. While he hasn’t formally said anything about his candidacy, a New York Times article full of anonymous quotes from personal friends is the type of thing that only gets published if Bloomberg gives it the ok. Having grown up in Bloomberg’s New York I have ample opinions on the man, which I won’t share. But considering we just had a blizzard of epic proportions, I have to at least mention what the last blizzard like this did to New York. To be fair, much like Bloomberg, I also left the city before that snowstorm, but my reason was to catch Phish in Worcester, MA.
The other billionaire New Yorker running for president is still speaking his mind. Most recently Donald Trump said, “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.” Surprisingly no scientific polls have asked voters if they’d continue to support a candidate who randomly shot someone. We also don’t have any recent data showing how candidates have performed before and after they shot someone. The closest thing we’ve got is when George Wallace got shot in 1972. And the day after Governor Wallace was paralyzed by a bullet he won big in both Maryland and Michigan. So based on historical trends, from a purely electoral standpoint, Trump might be better off getting shot than shooting someone else. That being said I don’t support either scenario.