You must chill!
I have been thinking about writing this blog post for a long time. After all of the "the sky is falling! Bernie Sanders is going to win!" moments from Hillary supporters I endured during primary season, I had to have my eye surgically moved back to their correct location after all of my eye rolling! It didn't take much to set most Hillary supporters off into panic (except for me).
Well today is the perfect day to write this because as I write a poll has been released that shows Clinton up by 2 points over that joke of a candidate that the Republicans have chosen. I have seen this many many many times before. This will be the poll that gets a ton of media attention. Then all my Hillary Clinton supporting friends will post it on Facebook or other social media while dabbling with the idea of moving to a foreign country and/or building a bomb shelter.
Here is what I have to say! STOP PANICKING!!! We most likely got this! I am worried for your blood pressure! I am also worried that your panic will lead us to Drumpfian doom! I know panic is natural for some and a hard habit to break, so here are three options for you to focus on instead of being a Chicken Little.
1. READ- I cannot emphasize this much. Read. A lot. Read multiple sources. Read point of views that you don't like or agree with. Be educated. I have always been critical about the many conservative Republicans who only watch Fox News and listen to conservative radio that only feeds into what they already think or want to believe. Well guess what? One thing I learned from primary season is that extreme liberals are just as bad. If you are only getting all of you news from Bernie Sanders media like Huffington Post and God forbid usuncut.com, you simply aren't well informed. Your information is as one sided as Fox News. I do my best to stay away from the extreme media on both sides and even if many of my media resources lean liberal like some of my favorites writers who write for MSNBC do , I counteract that with information from more conservative points of view.
That leads me to the poll problem. The media picks and chooses which polls are going to panic people the most. Yes, a 2 point lead over the Donald is nerve wracking. Your nervousness will get you to pay attention to their site or TV station. What they don't mention is that every other poll released in the last week has had Hillary up by anywhere from 5 to 12 points. But that's boring! The media needs you to believe this is a close race even if right now it is not. A blow out isn't interesting. This is why many media sites in 2012 led people to believe that Mitt Romney might actually defeat President Obama. You see how that turned out? If you were really paying attention then you knew it wasn't going to happen.
But Clinton's lead could change for the worse. Even if it doesn't change, I have some suggested sites for you. Fivethirtyeight.com is my go to polling statistics site. Yes, most of the people on it are Democrats, BUT they use the most thorough analysis of statistics that I have ever seen in Politics. Their politics may be biased, but their math is not. You can't go wrong when people are using real math to support their findings. You still don't buy into it? In the last several elections, fivethirtyeight.com has been extremely accurate in their predictions of presidential and congressional elections. During the Primary season, they were wrong about Trump getting the nomination and Bernie Sander's winning Michigan like most media was. But unlike most media they ate their crow and admitted they were wrong and did a full scale analysis of where they went wrong.
I am also a fan of the Upshot at the New York Times site. Yes, it is also liberal biased, so I balance it out by reading articles and polling information on Realclearpolitics.com. This site averages many of the polls that come out to give an average of where the races stand. It isn't as thorough as fivethirtyeight.com, but it also has news and editorial articles written by both conservative and liberal writers. It overall leans slightly conservative though. But the more you know!
2. STOP PAYING ATTENTION TO WHAT BERNIE SANDERS DOES OR SAYS- Bernie Sanders may not be endorsing Clinton and he may not be dropping out, but he really isn't running for president. He isn't. The Democratic race is over. So stop worrying when the media gives him time to let us all know that he isn't dropping out. Even the media is finally starting to stop falling for his game and he is getting less attention.
Senator Sanders should be commended for what he was able to do during this primary season. He engaged voters who were not engaged before (even though I kind of want to say "shame on you" if you were old enough to be engaged before), but the primary season is OVER. Bernie Sanders has gone from leader of a new movement to the guest at a party who WILL. NOT. GO. HOME. Everyday he prolongs this he becomes more of a joke and so do the few squeaky wheels left who are still Bernie holdouts.
Yes, there will be some Bernie followers who will not vote for Hillary. Most likely they won't vote at all or waste their vote on a third party candidate. Guess what? This happens in every election. Bernie just has some extremely loud supporters that NEED TO BE HEARD!!! But just because they are noisy does not mean that there are actually that many of them. And if they opt to vote for the Republican candidate over Secretary of State Clinton, then my guess is that they did not really know much about Sander's actual position on political issues at all.
Stop worrying! Every month more and more voters move over from Sanders to Clinton. She may not be their first choice, but most of them are intelligent people who know that choosing the other real option will have dire consequences. The ones who won't change their mind want you to know that they won't they won't change their mind. They are the spoiled brat craving their parents' attention and there truly aren't enough of them to make a real difference.
Move on everyone! The Sanders ship has sailed. We have bigger fish ahead to fry.
3. VOTE VOTE VOTE- You may think that I am living in a blissful state of mind that believes the host of the Apprentice can't become president. You are wrong. I know he could win. I know he can.
But here is the reality. There are more liberals, Democrats, moderates and sensible independents in this country than there are crazy conservatives who wish to bring on the rapture. That is just the truth. Here is the problem. Potential Democrat candidate voters are much less inclined to actually show up to vote than their conservative counterparts. The Republicans know this. It is a big part of their strategy. They work hard to make voting difficult. They want to make sure you don't participate in Democracy.
But it isn't totally the Republicans fault. In fact, it is more our own problem. Apathy seems to win out with us. There is an attitude among too many of us that our vote won't matter. Many argue that unless their state is one of the swing states our vote doesn't matter. But the swing states change over time. Your candidate might not win every time. But doing nothing is a worse option. You should still vote. Vote every time you have the chance! . Vote for who you believe in even if they won't win. Vote in smaller elections Especially vote in smaller elections. A lot of the problems we have today is because Democrat voters didn't come out for the 2012 unsexy midterm elections. Voting is not sexy. Do it anyway. Do it every time!
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