Twenty more days

That’s how many days we have until Election Day, when the majority of Americans who are politically engaged will go to the polls and cast their votes for President.  Of course, in many states, voters are able to vote by mail (my daughter and her husband have that convenience in their home state) or vote early, as we’ve seen happening in record numbers in the state of Georgia.

So now we’re seeing both candidates make concerted efforts to get their messaging out with increased television advertising and by appearing at public events but also taking advantage of non-traditional media sources like podcasts and satellite radio programs like Howard Stern’s.  Given the number of people who say that they don’t consume traditional news sources like network and cable news broadcasts and newspapers, that’s one of those ideas that’s a good one but it took a long time for political operatives to acknowledge their importance.

Objectively, though, I have to say that the former President and Republican nominee isn’t doing himself a lot of good by having partisan town halls and then ending the Q and A portions of them in favor of “playing some music,” as happened earlier this week.  His handlers have literally called a halt to other interviews with some of these non-tradtional outlets when the questions and answers did not go so well.

The Vice President continues to stick her head in the lion’s mouth, so to speak, even agreeing to a typical ambush interview on none other than Fox News.  The interviewer attempted to bully her, knock her off balance and continuously talk over and interrupt her.  Seemed to me, in the excerpts I saw, that he was called out by the Democratic candidate repeatedly as she plowed ahead in answering the questions asked.  She wasn’t perfect but she maintained her composure and got the majority of her points across.

I read that she is in discussions to appear on the Joe Rogan podcast.  For those keeping score, Rogan has one of the most popular podcasts in the country among male listeners, so that’s another potentially good move for the Vice President.

Polling isn’t what it used to be, it seems, and that’s largely because people have cellphones now instead of landline phones where people could be reached and few screened their calls.  So it’s hard to know how much to believe in the polls that are shown.  And I think we know that mass media wants this to be a tight, down-to-the-wire race, because people will watch or read more and so on.

In closing, it’s rather unbelievable to me that, after all that has happened, all that he has done or is accused of doing, and all that he says he will do if returned to the White House, a large swatch of the electorate plans to vote for the former President.  That’s their right, just as it’s my right to vote for someone else.

Make sure that you exercise YOUR right to choose and to express your choice sometime between now and November 5.