For something a little different today, let’s do a Movie Preview. So I finally saw the massive box office hit Civil War, a film that I had been anticipating with mixed dread and curiosity.

So the movie was very good. I think from a critical perspective, it was phenomenal acting, obviously compelling subject matter and so forth. But for me, the most interesting thing about Civil War was what it didn’t say, it didn’t say the specific motivations behind the war, or give any real background information at all. And throughout the film, I found myself trying to figure out which side each new character we met was on, until I finally realized that’s the whole point. That’s what director Alex Garland was trying to achieve. Garland is by his own description, a left centrist and interviews, he tends to emphasize the centrist element because to him, apparently, the point of both the film and the locus of his anxiety is not as much about politics as much as it is about extremism on both sides. And an interview with PBS garland said, quote, for me, it categorically is a political film. It’s just not choosing a politics of left and right.
I think that if I sat down and asked somebody, why might your country or my country disintegrate into a state of civil war, they would know the answers. I don’t need to spell them out. Those answers surround us. So I felt it would be not just patronizing, but redundant to spell it out.
Look, I am of the opinion that you don’t change anyone’s mind in either direction by yelling at them telling them they’re crazy fascists, what have you. The way you change minds is by finding points of commonality, communicating, above all, listening. And I definitely understand that the extremism of the very far left can be damaging to the goal of unity, perhaps, perhaps even to the goal of progress. But there is a danger to this film again. It’s one I thought was very good and very thought provoking, and I do recommend it. But the thing is,
I can have my disagreements with certain elements of the far left and certain elements of the far right but the danger presented by the two. It’s not an equivalency. A simple peek at gun death statistics in our country shows that the vast majority of mass shooting events have been at the hands of white men, often white nationalists. Only one side of our sadly binary political system is calling for a bloodbath if Trump doesn’t win the next election. So while I do believe, like Alex Garland does, it seems that centrism isn’t just an ideal but probably an imperative. I take issue with the concept that the far left is just as dangerous to our democracy and very selves as the far right. It’s just not a competition.

When people think about the Eighth Amendment, that is if they ever think about the Eighth Amendment at all, will they generally think of that cruel and unusual punishment clause. Now, that is the provision that bans the government from punishing people in a way that could be deemed to be cruel and unusual. What punishment actually meets that measure is something for the courts to decide. After all, they’re the ones that interpret the law. And this week, our highest court heard oral arguments on deciding whether it’s cruel and unusual to enforce laws punishing unhoused people for camping on public property when there are no shelters that are available, even though the right has a stronghold on the majority of our supreme court right now, the left may indeed take a win on this one. Because if people experiencing homelessness have no constitutional right to housing in this country, they should have a constitutional right to camp on public property when they’re given no other option. Let me be clear, homelessness is a choice, not a choice of the individual on housed person that is but a choice of us policymakers. The United States is among the richest nations in the world. Particularly it’s number three in terms of wealthiest country on a per capita basis. It also boasts more than 15 million vacant homes. That means approximately 10% of the homes in our nation are totally empty inventory. People aren’t living there, all the while 600,000 People live without permanent shelter. Some 30% of those people are unhoused families with children. 6% are veterans. 5% are unaccompanied youth. That’s children alone, and the number of individuals experiencing homelessness is steadily on the rise, and it has been increasing since 2017. People simply cannot afford housing. In California, for example, over the past 20 years, the average rent has increased 35% How much has the average renters income gone up? 6% all said right has increased more than 116% in US dollars for the average renter. We need not even talk about homeownership for that matter. It’s not even an option as a largest demographic in the workplace, that is Millennials like me, are priced out of the real estate market entirely. How are Americans to keep a roof over their heads when their wages remain stagnant? Yet housing prices go up? Where will the people go when they can’t make rent, we’re being forced onto the streets to punish us for that is cruel and unusual. And that’s what the Supreme Court will likely decide in the face of several states effectively criminalizing homelessness without providing adequate housing alternatives. And the cruelty it abounds. Just last month, Ron DeSantis signed a bill banning homelessness in terms of camping and public spaces. The Florida Governor believes somehow that this anti camping penalty will help ensure that individuals have the resources they need to get back on their feet. Come on make it make sense here. If lawmakers and leaders want to keep people from living on the streets, they must step up provide adequate housing ensure opportunities are available to thrive. Guaranteeing basic fundamental rights that include housing isn’t far fetched. France, Scotland, South Africa and many other nations have adopted a right to housing in their constitutions or their law books, improving the housing conditions of their people. There’s no reason the same approach cannot be taken right here in the United States. If our lawmakers and leaders won’t do it for us, I think the Supreme Court may find a way. Until then, it is so incredibly cruel. And disgustingly unusual to punish people who are forced to live on the streets because our lawmakers and leaders aren’t providing alternative housing options.

If you asked me to rank an order the top 100 problems facing America, your crime, your homelessness, drugs division, climate change, xenophobia, etc. Nowhere on that list, would you find the phrase anti white racism. Whoever heard of such a thing? That must be when the folks who devoured 99% of the pie fight you for the extra 1% And then cry foul. Crybaby in chief Donald Trump. If the skies turned Red Seas, boiled frogs fall from heaven and he is reelected President plans to use a second term to settle scores and get even with those who wronged him and his supporters. According to news reports, given what his close aides including the nativist know nothing Stephen Miller, have planned if they returned to power, one group that this bunch thinks has been wronged or white people. They intend to use the Justice Department and a perversion of more than a half century of civil rights laws to avenge the victims of what they claim is an epidemic of anti white racism.

This is nothing new. In the 1980s white people attacked affirmative action, insisting that it amounted to quote reverse discrimination. In the 1990s, they thought multiculturalism was a plot to make them feel guilty for the racial and justices of the past. Today, there are those who think to push for dei diversity, equity inclusion is all about taking things away from white people and giving it to people of color. Still, this whole concept of anti white racism is weird for me. I spent most of the first half of my life about 28 years growing up in the conservative farm country of Central California, where white people own the farms and brown people work the farms and no one lets you forget the color scheme.

Another thing that was always stressed to me and other Mexican Americans, strivers and achievers who didn’t know our place, or who maybe felt less well suited to the great fields than the Ivy League was that we should stop acting like victims. Boyd I hear that phrase about 1000 times before my 30th birthday. And the more I achieved, and the higher I rose, the more I heard it.

The sermon was always the same. Don’t be a victim. They said, Let bygones be bygones. They said, If one day the Mexicans run things, they said, Well, you shouldn’t do to white people, white people did to you just move on. And I bought it to I bought the whole thing. I don’t know Donald Trump. I wasn’t looking to settle scores. I’m not that small and petty, even though the injustice is of my parents and my people had to endure in the 1800s and 1900s. Were real. Little did I realize, though, that the reason that white folks wanted me to toss off the victim quote, was that they could put it on.

That’s the whole idea. They wanted me to not be a victim, so they could have the title alter themselves. In 2024. There is no group in America. Let me say again, there is no group in America that complains more or whines louder than white men. In Michigan, or Ohio or Pennsylvania or Nebraska, you will hear white men make the case that their lives have been ruined by everything from affirmative action to globalization, to immigration, to unfair trade deals, you name it, and white men think they’ve been screwed over by it. And even though it’s Donald Trump, who has been picking up on this thread, and has now decided to be the superhero that no one needs or wants, ie the white Avenger, make no mistake, Democrats played this game to this whole thing is a bipartisan deal. Heck, in the Rust Belt states, the white guy in the union is both a Trump voter and a Biden voter, depending whose name is on the ballot, he’ll go back and forth, as long as the candidate keeps playing up the narrative that the poor guy has been victimized by take your pick immigrants who invade the country or rich fat cats who don’t pay their quote, fair share of taxes. You see the victim him you hear it from both parties? Well, we’ve had enough of that. If Trump makes it back into power he should. What’s that thing that used to tell me years ago? Yes, let bygones be bygones and just move on.

Donald Trump’s criminal trials have started and there are political implications, legal implications, Freedom implications, and so much more. This is Donald Trump’s first of four criminal trials. It started in New York. This is what some refer to as the hush money case, but would probably more accurate accurately be referred to as the election interference case. And here’s the important thing to understand. If stormy Daniels had not accepted the hush money, we likely would have learned that Trump was trying to pay her off before the 2016 election. It may have prevented Trump from even becoming president to begin with. And we would now have Roe v. Wade. I mean, the end the leap, there is no trump no three Supreme Court justices who eventually overturn Roe v. Wade. So the implications are significant. And in polling, most Americans believe that the charges are serious. Now, one of the realities that’s already taking place is that Trump is having scheduling conflicts between this criminal trial and other things. For example, Donald Trump wants to be able to skip the criminal trial in New York in order to attend hearings at the Supreme Court on presidential immunity as they relate to a different presidential criminal trial that he is facing. His lawyer has said that this denies him due process. The reality is that it does not due process does not include being excused from criminal trials to go sit in the audience during supreme court hearings related to a matter that will affect a potential case of yours. Nobody’s denying that another one of Trumps criminal trials will be affected by the argument of presidential immunity. But it is not a denial of due process for Trump to not be excused from his criminal trial in order to attend that. So that’s one issue that’s going on. Trump also saying that the judge turned down his request to go to his son’s high school graduation in May. That is not what the judge did. The judge simply said, it’s too early to rule on that. I’m not ruling on that right now. And when a judge says I am not ruling on that you have not been turned down, the judge said he would rule on it closer to May 17, which is when barren graduate. So that’s also going on. Secondly, or maybe Thirdly, we are starting to see soft polling for Donald Trump. Now it is way too early to say that this is because of the criminal trials starting. But for whatever confluence of explanations, Joe Biden’s strong ish State of the Union, the fact that the economy continues to remain solid, it’s maybe not a perfect economy. I don’t know that it ever is. But it is relatively solid. And the fact that Trump is cognitively glitching on a regular basis and forgetting where he is, what he’s doing, who what’s what, what up is down and all of it, there seems to be a confluence of factors, where Trump was mostly winning almost all national polls about two months ago, not by a lot, but by 1234 points against Joe Biden. It is now the case that Joe Biden is tied or leading in at least half of the polls. So it is quite literally a toss up election. The other aspect of the polling that I think is important to remember is that we may not see the impact of Trump as a criminal defendant right away. Because there are lots of folks who publicly want to be seen as standing by their guy. They’re still part of the team. They’re saying the right things and doing the right things. But they are starting to question it. And I’m hearing from email, but a via email from some of them. And we’re starting to hear more of these voices in the media who were saying, you know, when he threatened democracy, it really was too much. There’s a Republicans against Trump group that is highlighting a lot of these individuals. And I’m going to be interviewing some of them upcoming. So my instinct is that much like with the improving economy, there was a bit of a delay a lag time before we saw it represented in the polling, I think that there will be a lag time as well with the effect of Trump being a defendant in his criminal trial. And lastly, there’s some really weird stuff going on at these trials. For example, in the first day of the New York trial, Trump reportedly reportedly fell asleep with his mouth open. Maggie Haberman, from the New York Times reported this. It isn’t super common. That in such a tense, high stakes situation in which Trump is quite literally fighting for his freedom, in that any prison sentence could be a life sentence for him. It is an unusual thing to be able to be so relaxed that you fall asleep. Now, could it be a medical issue? I don’t know. Could it be that Trump is so confident in his innocence and in his defense lawyers, that he’s just not worried and that’s why He dozed off. It’s certainly possible. Is it an indicative indication of sociopathy as some have suggested that he is just so disconnected from they just can’t touch me? I’m just Teflon. They can too smart for everybody here. They’re not going to get me that he’s able to fall asleep. I don’t know the answer. But it is a bizarre situation that Trump was even able to fall asleep in a fully lit court of law at which his freedom is at stake. So we’re going to fall All of these criminal trials very closely I anticipate that Trump will be increasingly unhinged if and when the potential reality of his imprisonment for life is sinking in but I want to hear your thoughts what do you expect what do you expect Trump voters to do as a result of this

Okay, at this point in the political game, it is fair to assume if you’re still a Trump supporter, you are antithetical to the notion of democracy. Let me tell you why I say that. I don’t say that lightly. There was a time in my political analysis, when I would say those who support Trump are a mixed bag, you have individuals that are adversarial to certain powers that be they are tired of the gridlock in DC, they wanted something new, they wanted something to be a game changer. And so they experimented with Trump. I don’t say that anymore. At this point, at this stage of the political career of Donald Trump, you have to conclude the man is adverse to democracy, his team, the people who will implement his policies, if you give him power, again, they are openly saying that they are trying to get rid of democracy. They’re at major convention saying that they are adverse to democracy. They don’t care about policies. They’re not concerned about rule of law due process. Remember, January 6, was about overthrowing not simply the government, not simply the capital, but the Constitution. They were there to stop a constitutionally mandated process. Here’s the point. I don’t believe you have different factions who are trying to get to the same goal. I believe you have very different factions, trying to get to very different goals. There was a time in this nation where good faith disagreement was okay. Because ultimately, we desired the same outcome. We prefer people to have access to high quality education. We prefer children to not be concluded, summarize, based on their zip code. Opportunities are good, anti racism, good. These are things we typically would agree with. Now, there’s debate. You see Donald Trump, he’s not trying to make America great again. He’s trying to make America Well, what it was founded upon the principle, not a freedom, but the principle that you can own another human being the principle that women had restricted rights and or no rights at all. You see, the nation was founded on principles that are not aligned to what we understand as an enlightened culture. However, those who support Trump support some of those principles, they say it out loud, their elected officials who have literally set on record from the Republican Party, they no longer want everyone to participate in democracy. Some candidates for higher office have said that women should not be allowed to vote, that individuals who aren’t smart should not be allowed to vote. And then the agenda, the actual agenda of Donald Trump to up end policies that have protected disenfranchised citizens all across this nation. You see, this is part of their strategy. This is part of their plan. And once again, I submit to you if you support Trump at this stage of the game, I must conclude that you are okay with the dissolving of our current democracy.

We are on the cusp of the commencement of the first of former president Donald Trump’s four trials. As someone who would like nothing more than for this horrible man – this criminal, who has caused so much pain to so many – to be locked away for the remainder of his life, I should be…if not “eagerly anticipating” the trial, certainly looking forward to the opportunity to have Trump pay for his actions. 

But I do not feel very optimistic about the outcome here. Because here’s the thing: This first trial, the so-called “hush money” trial – it actually doesn’t seem to offer an especially strong case against Trump. 

Trump paid off adult film star Stormy Daniels to keep her from talking about their affair in the leadup to the 2016 election – I don’t think anyone doubts that. Trump knew about the payment; of course he did. But there are several worrying factors that I fear will lead to either an acquittal, a mistrial, or – at the worst – some fines and a slap on the wrist. 

First, hush money payments aren’t actually illegal; they’re just gross. What would be illegal would be the fact that the payments were marked as “legal expenses” on Trump’s records. Trump’s attorneys will almost certainly argue that the former president had no knowledge or understanding of the bookkeeping process or how these payments were recorded. 

And even if the prosecution can prove that he did…falsification of business records is a misdemeanor, not a felony. It’s not the kind of thing that results in jail time. It’s not the kind of thing that I can imagine his rabid supporters abandoning him because of. If the prosecution can prove that these hush money payments amounted to campaign finance violations, the charges could rise to the level of a felony…but a conviction is still very unlikely to result in anything more than a fine, or probation. 

Another problem is the credibility of the man who appears likely to be the primary witness in this case, Trump’s former attorney and friend Michael Cohen. Michael Cohen has lied in court. A lot. By his own admission. He also hates Donald Trump. A lot. By his own admission. And these factors combined may make the jury view him as an unreliable witness. 

This case was never going to be the strongest one against Trump – the classified-documents case, the January 6 case and the Fulton County, Georgia case all allege more serious crimes, with vaster consequences should he be convicted. But those cases, more than ever, are looking unlikely to see verdicts before the presidential election. Which, of course, is what Trump is hoping for. 

So I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see. I just wonder whether this case will have much of an impact on…well…anything at all. 

Given the ongoing attacks on abortion care, I’m glad to see that the Biden administration is not only stepping up, but they’re speaking out about the need to preserve the bodily autonomy of women. From the VP visiting an abortion clinic to Biden centering this human rights issue in his campaign, these visible displays of support, they’re significant. That’s why I was a bit taken aback with the Biden administration when they had a delayed and weak approach to what we know is a pervasive practice that violates the bodily autonomy of women.

This month, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that hospitals must obtain a written informed consent from patients before performing pelvic exams, especially while the patients are under anesthesia. Apparently conducting non-consensual pelvic exams on unconscious women has been a long-standing practice at teaching hospitals and medical schools across the country. The HHS said institutions that don’t comply could lose Medicare funding.

Try again, federal government. This practice of copping a feel on women in the supposed name of science is criminal. Hospitals and medical schools that violate patient bodily autonomy by conducting pelvic exams without patient consent should not just possibly lose Medicare funding, they should lose their medical licensure and their freedom.

Let’s get this straight: In the Year of Our Lord 2024, medical professionals and professionals in training are examining the private parts of unconscious women without their consent. How are people okay with poking around others under carriages when they’re out cold? How did this disgusting practice survive? Me too? I have so many questions, including Why did it take the federal government so long to say anything about it? The Department of Health and Human Services only push back at the practice of nonconsensual pelvic exams this month. In the announcement, the HHS Secretary said the department is aware of media reports as well as medical and scientific literature highlighting instances where as part of medical students courses of study and training patients have been subjected to sensitive and intimate examinations. When were these media reports publicized mind you in 2020, so it took the HHS to what come forward four years later with their condemnation after a New York Times investigation. And to make matters worse, this investigation found that hospitals and doctors were performing pelvic exams on women who were under anesthesia even when those exams were not medically necessary. Said another way the medical community has been using vulnerable patients as guinea pigs accessing their private parts without their permission. For instance, a 33 year old Arizona nurse named Janine expressly told her physician that she did not want medical students involved in her stomach surgery in 2017. But after the Anastasia warmth wore off, well, a doctor told Janine in passing that she had gotten her period, which they noticed while conducting a pelvic exam on her. The doctor said the operating team saw she was due for a pap smear and they stepped up and figured that they would take care of it. Yeah, really. I am speechless. The doctor’s audacity has gall. Of course when they were questioned while the hospital declined to comment to the to the New York Times on its policy on informed consent for pelvic exams. They also face no legal liability it appears in many US states and medical institutions. Physicians are not required to get expressed consent for pelvic exams while women are under anesthesia. Make that makes sense. Just because you put me under doesn’t mean you get to indulge your curiosities. Yet this happens all the time. And there’s no record of who is being subjected to these unnecessary and a highly offensive physical violations. But if history has any indication, I would say it’s generally society’s most marginalized, who are systematically being victimized by the medical profession. The father of modern gynecology, well, he comes to mind as he happily performed barbaric pelvic experimentations on enslaved women, black women back in the 1800s without anesthesia or a second thought, and today, the only thing we should not be giving a second thought to is criminalizing this behavior. It should not matter whether you have an MD behind your name or not. Accessing someone’s private parts without permission should be a sex offense. Possibly pulling Medicare funding will not cut it. If this administered Rachel is serious about protecting the bodily autonomy of women it should ensure the consequences of violating that autonomy are grave.

Demographics are destiny, they say, but apparently destiny can sometimes be derailed or distorted—that is, if Texas has anything to say about it, the Lone Star State is currently 40% Latino demographic projections say that by 2040, that figure could grow to 50%. Now, this shouldn’t be so surprising to people, and especially to people who live in Texas, not for nothing. But we’re talking about a big chunk of land that used to belong to Mexico, before the mid 1800s, when a bunch of white people from states like Missouri and Tennessee, invaded the territory and tried to bring their black slaves with them, even though the Mexican said, No, you can’t do that. Of course, the state of Texas or test, if you prefer, was always going to be heavily Latino, and becoming more so all the time, due in large part to immigration and higher birth rates among immigrants.

A lot of white people are panicking about all this. And they would love to reverse those demographic changes, or at least stop them in their tracks. So much so that when you break down the anxiety that Americans feel about the issue of immigration, which pollsters say is now the number one concern in this election, I would say that at least half of the worry has to do with something that people never talk about out loud: demographics.

You’ve probably heard about the great replacement theory, a right-wing conspiracy popular with white supremacists that suggests white people are being pushed around and pushed out by massive waves of immigrants. The fear is that they’re going to be replaced or at least displaced. Well, they say somebody has to do something to stop this. So here comes Texas, where Republican Governor Greg Abbott is drawing the line with an immigration law that he says will scare off as many undocumented immigrants as possible, maybe even some legal immigrants who are afraid that they might be mistaken for undocumented.

To turn back the clock, Abbott will need a magic wand. Or maybe just a state immigration law that allows local and state cops to enforce federal immigration statutes by arresting people who they suspect are in the country illegally—read Latinos. Even though Abbott is a former Texas Attorney General, his grasp on basic legal concepts like the federal Supremacy Clause of the Constitution and the fact that only the federal government can make immigration policy is so weak that it makes me wonder if whatever law school he attended also doubles as the rodeo clown college.

It’s no wonder that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals recently blocked the law from being enforced. Because it’s not clear that’s constitutional. The smart money bet is that’s not not that avid cares much one way or another what the courts say. He’s not in this for the law. He only cares about the politics. Supporting this divisive and unlawful piece of legislation is how Abbott shows Republican voters in Texas and around the country, that he’s a tough guy who will keep Texas and the whole country safe from what Republicans describe as an invasion along the US Mexico border. Best of all, Abbott doesn’t have to do the really hard thing. You know, the thing that would really take courage, and that’s going after all those Texans who hire the undocumented, to do their chores, to carry out every job imaginable because a lot of Americans don’t want to work anymore. See, taking on employers is scary employers fight back. So Abbott would rather just go after the poor and the weak, a bunch of desperate, largely uneducated non citizens who can’t vote through what they say everything is bigger in Texas, even the cowards.

Then, aside from the politics, there’s the demographics. Texas Republicans don’t have a prayer of winning elections over the next 20 years in the state. If Texas continues to go down the road that’s on now and becomes more and more Latino. See, the Texas immigration law is the last gasp of those who want to change that reality. Silly Texas Republicans don’t you understand? You don’t spit in the wind. And you don’t make enemies out of those who will soon make up the majority.

During a recent meeting with supporters of Robert F. Kennedy Jr, his New York State Director, Rita Palmer, made some stunning comments in which she said, Hey, if you want to support Trump, you should go and door knock in Pennsylvania, like she did in previous elections, where she says the goal here is to work together with Trump supporters to deny Joe Biden the presidency and 270 electoral votes. This is so remarkable for a number of different ways that are worthy of discussion. And I believe, and I believe we’re already seeing it that that as this information gets out, fewer and fewer Democrats are going to be considering Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as a real alternative to Joe Biden. From the beginning. We went back and forth. Does Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s candidacy help Joe Biden or help Donald Trump on the one hand RFK Junior’s candidacy started as a democratic challenge to Joe Biden within the Democratic primary. And of course, the Kennedy is a longtime democratic family. At that point, the assumption and the belief was, oh, this is definitely better for Trump, because Democrat Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is going to take voters from Joe Biden more than he will from Donald Trump. However, then, the focus of the campaign became foreign policy comments, including about Russia and Ukraine, that we’re certainly more sympathetic to Russia than to Ukraine and aligned much more with the sort of stuff you hear going around in Trump’s circles. The anti Vax stuff, which Kennedy denies is anti Vax, but upon close examination, it is effectively anti Vax, anti Vax, appealing much more to Trump support supporters than the Biden supporters. And then Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said, hey, you know what, I’m actually going to run as an independent rather than as a Democrat. When that’ll happen, there was the idea. Maybe this is actually good for Biden and bad for Trump, Fox News, seemingly realizing that slowing down and almost completely halting the interviews of RFK Jr. But at the end of the day, as of about six to eight weeks ago, when you looked at polling had to had Trump versus Biden as compared to three way polling. When you added Robert F. Kennedy Jr. It worsened the situation for Joe Biden, and seem to help Donald Trump. We now have this video that was released, and it appears as though the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. campaign has been working to get the video off of YouTube, even though it’s been reproduced so many times that you can certainly find it, in which Rita Palmer says our mutual enemy is Biden. What we can look at doing is denying Biden the 270 electoral votes. If Republicans take the house in November, then the denial of 270 electoral votes to Biden would throw the election to the House of Representatives, which would then make trump the President of the United States. This is not what you normally hear from third party candidates. This is not about here is how Robert F. Kennedy Jr. can become president. This is how we can work together with Trump supporters to make sure Biden is not the president and Trump is and then I don’t know what I don’t know what Trump offers RFK Jr. So here’s my hope. My hope is that as more voters who are sort of toying with the idea, maybe I’ll stay home, maybe I’ll vote third party, RFK Jr, Cornel West, Jill Stein, whatever. I hope that the brazen and cynical nature of this becomes clear to them. And they will say, hey, you know what? Any action other than voting Biden helps Trump because Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has no path to the presidency. Cornel West has no path. Jill Stein has no path. I don’t even think any of them have enough ballot access to get 270 electoral votes, and people will hopefully realize, if I vote for RFK, or if I stay home, I make a Trump presidency more likely. This is the reality. It’s not about shaming people. It’s not about calling people stupid. It’s only about the only thing it’s about is saying my moral and ethical framework does not allow me to make an action or to take a step that is going to make it more likely that Trump is president. I think we’re starting to see that in the polls, because there are some recent polls in which the numbers are almost identical. When you add Robert F. Kennedy in there’s polling, for example, where in a head to head matchup, it’s Biden plus three, and in a three way matchup, it’s tied. That’s still a three point shift, but it’s not as dramatic as it once was. There’s polling where in a head to head matchup, it’s Biden plus one and in a three way matchup, it’s Trump plus one that’s only a two point swing. It’s still not good, but it’s better than it was the other sign that I am caught cautiously optimistic about is that while several months ago, you could regularly find polling in which Kennedy was polling 14 1618. He is much more frequently polling six, eight and nine. So my hope is that no matter what his intentions are, no matter what the intentions are of his voters, my hope is that he will not succeed at flipping this election to Donald Trump.