Well, take that, established rules of comedy!

...The previous sentence was a reference to common idiom, "If you have to explain the joke, then it's not funny," while the current sentence is an example of irony. Here, I am not using irony as it's colloquially used, which could best be described as a funny coincidence, but rather by its literally definition of, "the use of words expressing something other than their literal intention." While the literal intention of my words is an explanation of my first and second sentences, the non-literal intention is a continuation of the premise that I am over-explaining my own jokes, thereby using irony to create what some would call a, "meta," joke.

The point of the comment wasn't to blame the drag queens. It was to reverse the implicit shame of being, "caught," that's in the title, giving the connotation that it's shameful or embarrassing to associate with the GOP candidate, not the other way around. It was just a little quip that I'm sure I've made much funnier with this explanation.

I think you mean, "Drag queens caught partying with GOP candidate who called them pedophiles."

Yeah, considering how bad their campaign did with abortion, cat ladies, and misogynistic bullshit, my gut says this moment did some damage.

I thought Vance won the debate (mostly through Gish galloping), but I'm not sure it's going to matter. The big moment of the evening was him being muted for aggressively talking over two women, and it wasn't a great look. I'm sure it played well to Trump's base of incels who hate journalists, but I doubt anyone else found it very appealing.

They're somewhat different. Our news media doesn't properly question our security agencies (they basically stopped doing this after 9/11), and Israel is our strongest Middle East alley, so they tend to present the Israeli narrative of the war with little or no scrutiny. That being said, given the sheer amount of destruction and death caused by the Israeli bombings, our media really can't ignore the suffering of the Palestinians this time. They're still far too deferential to Israel's justification for the suffering, but they're not ignoring.

It didn't actually have any effect on 2016. Even if every single Jill Stien voter had gone to Clinton, she still would have needed to win over 50% of Gary Johnson's voters to win.. Since it's pretty unlikely that half of the Libertarian party's votes were from disaffected leftists, no, the protest vote did not cost Hillary the election.

Ed Markey, Elizabeth Warren, and Ayanna Pressley. What representatives do you have at your beck and call with your amazing volunteering skills?

I call my Senators and my rep all the time. I tell them I'm a voter in my district and I care about X. They've never once asked me if I voted for them or how much money I gave them.

LOL, what? Are you high? No, they're not going to listen to you if they have your vote already; why would they work for it if they already have it? And if they only tried to appeal to people who already voted for them, then they wouldn't spend all this time and energy trying to appeal to moderate conservatives, would they? Why aren't they ignoring them, and instead only ignoring the left?

And you think they're going to listen to me if I give them money? How much money do you think I'm giving them? Do you think I have a super pac? What do you think the conversations are in DCCC headquarters are like? "Hey guys, I know that the financial-services sector gave us $462 million in 2020, but @pjwestin just donated $50, and he'd like us to reinstate Glass-Steagall, maybe we should listen to him?" Like, Christ, maybe in deluded for thinking enough third-party votes will scare them, but at least I'm not naive enough to think I can negotiate with someone by giving them everything they want upfront.

You can only know that with accurate polling, and accurate polling doesn't exist.

C'mon dude. You really think California is gonna go red this year? Grow up.

lol, and I cannot stress this enough, lmao.

I mean, I'm represented by Ed Markey, Elizabeth Warren, and Ayanna Pressley, so...it's not not working. It's certainly better than voting for Democrats unconditionally while I whine about the electoral college and first-past-the-post polling.

If you live in a state that has even a slight chance to go red, yes, you should vote for Kamala. But if you live in a comfortably Blue or Red state, you should vote for the party that best reflects your ideology. I always vote for the farthest left candidate because I think that if my representatives see a strong third-party showing for a left-wing ideology, it will make them think twice before they pivot to the center.