Hope everyone’s weekend going? Thanks for spending a portion of it with the Six.
The recent midterm elections revealed how little we actually know about what voters care about.
High national inflation? Concerns over crime rates? The assumption was that these issues mattered enough to voters that we’d see a changing of the guard in the legislative branches across the country.
Nope. Not what happened.
As for Covid-related policies, how accountable should politicians be for their actions?
In this election, apparently, not at all.
States with more authoritarian policies – Illinois, Michigan, California, New York – overwhelmingly re-elected their governors. An argument in a Wall Street Journal op/ed piece this week said that Donald Trump should be rejected in his 2024 presidential bid because of poor leadership when Covid first hit on his watch in March 2020.
My best educated guess is if Trump doesn’t make it past the GOP primary, it won’t be because voters hold a grudge over decisions made on Covid. It’ll be because Republicans are all sick of him for reasons other than how he handled the “Chinese flu” almost three years ago.
One lesson from midterms is how polling means little when determining election outcomes and that voters aren’t motivated by issues we thought matter. If they do vote, they are likely to stick with the comfort of known quantity over uncertainty of change.
That’s a troubling trend. But that’s what the data tells us. We’ll see if it all holds up when we do it all over again in 2024.
Let’s proceed with the Six.
1. Poll: More Voters Prefer DeSantis Over Trump In 2024.
Donald Trump dominated the news cycle this week after his “major” – although predictable – announcement he is running for president in 2024. All the smart Republicans are trying really hard to stop Trump this time. The National Review put out a big anti-Trump editorial headlined simply: “No.” The New York Post has made the full turn, covering Trump’s run with the unbeatable headline “Florida Man Makes Announcement.” This time does feel different and conservatives are quickly spinning away from him as voters prefer Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis over Trump, according to a new survey and article via Axios.
2. How VC Became The Most Coveted Job In Silicon Valley.
So crypto blew up this week with the bankruptcy filing of FTX Group, the supposed-billion-dollar cryptocurrency exchange. One would think the wunderkind CEO of FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, would be in a lot of trouble right now. It sure looks like he was running one of the largest financial scams in history, with his cryptocurrency “bank” at one point valued at $32 billion and Bankman-Fried on his way to being “the world’s first trillionaire,” according to the investment firm Sequoia Capital. But Bankman-Fried was also one of the largest donors to the Democratic party, second only to George Soros this past cycle. And so the coverage from media and regulatory bodies has been extraordinarily – and hilariously – soft. Corporate media tends to make goo-goo eyes at these Gen Z CEO-types that are more hustle than substance (Hollywood glamorizes them as we’ve seen in recent series made on Elizabeth Holmes and Adam Neumann, the WeWork guy). This fascinating piece from the Dirt newsletter attempts to explain how Gen Z culture penetrated venture capital and how investors got ripped off.
3. What Happened With That Taylor Swift Pre-Sale?
Ticketmaster, arguably the least popular monopoly in the United States with some 70 percent of the ticket market, stoked the ire of a legion of Swifties this week by botching the rollout of the sale for Taylor Swift’s “The Eras” tour. During Wednesday’s pre-sale, Ticketmaster claimed that 15 percent of interactions on their site experienced issues, and at the end of the day Swift sold 2 million tickets, a record. This process happened to the consternation of the artist’s devoted fans, and followed a Tuesday fiasco where the site crashed repeatedly, forcing a delay of the sale by a day. Ticketmaster followed this washout by announcing Thursday that they would cancel the rest of the sale, further alienating the fiercely devoted fanbase. What exactly happened? Bloomberg with the story.
4. Swamp Boy.
We're often told that we have to be the quarterbacks of our own health care. Well, Michael Campbell's father had to be the quarterback, the offensive line, the coach, the team owner, and even the mayor of the city where the team plays. But it wasn't his own health he was looking to preserve, it was the mental health of his son. It all started, as this riveting article from Now This News does, with a statement by his son. "'I need to talk to you and Dad,' he said. 'It's serious...I think I'm the evil, damned son of the devil.' Read on.
5. Deaf and Hard of Hearing but Great at Football.
We’ve all probably at least heard of Gallaudet University, a school in Washington D.C. for the deaf and hard of hearing. The school also has a football team and its having one heckuva season. Gallaudet plays at the NCAA Division 3 level and won its conference, ensuring a spot in the D3 playoffs. ESPN reporter Heather Dinich embedded herself with the Bison for a recent game and pens a really good piece on the program that believes “We're not just a deaf school,” said one player. "We're here, we're going to compete for a championship."
6. Baby Elephant Disrupts TV Report.
Give this video about 30 seconds. Then you’ll see what’s coming.
Delightfully amusing.
Thanks for reading everybody and enjoy the rest of your weekend.
We’ll take next weekend off for Thanksgiving and be right back here on Dec. 4.
Have a suggestion for The Sunday Six? Send email to jonjkerr@gmail.com.
Thank you for sharing. Swamp Boy was of particular interest to me personally. In 2010 my son at the age of 10 suddenly, (overnight really)developed a “Tic”. After ignoring it for a few weeks (in hope that it would go away as quickly as it came on) decided to schedule him an appointment with a Psychiatrist at his Pediatrician’s suggestion. We had to wait several months for the appointment, so in the meantime I decided to do some research of my own to see if I could find a possible cause for the sudden onset. Six months prior to the Tic my son had a very bad case of strep, with extremely high fevers and a rash that developed at the end of the illness. He was also diagnosed with Scarlet Fever. He was treated with a round of antibiotics and got better. In my research I found some medical journals and kept coming across the acronym PANDA. Curious about what it meant (as it was being referred to often), I looked it up. And after hours of reading I thought for sure that there might be a connection between the onset of the strep infection and the sudden development of his Tic. I contacted his Pediatrician to ask about the possibility and what his opinion was on PANDA, and like the Campbells my concern and questions were dismissed. At the Psychiatric appointment my concern was more than dismissed. I walked away from the appointment feeling like an idiot after the Doctor patronizingly waved is hand at me as if I had no idea of what I was concerning myself with. He did however provide me with a prescription and another appointment for three months later. None the less I felt like I had stumbled across the PANDA information for a reason and after researching the side effects of the prescribed medication I couldn’t bring myself to fill it. (In no way am I saying that choosing Psychiatric medication is wrong, every circumstance is different and each person has to make their own choice.) Eventually my son got better and the Tic went away on its own however, several years later he was diagnosed with ADHD. I feel like as a society we have moved away from funding the type of research that leads us to finding root causes of many diseases. Instead research seems predominantly focused on treatment (mainly pharmaceutical.) I hope to see a shift.