Count Me In

“If it’s between them, I’m going to say this: Trump was hilarious. He was hilarious … I would say, it’s kind of up in the air.” That’s Arlando Monk, a Black entrepreneur from the Milwaukee area. What separates him from you? First, he’s currently undecided on a presidential race between Trump and Biden. Second, unlike most of us, his vote will really matter. A starkly divided country and the increasingly bizarro world of the electoral college has placed the outcomes of presidential elections into the hands of a remarkably few people. “‘It’s now getting to the point where you are probably talking about 400,000 people in three or four states. That is what it is getting down to,’ said Joe Trippi, a Democratic strategist who has worked on presidential campaigns since 1980. ‘It does mean that more and more people feel that they don’t have a say.'” Before you get too envious of the relative handful of voters who will decide the future of American democracy, consider that campaigns have more money than ever and much of that cash is being spent to target these critical voters. “Technology has improved to allow candidates to target only the individuals they need to reach, sometimes even distinguishing between members of the same household.” This is not necessarily a new story, but like every other political trend in America, it’s getting more extreme. WaPo (Gift Article): Small segment of voters will wield outsize power in 2024 presidential race. “The electoral college was supposed to moderate the passions of what Alexander Hamilton called the ‘general mass,’ which he worried could fall prey to candidates with ‘talents for low intrigue and the little arts of popularity.'” (Little arts of popularit sounds like a wordy way to describe a tweet…)