Folks:

Take polling in the presidential race not with a grain of salt, but with a brick of it. Any of those developed for cattle or deer will do.

Only two polls I can find (the Investor's Business Daily / TechnoMetrica poll (IBD/TIPP) and University of Southern California Dornslife / Los Angeles Times poll. - Bizarrely, the LA Times ignored their own polling and suggested a Hillary victory with 352 electoral votes.) Actually made the right call.

Story here: https://clarkcountypolitics.blogspot.com/2016/11/no-media-bias-youre-kidding-right-la.html

I point this out because much of recent polling is showing that Trump is winning and in some instances, that it could be something of a landslide.

You know, the same way they claimed Hillary was going to bury Trump.

Early on, several months ago, I suggested that you ignore 100% of what you "hear," and half of what you see for yourself.

That warning is now more important than ever.

Regardless of who you're supporting at any level, from local to federal, do the work.

Do not be an ignorant voter. Do not rely on what you've been told.
Incumbents leave fingerprints that you can easily find and identify. They're called a "voting record."

NONE of these people take credit for any of their failures.

While, for example, Sideshow Bobby Ferguson has a hair-trigger on his press release gun when he wins in Court, he remains strangely silent in the face of the tens of millions of taxpayer dollars he's lost in court in various cases... and he was involved in the cabal of billionaires who tried to strip the initiatives they hate off the ballot, behind closed, court room doors… and there are other cases that were equally disastrous for him politically. I haven't seen or heard of any of his glowingly self-flagellating efforts on the behalf of those loses.

You won't see his failures in campaign literature any more than you saw Sen. Ann Rivers taking credit for betraying us and ramming an unneeded, unwanted gas tax and tab fee increase down our collective throats after pledging, as a major part of her campaign to become a Senator to oppose both, claiming we "have to live within our means."

Candidates on both sides of the aisle generally do all they can to avoid specifics. Instead, we get what we call in the biz "glittering generalities" or "bright, shiny object" pledges.

"I support the 2nd Amendment" SOUNDS great. But the questions are both "how," and "what?"

HOW do you support the 2nd Amendment? What have you done in the past? What bills have you had signed into law, or stopped from being signed? What bills will YOU introduce to expand our rights?
And what happens when you try to nail candidates down on this issue and those related to it?

Most ignore you. At best they tell you as little as possible or, as in the case of both Perez and Harris, they outright lie to you.
The issue of abortion is one they routinely use to beat the hell out of the GOP.

What they claim is to put them back into office because THEY will return us to “nationwide abortion availability.”

They can no more do that than Kevin McCarthy, who was Speaker for a few minutes, pledged to get rid of the 87,000 IRS agent scam they ran.

No federal legislation can supersede a Supreme Court decision.
Dobbs made it clear abortion was a 10th Amendment issue. Any effort made by the Fed to remove that authority and assume it for themselves is DOA in the same court that got rid of abortion before.

Perez knows it. Harris knows it. But they can’t admit it. Neither have made any effort TO make abortion a “right” nationwide by a Constitutional Amendment… which both can be done and, in fact, is the ONLY way to arrive at the Narnia these two claim is RIGHT THERE, if you JUST KEEP US IN OFFICE!!!!

Which begs the issue: why haven’t they?

And when those reading this vote for either or both of those two, they have to do so KNOWING they are being lied to, to their faces. I did say we have the government we deserve or something, didn’t I?

You have many rights. But with rights comes responsibilities. And your responsibility is to get past voting merely because of a label of convenience. If an elected official has been a "fakir" in the past, they'll continue to do so in the future. Claiming to be either a democrat or a Republican is truly meaningless in the end.

Do not ignore their record. And do not buy into the "I'll do better next time" excuse.

When a pol promises the moon plus two dollars to get your vote, keep one hand on your wallet and the other covering your nether regions.

Politics is an outcome-based business. None of this "Well, I tried" nonsense like Herrera's miserable failure to get a bill passed that would have stopped tolling on paid for, completed structures; like the I-205 bridge.

In short, do the work. You still have time to make your decisions based on actual facts. Know what you're doing and why. Our obvious failure to hold politicians accountable for their actions... and lack of actions... is a major part of why we're as screwed up as a country as we are.

We do have the government we deserve. And what we have are the people you not only put there, they're the people we keep sending back.

And look what we, as a nation, have to show for it.