Poll Fever! Joe Biden vs. the Consulting Class 🥊 #000.5

Elite members of the Democratic Party who were convinced of a red wave in 2022 are now convinced Biden's chances in 2024 are shot. "We've never been wrong before," declared the consulting class.

Nov 06, 2023

Welcome to the latest edition of the Punch Weekly newsletter! If you have questions or feedback, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me at nick@sometimesweekly.com.

Weekly Jabs

Poll Fever! From the Democratic consulting class who brought you RED WAVE (2022) comes a new dramatized political take: POLL FEVER! Poll Fever is the latest elite-backed narrative that seeks to scare voters into believing Joe Biden's reelection campaign is already sinking.
Of course there are legitimate concerns regarding Biden’s reelection, as there are with any incumbent president, but forgive me for not blindly buying the hyperventilating self-assured certainty an entire year before the election. Eventually, we might learn to ignore pundits and consultants who have spewed a waterfall of wrong takes since 2015.
Friends in Low Places: Even David Axelrod, a former top advisor to Barack Obama, is getting in on the doom and gloom by fueling the flames of the POLL FEVER ripping through the Democratic Party establishment.
My issue isn’t with activists to Biden’s left, who are concerned about his reelection chances while doing the important work of holding him accountable by pointing out contradictions between his rhetoric and policies. My issue is with Democratic consulting class who seek to capitalize, both personally and financially, on angst within the Party to prop up… well, who exactly? Well, regardless of who, a new president would mean new opportunities to exert influence.
California Dreamin’: Instead of working to explain Biden's accomplishments in an era of hyper-polarization, these Party forces are already looking past Biden to see who they might be able to install next. Perhaps a good-looking, well-behaved member of the Party elite…Dear reader, is there anyone like this waiting in the wings?

The Main Event

The Last Graduation

This week’s newsletter was delivered early because tomorrow I’ll be hitting the road for Dayton where I’m presenting the findings of my doctoral dissertation. My research is focused on building and sustaining meaningful online learning communities through positive learner-learner interactions, and although the scope of that work is limited to a narrow setting, I believe the findings have some application to the work I’m doing with Sometimes Weekly. Namely, focusing intently on creating safe and meaningful digital spaces where online communities can thrive.

This is something I’ll be writing more about in the future, so I won’t go too in-depth here. But I’m a bit concerned that most “leaders” in the world of online community-building are either tech entrepreneurs or SEO-savvy influencers. There are, of course, a lot of online spaces where meaningful community has taken root, often despite the flaws of the hosting tech platform. Those are the communities I’m interested in learning more about, to see how they operate so we can work to provide much-needed nourishment to other virtual communities.