Democratic Party VP Choice, Bots and still no election speculation

VP Harris made a decent choice with Governor Walz. I still believe she should have chosen someone a little more centrist or slightly right-of-centre to offset her slight left-of-centre instincts but the Governor is a middle-aged white guy, with an honourable military service record and who likes to do "manly" things like hunting and fishing. That should allow those who do not like Mr. Trump but who would be uncomfortable with the prospect of a woman of colour as President to feel a little better about it. The whole point is to not provide them with a reason to stay home in November. She might have accomplished that.

For now, ignore the polls. It is predictable that Ms. Harris would receive a bump in them when she took over the nomination and named a running mate. They will receive another bump after the convention and then the hard slogging to November will commence. Do not bank on any bumps being permanent.

So the Conservatives in Canada got into a little trouble because thousands of bots wrote glowing reports on his visit to Kirkland Lake. That made me laugh considering how small that town is. However, it would also seem to indicate that these bots acted without the knowledge of the CPC as they would probably have been able to predict that having more bots than the actual population of Kirkland Lake mentioning his visit would raise eyebrows. This still warrants an investigation of who owns these bots and their motivation for releasing them into our politics. Foreign actors are interfering in our politics more and more and I believe something more substantial than the inquiries we have seen so far into this issue needs to be done. A full blown Royal Commission, with broad powers to call witnesses and access evidence, would be very useful. 

It has been more than a year since the CPC took a double digit lead over the Liberals in the public polls yet no one is suggesting that we will have an election before the Fall of 2025 despite the fact the Liberals are leading a minority government. Remember, election speculation is a favourite pass time of our media. Hell, they have been talking about Doug Ford calling a snap election even though we just went through a provincial election in 2022. So why no election speculation when the Federal Liberals have been trailing the CPC by double digits for a year or so? Maybe, and I am just spit balling here, those polls are full of crap and the actual political situation at the federal level is much different from what the public polls are saying. Maybe all involved, the political parties and the media, have access to data they are not sharing with the public that is showing a much different situation. It is absolutely unprecedented that a minority government has survived more than a year while trailing its main opponent in the public polls. Something is just not adding up.