Liberate D.C. & The Silence of the Polls

I have spent the last few days in the People’s District of Columbia, where Democrats have used both COVID and January 6th to remove the people’s capital and its treasures from the people.

Republicans, when they recapture the capital, need to liberate it.

Wandering the Mall, more than one Smithsonian Institution can no longer be accessed by the people on a first-come, first-serve basis. Instead, you must now know to reserve a time and show up at a particular hour. Gone is the ability to just wander in and explore.

This must be corrected.

More troubling, hiding behind the events of January 6, 2021, Democrats have Congress on lockdown. One had been able to walk straight into a House office building, show up at a congressman’s office, and engage with staff or the congressman.

Now, you must have an appointment and stand outside in the elements until a staff member or intern shows up to retrieve you. Gone are the days where you could wander freely, swing by the cafeteria for a bite, and show your family the treasures hidden within.

This is an abomination. Democrats claim January 6th was an attack on democracy itself and now they’ve put our democratic and republican institutions behind walls, guards, and barriers to entry.

Members of Congress can now hide from their constituents with zero accountability. In fact, many Democrat members of Congress don’t even go to D.C. anymore. They stay home, cloistered from their constituents even in district, and their staffs show up occasionally to check the mail.

The day I went, multiple offices had stacks of newspapers and documents piled up at unchecked and unopened doors. They were all Democrats who’ve taken to voting remotely.

This is antithetical to the American experience where congressional staffers are expected to wait for constituents, tourists, and lobbyists to show up sweaty and smelly and be annoying without appointments or reservations.

This must be fixed.

It is time to stop hiding behind January 6 and COVID and liberate DC to tourists and constituents. Reopen Congress. Let the people walk through again freely and show up randomly.

The Silence of the Polls

Here’s something in Campaign 2022 you aren’t hearing about. The silence actually speaks loudly. First, understand the two campaign polls.

Campaigns push out cheap polls designed to generate media narratives. In the 2022 Georgia GOP primary, for example, David Perdue launched his race with a public-facing “internal” poll claiming he could beat Abrams and Kemp could not. The media used that poll to tell Perdue’s story, and Perdue helpfully provided the poll to shape a narrative he preferred even though it was crap.

There are also very legitimate internal polls. These polls are detailed, very expensive looks at where the electorate is, who the undecideds are, what messages are and are not working, etc. These polls are not made public because they’ll give away strategy. They are expensive and rely on pollsters and campaign strategists to digest the data accurately.

In 2018 and 2020, Democrats were not making their real internal polling public. But they shared it with people like Dave Wasserman from the Cook Political Report and a number of other political prognosticators. Obama did the same in 2008 with Nate Silver. It provided a window into voter sentiment, shifts, and momentum that then shaped overall coverage of 2018 and 2020. It is why everyone missed the GOP nearly taking back the House in 2020.

Wasserman was pretty open about being given access. He didn’t report the data specifically, but he could use it to shape how he saw the landscape. Republicans, it should be noted, did not share their data. Still, many of the Republicans who insisted in 2020 that their data showed a big Republican wave now will admit their data actually also showed Democrat gains.

A few members of Congress actually tell me they expected to lose in 2020 based on their internal polling, and they won big. Everyone now acknowledges the 2020 polling was flawed with real biases for Democrats largely because Republicans have stopped talking to the pollsters.

That gets me back to the silence we can hear. It is very telling.

Democrats are not sharing their internal polling this time. That’s a pretty damning indictment. If things are as good as they claim, they’d be sharing their actual internals. They have stopped even producing the narrative-shifting PR internal polling.

That makes me wonder how bad the polling is because if the consensus is right, i.e. the polling is wrong because Republicans aren’t answering pollsters’ calls, there’s really no good way to correct that. So if there is still a Democrat bias and their polls are still so bad they don’t want to share them, then it is going to be a very rough night for Democrats.

On a Personal Note

Six years ago today, my wife began taking a small chemo pill every day. She has stage 4 genetic lung cancer. The pill keeps her tumors from growing and spreading.

The pill works for two years. For my wife, it is still working these six years later. We don’t know when it will stop working. Every three months, she goes for scans. Her next ones are Election Day.

In these past six years, you all have stepped up and prayed so much and offered so many words of encouragement. I can’t thank you enough. I’m so proud of my wife for waging this fight with grace and courage.

Now, here’s a shot I took from the very top of the U.S. Capitol dome on Wednesday morning:

By the way, this may be one of my favorite shots. When you look up into the Capitol dome from the floor of the rotunda, you see octagonal-shaped decorative holes. Turns out they are cast iron air vents that can be opened. Here’s a view of The Apotheosis of George Washington through the exterior of one of those air vents.

Here is the painting from the floor of the rotunda looking up.