#and i just let frustration build up and up and they always say eventually youll explode but ive been

[worstsequence]

🤪

[onionjulius]

[...]

For all the hands we’ve wrung dry over it in recent elections, electability isn’t a thing you can measure. It’s subjective, not objective — which is why Sanders isn’t the only candidate whose persona can be twisted one way to fit a narrative of unelectability, and another to tell a story of certain success. (Sen. Elizabeth Warren can attest to that.)

Political scientists study electability, but electability ain’t no science. Instead, researchers say, it’s basically a layer of ex post facto rationalization that we slather over a stack of psychological biases, media influence and self-fulfilling poll prophecies. It’s not bullshit, exactly; some people really are more likely to be elected than others. But the reasons behind it, and the ability to make assumptions based on it, well …

“[Electability] is this vague, floppy concept,” said Nichole Bauer, a professor of political communication at Louisiana State University. “We don’t know who is electable until someone is elected.”

“I’m not sure I’m who you want to talk to,” said Julie Brown of West Des Moines, arching her eyebrows and flashing the Elizabeth Warren button hidden under the flap of her canvas purse. She came to the Sanders rally with her teenage daughter, curious to understand why he was polling better than her favored candidate. As Sanders proxies worked the crowd, we huddled against a wall, talking about the ways electability and psychological biases overlap. “I think he is electable and that frustrates me,” she said. “It frustrates the female inside me. If Elizabeth Warren had had a heart attack, they would have put her six feet under.”

Determining who is electable inevitably pits candidates against each other, especially in an election year when the top priority for primary voters — by a long shot — is nominating someone who can take down the sitting president. Brown is a voter who sees “electability” as basically a reflection of whether a candidate can clear the hurdles presented by the electorate’s prejudices.

Months of talking about the primary — and wondering whether candidates will eventually win the general election — has made electability a hot buzzword of the 2020 election. But, scientists say, we’ve not put as much work into clearly establishing what it is.

When physicists suspect a thing exists, but can’t observe it directly, they start studying the stuff around it. You can’t see the particles, you can’t look at the black hole, but you can see what happens when they crash into something else. And that’s basically what political scientists have ended up doing with electability. To understand it better, researchers have looked at a couple of different kinds of social collisions: What voters like in a politician, and what those voters think other people like.

And, in that way, Julie Brown isn’t wrong about electability and bias, Bauer told me. Social scientists do use voters’ biases to understand what electability is and what it might look like.

[...] 

So it’s fair to say that our notion of electability is, at some level, related to our individual knee-jerk social biases — things like the color of a person’s skin, or the way they present their gender to the world. We take those ingredients and we make assumptions about that person. We make assumptions about what other people might think about that person. We make assumptions about what researchers want us to say when they ask about our biases. We make a stew — reactions and reactions to reactions. It’s virtually impossible to avoid bias in perceptions of electability, said Alan Abramowitz, professor of political science at Emory University. “Just about anything that affects how you feel about a candidate could affect assessment of electability,” he said.

Media narratives, in turn, often prey on these biases, which only makes them stronger. In lifting up electability as a marker of fitness, we’ve inadvertently created a system that caters to whatever our imagined lowest common denominator might be. You might want to vote for a black, female candidate, goes the narrative … but other voters are racist and sexist and so you can’t.

Because, of course, electability isn’t just about individual feelings.

When voters like Julie Brown and Brooks Vander Kopsa talk about whether Bernie Sanders is electable, they aren’t really talking about their own feelings. They’re talking about what they think other people feel, which is where polls come in.

“The average person knows a little about politics, but not a ton,” Stephen Utych, a professor of political science at Boise State University, said. And voters use polls as a source of information to fill in the gaps. “If I’m a Republican and other Republicans don’t like this person, I don’t know what it is, but there must be something wrong with them,” Utych said. We American voters really like to believe we’re independent, Kam agreed, but the reality is that we take a lot of cues from the herd.

But polls can become a bit of an ouroboros. Kam and Utych’s 2014 study found that candidates who were behind in the polls were rated less favorably by voters — and voters were less interested in seeking out information about those candidates.

The interaction of polls and media becomes its own self-fulfilling prophecy, Abramowitz and Utych both said. And candidates can shift the perception of how electable they are by striking back at the media and crafting their own narratives. In a 2018 study, the share of voters who, after reading a candidate’s defense of their own electability, were willing to think the candidate could win the election more than doubled, rising from 15 percent to nearly 34 percent.

This early in the election season, there’s still an opportunity to change the narrative – to grasp electability out of the jaws of defeat. And that’s the paradox that leads candidates like Sanders to spend months traversing the early primary states – breakfast to breakfast, handshake to handshake. Winning Iowa allowed Barack Obama to craft a narrative of electability around himself in 2008. Conversely, Bill Clinton lost Iowa and took second place in New Hampshire in 1992. But, from that, his campaign was able to spin a narrative of being the “comeback kid”, said Seth McKee, a professor of political science at Texas Tech University. “I think Iowa and New Hampshire matter so much in how the media portray the horse race after the votes have been cast,” he told me.

But building those narratives and harnessing those horses are dependent on the idea that voters have a good idea of what other voters want, or what other people’s deal breakers might be. And the psychology gets very tricky here. Frankly, experts said, voters aren’t great at knowing what’s going on in their own heads, let alone those of strangers.

[...] 

Then there’s the issue that electability is not a fixed idea. What makes a candidate likable to the nation, as a whole, is in flux — tracking, experts say, with hardening partisan lines.

And voters see it, too. James Muhammad, a Californian visiting Iowa, was one of the other people I spoke to at the Sanders rally. When I asked him about electability, he just laughed. “Was Trump electable?” he said.

That’s a question academics are also asking. And it’s one that’s deeply tied up in attempts to understand what electability looks like to Democrats now. From what we can see in research on congressional races, which are more numerous, there’s something about electability that is shifting. Something fundamental.

“I think there is an idea in the media of a centrist, usually white, not necessarily college educated voter who is the one at play and that probably has influenced the way the media is covering it,” said Joshua Darr, a FiveThirtyEight contributor and professor of political science at Louisiana State University. That assumption of the power of the centrist voter is, to some extent, evidence based. Historically, being moderate and appealing to centrist voters was a great way to win congressional elections, Utych and Abramowitz both told me. But that’s been changing. Abramowitz’s analysis of the 2018 House elections turned up evidence that an incumbent candidate’s past voting record — whether they were more moderate or not — didn’t really make much of a difference in whether they won or lost, regardless of party. What’s more, he told me, the number of moderate members in Congress has been falling for decades. Forty-eight percent of the 95th Congress (1977-79) fell within the moderate range of ideology,1 compared to just 16 percent of the 115th Congress (2017-19), Abramowitz found.

Ideologues are elected more often than they used to be. Outsiders are elected more often, too. And the percentage of true swing voters is shrinking, Utych said. So does that mean someone like Sanders is more electable and someone like former Vice President Joe Biden is less electable? Electability here becomes a game of divining which group is more important to winning — swing voters or the partisan base. But that’s no more accurate than trying to estimate how sexist your neighbors are. “Which segment is bigger … there’s not great information on that,” Utych said. “Anything you say is just guessing.”

Even attempts to pin electability down subjectively leave you chasing your own tail, said Elizabeth Simas, a professor of political science at the University of Houston. We know from decades of research that voters have a tendency to line up their assumptions about who is electable line with the person they want to be elected. Maybe that means people just want to maintain some kind of cognitive consistency. “But it’s just always going to be impossible to parse out whether someone supports a candidate because of electability, or if a candidate is perceived as electable because they are the preferred candidate,” Simas said.

[...]

Maggie Koerth is a senior science writer for FiveThirtyEight. @maggiekb1

[reesewestonarchive]

chapter nine / rem belongs to @forlornraven / masterpost / mature content

Nakoa wakes to darkness. He finds out easily that he’s in a vehicle; the rumble of tires beneath him, the loud, high-pitched squeal of rubber on asphalt.

The hard, unforgiving feel of metal against his shoulder. He opens his eyes, but it makes no difference. He sees slivers of light, but nothing really. Nakoa blinks, once, twice, and, when he turns over, finds himself grateful for the lack of light, because just the slivers of daylight peeking through are enough to send spikes through his brain.

“You awake?” He jolts at the sound of a voice, relaxes when Rem adds, “Hey, it’s just me.” His words are near slurring, though. Nakoa spins his head to look for him, nervous, worried, but it’s impossible to see in the darkness. “I—” Rem huffs a frustrated breath. “Can’t see a fucking thing—where are you?”

One of Rem’s boots finds Nakoa’s ribs. He mutters an apology, then says, “Hang on—” before he reaches down, his hand skirting along Nakoa’s back until he reaches Nakoa’s hands, clasped behind him. “Hold still.”

The ties release after just a second, and when Nakoa pulls them up, he asks, “How the fuck did you get out of them?” The plastic rubbed his wrists raw, even as short as they were on.

He can hear Rem’s grin in his voice when he speaks, though, and his presence makes the dark, unforgiving trcuk a little less foreboding. “You think I leave the motel without a knife?”

Nakoa would laugh, if he could. Instead, he reaches a hand out, trying to find Rem in the dark. “Where—” he says, before he makes contact with Rem’s knee. Relief settles in his stomach, and he reaches out for Rem’s hand, squeezes it. Feels better already when Rem squeezes back.

“You okay?” Nakoa asks. “That looked.” Bad. Terrible. Nakoa sees it no matter where he looks, Rem lying on the asphalt like that.

“Mm.” But his voice sounds far away. “Nakoa.”

“Yeah.”

“What the fuck?”

Nakoa should have known, knows he should have. That he should have said something to Rem, but… “My father’s—” The word tastes bitter on his tongue. “…in imports.”

“Drugs,” Rem says, immediately. “Fucking hell, Nakoa.”

It’s how Nakoa got started. It’s why he kept going with them. Michael’s into more than just weed, though, and therein lies the problem. That Nakoa knows. Michael had beat him, when Nakoa found out, and has since used his strength to his advantage. Try as he might, Nakoa can only throw a punch if he’s catching someone off guard, if they can fight worse than he can.

Michael doesn’t fit the bill, and he’s always carrying.

“I didn’t have a choice!” Nakoa says. “And I thought. Maybe, if I wasn’t there… why would he waste a bunch of bullshit on me? Men, resources.” Why would he follow Nakoa across the country? Nakoa, of all people?

“You stole from him,” Rem says. His voice comes out flat. “Nakoa.”

“You don’t get to play like you wouldn’t have done the same fucking thing,” he says, tone sharp. He pulls back from Rem, smells blood on his hands as he wipes them down his face. “How often have you stolen whiskey?”

“It’s legal! You wanna compare that to coke?”

Exhausted, suddenly, Nakoa says, “I really need you to not fucking judge me. I stopped, okay? He didn’t notice, and even if he had, what was he gonna do?” Michael hates Nakoa; always has. A disappointment, and that isn’t even considering Rem. That’s not considering the fact that Michael knows, and always has, that Nakoa beds men as often as he does women. It’s been like this since Nakoa was born, his father distant for work, and Nakoa eager for his approval and stumbling on his work at thirteen.

“He couldn’t do anything about it then,” Nakoa says. “But now what’s stopping him? His kid went missing. No one’s gonna care if I end up in a ditch.”

“Don’t fucking joke about that.”

Nakoa shuts his mouth, though. Taps his fingers on the metal on the floor. He says, “I should have told you.” He wants to apologize; can’t.

Wishes that he could just… touch Rem. No expectation. Find comfort in his touch.

He holds his hands to himself, and neither of them speak.

Eventually, the van slows to a stop, and doesn’t start again. Rem gets to his feet, says, “I got this.” Nakoa hears the knife unlatching in his hand. “Stay back.”

“Don’t being a knife to a gun fight, you—” Nakoa sighs. “Just—get behind me.”

“I’m not going to let you—”

“He’s my father,” Nakoa says, his voice cracking. “Let me deal with him.” He thinks about clocking Rem on the head again, but if he got knocked out that bad, he might already have a concussion.

Nakoa doesn’t say, “I want you safe.” He doesn’t say that it means more to him that Rem is okay, that Rem can go home. Maybe Rem thinks he’s worthless, but he’s Nakoa’s entire world.

The door slides up, and Nakoa blinks against the blinding light. Rem stands behind him, body heat warming Nakoa’s back. Michael’s behind his men, chatting on the phone, but Nakoa doesn’t move, not until Michael says, his voice almost bored, like he’s not still devising a plan. “Come join me for dinner.”

Nakoa blinks. “Pretty fucking dramatic entrance for dinner.”

Michael rolls his eyes. “You could show a little respect.”

Already disappointing his father, and they’ve been reunited for a matter of minutes. Nakoa holds his gaze and says, “You wanna kill me, go ahead.”

Behind him, he hears Rem make a small, distressed noise. “Nakoa—”

But Nakoa’s tired of living in this hole, in his father’s shadow, too afraid to move beyond Michael and his wants. Too afraid Michael might follow through on his threats.

“Just come. We’ll discuss what I plan to do with you at dinner.” Michael sighs, rubbing his forehead. “I keep forgetting about the carry on.” Nakoa catches his attention shifting to Rem, wishes it wouldn’t. “Hm. Looks like he’s the reason they’re free. Someone remind me we need handcuffs.”

When Nakoa doesn’t go forward, Michael sighs, says, “Someone grab him, please. Leave the other.” He sighs. “And tie him up this time?”

One of the men hauls Nakoa from the truck, by the hair, the shoulder. Nakoa swears, grips at the guy’s wrist and tries to walk with him, can’t. Holds tight and tries to lessen the pressure on his hair, anyway.

He watches as Rem crawls from the truck, eyes wide with fear, brandishing his knife. In comparison to giant men with handguns, he looks like a small, terrified child. Nakoa knows better than to call out his name, so he doesn’t.

His chest aches, and a half-strangled, “Rem—” escapes from his throat, just as the man dragging him pulls him into a building. Before the door shuts, Nakoa catches sight of Rem lashing out, the sound of a gunshot, then… Nothing.

Nakoa finds himself dropped at Michael’s feet, scalp burning, Michael staring down at him with something akin to disinterest. “I wish things could have gone differently for you, Nakoa.”

This is nothing like the Michael Nakoa remembers. This man is… different. Distressingly calm, quiet.

Nakoa prefers him screaming. Calm breeds terror in Nakoa’s chest, and he doesn’t care for the way it burrows in and refuses to leave.

“Up.” It’s not a request. “Dinner.”

Tossing a scowl back at the man who’d dragged him, Nakoa rubs his wrists, follows Michael through the warehouse.. He needs to stay around until he can get back to Rem, anyway. After that… who cares? Michael can do whatever he wants with Nakoa, as long as Rem gets out of this safely.

Michael leads him into another room to a table sitting alone, like one in the movies, covered with a tablecloth, a single lightbulb illuminating the table and nothing more.

With a swallow, Nakoa takes his seat, still rubbing his wrists. Michael sits in the other chair, and, neat as can fucking be, he undoes his napkin and lays it across his lap.

“Nakoa,” Michael says, and now he sounds more like himself, like the Michael Nakoa remembers. “You are a pain in my ass, you know that?”

“So the pleasant, calm druglord, that’s just for your employees. But your son, all bets are off.”

Michael’s gaze is sharp, piercing, and Nakoa wishes he’d kept his mouth shut. “Ungrateful. You know,” he says, already lifting the lid from his dinner, “you really don’t understand the sacrifices I’ve made for you. The resources I’ve wasted finding you.”

As if Nakoa asked for it. As if he gives a shit about whether Michael goes broke. As if he cares, for half a second, what Michael loses. He sits back, crosses his arms. Waits.

“I can see you’re going to be difficult, so let me lay this out for you.” He pops a bite of dinner—steak, because of course it is—into his mouth, and chews. Slow. Nakoa knows the tactic well, terrify them with their own imagination. “You’ll come home with me.”

“Over my—”

“—and we can leave your friend here to fend for himself.”

“Next.”

Eyebrow raised, Michael cuts back into his steak. “I could just as easily kill your friend, you know. He hardly seems like a man someone will miss.” At Nakoa’s expression, Michael laughs. “Don’t tell me you think—” He shakes his head. “You’re a fool, Nakoa.”

Better a fool than a prick, Nakoa thinks, but he doesn’t say so. Michael married a gentle woman, one he can scare into submission, and he thinks Nakoa’s life choices are worth judging. “Next option,” he says, through gritted teeth, staring hard at the table, at the knife marks in the wood. Imagines what it might be like to see those on his skin, instead. If he’d even life through it.

“I could kill the both of you. You’ve already been missing for how long? None of the authorities would think twice about a couple of stupid, runaway queer boys ending up dead. Two of them…” He clicks his tongue. “Well. Is that even a tragedy worth the news cycle?”

And Michael wonders why he ran away. Nakoa lifts his gaze, reluctant, up towards Michael’s face, hates the giddy expression on his father’s face. He’s a bastard, and Nakoa knows he’s always enjoyed his work a little too much, but he’d hoped maybe, underneath it all, there was something that made him human. Now he’s not so sure.

“Easiest way to tie up loose ends, don’t you agree?”

Nakoa wants to tell him to fuck off, but Michael won't hesitate to cut him with the knife on his plate. Never has before. Never hesitates, once he makes his mind up. “Why the holdup?” Nakoa asks, but his voice shakes. “Sounds like you got it all figured out. Why not just kill me now?”

He’s losing his patience, Michael. The joy drains from his expression and he returns to his dinner, almost bored. “Unfortunately, I still think there might be some use in you. I could use you to make an example. I think using you as a living example carries more weight, don’t you?”

“What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?”

Pointing a fork to Nakoa’s plate, Michael says, “Eat. It’s the last time you’ll get the opportunity in a while.”

“What about Rem?” Nakoa does his best to hold his voice steady, to keep Michael from making any more shitty comments, but it still comes out wrong.

“I think I’ll be doing the world a favor, taking him out.” He reaches for his drink, then sighs. “Nakoa, please. If you don’t eat, I’ll be forced to take other measures.” Like what, Nakoa wonders, but doesn’t ask. Sighing, Michael sets his fork down and says, “Nakoa. It’s in your best interest to work with me.”

“Too fucking bad.”

“I can make your life a living hell, you know.”

“You already did. What can you do to make it worse?”

Michael raises an eyebrow, says, “You think you’re in love with the man outside. Not sure where you got that, but fine, I’ll play along. You’re right in considering yourself worthless, so I understand I can’t use you against yourself.” With a cock of his head, Michael leans back in his seat. “I might be able to use him yet. Suppose I better put in the call to keep him in one piece after all.” He pulls a walkie talkie out of his shirt pocket and switches it on. “Hold my previous order,” Michael says, glaring at Michael. “Plans have changed. We’re going to have a little fun.”

[teddy-feathers]

In middleschool... I figured I must be straight because itd be pretty 'wanting to be special' of me to think I might be gay.

Dad's cool in that during serious talks he ALWAYS included 'or girls' to the point I wanted to roll my eyes because 'yes, I get it, thats implied by now get to the point' so I never worried what my family would think if I did bring home a girl.

But depsite most likely probably being striaght because in my mind that was the 'default' I decided that with half the population being girls who was I to say no if my soul mate turned out to be a girl? Or like multiple people?

So I promised myself Id keep an open mind if anything happened.

In highschool i realized... I hated everything to do with dating.

To top it off I was aggressively proactive about noticing and then bullying anyone who showed interest in me because I was not about to let them make their feelings my problem.

But yeah. Romance? Being treated 'like a girl'? Sexy fun times that we weren't old enough for and could WAIT until we were if we ever wanted to...

And how otherwise cool friendships changed. Or. Like. How. Friendship became a consolation prize? Or as one guy put it my second semester in college 'girls are only friends with guys they dont want to fuck'

Hell and even if i ever did want to date - don't you have to like know a person before you want to fuck them?

Had I known what aromantic was or demisexuality id have claimed that in a heart beat in highschool.

Nothing about dating appealed and... While hormones were a thing I REFUSED to ever be controlled by mine thank you very much.

This didn't really... Change. In college.

I felt the same about romance and sex but... I also felt. Kinda guilty.

A few people liked me weirdly enough and. Even though it was super frustrating that when all i wanted was a close deep friendship with people they wanted MORE I still felt. Bad. That they liked me.

Like I had tricked them somehow?

And then once i dropped out and just atarted working full time... I just. Really was lonely and wanted a friend and... I figured. Why NOT give dating a shot.

I mean. They liked me and dating was supposed to get to know someone.

And i dated really sweet cool people. Like. Great friends had a good time.

First time a guy went to kiss me? I was COMPLETELY terrified. Completely. Couldnt figure out why my heart tried to drop out of my chest when i realized what was about to happen but while part of it was I didn't know how the fuck to kiss... I also just. Wasn't ready.

But... I kinda. Did everything eventually. Even though i wasnt ready. And like. The people I slept with weren't. Bad. And were def great partners and nice and did and said all the right things and totally would have backed off or... Idk not proceeded had they known just how hard i had to talk myself into shit.

But during? I was making lists in my head. I was waiting for it to be over. I wasn't... Invovled. All that build up of hormones for something that felt a lot like... Something i didnt particularly want to do and didn't really. Enjoy. Not for lack of trying but. It really wasnt my thing.

And. Now i know. Some tricks. To get me in the mood and maybe even keep me there if I wanted to participate but. It's not really. My thing. Worth it?

And most of the time if it involves another person im just kinda low key 'ick i dont want anything to do with your arousal or the process thereafter'.

And... Kinda like high school my brain still thinks sex is funny and its great for a laugh and im not. Ashamed of talking about shit that I really should learn to filter but.

Its only interesting as a joke or something... That has absolutely nothing to do with me.

As for romance... Love is complicated.

They tell you youll know when youre in love.

My emotional metaphorical heart has done many scary things for many reasons but not once did i... Fall in love.

I can only say this with surety in retrospect because. I care deeply about my friends and I was very very lonely and desperate not to be alone at various points.

And i thought... Love was something that grew between people given time.

But.