Exaggerations in American Politics

I just received this:  Ten days ago, Ben Carson went on national television and said that legal abortion is like slavery. He compared young girls who had been raped to slaveholders. And the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released just yesterday has Ben Carson leading the GOP primary—and beating the Democratic front-runner by ten points. This is not a drill. America could be on the verge of electing the most anti-choice president in history.

Being “anti-choice” is just one of the terrifying aspects of this lying, science-hating, totally unqualified boob.  But no, sorry, we’re not “on the verge” of electing Carson—or the other Republican front-runner whose name I won’t mention.  If, in the minuscule chance that either is nominated, he’ll get close to zero votes from Democrats and liberal independents, and almost zero from intelligent, well-educated Republicans—and there are plenty of them.  (Intelligent, but morally challenged.)  The (admittedly few) Republicans I hang out with would never vote for an idiot like this in a million years.

We also need to keep in mind that ideology is only one aspect of electability.  The other is economic results.  Here are two charts that speak to what’s happened over the last eight years. Good luck defeating that.

Yes, in America we have a decent number of people who could easily and fairly be called “fools.” But we’re not all like that.