Election Update: 9/8

We've passed labor day, the first debate is coming soon; we're getting into the real election season. I'm going to experiment with posting short regular updates (6 days a week). I'm doing this for a few reasons. First, I aspire to be a better writer and the only way to improve a skill is to practice it. Second, work and life and college football have kept me busy and I've fallen behind on daily updates even to the sidebar. Finally, when I haven't posted for a while it feels like I need to post something Extra Substantive when I finally do post, and that's a terrible self-defeating cycle.

So I'm going try to keep the pressure low and post daily short updates. I'll usually talk about the polls that were added that day and what I think they mean, and I might comment on some other event that relates to the election and/or politics in America. I'll give it a try for two weeks and see if I've formed the habit.

Decent volume of polls today:

• National
• Clinton +4
• States
• Florida
• Tied
• Ohio
• Trump +1
• Pennsylvania
• Clinton +5
• North Carolina
• Clinton +4
• Trump +3
• Colorado
• Clinton +5
• Oregon
• Clinton +13

The national poll is par for the course. The FL and OH polls are clearly bad polls for Clinton. The CO poll is a little good, it moved the state poll component of Colorado's aggregate poll up a little. NC was a wash and Trump is never winning Oregon. All told a slight edge to Trump on the day's polls.

On another note, I've identified as a feminist for a while, but having three daughters has made me considerably more feminist. Already I observe them being put in gender roles by perfect strangers (e.g. she's so cute vs. he's so strong/fast), I see how it's difficult to find female role models who aren't Disney princesses, and I'm at least a little empathetic when women point out the routine, institutionalized, sexism that happens every day in the world.

That's all made me primed to observe the consistent sexism that has faced Hillary Clinton throughout this campaign. All the criticisms of her mood, her appearance, her voice, and how much she smiles are sexist and should stop. You'd think that was obvious but she was criticized for not smiling enough during yesterday's Commander in Chief forum by the leader of the RNC, so clearly "it should obviously stop" isn't a ubiquitous position. I have a lot more to say on sexism and its impact on this campaign but I'm committing to keep this short and will re-visit this topic on a different day.