Youth Gone Mild

Say it with me: I will ignore the exit polls.

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Addicted to the sensation of power that the Remnant command chair provides, Sarah Isgur takes control of the program once again. She’s joined by famed pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson to discuss the reliability of polls and the future of the polling industry, as well as the midterms and the 2024 presidential election. Tune in also to learn about Sarah’s spindrift habit, Kristen’s exceptional canine companion, and what really appeals to young voters.

Show Notes:

–Kristen’s webpage

–The Fetterman-Oz debate

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  1. Joseph Kessler

    Thank you for this discussion. I understand the need for internal political and issue polls by political candidates, parties, etc. Polls conducted by news agencies drive me crazy. They commission the poll and then report the results as “news”. This is not to inform their readers and viewers but to influence them. I was on that rant before 2016. Since then the constant reporting of poll results and my rant has only gotten worse.

    I appreciate the discussion re exit polls. Another poll with the sole purpose of giving news and opinion folks something to fill the endless airwaves they take up. Let’s go back to counting the vote, reporting on the actual count, and provide analysis and opinion on the real results. Then as KSA said, digest the polling data after the results are in and you have had time to study the data to help understand the electorate and what they said with their vote.

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    Gibby

    Dog before birth of my son: My baby
    Dog after the birth of my son: my dog

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    Ben Connelly

    You know it’s going to be a good podcast when the guest says her favorite remnant episodes are the drunk half-baked ones with Mike Gallagher.

    When my parents took me home from the hospital, they wondered how their dog (a Boston Terrier with a tough streak) would react. I’m pretty sure on day one he was like, “another human to protect? Guess I’ll have to up my game.” Between my birth and his death nine and a half years later, he bit me once and I deserved it. Basically I was four or five and punched him to see what he’d do. He bit me just enough to hurt but not enough to break the skin, as if to say, “don’t try it kid. You won’t win this one.” That was an important life lesson.

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    Ben Connelly

    I will ignore exit polls

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    Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)

    "Millennials are OLD PEOPLE now," Kristen Soltis Anderson assures Sarah Isgur, as they converse with each other from out there on my lawn with the other kids. "Gran Tornio" was released in 2008, after all.

    Nope, nope. You have a point about millennials maturing on both absolute and relative bases. But if you can't tell us where you were when JFK was shot, you're not old people. (First grade, Mrs. Pratt's private school in Lamesa, Texas, having lunch in her kitchen, whence we all watched Walter Cronkite together.)

    I think Mr. French used the "where were you when Challenger blew up" version on an AO the other day. I laughed to think that he thought that makes himself feel really old, as he remembered that from his school days. Mr. French, I was preparing for a closing argument in a fairly serious personal injury jury trial when THAT happened, and I had to figure out on the spot what I was, or was not, going to say about it to the 12 Houstonians good and true (and therefore huge space program fans) who held my client's financial fate in their collective hands.

    And even so, there are indeed other Dispatch members, active in the comments, who'll consider ME a young whippersnapper because I can't remember where I was when Sputnik went up. (In utero, is the answer to that one.)

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      Ben Connelly

      Who’s JFK?

      Just kidding.

      My mom was only 3 months old when JFK was assassinated. But my dad remembers Sputnik.

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    2. 555websters

      @Bill Dyer Don't leave us hanging, old man! What did you tell those 12 Houstonians good and true?

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        Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)

        The case was an unusual one in that my client had, per our firm's recommendation, admitted liability for the underlying motor vehicle accident and the plaintiff's injuries. So the only evidence that had been presented in the (correspondingly shorter) trial was on the plaintiff's injuries. The whole point of admitting liability — when our client had no credible factual defense and had indeed been demonstrably negligent — was to avoid arguments over fault, and hopefully to keep the jurors' passions well under control.

        We'd closed the evidence just before lunch. The explosion was at 10:39 a.m. Houston time, and so it was not until the lunch break that everyone involved in our trial all, haphazardly, got the news. It was a six-story courthouse with a basement and a dome on top, and pretty much everyone in it, from top to bottom, was reeling in shock and horror. It was a building full of people who were suddenly rubbed emotionally raw, regardless of who they were or what they'd been feeling when they'd walked in that morning.

        I had to make — but I expected to lose, and did lose — a motion to recess until the following day. Grounds: distraction! "No, that'd make these people [i.e., voters] miss another day of work or child-care or whatever else it is that they'd be doing, Mr. Dyer. We're going to argue as scheduled, they'll be in the jury room by 2:30 p.m., and we'll have a verdict by close of business in all likelihood," he said. "Saddle up."

        So I sought and got the judge's agreement — this time with no objection from my opponent — that the judge would reopen our afternoon session with a short special instruction (which I had written out in longhand in the last 10 minutes of the lunch break). It was basically to the effect that he knew we'd all learned of the tragedy, and that there would be a time and place to talk and grieve about it for all of us very soon — but that his courtroom, during both sides' closing arguments, and during the jury's deliberations thereafter, was NOT the time or place to talk or grieve. And he reminded them that the court's charge he was about to read, with their instructions (which Texas practice also gives to jurors in written form to take into the jury room), would oblige them to make their decisions in the case based only on the evidence he'd admitted during the trial, and that as the very first of those instructions prescribed, they must not let bias, prejudice, or sympathy play any part in their deliberations.

        I am entirely confident that all over America, the resumption of trial court proceedings that particular afternoon included some similar instruction — the consolation prizes for the denied motions to recess for the afternoon.

        The plaintiff's lawyer, having been handed a gigantic present all gift-wrapped — and yes, that's warped and twisted logic, but 99 out of 100 plaintiff's lawyers would have had that same tactical assessment of the situation — wisely said absolutely nothing at all, directly or indirectly, about the Challenger during his initial closing.

        In my turn, I briefly touched on the special instruction the judge had given them. I think I probably did an otherwise fairly standard PI defense lawyer closing, stressing the parts of the medical evidence that were most favorable to our (much lower) estimation of the plaintiff's damages. And as part of my usual defense-lawyer pitch about viewing the evidence dispassionately, I'm sure I talked about the statue on top of the courthouse dome of Lady Justice, with her sword and scales and blindfold.

        My opponent then got up for his final closing, and did a three-minute riff which basically said, "That statue is marble, and has a heart of stone, but we don't put statues in the jury box where you're sitting now. You have working eyes and ears, and a heart of flesh, and you're entitled as jurors to use those as you weigh the evidence in this case. There are other tragedies in the world that aren't on trial in this courtroom, but my client's tragedy IS, and it's your job to render a just and true verdict on the evidence of that tragedy that I've brought you."

        So yeah, I got my butt kicked. The verdict was below the final pretrial settlement demand, on which basis I could technically claim a win, but considerably higher than our side's pretrial offer or estimation of the likely verdict. It had ample support in the evidence; my client was a self-insured company that promptly paid the resulting judgment and continued sending business to my firm.

        But I'm pretty sure it was a bad day for defense lawyers all over the country. Sometimes that's life.Show lessShow lessShow lessShow lessShow lessExpand full commentExpand full commentShow lessShow less

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        1. JDubs

          Thank you, Mr. Dyer! I'm always here for a great story.

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    Sheila M

    I really enjoyed Sarah's Remnant episodes. I've always enjoyed the "Sarah & Friends" episodes she has done on the various podcasts, but the more informal tone of the two Remnant episodes was especially enjoyable. I would definitely sign up for a "Sarah and Friends" podcast!

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    BWG

    That was quite the stealth dunk there Jonah!

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  8. Mikenyork

    If I were Jonah, Iwould think really long and hard about having Sarah Isgur do my podcast. Old (very old) pop tune lyrics, "Absence makes the heart grow fonder...of somebody else." Even English, an exceptionally powerful language, does not have words to adequately express the pleasure I got listening to this Remnant episode. Thank you.

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    Travis M

    You mentioning one of the advocates using LatinX during the oral arguments at the Supreme Court reminded me that my pretty progressive Latina friend in the PNW was paddle boarding dressed like she was in the Handsmaid's Tale on Lake Washington on Halloween hates the term LatinX.

    The fact progressive politicians still are trying to make it a thing is one of the best things that happens to the Republican party in the past 5 years.

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    Dwayne G

    The discussion on polling and 'secret sauce' in regards to accuracy seem overwrought . Was it a double blind controlled study? Is it replicable? If not, it's not any sort of truth we should be concerned about. Polling is very hard, and that's all the more reason to not take it too seriously. Not that it's frivolous, it's just not science so let's not worry needlessly about the fidelity.

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