The true believer butt-hurt from some people here is creepy as hell. You remind me of the leftist "social justice warriors" who babble on about things like "hate facts."
People pointing out FACTS like hard vote and poll numbers are told to stop being so negative, of taking pleasure in seeing Rand fail, of supporting other candidates (even if their info shows them as active on this board since Ron's 2007-08 campaign), and are even told to kill themselves.
But some people never learn -- even people who have been through this process before. Not two hours ago, I posted that I was "cautiously optimistic" because I've seen this un-polled youth vote theory in Ron's previous two campaigns. I was told that even that was too negative, and this year was going to be different for sure because of the caucuses being a month later than the past several ones, this time while school is in session.
How'd that turn out for you?
Nothing would make me happier than to see Rand win, but it looks like he's going to come in a distant fifth -- the same place as Ron eight years ago, and with a LOWER percentage.
If only he had done this, if only he had done that. We just need to get the word out better, or wait for the old people to die off, or overcome the control the establishment has over the schools, the media, and the political process, etc., etc., etc. We're going to learn from this and regroup, and 2020 will be different for sure. Politics and campaign strategy are one of those odd things in life that EVERYONE -- even people with zero professional political experience -- has an opinion about. And that includes me.
Look: most people want security, not liberty; it looks like the ceiling for hardcore liberty-lovers is about 10% of the public. Regardless of the reason, there is zero evidence that it's going to go much higher. It's probably largely due to 12-year government school brainwashing doing exactly what it was designed to do -- and you damn sure aren't going to undo that by running some commercials at election time.
That's the bad news.
The good news is it probably doesn't matter much.
The presidency is probably a puppet position, and the majority of the day-to-day operations of the government are administered by unelected bureaucrats who are going to remain, regardless of who is elected to the presidency or Congress.
The government is also going to hit the wall of economic reality eventually and massively contract, regardless of what happens politically.
Technology will also continue to advance and improve our lives in the coming years in ways we can't even imagine now. The availability of info online is also going to undermine the government's control of education in the future.
As the saying goes, insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Politics is hopeless. Stop looking to it to improve your life. Give up on politics, or at least learn to follow it as I do -- mostly for entertainment and with bemusement, like it's a spectator sport. Don't donate money to campaigns that you can't afford to lose. Don't get too emotionally invested in it. If you must get involved, do so only for the enjoyment it provides to you in the present, regardless of the outcome, with winning just an unexpected bonus in the unlikely event that it happens. If it's drudgery to suffer through, effort that was wasted if the campaign loses, then quit.
Read Harry Browne's 1973 self-help classic, How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World, for his personal account of how he learned this lesson, and how he figured out how to arrange his own affairs to minimize the government's adverse effects on his own life acting all by himself, with no one else involved. (Yes, he ran for president in 1996 and 2000, and I was with him all the way, but he did so mainly for his own personal enjoyment.)
But, you know, 2020 is going to be different for sure.