Obviously, the potential size of the audience is the differentiating factor, but the truth is that there are many, many, many more people putting content onto YouTube and other similar user-content generated media that have audiences comparable to or much smaller than cable access than there are people who have found…

Over the weekend, Sanders staffers handed volunteers canvasing talking points that said Warren is the candidate for elites. That is, she’s an out of touch academic whose primary appeal is to people who are more educated and likely make more money than the average voter. It’s both an argument about electability and,…

What I hate is the Internet as a tool for people to demonstrate how bad they are at constructing logical parallels and analogies.

I don’t think that’s similar at all, though. It didn’t occur to me that when you were talking about cable TV, you were talking about people made famous by reality TV, which is dumb sure, but still not the same kind of thing.

Do you mean cable-access? That’s not the same thing as cable TV. YouTube is somewhat analogous to cable access than to cable TV, but cable access celebrities weren’t really a thing.

That’s not as meaningful of an observation as that piece tries to make it out to be. Obviously, the progressive third of the party is not a monolith, and just as obviously, Warren and Sanders will appeal to different people within that group differently.

For the life of me, I just don’t understand this as a concept...YouTube celebrities? Your generation is so weird. 

I suspect none of them are actually blood related. But who knows. 

The things is, this isn’t clickbait. This is the beginning of the two progressives realizing There can be only one.

I don’t think I asked why people get excited for these things. That’s a dumb question, indeed. I said that I wonder what the outcome would be if people stopped being marks for the awards shows. If people stopped producing free advertising content for them. Stopped fueling general interest in the award shows by…

Bernie Sanders is nothing if not an idealist. He believes if elected, he can achieve the Herculean feat of transitioning America to single-payer healthcare.

It became a thing because Warren and her people saw the shit Sanders supporters were doing over the weekend as the beginning of a coordinated effort by the Sanders campaign (probably at the direction of the candidate) to begin to try to muscle Warren out of the race. Right now, she’s right at the line of viability in…

Strictly speaking you’re only ever tall or short relative to other people. But as I said, I’m 6'1" and don’t as a habit think of myself as tall at all. I have had the “Oh, you’re a lot taller than I realized” thing, but obviously not the way somebody a couple or several inches taller would.

My guess is that he was once 6 feet tall, but probably hasn’t been for 30 years.

As somebody who falls just short of 6'2" but has plenty of friends in that neighborhood, I think of it that way until I find myself standing in a crowd of people. And then I realize how short the population is. 

It’s really not complicated. It’s the simple math that has been guiding both their campaigns for forever. Neither can compete (let alone win) while the other is in the race. Neither can actively push the other out for fear of alienating their supporters. We are weeks away from the voting, and Warren is at her weakest…

It’s also a really silly sentiment coming from the volunteers of any Democratic politician. Spoiler: They all went to college and are in a privileged enough position in their lives to be able to work for free or very cheaply as a political volunteer.

But it’s not about caring about things that don’t matter. It’s about the fact that this particular genre of thing that doesn’t matter thrives on the controversy of “the snub.” Or of any other decision they make that they know not everybody will like.

I don’t think they would miss your attention any more than they miss mine. But I do think they are a television show, and television viewership is waning as it is. The easiest thing in the world to do is simply not watch. Maybe I overestimate how many people out there fall into the category of hate-watching or…

As I said, I don’t need somebody to explain to me why people rationalize all of this as being really important. That part I get.