Not to speak for Reeq, but there's a difference between being "establishment" and being "informed." Sometimes the difference is hard to see, because the establishment tends to be in the business of BEING informed. That's how they win, and that's how they become established.

I know you will admit that this dude knows his shit. Reeq and I have disagreed many times in these politics threads. But I'm happy to admit that he knows more about the mechanisms of US politics than anyone else here. He's a progressive, but he knows that for progressives to gain any power they have to challenge their progressive assumptions and think about how the average voter sees an issue. That's what YOU are failing to do.

And I don't know how you came under the impression that Reeq (or I) dismiss the value of polls. Polls are extremely important measurements of voter sentiment. As for me, I've argued a few times with Vex (who, when he isn't boosting Bernie or Tulsi, only seems to care about space aliens, supernatural powers, and conspiracy theories) about a *specific* poll he claims showed that Bernie was supposedly more electable in 2016 than Hillary. That interpretation, to put it plainly, was stupid. The problem was not that it was a bad poll; the problem was that it was comparing a candidate who had been attacked for decades to a candidate who had never been attacked in his life. Obviously such a poll would drastically overstate Bernie's general-election chances. That's fine, but it's something that had to be accounted for in interpreting its results. Trusting numbers too much, without any regard for context, is just as much a matter of innumeracy as ignoring the numbers entirely. I don't know if that same dustup is what has you arguing with Reeq over polls, but if so, it's not that deep.