With recent election polls placing Biden comfortably ahead of Trump, we should remind ourselves that polls are imperfect and should be taken with a grain of salt. Let's dive deep into the factors and history behind polling.

To say that Monday evening in Iowa was a dumpster fire is an understatement. Firstly, caucuses are ineffective, antiquated, and must be replaced with primaries. And, secondly, our current electoral rules have some issues: a growing candidate pool renders the “first-past-the-post” system increasingly problematic and multiple rounds of voting are way too time-consuming. Can we just adopt ranked-choice voting already?

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio made a recent trip to Iowa, signaling that the two-term mayor is inching closer to a potential, and long-speculated presidential run in 2020. However, Bill de Blasio should not run for president in 2020. He stands no conceivable chance in a presidential primary, and he never will.

Since 2011, a coalition of Republicans and breakaway conservative Democrats in the New York State Senate has stymied much of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s left-leaning legislative agenda. Now, Gov. Cuomo has near-complete control over the legislative agenda, since the Democrats, having seized the State Senate in last Tuesday’s midterm elections, now run the entire state government. An important question we should ask, then, is: What will happen to New York State now that it is under one-party rule?

Nowadays, the political climate only seems to worsen and polarize each day. Bitter, villainizing rhetoric; death threats; and politically-motivated violence is not uncommon. Some have called for a “return to civility” in political life, but can we really say that political discourse in our country has ever been “civil?” And how might we be able to guide our politics to a state of “civility?”