The scholarly research on choice suggests hardcore Democratic voters may end up “(kicking) the tires for so long that they’ll start complaining that their toes hurt,” and those who decide early will most likely back the best-known candidates.

That would make things harder for candidates polling in single digits to break out of the pack, no matter how much media coverage they get or what credentials they boast.

Behavioral science also suggests voters will mentally shrink the field by sorting them race, sex, ideology, and perceived chances of winning.
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Candidates can also stand out visually by creating an identifiable brand, like Steve Jobs wearing the same style black turtleneck every day.

Mayor Pete Buttigieg has already tried to do that, by frequently appearing in a white dress shirt, without a coat and usually with a blue tie, which may help voters create a visual image as he’s trying to break out.

But just when we think we have seen the last of Jack the Ripper “murder porn”, when the conversation seems to have moved on beyond the violence and instead towards the lives of the women themselves – as with the ENO’s new opera Jack the Ripper: the Women of Whitechapel – BBC One reminds us that dead women’s bodies are still an important device in entertaining us.

Using the latest technology, Jack the Ripper – The Case Reopened promises viewers new insights into how the Ripper went about killing mothers, daughters, sisters, wives and friends. The programme’s description on the BBC website invites audiences to “understand the extraordinary risks the Ripper took to kill his victims” as it places the women on a “virtual reality dissection table”.
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I struggle to see how violence in any form, whether it’s against women or men, is entertainment. Nor do I find the prospect of watching a 130-year-old murder case reopened simply to try out some modern technology on the bodies of some of the most defiled, defamed and dehumanised women in history a nice way of spending the evening. No amount of 21st-century sleuthing will ever solve the Ripper murders, a series of crimes where the majority of the documentation is missing or unreliable to begin with. Recently, Hamish Campbell, the detective leading the murder inquiry into the killing of Jill Dando, a professional with all the contemporary resources available to him, admitted that the case will never be solved. The hunt for these killers will only ever be a parlour game played for our own entertainment and at the victims’ expense. We owe it to them to finally call it a day.

President Trump has made 9,451 false or misleading claims over 801 days

It was only 200 days ago, on his 601st day in office, that President Trump exceeded 5,000 false or misleading claims.

Now, on his 801st day, the count stands at 9,451, according to The Fact Checker’s database that analyzes, categorizes and tracks every suspect statement the president utters. That’s a pace of 22 fishy claims a day over the past 200 days, a steep climb from the average of nearly 5.9 false or misleading claims a day in Trump’s first year in office.

Of course, not every day yields 22 claims. The president’s tally expands when he’s giving a speech, usually at a campaign rally. At such events, he runs through many of his favorite lines, such as that he passed the biggest tax cut in history, that his U.S.-Mexico border wall is already being built and that the U.S. economy today is the best in history. All three of those claims are on The Fact Checker’s list of Bottomless Pinocchios.

Iconic Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow found himself being the story this weekend as he briefly alluded to the fact that the collection of thugs, racists, cretins, virulent xenophobes and football hooligans who were applauding career criminal Tommy Robinson happened to be mainly white.

Senior producer at Channel 4 News, Simon Williams, added that the channel regretted that Jon Snow insinuated that BAME people might not have felt welcome at a rally that featured the banner of the Identitarian movement linked to the Christchurch massacre.

He went on, “It was a long day and we were all exhausted from covering the news and being called traitors by lovely gentlemen with tattoos of football club crests on their hands.

“In an uncharacteristic lapse of professionalism, Jon mentioned that, in a city where 40% of residents are BAME people, the ethnic mix of the Brexit rally was more akin to that seen in a yacht club in 1893.