Plastic straw pollution doesn’t have a measurable impact on the environment.

The entire thing about banning plastic straws comes from some high schooler using back-of-a-napkin math to guess how many straws are in the ocean in what was clearly a successful attempt at starting a science fair project the night before it was due. Some news station picked it up, and then a bunch of science-illiterates ran away with it.

You can’t determine the impact of pollution by count. Straws are tiny and weigh almost nothing. If you skip buying one pair of sneakers in your life, then you’ve successfully reduced your plastic use by almost a lifetime of plastic straws.

Removing plastic straws is probably the single least impactful way to reduce plastic pollution. It’s pure virtue signaling: it’s about presenting an image of being environmentally conscious while doing effectively nothing to help the environment.

On the other hand, appealing to the center hasn’t been working for Democrats lately. If Crockett energized the base, the numbers could be there.

Plus a lot of us aren’t comfortable perpetuating the racism/sexism by caving to it.

I’ll vote for either candidate, but this idea that it’s obvious Crockett could never win doesn’t sit right with me.

My wife and I just had our third kid. We don’t make nearly that much, but we’re quite comfortable.