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What Happened? And What Now?
The Red Wave barely made it high enough to threaten the sandcastles halfway up the beach–except in Florida, where it met all expectations both wavey and reddish. So what happened? How’d a senile career corruptocrat’s party, which stands for open borders, unrestricted abortion, child genital mutilation, and even more debt, do as well as it did as a party holding power in a midterm election in a time of massive inflation, lots of crime, and a European war?
I’ve settled on three hesitant theories that explain things, and they all make some sense.
Theory 1: They cheated enough to make a red wave into a ripple.
As long as many voting machines have online connectivity, it is a viable speculation that someone manipulated that vulnerability. (I also need more time to think through the theory that they can cheat through algorithms built into the machines. I’m open to any theories at this point.)
That aside, old-school cheating without electronic shenanigans really is a thing. Democrat machine corruption exists. There are still plenty of mail-in ballots to make it easier to cheat in plenty of states. The warning that counting might take a long time, plus those long pauses in vote-count updates, sure is suggestive.
This stuff is a recipe for election-flipping levels of fraud in swing contests. If you throw diced potatoes and chunks of beef into a pot of boiling water, don’t be shocked if there’s beef stew in an hour.
Theory 2: The GOP really does suck that much.
How can we rule this out? DeSantis doesn’t suck, and he did great. Trumpier people won (Vance), and Trumpier people lost (Oz). But the least sucky Republican did do great, and Greg Abbott did well enough too! Maybe that–not anything about Trump–is the real factor here.
Theory 3: The country–at least in this iteration–is more or less finished. A return to sanity is basically impossible at this point.
Too much corrupt leftist education. Too much porn. Too much drugs. Too much fatherlessness. Too much reliance on welfare. Too much debt. Too little religion. Too few people having babies monogamously. Not enough responsibility. Too much leftist propaganda from Big Media, Big Tech, and Big Government. Too much vulnerability to propaganda because of that education system. Too much nihilism. Too much addiction to screen-based entertainment.
Renewal is unlikely without massive suffering first. Maybe something dramatic and fast-moving along the lines of World War II, the Great Depression, or the Civil War. Maybe just a long, slow, and increasingly miserable decline with some resemblance to the decline of the Roman Empire.
So which theory is correct?
Probably all three, to varying extents. I think Theory 3 is certainly on the right track. In 2008 I feared we would lose the country, and we probably did. It’s not easy to go back after Obama’s radicalism, however less radical it may seem now. Elections have consequences, including the breaking down of a country in such a way that an election fourteen years later ends up being this ridiculous.
And what do we do now?
Everything that’s right. “Love your neighbor as yourself,” for a start.
But if you’re looking for a successful political strategy, I don’t have it either. I can only make four suggestions. Maybe they’re a good start. If you agree, maybe you can identify one personal step you can take in the right direction and one topic you can mention to your state and federal representatives later today. If you disagree, I hope you can air some better ideas in the comments.
- Every state needs electoral reform. Do everywhere what Florida has done since the year 2000. Have voter ID laws. Have less mail-in balloting. Get rid of the scummy Wisconsin Elections Commission. Take the federal government’s advice–just this once–and ban all voting machines with online connectivity.
- Pro-family policy. I don’t even know what policies. But there’s probably something. At least we could stop the anti-family policies.
- Massive education reform in every state, every city. And, if at all possible and for as many families as possible, homeschool.
- Every Republican governor should be more like Ron DeSantis.
They won’t do #4
As for #4. Why do we only have one or two players? The world is full of good CEOs. Surely some decent governors can be found.
Doug Ducey was a good governor in Arizona. He was term-limited.
I think that term limits are a bad idea.
I tend to think they’re a net benefit. Once in a while, a golden person who could have done more good gets to retire. But a lot of scum will be forcibly removed by term limits. We should probably have them for federal judges, and for Congress.
And for the federal bureaucracy!
Gotta amend the Constitution for this. Let’s get started.
Fixing the broken education system, the border, and the national debt are probably higher priorities.
But yes–I probably agree.
Great post. My thoughts exactly.
That would probably require some kind of Convention of States, the Congress itself isn’t likely to go along.
Yup. But still gotta get started.
A Convention is on the table. I’m down.
Things are falling apart rapidly enough that I’m ok with the risk it goes haywire, although I believe there are safeguards to keep things from going haywire.
Wish I could remember what podcast it was–maybe a The Federalist podcast. Anyway, someone on a podcast talked about safeguards. I think it may have had something to do with states having the power to limit the topics available for consideration at the Convention.
Have to clean out the deadwood in Congress to make any of that happen. Though there’s hope for the educational system in the States if the Feds get out of the way.
There’s that, and the fact that any proposed amendments would still have to be ratified by 3/4 of the Sates.
So far, too many of the states are problems themselves.
I think I heard Mark Levin hinting at how quiet the GOPe has been during this election season. Other than complaining about “candidate quality” that is. Odds on how quickly the usual suspects begin telling us commoners what we should have done and how we should have listened to them all along? As if The Turtle or the New Jersey Orca would have been more effective. Did any of those jerks get out and actively campaign for the Repub candidates? If they did, I somehow missed it.
Trump was a net negative this time. He energized the Dem base more than his own supporters. Trump turns off too many independents – which is the swing vote.
JD Vance was saved by McConnell’s PAC bailing him out with $32M when he was out of cash & being pummeled by Ryan’s ads.
Candidates matter- Oz & Walker had too much baggage (and their opponents had a bus load of baggage).
Possibly so. I have no clear sense of this.
Candidates do indeed matter.
Why didn’t Ducey run for the Senate seat?
Why are ‘crazy’ Republican candidates a liability at the ballot box but crazy Democratic candidates not? Isn’t that a long-term issue to be solved, rather than continuing to let the media and the donor class chose who can represent us?
The double standards are truly atrocious.
To be fair though, it’s about the voters on both sides. Dimocrat voters will vote for senile, demented, etc, but Republican voters not so much.
Your point being that Republican candidates should include fewer weirdos?
#4 every day and twice on Sundays. Insert Mandalorian GIF here. The other three, too.
I’m not sure what the problem is, but the main thing is probably for Republican voters to vote for the nominees even if they may not seem 100% ideal. Sitting on their hands isn’t just not expressing a preference, it’s also letting the other side win.
Nice idea, but Ron DeSantis would never win in California or several other states.
Does Mando do a cool nod or something? I’ve only watched Pitch Meetings and HISHE, and probably an Honest Trailer.
Indeed.
Good grief. Over 30% of Arizona hasn’t reported its results yet? That is not ok. Arizona’s elections need reform very badly.
It takes time to dispose of a bunch of ballots for Lake!
I don’t want to have a president that could win California. Nor Arkham Asylum, for that matter.
In California, among Congressional seats in play, none is even 60% “counted” yet.