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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.
That was part of my point about needing to get the states improved first, before that much can really change. Considering that Reagan was governor of California and won the state as president too, shows something. Federalism necessarily goes both ways.
That was a California with a two-party system capable of fight wildfires and building infrastructure and managing reservoirs. Before Big Tech “improved” everything and people with sous-chef’s discovered the unalienable human right to defecate on the sidewalk.
You didn’t miss it – it didn’t happen. And in our state (NH) our governor went out of his way to disparage excellent candidates for senate and house because they weren’t One of Us. He couldn’t wait to keep going on national TV yesterday reminding everyone of how much he dislikes Trump. Petty, petty, petty and obviously auditioning something well above his skill set. Others were more passively absent. Many just cranked and sighed about “the candidates” where someone would hear them.
Willy Brown was running for mayor of SF when I first moved to CA way back. One of the stories I remember thinking then was just astonishing was ballot boxes (not a small number) being found in the Bay weeks after the election. You do remember who was sleeping with him then, right? And he was a smart one.
Number 3. Bring on the EMP.
It will be ugly for a while, but it’s the only way.
That is what having the media on your side does- inconvenient stories about Dems get deep sixed, while Romney’s 5th grade report card gets deeply analyzed & a sealed child custody cases get opened (Ryan).
But that is a preexisting situation- everybody knows it. It is insane to back Oz in the primary knowing all his laundry will be aired on a daily basis ( much less his significant shifts on issues at the last minute) all the while ignoring a decent candidate (McCormick) who would easily beat a disabled socialist. McCormick wasn’t perfect but he is much, much better than Fetterman- who Oz gave us. The Reagan rule holds- in the primary, vote for the most conservative candidate who can win- not the most obnoxious.
Not time for a long response, but on theory 2, you are spot on. Here’s how we know…the pundits are blaming this on Trump and bad candidates. They should look in the mirror because they have failed at their basic job which is to communicate a credible message that builds a coalition that can win. Instead we have, well the the stupid base hadn’t of selected Boldoc, or Oz, or Masters, or Walker…, ad nauseum. None of them are saying, hey, our message socks because no-one listens to it and it isn’t compelling. If the GOP cannot win with record inflation an infirm President, etc. then they never will.
Adapt the model to the environment in question. See Ben Shapiro , about 40-45 minutes into his show from last night.
“This is the way”- the quote everyone repeats/riffs on.
Are you sure about that? Seems to me that any opponent who could string together a coherent sentence should have beat Fetterman, yet he apparently won. I doubt that McCormick would have won after all the mail-in ballots were counted.
Mark, good post, though I think that there are a variety of alternative theories to consider. As you point out, most of these theories are not mutually exclusive. Though it seems to me that theory #3 — the country is finished and a return to sanity is impossible — does make all of the others irrelevant.
You may be right about theory #3, but I’m going to be a bit more optimistic, and present some alternatives.
Theory #4: Realignments are volatile. We may be in the middle of a political realignment, with the Republicans becoming the party of the white working class, and the Democrats becoming the party of the college-educated and the minority poor. Even the black and Latino working class may be up for grabs. Such realignments are messy, and there may be strange results on occasion. There’s a lot of strife inside the Republican party, and this makes sense. Trump attempted to move the party in a new, more populist direction, and some existing Republicans didn’t like that. This was the first election that gave the anti-Trump GOP a chance to undermine his new agenda.
In some important states, we observed pro-Trump candidates doing less well than more Trump-neutral candidates. I think that we saw this in Ohio, New Hampshire, and Georgia, with Trump-neutral gubernatorial candidates outperforming pro-Trump Senate candidates. This could be a matter of appealing to independents, but it could also be a matter of greater party loyalty, at the moment, among the pro-Trump folks. So, for example, a pro-Trump Republican would vote for both DeWine and Vance in Ohio, while an anti-Trump Republican would vote for DeWine but not for Vance. I haven’t yet found data that would allow me to evaluate this hypothesis.
Theory #5: Dobbs hurt us. From what I’ve heard so far, abortion wasn’t necessarily a top issue for a lot of voters, but it may well have been the key issue for a modest proportion of voters. If this issue decided just 5% of voters to go for the Democrats, it would have a huge effect nationwide.
The ignorance of the public plays into this, as well. It appears that a large number of people don’t understand the actual effect of Roe or Dobbs, allowing Democrats and a deceptive media to mislead them into thinking that the abortion “rights” that they favor are actually at risk. In most states, they really are not.
I’ve also heard that there were abortion-related referenda on the ballot in some key states, which may have driven Democratic turnout. I haven’t looked into this in detail.
Theory #6: Trump hurt us. I should be clear that I’m not blaming Trump here, as I still like him a lot. It is possible, though, that the whole January 6/insurrection/democracy-is-on-the-ballot rhetoric was effective with some voters. As with abortion, if this rhetoric decided just 5% of voters, it would make a big difference.
Theory #7: Lack of vision. I didn’t get the sense that the GOP had a coherent national vision, or a plan about what they would do if returned to power. There are so many divisions in the GOP right now — see Theory #4 — that it may be impossible to do so. This may have hurt, though. I realize that this may be the same as your Theory #2 (that the GOP sucks). Combining these theories, we might hypothesize that “we don’t suck quite as much as the Democrats” is not a winning message.
Remember Missouri 2020 when a dead Mel Carnahan beat John Ashcroft.
I would have liked to see McCormick in the race, but we spend way too much hemming and hawing over candidates in general elections. The sad truth is that if you are a Democrat, you are NEVER going to vote for a Republican. You will vote for that Democrat if they are dead, sick, heck even if they are a yellow dog. It has been this way for a long time and with a few exceptions (Reagan in 80 and 84 and Trump in 2016), Democrats do not cross over.
The even sadder truth is that Republican voters are much more fickle and way too many will vote for an independent or even a Democrat when they don’t like the Republican nominee. There was a reason that Romney campaigned hard in PA right up to and including election day. He thought he had a chance to win there. He didn’t because the base of the GOP party in PA didn’t like Romney (he was weird, he was too rich, he was too liberal, etc.) and stayed home. The Dems don’t do that…especially now that they vote them by mail and harvest those ballots so that even if you don’t care too much about the election, your ballot will be cast and counted for the Ds (you may or may not have actually voted yourself, but your ballot cannot go to waste).
For some reason, the GOP thinks that the other side plays fair, and that they cannot sully themselves to do what is needed to win.
I dig. Good theories. Just these observations:
7 is, I think, more detail on 2. I might have said it if I were smart enough to think of it myself.
5 and the Jan. 6 bit of 6 are just some of the topics of the propaganda mentioned in theory 3.
In your 4, I would say black and Latino middle class votes are definitely up for grabs.
And count all early and mail-in votes ahead of time. I know there is a danger of the preliminary results leaking, but for God’s sake – these delays are destroying credibility in the process more than 2000 Mules and ballot harvesting . . .
Five years ago, if someone told you that you’d win the House by a small margin and maybe tie the senate or hold it by one but in exchange Roe v Wade would be overturned, would you take that deal?
I would, and twice on Sunday.
If he was so decent, why is Arizona’s election process so screwed up? Florida, with 3 times(?)as many people, was done Tuesday night! Wasn’t there something the governor could’ve done to rein in Kathy?
It’s corruption. Delays of this length and this many votes are corruption. Maybe some are a fluke or incompetence. Not this many.
Even if it were incompetence, incompetence on this scale would enable corruption, and, since people are jerks, there would still be corruption.
Corruption is the reasonable conclusion of an inference to the best explanation argument. But even if we had no such argument we would still have no reason to trust this process. This is not a trustworthy process. There is no Ockham’s Razor presumption of a clean election. Evidence of honesty is not present when many, many votes are cast by mail and then counted in this manner.
The governor isn’t in charge of elections. The problems were in Maricopa County. In the election-day balloting that is the responsibility of the elected county Board of Supervisors. That Board has a 4-1 Republican majority.
Of course, the Board doesn’t set up the machines and all. They hire people to do it, and those people fouled up.
Who is Kathy?
Here is a summary of the abortion-related referenda in 5 states for which I found election results.
I will start with arguably the most conservative, most pro-Trump state of the 5 states and on down to the least conservative, most pro-Biden state.
[1] Kentucky
In 2020, the state of Kentucky preferred Trump over Biden by a 29 percent margin (62 for Trump; 36 percent for Biden). According to my calculations, this 29 percent margin of victory makes Kentucky Trump’s 8th best state. (Only Wyoming, West Virginia, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Idaho, Arkansas and South Dakota are more pro-Trump, by my calculations.)
Kentucky had a referendum called Constitutional Amendment 2: No Right to Abortion. If passed by the voters, the Constitution would not contain any right to abortion nor any requirement for the state government to fund abortion.
Currently Constitutional Amendment 2 is losing 52.4 percent to 47.6 percent, which, if this holds, would be a defeat for the pro-life cause in Kentucky.
[2] Montana
In 2020, Montana gave Trump 57 percent of the vote and Biden 41 percent of the vote. This makes Montana, by my calculations, Trump’s 16th best state.
Montana had a ballot initiative called the Born Alive Infants Regulation, which would require health care providers to make every effort to save the life of an infant born during an attempted abortion.
This measure is currently losing 52.6 percent to 47.4 percent. If this holds, this would be a defeat for the pro-life cause in Montana.
[3] Michigan
In 2020, Michigan gave Biden 51 percent of the vote and Trump 48 percent of the vote. This makes Michigan, by my calculations, Trump’s 31st best state.
Michigan voted on an amendment to the state constitution called the Constitutional Right to Reproductive Freedom, which is currently ahead by a 56.7 percent to 43.3 percent margin. If this holds, this would be a defeat for the pro-life forces of Michigan.
[4] California
In 2020, California gave 63 percent of its votes to Biden and 34 percent of its votes to Trump, making California, my estimation, Trump’s 46th best state. (Only Vermont, Massachusetts, Maryland and Hawaii were worse for Trump, by my calculations.)
On the ballot was the Constitutional Right to Reproductive Freedom Amendment, which is currently leading by a 64.9 percent to 35.1 percent margin. If this holds, this would be a defeat for the pro-life cause in California.
[5] Vermont
In 2020, Vermont gave Biden 66 percent of its vote to Biden and 31 percent of its vote to Trump, making Vermont, by my calculations, Trump’s worst state in the country.
Vermont voted on a Constitutional Right to Reproductive Autonomy, which is currently ahead 77.2 percent to 22.8 percent. If this holds, this would be a defeat for the pro-life cause in Vermont.
We should consider this referenda in light of what happened in Kansas earlier this year, when the voters of Kansas rejected an amendment to the Kansas Constitution that would have allowed for restrictions on abortion enacted by the state legislature. This ballot measure was defeated by a 59 percent to 41 percent margin. Thus, abortion remains legal in Kansas.
So, if I have this right, we are zero for six in post-Dobbs referenda on abortion.
Delays are necessary so the Dems know how many votes they need to manufacture to win. Plain and simple . . .
My theory is that the voters got what they asked for.
It’s sorta like, “Thank you, Sir. May I have another, Sir?”
Theory 3 and all its variations is a popular one!
Silly voters.
Roger on that!
HW, this is good work. Thanks.
If you have time, I think that it deserves a post of its own.
I just posted it. I titled it “Abortion in 5 State Referenda.”
Wrong name— sorry! The SOS running against Lake for governor. So the hired people fouled up? Deliberately or because they weren’t trained in correct process?
Well, in Arizona at least, maybe it’s better than it looks.
https://ricochet.com/1336508/explaining-arizona-voting/