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Turnout, I Expect
Apparently, this election day has brought good news in Mississippi. At least somebody got some good news, because from coast to coast, this place looks like Beirut. Well, that’s a dated reference. Maybe Mariupol. Or Gaza. Man, it’s hard to keep up.
So in the wake of our ass-kicking, it’s hard to sit down, which makes a cocktail party difficult. I imagine we’ll be more like too many addicts crowded around a barrel fire with too little Night Train. They stopped making that stuff, you know. Got my commemorative bottle. Let’s fight over it.
@EJHill has a short, tart post up laying defeat at the indicted feet on the golden escalator. Commenters disagree, some in even more tart terms. Hill says, “Donald Trump’s endorsement continues to be the kiss of death.” Well, I don’t know about that, but I’m hard-pressed to support disagreeing. What we do know is that it’s not exactly the breath of life. I don’t know how much influence we should expect from anybody in this party.
The very real deep-state cabal, with its overtly weaponized legal system and media, have done a number on us, and the hits keep coming. Remember when Biden said this? “We just have to demonstrate that he will not take power by, if we, if he does run. I’m making sure he, under legitimate efforts of our Constitution, does not become the next President again.” The laughable fact-checkers busily explain how this means only the best things, and how anyway a conviction would not necessarily bar him from running or taking office, so nothing to see here! Except that this obvious lawfare is not intended to gain convictions, certainly not ones that would stand up to an appeal.
This political prosecution is designed to sandbag the 60-70% Republican favorite, preventing him from running an effective campaign. Being overturned on appeal some time down the road is just fine with the corrupt prosecutors like, uh, whatever her name is out there chanting that some government body is “Too male, too pale, and too stale!” which her audience ate up like free hamburgers, with bacon, double sauce, curly fries, a mega-sized sugar drink, and about nineteen packets of sugary ketchup. You know it’s sugar in the burgers too, right? Now look at these prosecutors again.
So this suppression campaign being waged against us doesn’t only work at the top. It’s hitting all of us. Trump is right when he (and his meme-tards) say that it’s not Trump that “they” are after — “they” are really after the rest of us, and he’s just in the way. Truer words were rarely spoken, as a particular office is but a means to enact policy and exact retribution upon the population in general — that’s us. We really are the target, and it is working.
I’m going to guess that Republican turnout lagged in this off-year election, with the peculiar specter of an indicted hands-down frontrunner heading into the primaries. If you feel boxed in by this stuff, don’t be surprised — that’s the goal. It’s definitely voter suppression, although it would be hard to make a case stick. Same way that when twenty years ago we said that unrestricted, unassimilating immigration was guaranteed to lead to disaster, we nonetheless could not “prove it” to the left. Back when we were still stupid enough to argue with these wasps, these vermin, this cancerous Marxism eating our country away. We were right then, and we are right now, and there’s not a court in the world that will hear this case. Politics is that court.
So we also have the pernicious effects of over a decade of Democrat domestic terrorism. Occupy, OFA, Antifa, BLM, and now Free Palestine — this is all terror in the streets for political purposes. Most of the people out there chanting genocidal Jew-hating slogans have no idea what they’re talking about and could not explain any of the history without either shouting or crying, because those are shortcuts out of a hopeless conversation. Convert the talking to fighting and you don’t have to explain your ridiculous position.
That brings us right back to where we are today. Terrorism, like propaganda, simply works because it works. Even when you see it for what it is, it still works. So there is no talking to these people. There will be fighting, or there will be an utter collapse, but there will not be negotiation. Hard to get excited about lacing up one’s boots and marching down to vote. I suspect that voter turnout will be the key to this year’s disaster, and I don’t think it has much to do with Trumpy endorsements one way or another.
Things are changing, quickly, and I think that the real trap here is to keep trying to do politics the old way, when there’s a new way coming (yet again). I have no clue what that is, but the Democrats are inside our OODA loop. Know why? Because they understand the battle. They are the ones driving the change — we are being herded onto their desired ground for a fight, in which they will burn down cities and jam up freeways and call for genocide with hundreds of thousands in the streets, and steal elections, and run a shadow government with a former President and the world’s most sophisticated intelligence agency, and flood the border with unassimilating mouths with fists, cut the genitals off children, and how dare we object. So, no, talking is not on the menu.
Meanwhile, another factor I suppose would suppress Republican turnout is the miserable economy. Bidenomics may just have worked out for these bargain-bin Pol-Pots. Tiny, marginal differences across vast numbers have significant effects. Republicans are traditionally the ones who don’t have time to organize various marches and die-ins and street signs and whatnot because we have to go to work. I’m laying out a guess here that there’s a differential effect (one might say a “disproportionate impact”) with inflation crushing American households, and that it works against Republicans. Easy to say, “Just go vote, man, there’s too much at stake!” Less easy to arrange some time off (or to go when you need to sleep) for a lot of people, and I’m betting that through some combination of likely voters and those in the pinch, it’s Republicans who take it in the shorts.
Gee, it would be nice if we had a candidate other than Trump. Gee, it would be nice if things were going better for Trump. Either way. I’m not against either Trump or DeSantis, and hell, even Ramaswamy would be better than Biden, although Haley probably has a better chance than Ramaswamy, which is still to say zilch. Gee, it would be nice if a lot of things, and none of them are happening.
This administration, which began by stealing an election and turning DC into a razor-wire military occupation, is not about to exit on reasonable terms, Trump or no Trump. Remember when DeSantis peaked in the polls and for a week he was “worse than Trump” and all of that? If DeSantis were the leading candidate, he would be the one under multiple indictments! We could run Abraham Delano Jefferson and still the freeways will be shutdown if we poll high, and cities will burn if we win. Our choice of candidate matters less than we think. We learned in the first half of this administration (Obama’s third) that Americans are much more ready to dehumanize and imprison one another than we thought, and in the second half, we learned that Americans are much closer to 1937 Germany than we could imagine.
It’s not the “right” putting on swastikas and Lugers, just as it wasn’t back then.
I think that we are more deeply screwed than many of us consciously admit, and that our biggest danger lies in not recognizing that things have changed, and we have not. I said in 2014 (to a friend of mine, a political consultant in NY state) that the next election would be about anger, not politics, and I was right. God only knows what 2024 will be about, but we had better figure it out fast. We’re not voting our way out of this. This is that point in the history of every country taken over by Marxists when there is still something to do about it, but we cannot see it in real-time.
Oh, I’m sorry – were we still talking about Trump?
p.s. What does Ronna McDaniel do?
Published in Elections
Nicely put.
Styx raises some interesting points. I think the GOP, as usual, does not know how to fight to win.
This has the disadvantage of being true. There are plenty of people in the Republican party who are invested in Trump as Trump and therefore will reject it reflexively and passionately.
PS: Ramaswamy is still a knucklehead if he believes he can “negotiate” anything lasting with the China/Iran/Russia axis. Lots of chickens need to go home and roost.
I think Ronna is doing what she wants to – and that isn’t promoting Republican candidates. She’s making deals I imagine, like her uncle, looking after her family business, which is politics.
I think you capture the Zeitgeist, but I don’t have a clue what to do about it. And I think a lot of people are going to throw up their hands and shout that they’ve heard enough about the problems and what to do and just leave me alone. I hate feeling clueless.
Republicans should trademark post-election self-flagellation. We do it so well, and it has been so productive.
Meanwhile, Republicans own Long Island. How about we analyze the successes so they can be repeated?
Or putting out a simple, clear message on abortion, such as that if you vote Republican you’ll get reasonable restrictions on abortion, but if you vote Democrat you’ll get no restrictions whatsoever. Republicans will give you the exceptions to their pro-life position, but Democrats won’t ever give exceptions to their pro-abortion position. And yet somehow swing voters haven’t been made to understand this irrefutable fact. The Republican position is closer to what most people actually believe, and yet even with that they couldn’t sell it.
I think there were too few elections yesterday to glean much useful trend data. For example, Virginia was voting on abortion issues, and it’s a purplish state, which might explain the seeming turnaround from just two years ago.
It’s a great post, but I’m not sure there’s much to see in yesterday’s voting.
I think she, among others, really do not want to make clear statements of principle (something that can be stated in the affirmative in 10 words or less) so that it’s clear what she stands for. She doesn’t want to defend any position. She’s not alone.
We’ve probably all known (or been) someone who falls in love with the wrong person, and no amount of persuasion will make any difference. They will do whatever Mr/Ms Wrong asks, even if it’s self-destructive.
I feel like the majority of my fellow citizens are in that state when it comes to the Left. They’re in thrall.
So another election, like 2022, when Republicans “underperformed.” Get used to it.
All we can do is keep our ideas out there and hope at some point there’s a general snapping out of it. It will have to be like a religious awakening.
The Tea Party tried to start one and got shot down. Trump tried to start one and got shot down. I have no idea where the next one could come from. Musk?
It seems obvious to us that it should have happened already, many times: COVID restrictions, school closings, transgender athletes, pronouns, the government shutting down free speech, inflation, homelessness, open borders, the slaughter of Jews in October. How can none of this have achieved critical mass? Yet it hasn’t.
Maybe a George Floyd moment will happen tomorrow. Or maybe not.
Yeah, I was wondering when we go out to Burn, Loot, and Murder. I don’t see this anywhere on the schedule for GOP or Boogaloo events. I mean, there’s just nothing. It’s like we don’t want to be in politics at all.
Both 2022 and 2023 have been about one thing and one thing only. Turnout. To quote some Civil War commander whose name I forget .. “Victory goes to him that gets their firstest with the mostest.” And for the last two election cycles Reps failed to do that. And it’s no surprise. Dems are motivated by three burning desires…
– defeating Trump and those he endorses
– legalizing marijuana
– killing babies
Repubs, to the contrary, have a message guaranteed to motivate its most ardent supporters to stay home … Elections are stolen by Dems. If that’s the message, and people believe it, why go vote? It’s pointless. Small wonder Reps don’t show up.
You’re still looking at this rationally. Which is good as far as it goes, but the subject itself is increasingly not about rationality. It’s good to have it, but not to ascribe it to what we’re looking at.
A magnificent phrase which seemed new twenty years ago when I heard it, “weaponized Daddy issues,” now sounds stale, which is too bad, because I think that is the wave confronting us. Another phrase I like very much, heard it recently from somebody here — “You cannot reason a person out of a position that reason did not get them into,” and that is another aspect of the problem. Reason did not result in the opposition that we face — Daddy issues did. And this is the sort of personal defect that people like Obama weaponize for political purpose. That’s what a Communi(s)ty Organizer does.
Shifting gears, look at the Biden administration’s push to gay and tranny up societies at an amazing remove from our own culture. Uganda, I think, and Tibet, among others. The grand liberal dream was a world in which each country is interconnected with many others, nobody can afford the disruption of going to war (and therefore won’t, the thinking went), international norms increasingly govern the converging behavior of each nation-state, and the UN functions as a clearing house for ideas and issues, oh and a lot of money to help goad those international norms into place. The result is America threatening to stop paying Uganda for nothing if they don’t gay the place up right quick. Shame on Uganda for taking US money and shame on America for sending it, but my Goodness, shame on America for telling Uganda what to do. The real audience for this is domestic — Uganda is just a backdrop against which American domestic politics are conducted, and the closest that rationality gets to this is the animal calculation that opposing the gay agenda here at home would make us somehow less than Uganda, and personally subject to sanctions (payment processing, IRS trouble, or burning down your house or business).
Which is the last bit. We have been successfully terrorized into a prone acceptance of subjugation. Treason was then. Now it’s conquest. And nobody conquers like the returning father.
This. It’s a religious war. And as such for the left (Dems) it isn’t so much about conquest as it is about imposing their values and beliefs upon the unenlightened; making converts by force, if necessary. Conquest is the means, but not the end.
They only want to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony …
It was a freakin’ Coke commercial, people! Let go of it already!
I don’t know what “happened” and to assert that I do is foolish. I agree that we’re in the Deep State/Progressive OODA Loop. A couple observations & hypotheses for your consideration:
Could the common perception amoung the GOP electorate that ‘the election/future elections will just be rigged’ has been taken to heart, driving down turn-out? I think the 2020 Election was rigged – I’ve seen nothing to make me change that view. I still vote out of defiance but for those not as motivated or resigned to dissolution?
In KY – I’d put that on the GOP voters. Not who endorsed who. Though I was aware Trump endorsed him, I was under impression that he was “Mitch’s Guy” more than Trump’s. There were probably enough on both sides of that withholding votes to sink him from both camps, thinking that the legislature could over-ride the worst of it?
OH – Abortion & Pot. We may not like it (I didn’t when that WI Supreme Court Leftist was elected). The GOP here was looking at there shoes, not saying anything. They offered nothing, and got nothing in return. The Abortion issue has been very effective for the Left – I think we’ll continue to get beat until there are reasonable prohibitions/protections tailored to the individual states that majorities can accept.
On the POT initiative – I don’t get it. Seems that every state that has tried it, things go to crap even faster (CA, WA, CO, IL…). Why anyone would invite this in I have no idea. I know Ex-Speaker Boehner (OH) was lobbying for ‘Big Pot’ – were his drunken hands or OH backers part of this? I don’t get how one can’t seem to get these users/losers off the couch, but they somehow are able to know when to show up for these types of referendums.
VA – it’s a Blue state/”Company” (Federal Government) Town. I understand there were new disctricts but the Left sure knew where to vote, our side didn’t but I suspect they don’t have the numbers any longer. I have not found the ‘Younkin whisper campaign’ atrractive at all – he seemed to reluctantly take the education issue up and got elected off that. Other than that – I’m not aware of what else he’s been up to there or if those schools are still a ‘thing’ with his administration.
We are fractured on ‘our side’ – no doubt about it. I would have thought that those on our side would recognize primary fights from ‘Gametime’ and show up regardless who advanced to general. That may not/does not seem to be the case.
I’ve spit some venom of my own here but come November 2024 – I’m there and voting against the Left.
‘We either hang together for we will surely hang separately’
I cannot find the references, and do not remember the names (from a paper I wrote decades ago), but WWI occured after two things happened, which are not causal, but certainly predictive: In 1909 or so, some British guy wrote a famed article/paper/book extolling the virtues of international trade as making war too expensive, and therefore guaranteeing peace. Then in 1911 or so, some German guy published an article/paper/book extolling the right and duty of strong nations to make war upon the weak — strengthening the herd. At any rate, the current train of thought that trade guarantees of peace goes back at least to the mid-1700s, some French thing.
To this day, part of the globalization mantra has been an insistence that free traders do not go to war. “Liberal democracies do not go to war with each other,” is a popular, if hedged phrasing. I think this recent paper (excerpt of abstract here) nails it:
Think of the 1993 movie Tombstone. Unlike Doc Holliday who has only a single friend, Wyatt Earp has many friends and can afford to lose some. Doc Holliday will do what it takes to defend his friend, and Wyatt Earp will let him. True, Holliday and Earp do not go to war against one another, but then the world is studded with countries like Curly Bill Brocius (“Bye!”) and Johnny Ringo (“In vino veritas“).
Every post-war period is also the pre-war period. Buckle up.
Might be some truth to this . . .
A lot of truth to that.
Yes! Insulated from hard reality and enabled to continue choosing the “luxury” of unreality. Up and down the line, on all issues.
It’s not only low-status people, it’s also people who threaten to disturb the masses while they’re trying to enjoy consuming their “luxuries”. It’s also the prophets of the copybook headings coming, the buzzkills trying to remind us that reality comes eventually and it will be hard if we’re unprepared.
The threats are simply not real to them. People believe what they need to in order to maintain their chosen conclusions. They also refuse to believe what will clash with their chosen conclusions.
At the very beginning, politics is about control, meddling to some degree… conservatism in general just doesn’t seem all that interested in doing that. The other side loves doing it.
Cultural imperialism, straight up.
Going to put this as simply as I can. Who, did we learn, were a significant part of the Trump base in 2016? People who had not voted in many years, or hadn’t ever voted. They felt they had a stake.
Where is their stake away from Trump? It has to be created by individual candidates. I don’t see anyone, even around Indiana, actively courting in this election. The only candidate I’ve seen who did court Trump voters besides Trump was Victoria Spartz. She won her two terms easily despite prognostications to the contrary.
I think the rest of the candidates just assigned this bloc to the “general Republican voter” column and expected similar behavior. From what I’ve seen today on Ricochet, they were expected to vote and it was important. I’m not sure that was communicated well or at all. In fact, I’m not sure the GOP is very good at communicating with this group…so far.
Candidates are, though, and why might that be? Why might an individual not trust an apparatus, but trust a person running under its banner? Hmm. Is it because the apparatus has given them reason for distrust and maybe the individual was able to give them reasons for confidence? It’s not rhetorical, it’s likely case by case.
Way, way back in 9th grade I took Civics. My teacher told me that the beauty of the American electoral system was that it emphasized candidates and not parties. Let’s face it, a candidate is usually going to rise above more general perceptions of their parties and that is particularly true these days.
I’m working on a different post, so I’m not going to pursue this. Maybe, just maybe, though, all the state committees and people helping from the national scene, never advised these candidates to court Trump’s base and try to recreate that coalition.
They turned up for two presidential elections, just as many voters only turn up for presidential elections. There is the behavior you have to change, and you have to chase them as Trump voters or do the work to make them Republican voters (i.e. actually follow through on what you say).