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A Fearful Ramble
If the GOP looked that weak in Ohio, Kentucky and Virginia after two years of utterly spectacular Democratic policy failures, what is left? For a huge swath of voters in metro areas, all that is now required is to run a TV ad where you say “MAGA, Abortion, MAGA, Abortion” and all other issues magically disappear. The most privileged white-collar class in US history now votes as if they are at great personal risk from some caricatured rural redneck demons.
It is less about voters being ill-informed than about no longer wanting to be informed. The habits learned in college about only going to sites and sources that confirm existing prejudices have apparently shaped thinking in some permanent way, which easily degenerates into a need to believe those outside the bubble really are evil.
Aside from the likelihood of destructive policies and the rapid erosion of rights and liberties as such people become politically dominant, there is the habit of dehumanization. I was horrified and surprised to watch thousands of Americans march in support of the October 7 atrocities. The operant mindset is that once the tiny-brained-binary label of “oppressor/oppressed” is applied, the “oppressed” no longer have agency or accountability and a greatly diminished humanity instead. They are merely expressions of their class as are the oppressors whose very existence (like all officially white people) gives offense. The humanity of the victims must, therefore, vanish.
The Babylon Bee joked that Planned Parenthood now demands that the word “fetus” be replaced by “womb colonizer.” The mental processes of dehumanization are at work there as well. An intersectional moment?
I once believed that the kneejerk leftist swill taught in colleges would eventually dissipate for most graduates when they encountered the real world. I am now terrified at the thought that the real damage is not ideological but psychological and formational. Being immune to data, reason, and observable outcomes is bad but ultimately not as bad as becoming numb to what should be the natural human revulsion to Hamas. Nothing good can come from that mindset. Nothing.
Published in Politics
The majority of Americans depend on government for a paycheck and they vote accordingly.
It appears that the Leftist swill has been taught for long enough now that it is the culture and real world for a large majority. It will take a long time to change this.
In what sense did the GOP look all that weak in KY?
Yes, the GOP candidate lost to a popular incumbent Dem governor. But down-ticket, Republican Russell Coleman won the state-attorney-general race handily, and Republicans won the secretary-of-state, state-treasurer, agriculture-commissioner, and auditor-of-public-accounts races by 14 percentage points or more. Seems more like Cameron wasn’t all that great a candidate.
Us vs Them is natural. “What you do to the least of these…” is Christian, and supremely difficult especially when we as a society have stopped systematically teaching and enforcing it.
We’re in big trouble as a society which is why I only want fighters now. We can’t afford to waste any more time.
You left out “Weed”
”MAGA, Abortion, Weed!!!”
I sincerely appreciate the pick-me-up, but why is a progressive Democrat popular in supposedly deep red Kentucky in the first place?
Adding to this, Charles Cooke has a post on today’s NRO Corner about this. He quotes another post that is paywalled, so here’s that quote:
Charlie’s post, which expands on this a bit, is here: https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/why-andy-beshear-won-in-kentucky/
It’s difficult to read the tea leaves on things like this. Almost impossible considering the endless variables down to the individual voter. It could be many things causing this outcome in a deep red state. Perhaps our view of Beshear is different than the view from the state. Perhaps Beshear is popular precisely because he is leashed by the rest of the levers of power being red, the way Clinton captured “the middle”. Perhaps Cameron was lackluster. Perhaps the other team spent enough to break through to voters in key ways. Perhaps voters are insulated enough and they view Beshear as a luxury they can afford instead of poison. Perhaps voters view Beshear as a hedge against total red control. Perhaps the Dem strongholds know that they can cheat only so much so have to pick their battles more carefully than the Dems in CA or IL.
When one party wins all of the key elections from what should be a position of extreme weakness, we are past local tea leaves or Michael Barone-level grassroots analysis.
Illegal aliens are swamping cities. Visible, depressing crime is up. Antifa/BLM/Hamas-loving crowds are a destructive disgrace. Universities are killing societal values, killing careers with crushing debt and useless degrees and are openly hostile to everything most Americans cherish. Inflation, disastrous energy policies. Half of our young women need treatment for depression.
And none of that is the issue. There is no organized pushback. The natural political pendulum no longer swings.
As if a button is pushed, groupthink mobilizes functional majorities of voters to accept more of the same because MAGA, Abortion, and the Threat to “Our DemocracyTM”. A pregnant woman in Loudon or Fairfax County who waits past 15 weeks (in the bill Youngkin would have liked to see passed) may have had to drive 25 minutes over to Maryland where she can kill her baby even immediately after delivery. That rather infrequent commuting inconvenience outweighs higher taxes, nutball content in schools, more crime, more illegal immigration, higher energy prices, inflation… Explain that in terms of rational choices as seen in the tea leaves.
I tend to think that voters are insulated from having to make rational choices. The problem is that by the time the insulation wears away enough to affect the “normal” voters it will be much too late. Once it’s too late people either jump ship or try to pirate whatever is left.
I was living in CA when Beshear won his first term. People I knew hated Matt Bevins who was his opponent.
What are you defining as “…all of the key elections…” and “…a position of extreme weakness”? Because as I noted above, that’s not the case in KY. I’ll also note that VA (and you may have better insight on this one) seems to be a blue state that occasionally goes purple.
He was good enough of a candidate in 2019 to get 800,000+ votes when he ran for Sec of State. That’s more than Beshear got for Gov in 2019. By a lot.
What changed?
Part of it is likely because Ronna McDaniel sucks, and the Democrat machine doesn’t; my understanding is that this was an extremely low-turnout election. Not the only variable, but likely an important one.
From my previous comment:
I’ll just keep dropping this in various threads. The majority of Americans get a government paycheck and they tend to vote for the party of big government.
And of course a significant portion of those Americans who get a government paycheck don’t vote for the party of big government.
What bothers me is the people who think there is nothing wrong with announcing in public that their vote is based on the near-term paycheck. How did we ever get there?
Late to the game with this but one voter said that he was won over by Beshear’s handling of the tornado disaster in Eastern Kentucky. When asked what was wrong with Cameron, he answered that in the debates Cameron talked mostly about “national issues” and that was not what this particular voter wanted. Finally, the voter said he voted a straight repub ticket otherwise and would gladly vote for Trump in 2024.
Sorry, having trouble understanding how a red state has a Dem governor.
Heard a KY voter (on Clay and Buck) who’s a Trump supporter who voted for Beshear. He said that Beshear talked about Ky issues during the debate while his opponent talked national issues. Trump and Mitch don’t get along, but if anything happens to Mitch guess who gets to name his replacement. Another Dem senator does not help Trump to advance his agenda.
Not for the border, or inflation, or mortgage rates, or energy costs, or taxes, or regulation, or woke military, or China relations, or Iran deals, or Palestinian funding, or parental rights or using federal funds for abortion, or unlimited Ukraine funding, or rejecting the green agenda, or outlawing gas cars and ovens, or turning the justice system on conservatives, or raising taxes, or gas prices, or nuclear power, or drilling on federal land, or subsidizing virtue signaling EV purchases for the well-to-do third cars, or funding Iran, or calling for a pause. Probably missed a few. ZERO chance a Dem senator is going to vote for any of that.
If you support Trump, a Beshear vote is just idiotic. Lets just watch all the Trump voters send Manchin back. Stupid party, stupid voters. I guess. Nope, the facts are in, I do not have to guess.
KY law states that the governor appoints a replacement from three names recommended by the executive committee of the outgoing senator’s state party, and must make that selection within 21 days of receiving the list from the party.
So if anything happened to Cocaine Mitch, Beshear would have to choose from 3 candidates selected from the KY GOP.
And just to bring this full circle (kinda), who recommended this law to the KY legislature? None other than Mitch McConnell.
Look, I will always appreciate Mitch for keeping the Republicans together for the vote on the Affordable Care Act (and I have relatives and friends who have just plain been victimized by it), but I think his age has caught up with him. Is there any doubt that there will be all kinds of litigation, maybe decades, before Beshear will chose a Republican? Seriously.
If he doesn’t follow the law, he’d be impeached. The GOP has a “super-super-majority” in both houses of the KY legislature. There are 38 members of Kentucky’s state senate; 31 of them are Republicans. There are 100 members of Kentucky’s House; 80 of them are Republicans.
I wish In shared your confidence. I don’t care if KY Republicans have a thousand seat advantage. If Dems cannot win legitimately, they litigate. Every time. And if they lose it’ll be three or four years later.
Local news says that Beshear considers the law an unconstitutional restriction. Pour some Laphroaig Ten or get some popcorn depending on your preferences. Will be interesting.
A prediction: Disney will move their Florida operations to Ohio and put a dome over the parks. While they will have to contend with winter, their liability for alligator related deaths will disappear. And, they intend to focus on indoor recreational activities in any event, and groom children to prefer that orientation. Win-win. Expect abortion and gender affirming surgicenters to pop up faster than marijuana shops across the state and particularly convenient to Disney so preteens can be lured there by their uncle, excuse me, treated to the happiest place on earth while conveniently accessing reproductive health services. I tell you, man, Ohio drive-through reproductive health centers are going to eclipse Las Vegas wedding chapels.
I will no longer pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, nor to the Tyranny for which it stands, an abomination with no god, polyglot, with liberty and Justice for none.
“Republicans”. So-called. Like Mitch, who was all in with Obama to squelch the Tea Perty.
My county in VA (between Warren and Clarke) did good locally. All R and a good school boards it seems.
Which language would God have to speak in order to be invited back?
I would suggest the Hebrew in which He wrote the original 10 Commangments. We would then of course need translators who speak that language. He should include the cloud and the pillar of fire.
Interesting question on a Star Trek-ian level, for those familiar: did God actually “speak” Hebrew, or did people “hear” Hebrew because that’s the language they knew?