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We’re back from the holiday break and have Georgia on our minds. As such we welcome Erick Erickson, host of “Atlanta’s Evening News” on WSB AM/FM, and he joins to us to analyze “suitcase-gate” and give us his take on January’s double US Senate election in the Peach State. (Erick’s podcast is available right here on Ricochet.)
Then we talk to old friend Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Professor of Medicine at Stanford University. As the Covid-19 vaccination comes to market, what’s the best way to do it? Who gets priority and who shouldn’t be bothered?
Eustace C. Scrubb walks away with the coveted Lileks Member Post of the Week for his essay on the passing of David Prowse, one half of the man behind Darth Vader.
Music from this week’s episode: The Devil Went Down to Georgia by Charlie Daniels.
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I think Erick Erickson explained in the beginning of his time on the podcast that he tries to tell his listeners the truth, even if his listeners get mad at him for telling the truth.
Erickson could say, “There was massive voter fraud,” and this would please the majority of his listeners. It might be good, short term, for ratings. But Erickson apparently isn’t comfortable telling his listeners things that he doesn’t believe are true.
The reality that there is always a temptation on the part of a losing campaign (for US Senate or President or State Senate) to blame the result on voter fraud.
It’s easier on the ego to say, “The voters didn’t reject me. It was ballot stuffing that stole the election from me.”
Erickson could pander to his listeners. Instead he is willing to risk angering them while trying as best he can, to tell them the truth.
It’s more an egotistical way of thinking he’s right while everybody else is wrong (or lying). He has some expertise on Georgia politics, so his opinions on Georgia are worth taking into account.
But he is not an expert on election fraud; nor is he an expert on the politics of all the other states where election irregularities have been alleged.
By all means, he should say what he thinks to be true, even if his opinion is poorly informed. But then, there are 10,000 topics he can talk about, without strengthening Joe Biden’s mandate.
P.S.: Given that Trump’s vote increased enormously from 2016 to 2020, it’s hard to claim voters “rejected” him. He was defeated by a statistically freakish Biden vote.
Mark and Occupant make a lot of the points that have frustrated me for the last couple of weeks. As if the inconsistent down ballot results make sense. As if halting the ballot counting simultaneously in several democrat strongholds just makes sense. Who are these Republican voters who want their taxes going up while their guns are being grabbed? This election result suggests the emergence of a previously unknown large contingent of ticket splitting masochists. I don’t remember reading about them in the pre election polls.
We know the myopic pride Democrats take in all the “firsts” they can take a bow for. And yet Biden racking up substantially more votes than the first black or woman at the top of the ticket makes sense somehow? And he manages this without a memorable gotcha moment, without a seriously popular policy (except maybe Not Bernie), without campaigning, etc. And to boot Joe is Jurassic, pale pre-boomer. Complete the following: Joe Biden is best known for ___________.
Sadly, I haven’t seen any plausible explanation for any of this. Barr says it’s OK, so we just need to stop asking uncomfortable questions.
Actually, ticket splitting wasn’t nearly as frequent in the 2020 presidential election as it was in elections such in the 1980s and 1990s.
When Reagan won a 49 state victory in the 1984 presidential election, the net gain for Republicans in the US Senate was actually negative. The GOP lost a net of 1 seat in the US Senate even as Reagan cruised to victory.
Some people, including my wife, just didn’t like Trump. A friend of mine who lives in California has been a Republican his entire life, but didn’t like Trump and would not vote for either Biden or Trump.
Ticket splitting happens.
Trump has an abrasive style. Some people like it. But it seems over 80 million people do not.
The Georgia run-off elections serve as a test for our GOP betters in assessing their ‘surgical strike’ electoral theory of Trump’s defeat. I believe we have seen a number of ‘only Biden’ ballots but those cannot be in the mix in the January 5th election. So, the theory is Republicans just wanted to get rid of Trump but elect Republicans pretty much everywhere down ballot. This should bode well for Loeffler and Perdue.
Count me skeptical. My prediction is it will be close and just enough ballots will be found to get the two Democrats the win.
In which case, it was not a ‘surgical removal’ of Trump but corrupt machine politics that will hand Democrats every, or almost every close important race.
A lot of people hate Trump.
What more do you need?
It hit me a few weeks ago. People really, really love Biden and came out in 2008 to vote for him in large numbers even though he wasn’t at the top of the ticket. Now that he is the main attraction, even more people voted. More people in Wisconsin as a percentage voted than ever before by a huge number. Not fishy at all. Just lie back and think happy thoughts.
Good point! After all, as the Democrats never cease to inform us, this is a racist country.
Obviously the vote for Obama-Biden was really a vote for Biden!
I think surgical strike was already proven.
(R) David Perdue received about 80,000 more votes than (D) Jon Ossoff even as Trump received about 12,000 fewer votes than Joe Biden.
(R) Susan Collins in Maine won her re-election decisively while Biden beat Trump in Maine decisively.
Same in the 2nd congressional district in Nebraska where 1 electoral vote was at stake.
A more accurate test of this theory will be without Trump or Biden on the ballot, correct? I’m told Trump is holding the GOP back (despite getting more votes in 2020 than 2016) so now we can see the non-Trump GOP flourish. Of course didn’t a Democrat operative admit that Trump helped down ballot races?
Zuckerberg bought the ***g o v e r n m e n t*** election system.
https://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/2020/12/02/the-real-kraken-what-really-happened-to-donald-trump-in-the-2020-election-n1185494
In Georgia, Trump got 2,461,837 votes; Perdue, 2,462,617.
Looks like pretty minor “surgery”!
In the other race Loeffler and several other Republicans got 2,426,120, put together.
Sure Heavy Water. I remember Reagan campaigning on raising everybody’s taxes while confiscating firearms and promising to spend trillions on ecology projects that don’t actually rank high on American’s list of priorities.
Point taken on ticket splitting, I just don’t see it happening in 2020.
Having said that, I’ve heard people gripe about what I consider completely irrelevant Trump habits. Like not wearing a mask is more important than the incredible unemployment rate. Like calling out the MSM in blunt terms is more important than destroying ISIS and drawing troops out of IRAQ and Afghanistan. Like tweeting is more important than resisting the lopsided trade and intellectual property theft by the PRC. Like his appearance is more important than his judicial appointments.
I have a hard time understanding conservatives who think that their policy preferences have a better chance under President Biden. Or President Harris.
I have explained this over and over. You have to look at the way things are now. The GOP hasn’t been that great for a couple of decades.