At the time I took notes for this episode, there was no definitive answer to the question, “Who will be our next President?” But there’s still plenty of election news to give my thoughts on.
Mentioned links:
Newly elected House Republican women break record in ‘stunning blow to Nancy Pelosi’
Biggest Election Story: Despite Constant ‘Racist’ Accusations, Trump GREW Minority Vote
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Show transcript
First off, I want to let you know that I put my notes together for this episode on Friday the 6th, so by the time you hear this, who knows what might have changed. Just keep that in mind as you listen.
OK, so it feels to me like we’re in for a Biden / Harris presidency and at this point I’m resigned to that but I’m not in despair about it. I’d prefer Trump, but with all signs pointing to the Republicans holding the Senate we do have a firewall against some of the more radical ideas that the Democrats have. And holding a Republican majority in the Senate means that Supreme Court Justice openings still have to run past Mitch McConnell. I’m feeling OK about that, and since the party of the sitting President tends to lose Congressional seats during mid-terms, I’m feeling even better.
So where do we stand at the moment on other races and stats? Well, as I said, the Senate looks like Republicans will hold the Senate. Democrats have flipped 1 seat, but I think the rest are safe. Here in Georgia, we have the rule that a Senator must get 50% or more of the vote to win, otherwise there will be a runoff of the top 2 candidates in January. I think we hold those pretty easily, but it does mean we’ll have to endure political ads and robocalls for a few more months. In the House, against all expectation, Republicans have picked up a net gain of 6 seats so far, and some pundits are suggesting it could be a dozen before Election Month is over.
We’ve also got 13 newly elected Republican women joining the House this next session, most of whom are pro-life. You probably won’t hear much about them on the legacy media because…narrative.
How did this happen when the pollsters predicted a Biden landslide? Well speaking of narrative, there was another one that bit the dust, or should have. Trump was allegedly a white supremacist, and yet his share of the vote of white men dropped 5 percentage points. Trump was allegedly a misogynist, and yet his share of the vote of white women went up 2 points. And combine that alleged misogyny with his alleged racism you have to wonder why his share of the vote of black men went up 4 points, and black women up 4 points, and Latino men up 3 points, and Latino women up 3 points, and other minorities up 5 points. In fact, preliminary numbers showed that 26 percent of Trump’s national voting share came from non-white voters — the highest percentage for a Republican presidential candidate since 1960. Some have predicted that we are witnessing the start of a major realignment of the two parties. Maybe, maybe not, but would anyone have predicted that a Trump presidency would bring over more minorities? Perhaps they are getting tired of the paternalistic Democrats telling them what they should and shouldn’t be offended by. Is identity politics starting to fall out of favor? We can certainly hope so.
So then, what do Democrats think of this election? Turns out, even if Biden eventually is sworn in as President, Congressional Democrats are very upset that this was not entirely the outcome they had hoped for. The finger-pointing has started and mostly those fingers point to the left.
On a 3-hour call last Thursday moderated by Nancy Pelosi, she said to the House Democrats, “We held the House. Joe Biden is on a clear path to be the next president of the United States. We did not win every battle, but we did win the war.” Well I guess it all depends on what you consider “the war”. Putting your guy in the Oval Office but having the opposition party hold the Senate and make nice gains in the House doesn’t seem like winning a war. At best, it’s winning a major battle, but generally losing everywhere else.
But those House members were having none of that. Some were downright furious. Representative Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) gave poor Nancy an earful. “We need to not ever use the word ‘socialist’ or ‘socialism’ ever again. .?.?. We lost good members because of that. If we are classifying Tuesday as a success .?.?. we will get f—ing torn apart in 2022.” Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), at least understands that their voters, and voters in general aren’t so far left. He cautioned that if Democrats run on socialized medicine and defunding the police, “we’re not going to win”.
Others said that Pelosi should have compromised with Trump to get a Coronavirus aid package passed before the election. I’ve got a link in the show notes to a rather detailed article from the Washington Post about all the other ideas that those Democrats considered losing issues or big mistakes.
Listener Tom, who hails from Australia (which, if I may add, I find cool that I have someone listening from there), asked this question in the Facebook group. “The Dems have cast Trump as the debasement of politics, as a refutation of debate based on issues rather than rhetoric, and character giving way to the lowest common denominator. Given that, what would his re-election mean for the Democratic party?” Listener Mark thought that this would lead to, “An exponential increase of radicalism.” I agreed with him though I also said what they should do is moderate. Sounds like that’s what the rank-and-file representatives also want to do as a result of what is clearly not much of a ringing endorsement of their policies. I have a feeling that AOC and her squad will have a somewhat different opinion about that. Let’s put another popcorn packet in the microwave and keep watching this show.
Two final thoughts. First of all, the skill of political polling may go the way of the “skill” of astrology. I don’t want to totally disrespect the entire industry, because I don’t think this necessarily applies to the entire industry. When quality control guys select a random sample of product to be tested for quality, how many they test out of a batch is based on a long history of statistical theory and real-world application. Same goes for pollsters; it’s the same principle. But when it comes to political polling, it just seems that bias has infected this specific profession. There have been lessons learned over the years (such as those from “Dewey Defeats Truman”), and either there are more to learn from failures in 2016 and 2020, or it’s time to turn predictions over to Miss Cleo or the Psychic Friends network.
And secondly, if Biden does indeed win the Presidency, we just have to admit we lost. Now, we lost in one of the closest elections ever. We lost while we got many important wins elsewhere. We won a moral victory showing how much minorities are beginning to reject intersectionality. But that moral victory is still an election loss. And while the Democrats bicker over whether to moderate or radicalize, Republicans need to do the same thing. I think Trump pointed the way. He got things done. Presidents for decades said they wanted to move the embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, but the intelligence community said it would blow up the Middle East. Trump looked at the lay of the land, and decided to move it. Nothing blew up. Trump went ahead with many conservative principles regarding the number of regulation or economic policy or Middle East peace deals or so many other issues and he proved to Republicans that you can get things done, and they work. If we had a nominee unafraid to keep that up, and unapologetic about conservatism, but without the Twitter proclivities, same message but different messenger, I think we’d have a winner. We can certainly hope so.
The post Episode 306: 2020 Election Thoughts appeared first on Consider This!.
