There has been quite a bit of election news under the radar, so I thought I would get you all up to date.
1. Republicans seem finally to be getting how much of a disaster Trump caused the GOP. I think he's done. But we'll see... cockroaches and all. Biden trying to elevate Marjorie Green is pretty good evidence that Trump is old news and he needs a new lunatic to shadowbox, so is the dismissive tenor of the news articles about him lately. It's also a good sign that several governors are starting to get good press. The latest to be recognized nationally are the Governor of Virginia and the retired Governor of Maryland.
2. Sinema left the Democratic Party, as you may have heard. I'm not sure if you heard why. The reason she left is that she realized she could not win the Democratic primary next cycle because their party no longer tolerates anything but raving lunatics. She had something like 17% support in the party. She's betting that she can win over Arizonans by being a moderate liberal and beating the clowns to left of her and the next joker on the right. It's a hard road to go, but it's honestly her only option at this point. Do I think it might work? Eh. It has a chance. The Dems and the Repubs will play into her hands and nominate lunatics, and she can leverage her fame to make the whole thing plausible... but in the modern era, people tend to vote out of utter terror that the other side will win. That doesn't bode well for her wedging off people from both parties. Ultimately, I think she sinks.
3. There are people speculating Joe Manchin will jump next, but there's no reason for him to do that. West Virginians are not as party-bound as people in other states. They vote for whoever brings the most bucks back to the state, and Manchin is good at that. Plus, he's generally liked in the state and I think people will vote for him no matter what party he is in, i.e. he doesn't need to fear the state's rightward drift. At the same time, the Dems in West Virginia aren't California Dems, they are coal mine worker Dems who purr when you whisper union words. He fits that demographic perfectly.
4. There was this fascinating 'ha ha' article from MSNBC claiming that the GOP's supposed surge with Hispanics didn't happen as planned. The thing is, all the evidence they cite suggests a continued rightward drift of Hispanics. They noted that (1) Hispanics voted in "roughly" the same percentages as last time -- meaning we kept the increased numbers we got last time, (2) Florida had to be excluded to make the article work because Hispanics in Florida did jump right in vast numbers, and (3) wherever the Dems outspent the GOP by 5 to 1, Hispanic numbers did not increase, but anything less than that did show a GOP drift - which is hardly a ringing endorsement of MSNBC's point. They did note that in Pennsylvania, Puerto Ricans still voted in large numbers for the Dems.
So... the GOP kept the significant gains they made last time, made small improvements across the country except with Puerto Ricans, and dominated Florida. That sounds kind of like GOP improvement, especially as the GOP made big gains throughout South Texas. Not to mention, realignments don't happen all at once. It took 30-40 years for the Democratic South to become the Republican South. We've seen a huge jump for 8-10 years already. And don't forget, the overall numbers are so close nationally that even a couple percentage points makes a huge difference. I think this bodes well.
5. Most fascinating of all, young people (those under 29) shifted right significantly. During Biden v. Trump, the gap was +25 Biden in that age group. This time it was +12 Dems. That means the gap got cut in half. What makes this even more interesting is that these people are the most woke too. I wonder if we're looking at some sort of anti-woke backlash? One thing is for sure, Biden's student loan bribe didn't work.
All told this is good news. So long as the House GOP doesn't, uh, defecate the bed, then things are looking good for the next election cycle and possibly the future overall. They need to not fight, pass an agenda (knowing the Dems will kill it) and not get sucked into being pissy. We shall see.
Thoughts?
1. Republicans seem finally to be getting how much of a disaster Trump caused the GOP. I think he's done. But we'll see... cockroaches and all. Biden trying to elevate Marjorie Green is pretty good evidence that Trump is old news and he needs a new lunatic to shadowbox, so is the dismissive tenor of the news articles about him lately. It's also a good sign that several governors are starting to get good press. The latest to be recognized nationally are the Governor of Virginia and the retired Governor of Maryland.
2. Sinema left the Democratic Party, as you may have heard. I'm not sure if you heard why. The reason she left is that she realized she could not win the Democratic primary next cycle because their party no longer tolerates anything but raving lunatics. She had something like 17% support in the party. She's betting that she can win over Arizonans by being a moderate liberal and beating the clowns to left of her and the next joker on the right. It's a hard road to go, but it's honestly her only option at this point. Do I think it might work? Eh. It has a chance. The Dems and the Repubs will play into her hands and nominate lunatics, and she can leverage her fame to make the whole thing plausible... but in the modern era, people tend to vote out of utter terror that the other side will win. That doesn't bode well for her wedging off people from both parties. Ultimately, I think she sinks.
3. There are people speculating Joe Manchin will jump next, but there's no reason for him to do that. West Virginians are not as party-bound as people in other states. They vote for whoever brings the most bucks back to the state, and Manchin is good at that. Plus, he's generally liked in the state and I think people will vote for him no matter what party he is in, i.e. he doesn't need to fear the state's rightward drift. At the same time, the Dems in West Virginia aren't California Dems, they are coal mine worker Dems who purr when you whisper union words. He fits that demographic perfectly.
4. There was this fascinating 'ha ha' article from MSNBC claiming that the GOP's supposed surge with Hispanics didn't happen as planned. The thing is, all the evidence they cite suggests a continued rightward drift of Hispanics. They noted that (1) Hispanics voted in "roughly" the same percentages as last time -- meaning we kept the increased numbers we got last time, (2) Florida had to be excluded to make the article work because Hispanics in Florida did jump right in vast numbers, and (3) wherever the Dems outspent the GOP by 5 to 1, Hispanic numbers did not increase, but anything less than that did show a GOP drift - which is hardly a ringing endorsement of MSNBC's point. They did note that in Pennsylvania, Puerto Ricans still voted in large numbers for the Dems.
So... the GOP kept the significant gains they made last time, made small improvements across the country except with Puerto Ricans, and dominated Florida. That sounds kind of like GOP improvement, especially as the GOP made big gains throughout South Texas. Not to mention, realignments don't happen all at once. It took 30-40 years for the Democratic South to become the Republican South. We've seen a huge jump for 8-10 years already. And don't forget, the overall numbers are so close nationally that even a couple percentage points makes a huge difference. I think this bodes well.
5. Most fascinating of all, young people (those under 29) shifted right significantly. During Biden v. Trump, the gap was +25 Biden in that age group. This time it was +12 Dems. That means the gap got cut in half. What makes this even more interesting is that these people are the most woke too. I wonder if we're looking at some sort of anti-woke backlash? One thing is for sure, Biden's student loan bribe didn't work.
All told this is good news. So long as the House GOP doesn't, uh, defecate the bed, then things are looking good for the next election cycle and possibly the future overall. They need to not fight, pass an agenda (knowing the Dems will kill it) and not get sucked into being pissy. We shall see.
Thoughts?
6 comments:
Hey Andrew, glad to see you posting again.
I am hesitant to predict much about Trump and his presidential bid. On one hand, Trump has some good policies: when he held office previously his actions seemed to have decent intentions. On the other hand, he steps on rakes, puts his foot in his big mouth every day, and he surrounds himself with morons.
We will see if the GOP has any balls. There are some good grassroots efforts from the center-right… however leadership is severely lacking. I mean the Republicans should be in a huge lead due to the god awful Biden admin, however they just keep dropping the ball and focusing on the wrong things… IMO this is a cross party problem: the establishment GOP, MAGA types, even libertarians are just not capitalizing on Biden's failures.
I believe I read the MSNBC article you spoke of; the one trying to downplay the rightward shift of Hispanics. It was just pure non-sense, mixed with opinion and leftoid interpretation of statistics.
IMO Sinema is a neo-liberal that happens to hold other Democrats toes to the fire. By switching to an independent, Sinema is just insuring she wont be primaried out by another Democrat.
I have read other people compare Sinema to Tulsi Gabard… I completely disagree with that assertion.
Tulsi Gabard is a center-left type, and has sensible policy positions. Gabard is a bit of a grifter but she is alright by me.
Sinema is a leftoid-light with fairly far left views… she is just not full woke. I don't see her making any good policy in the future IMO.
Optically this looks bad for the Dems. I mean Sinema is clearly a mainstream Democrat leftist, however apparently she is just too right wing for the party! Democrat politicians and legacy media pundits really are just a bunch of dips-hits at this point in time.
Andrew, do you have any thoughts on the Elon Twitter File dumps? It more or less corroborates our suspicions about the legacy media being nothing more than a propaganda arm for the Dems & big government in general.
-Kyle
My biggest concern about Trump is he will not exit quietly and some of his hard core followers could sit home. I would like to think they would vote anybody over whoever the Dems device to run, but never underestimate the pettiness of the former President. In retrospect, he probably only won because Americans so disliked Hillary. BTW, what are your thoughts on Dems trying to push through statehood for DC.? I am still concerned about election laws and the ability of big city machines to pull in votes from people who don’t even know who is running - Jed
Hi Kyle!
I agree across the board actually.
Trump did some good things, but also steered "conservatism" into a land that is anything but conservative. And the people he recruited were not conservatives, they were nuts with idiotic conspiracy views and messianic fantasies. They had no idea what conservatism is. He's also made himself so poison that his touch is like poison at this point.
As for next election, Trump would rather the country and party burned than he not be king, so he will not go away quietly because he doesn't care about the damage he does. The thing is, I think a collective decision has been made that he doesn't matter anymore, which will limit his ability to do harm. As for his people staying home, they've already stayed home when he lost. And they aren't coming back even for him.
As for the GOP, we will see. I agree that their leaders are terrible. They live in such a bubble in Washington that they've come to think that the crazy crap their hear from lobbyists is what drives the public and they will fight for crazy but not for what matters. They also fight stupidly because they have never understood the public enough to sell their ideas to it.
Agreed on Sinema. She's just progressive at a lower cost.
Gabbard was interesting, but it was hard to get through the media screen that screamed CRAZY to know what she stood for!
Kyle, Statehood for DC would be a disaster. We need to keep that from happening. Give it back to Maryland.
On Musk, I'm going to write about that. I think what you are seeing at Twitter is absolutely shocking. It makes Watergate look like nothing. You literally have liberal-Nazis stopping people from communicating with each other in the name of their hate and on behalf of the Democratic Party. That should be criminal, honestly.
And yes, it shows the level of incest between the Democrats, the media and Big Tech.
Andrew, Jed again. I agree the Musk Twitter dump is frightening. It goes to how warped so many people are, because they have conned themselves that this kind of censorship was justified because conservatives are racist terrorist who tried to overthrow the government on January 6.
Hi Jed. I want to organize my thoughts on it, but it is very frightening. What you have is basically a tyrannical chunk of people who think they have the right to control and destroy others all in the name of their beliefs. That's always disastrous.
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