Pre-election political observations and images

I'm now more convinced than ever that my "blue wave" prediction will be vindicated, based on an emerging pattern of the early vote going overwhelmingly for Harris, both nationally and in individual states, even though the numbers of Republicans and Democrats voting early are nearly equal.  This shows that huge numbers of Republicans are voting Democratic, at least on the presidential level.  As my earlier post pointed out, this continues the pattern seen in elections and referenda since the Dobbs ruling -- major shifts in favor of the Democrats and abortion rights, which were not anticipated by polls.

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How important are endorsements?  I'll offer myself as one data point.  I always know enough about the "big" races (for president, Congress, and governor) to know which candidate I prefer, but for lesser races I often don't, and researching all of them would be an onerous task.  In such cases, I do look at endorsements.  If a candidate is endorsed by a bunch of labor unions, for example, I can safely assume that candidate is the one to vote for.

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I've been glad to see that there's very little concern being expressed about what would once have been a serious question -- whether the country is ready for a woman president.  In a sense, the question was answered in 2016, when Hillary Clinton won the popular vote even though the Electoral College thwarted the will of the people.  Beyond that, female leadership is no longer a rarity among democracies.  Italy, Mexico, and Thailand have women leaders right now.  Germany and Taiwan did until recently.  The UK elected Margaret Thatcher in 1979 and Israel elected Golda Meir in 1969.  One might ask why the US is taking so long.

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All week the racist insults aired at Trump's Madison Square Garden rally have been the talk of the left-wing internet.  Personally, I doubt this event will move the needle much in the overall election, though it may have some marginal impact by motivating Puerto Rican voters (especially in Pennsylvania and Florida, which have substantial Puerto Rican populations), particularly since several Puerto Rican celebrities have forcefully called attention to it.  It might even slow down the trend of Republican gains among Hispanic voters, though US Hispanics are far from homogenous in ethnic consciousness.  But the idea that it's an election game-changer strikes me as more of a blogosphere concept than a real-world one.  Trump already has a long history of ethnic slurs, including slurs targeting Hispanics.  Any needle-moving that such utterances could do, probably was baked in long ago.  In this case, the offensive remarks weren't even delivered by Trump himself, and his campaign rushed to repudiate them.

However, I think the slurs at that rally may do the Republican party considerable harm in a more subtle way.

As noted above, early-voting patterns suggest that the Dobbs effect is indeed producing a "blue wave".  However, the polls are still showing the race very close (despite this bearing no resemblance to the actual vote so far), and the media are still pushing a close-race narrative.  If the actual result is a blue wave, with the Democrats overwhelmingly winning the presidency, Senate, and House as well as state races that were expected to be close, the right wing will suffer a profound shock.  The dumbest and most delusional among them will start bleating about the election being stolen, rigged, etc, but there may not be very much of that -- there wasn't in 2022 when the poll-predicted red wave failed to materialize (probably also squelched by the Dobbs ruling).  Most of them, including the leaders, will realize something went very wrong, and will focus on determining what that something was.

The religious hard-liners will be desperately trying to fend off the obvious answer -- that it was the party's attacks on abortion -- to avoid that issue being jettisoned as the ballot-box poison it in fact is.  If the celebrating left is trumpeting Trump's racism as the game-changing issue (which many will -- leftists try to make everything about racism if they can find a remotely-plausible pretext for doing so), they'll seize upon that as a diversion -- it wasn't forced-birthism that sank the party, it was Tony Hinchcliffe.  And a lot of the leaders will want to believe this, to avoid the agonizing internal conflicts which would result from throwing forced-birthism overboard.  It may well become the accepted explanation for the unexpected loss.  Thus the Republicans will suffer a major defeat and loss of power, and will not even gain the benefit of correctly understanding their weaknesses so they can correct them.

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If something's hard to read, click for full size.  For the previous post, click here.

Made by Pliny.

Do not repeat the mistake.