"The results of this year’s election, with a solid Biden win but Republicans doing well down-ballot, tells us that American voters don’t fully understand what the modern G.O.P. is really about." - Paul Krugman, NY Times, Tuesday
"The voters must understand that as long as Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is the Senate majority leader and the base of the Republican Party is dominated by the far right — including “Stop the Steal” Trumpists — a divided government is not a recipe for compromise. Instead, it’s a ticket to obstruction and the very sort of partisan brawling that moderate voters can’t stand. The belief that divided government guarantees moderate outcomes might once have been true when there was a solid moderate bloc in the Republican Party. But it should now be clear that it’s a destructive myth." - E. J. Dionne, Washington Post
The math didn't add up, to put it simply. How the hell could Joe Biden beat Trump in the popular vote by some 7 million votes (at latest tally), and yet the Democrats lost so many down ballot seats in the House? As per an ABC News release yesterday:
"Republicans trimmed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's 35-seat majority to just 12. With an additional two races outstanding in Iowa and New York and a runoff in Louisiana, current ABC News projections put the partisan breakdown at 222-210 -- leaving Democrats with one of the smallest majorities in two decades."
This is incredible as well as disheartening as there is no way the Dems should have suffered such a loss of House seats given Biden's 7+ m win. What it means is that millions "split" their votes, voting for Biden to oust Trump as president, but then kneecapping Biden by narrowing the House margins and not delivering the extra Senate seats (e.g. in Maine, NC, SC etc.) needed for effective governance.
What were these "split vote" (divided government) folks thinking? WHO were they anyway? We still don't have all the exit vote assessments to parse these voter backgrounds. But it seems a good many were independent moderates as well as Republicans who turned against Trump - didn't want to see 4 more years of the authoritarian demagogue.
They also likely believed in the abstract concept of divided government, that at least one (or two) branches of congress will modulate Democratic aspirations and check overreach. But they are operating under a delusion: the delusion that the 'checkers' are the same as the respectable GOP office holders of old. They aren't. They are obstructionist, traitor rats like Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, Ron Johnson and others who even now are enabling the brat in the White House. Daily encouraging his tirades against the reality he will not get another term, e.g.
They are, in effect, engaging in an insurrection against democracy and the peaceful transition of power. These are not the people any sane person wants checking the next incumbent or his party! They are in fact the worst, so voting them in down ballot was a foolish expectation. Worse, the split voting has played into Trump's rants about election fraud. Such as Wednesday when the asswipe fool referred to the success of GOP House and Senate candidates down ballot and suggested that the Republican presidential candidate (Trump) should have had similar success. That he didn’t was a "statistical impossibility", and hence there had to be fraud. But as WaPo columnist Philip Bump has pointed out:
The term “statistically impossible” is a rhetorical one more than a statistical one. It’s often used to describe situations that are impossible and involve statistics, such as if a candidate trails his opponent by 40,000 votes with 10,000 votes left to count. At other times, it’s meant to suggest that something that is very, very unlikely almost certainly wouldn’t happen.
Say like a subnormal I.Q. crackpot elected to congress by subnormal I.Q. voters. Such as transpired here in Colorado with the election of Lauren Boebert, e.g.
who believes her election was free and fair but has echoed Trump’s allegations of fraud for his own. . Oh yeah, she also wants to be able to carry her Glock at the U.S. Capitol. As recently as November 28, this idiot imp fired off a tweet asking Time if it was ready to name AOC as "communist of the year" instead of Person of the Year. How on earth could voters choose such a cretinous creature to represent them in Colorado's third congressional district? Who knows? At least one 3rd district Dem voter appalled at the choice wrote on Facebook:
"What is really concerning is the quality of people in the district who voted for this uneducated, crazy person to go to congress. This is the best they've got? That is pretty sad."
But say what you will, this election of Boebert is in line with most of the other GOP choices as a result of voters' ignorance and/or divided government delusions.
Beyond the lack of proper voter education we know three factors contributed to the anomalous down ballot losses, which will ensure gridlock unless Dems pick off those two Georgia Senate seats. These three factors include:1) the virus of partisan polarization (which inaccurate polling obscured); 2) the illusory strength of the juiced pre-Covid-19 economy (based on tax cuts and deregulation); 3) and the success of Trump’s denialist, "open-everything-up" nonresponse to the pandemic.
So in addition to lack of adequate political education, these mostly explain why Democrats didn’t fare better.
The shocking strategy embodied in the three factors worked for Republicans, even if it didn’t pan out for the Dotard himself. The fact it did work out, again shows the degree to which voter naivete played into their hands. Thus, the belief the Repukes are a real party instead of a cult full of traitors doing Trump's bidding including taking a wrecking ball to the electoral process now.
Moreover, this Reep plan laid a trap that Democrats walked into, based on the assumption most voters are rational beings and not gullible rubes who can be played by dazzling them with baloney. This is something the Democrats should understand and adjust for, as best they can, as they look ahead. How far down the rabbit hole of ungovernability have we gone? A lot!
In 2008, Republicans at least acknowledged that Obama had won the election. This time, Republican leaders have either refused to stand against Trump’s outright lies about a rigged election or are actually abetting his attack on our democracy (see: House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California).
An intelligent and rational electorate would not have been fooled by Trump’s relentless campaign to goose the economy by cutting taxes, running up enormous deficits and debt, and hectoring the Fed into not raising rates was working for millions of Americans. They'd have caught onto the fact these were all expedient con man tactics. (Even Hitler boosted Germany's early 1930s economy for a time- but by vastly expanding its weapons systems and military)
No doubt another large part of so many voters being played is that we tend to notice when we’re personally more prosperous than we were a few years before. Hence, tend to give credit to whoever is in power at the time of advanced prosperity - despite the fact that person was the benefactor of the president who came before - in this case, Obama.
By all rights and reason Trump ought to have been blown out in this election - not just 306 to 232 electoral votes, but more like 432 to 106. A margin so huge- and with 100,000+ margins in each swing state - so no attempt to overturn the election would even be attempted. Also, no loss in House seats, rather 3-4 pickups and at least 5 Senate seats snagged. This didn't materialize mainly because voters punted and opted for divided government, or were too blinded by Trump's tricks to throw the hammer at him. Am I exaggerating? No!
Trump's catastrophic response to Covid-19 threw the economy into a tailspin. He totally abdicated responsibility, lying and downplaying the virus then shifting the burden onto states and municipalities with busted budgets. He then waged a war of words against governors and mayors — especially Democrats — who refused to risk their citizens’ lives by allowing economic and social activity to resume.
He spurred his supporters to make light of the danger of infection, made the churlish refusal to wear masks into an emblem of emancipation from the despotism of experts and turned public health restrictions on businesses, schools and social gatherings into a tyrannical conspiracy to steal power by damaging the economy and his re-election prospects.
He succeeded in putting Democrats on the defensive about economic restrictions and school closures. As months passed and with no new relief coming from Washington, financially straitened Democratic states and cities had little choice but to ease restrictions on businesses just to keep the lights on. That seemed to concede the economic wisdom of the more permissive approach in majority-Republican states and fed into Trump’s false narrative of victory over the virus and a triumphant return to normalcy.
Make no mistake, it was unforgivably cruel of the Repukes to force blue-collar and service workers to risk death for grocery money. Yet their disinformation campaign persuaded many millions of Americans that the risk was minimal and that Democrats were keeping their workplaces and schools closed, their customers and kids at home, and their wallets empty and cupboards bare for bogus reasons.
To avoid another election like this, we have to educate voters to be smarter, and especially to stop trusting the GOP as a responsible political party. They are not that any longer, and have merely proven themselves obstructionists and enablers of would -be authoritarians. For now the GOP has devolved into a cult based on Trump worship, obeisance and destruction of democracy. Hence, unworthy of any kind of divided governance!
See Also:
by Amanda Marcotte | December 3, 2020 - 7:53am | permalink
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