I'm seeing a lot of fog machines putting out a lot of fog about the election. Some of the fog is even from well-meaning individuals. I still ain't buying it.
One rationalization is along the lines of “People voted for normalcy, therefore we should forget about investigations etcetera. Just fix the economy, that is all people care about. They don't care about culture wars. They don't care what happened with Covid, Covid is so over. Even the border doesn't seem to matter. They rejected GOP 'extremism' ”.
I am not buying this. That does not jibe with the impressive Youngkin victory not so long ago which was 100 percent culture issues. It does not jibe with DeSantis's impressive victory in Florida; he is a culture warrior par excellence. It does not jibe with Noem's impressive victory in SD either, though SD is admittedly culturally conservative to begin with.
There is also an almost-opposite rationalization, provided mostly by Democrats: People actually cared deeply about cultural issues after all, but only about the ones that have traction with Democrats: abortion and “saving American democracy” from... what? 'Extremist' parents showing up at school board meetings? Give me a break. Along with saving the country from giving each state local control over its abortion regulation? That's somehow radical? Give me a break.
Another foggy rationalization is “Polls are never accurate. Polls mean nothing at all.” Again not buying. For at least a decade now, when polls err, they err consistently in the direction of downplaying GOP strength and overplaying Democratic strength. Did they suddenly, all of them simultaneously, start erring in the opposite direction? That requires further explanation, at a minimum.
Another factor not being talked about is momentum. All pollsters of whatever persuasion were showing that the GOP had the momentum, a huge factor in winning elections. For the growing momentum to suddenly reverse itself on Election Day itself—that would be historically unprecedented, not to mention illogical. It would be logical only if a sudden, enormous scandal had broken against the GOP, and no such event occurred.
No, the elephant in the room is, all together now: FRAUD. Let's say it again, right out loud: FRAUD. For months I've been saying that there would be an October surprise by which the Biden administration would justify fiddling with the election in some way. I said the Dems would never give up power to any significant degree.
I was wrong about the October surprise, but right that the Dems would never give up power. It turns out that they didn't need an October surprise. They had so skillfully gamed the whole elections system beforehand in multiple states, that they only had to tweak that system here and adjust it there, to win just enough elections to assure continued Senate control at a minimum. A camera going dark here, a whole bunch of machines "malfunctioning" there... and pretty soon you've got control of the US Senate for at least two more years. Considering how quickly Biden with the help of a Democratic Senate has run the country into the ground in just two years, the USA will be in shreds in another such two years.
People like Tucker Carlson have tried to shame states like Arizona and Nevada and Georgia by comparing their abysmal performance of a basic governmental responsibility with how much better almost everyone else does that job, from France to Brazil to the 1860 national election in the USA (an election, as Tucker reminds us with bitter humor, that was counted in many cases by candlelight from scraps of paper and covered THE ENTIRE COUNTRY....), but he is wasting his breath. You can't shame an entity that has no conscience.
Republicans have not done their due diligence in safeguarding election integrity. We'd better start figuring out how to get serious about doing it. The hour is already late and the system is already heavily rigged. It's only going to get even harder from here on out. But the alternative—which is to REALLY lose our Constitutional democratic republic—is unthinkable.
Wake up, Republicans!
(Editor’s note: Later, Patsy added this:)
TWO PLUS TWO NO LONGER EQUALS FOUR
I'd like to add one more thought to my post from a couple of days ago, “Dispelling the Fog.” In that post, I pointed out ways in which the official election outcomes were counter-intuitive to what one would have expected from the “if you voted today” polls taken right up to election day.
But an important point which I omitted, was the historical correlates of some completely different polls -- the polls that for months had been recording people saying in record high numbers that “the country is on the wrong track” and those same people giving Biden's performance in office historically low approval ratings. These polls were not tied to the elections per se. They were consistent in their findings over a rather long period of time.
Many pundits commented over that time that historically, wrong-track polls showing high numbers of people saying the country is on the wrong track... have always predicted major election losses for the party in power. Similarly, low approval ratings for a President have historically predicted major election losses for the party in power.
Somehow, none of these well-established patterns which have historically held in all previous elections.... none of those patterns held in this election!! The same people who said the country was on the wrong track, the same people who said that Biden was not doing a good job as President—those very same people then voted for the candidates offered to them by the party whose President they gave low ratings to! In so doing, those (apparently very confused) voters broke historical patterns of long standing which had been established in previous elections over the years.
Why did they do that? Why did election history come to an abrupt, unforeseen halt in 2022, and fail to predict accurately... though it had always done so before? Surely.... at the very least... this calls for a credible explanation! Not just bland, unquestioning acceptance of anomalous outcomes....