An Impossible Election

While the dust is still settling three weeks after the Election, much has become clear with how the political make-up of the country will be for the next few years. The big winners were of course Republicans, though surprisingly Big Media does not seem to have followed this story at all. And even more mysteriously, while all Republicans were doing well across much of the country, Biden pulled off the most astonishing victory ever recorded for the Presidency, not just in the US, but in any democratic election ever. And Big Media so far has ignored how that impossibility happened as well.

Going into the election, the Democrats were breaking out the champagne. They believed that their platform of defunding law and order, advocating race war and pushing for socialism was a winning combination. Moreover, the Dems believed folks loved the COVID restrictions so much they wanted more of them, which they could only get from a socialist paradise. Finally, they thought, a massive victory that would at last turn the US into the one party state of Wokistan.

And they had a winning electoral strategy as well. Attack the rascally Trump for anything and everything, and run a charismatic, energetic, intellectually compelling, extraordinary orator, and trusted (no corruption here, that’s right out) candidate. These are the Dems so one was not available, and they had to settle for the 78 year-old cognitively challenged DC Pol Joe Biden, but they still pursued the strategy. It’s an old US strategy – take down the top man and the whole ticket will collapse up and down the line. Timeworn maybe, but always effective. And the word went forth across the land to all media outlets: “Blue wave a-coming!” And the word was made flesh by the polling companies which tabulated monster bigly leads for all Dems across the board.

In a real turn-up for the books, though, pretty much the reverse happened. To start with the Feds, out of the 435 House seats, 27 were considered toss-ups, i.e., ripe for the Dems to pick off. But the Republicans are on track to win every single toss-up, and in the process look to gain as many as 16 seats. This will give them 213 seats in the House to 222 for the Dems. In a post-election autopsy session, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairwoman Cheri Bustos was very angry with the non-existent blue wave. “I’m furious,” Bustos told her Democratic House colleagues. “Something went wrong here across the entire political world. Our polls, Senate polls, gov polls, presidential polls, Republican polls, public polls, turnout modelling, and prognosticators all pointed to one political environment—that environment never materialized.”

She was not as furious as Rep. Abigail Spanberger, who was one of many ex-CIA Dem folks elected as a House Rep in the Trump years. She nearly lost her Virginia seat due to excessive wokiness: “No-one should say ‘defund the police’ ever again. Nobody should be talking about socialism. If we repeat these tactics we will get fucking torn apart.”

The Dems still have a narrow House majority, but this is far far short of what Nancy Pelosi predicted back in August that the Dem majority would increase by “double-digits.” Right number; wrong party. The Dems believed they would pick up at least 15 seats from Republicans on the way to an unassailable majority that would last forever. Now of course, the poor old Dems are looking at actually losing their majority in the House in 2022 as midterm elections always go against the party holding the Presidency (more on this later).

The Dems also thought they would win the Senate, which along with the House and the Presidency would mean plans to turn the USA into a country looking like the old Soviet Union, if it had no electricity, would be accelerated. Of the 35 Senate seats up for re-election in 2020, 23 were Republican ones and so Republicans had much greater partisan risk than the Dems. Republicans lost just one seat, and they only have to win one of the two runoff seats in Georgia in January to retain control of the Senate. Which looks highly probable as Georgia maintained their solid red status across the board except for the Presidency (more on this later).

It wasn’t just Federal elections that took place on November 3^rd as State Governments were up for grabs as well. In 2018 and 2019 the Dems had started to reverse some of the massive nearly 1,000 State seat losses they sustained in the Obama era. But these gains were reversed by the Republicans this year. Republicans increased their control of State legislative bodies from 59 to 61 (there are 99 total State legislative bodies in the US). Republicans also picked up two trifectas (one party owns Governor, House, Senate) in Montana and New Hampshire. This gives them a new total of 23, as opposed to the Dems losing two trifectas which gives them an overall total of 15 (the other 12 States have divided Governments).

The importance of this was not lost on the Dems. The raw figures are worrying, but of more concern is that State governments are responsible for the upcoming “re-districting” of legislative seats following the 2020 census. Both Congressional and State legislative seats are allocated based on population, and each census can cause the need for a State to “re-district’ if it gains or loses population. Republicans now have a much better chance of deploying the creative art form where new voting districts are created that look like paint stains on a map, but are really cunningly crafted to get their folks elected. The re-districting is an opportunity that only comes along every ten years, and the Dems lost badly.

And not even cherished Dem policy initiatives were spared. Many States have referendum options available at Election time for the voters to weigh in on controversial issues. Super-blue state California had a dozen or so this year, with several being at the forefront of the wokiest parts of the Dem agenda. Despite the unbroken ranks of the Dems, Big Media, celebrities, and Silicon Valley execs and companies supporting the nonsense, much of it was voted down. Californians threw out any notion of getting rid of cash bail (Dems love releasing criminals quickly back on the streets), 17-years olds being allowed to vote in primaries (Dems just love having the children vote), affirmative action (Dems just love racial preferences), and raising already sky-high commercial taxes (Dems love any and all taxes).

“It’s clear that Trump isn’t an anchor for the Republican legislative candidates. He’s a buoy,” said Christina Polizzi, a spokesperson for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, on November 4th. “He overperformed media expectations, Democratic and Republican expectations, and lifted legislative candidates with him.” The funny thing about the buoy, however, was that while it was able to pull all Republicans up to the surface, it then sank.

In the weirdest election ever, Biden managed to pull off a stunning victory when most states were repudiating his party. For a start, Trump became the first incumbent President to potentially lose the Presidency while his party gained House seats. Further weirdness is provided by the fact that Biden lost the bellwether states of Ohio and Florida by large margins. These two states have reliably predicted the actual winner for 60 years, ever since Kennedy won the Presidency after emptying the Chicago graveyards for Dem votes. At the State level The Wall Street Journal checked the top 19 bellwether electoral districts that always pick the President correctly; 18 went for Trump with a monster average lead of 16 points.

There are two explanations circulating for this anomalous election. The first, by some talking heads, which has started to be pushed by certain parts of the media as well, is that everyone in the country hated Trump so much that the election only came down to getting rid of the despised Orange One. But this meant that Republicans en masse would have had to desert Trump in droves. They didn’t. His number of 94% approval in the Republican primaries in the summer was actually beaten in the election where 95% of Republicans voted for Trump. His campaign saw off the charts enthusiasm, an enthusiasm underlined by the fact that Trump is only one of five incumbents since 1912 to receive more than 90% of his party’s primary vote. And no candidate receiving greater than 75% of his party’s primary vote has ever lost the Presidency.

The second explanation is pushed by the Trump Campaign, many Trump supporters and, if polls be worth anything these days, an overwhelming number of Republicans (75% in latest Rasmussen Poll). What is even weirder is that, in the same poll, 30% of Democrats also believe that the election was stolen from Trump. The case is based on simple math of voting totals in the swing states, a view that the mail-in ballots make fraud very easy, particularly in some of the major Dem strong holds such as Detroit and Philadelphia, and a theory that the election software in many States switched votes from Trump to Biden.

The evidence, or not, for this will play out in the courts, but it is instructive to look at the math behind the election. One example is the peculiar facts around minority voting patterns. Here Trump got the highest numbers for a Republican Presidential candidate since 1960. Trump and Republicans nationwide made unprecedented inroads with Black and Hispanic voters. Nationally, preliminary numbers indicate that 26% of Trump’s voting share came from non-white voters — the highest percentage for a GOP presidential candidate since 1960. Trump increased his share of the national Hispanic vote to a little more than 40%. With 60% or less of the Hispanic vote it is arithmetically impossible for a Dem to win Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico. Biden appears to have won all three. Then there was the Black vote in certain areas. Biden‘s margin of victory in the swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin was derived from an amazing tsunami of Black votes in Detroit, Philadelphia and Milwaukee. But Biden’s Black support was well below the 90% political wisdom says the Dems have to have or they lose the Presidency. So Biden’s Black vote was well down in most other places – an inconsistency that has hitherto not been seen in presidential elections.

Trump is pushing this through courts but has yet to get very far. Cases of actual fraud have come up, particularly in Pennsylvania, but so far they have been ignored as not being relevant. “Not enough fraud to change the result” as Big Media is beginning to put it. Big Media much prefers electoral stories with no evidence, such as Trump winning due to Russian collusion, as making stuff up is better than having to work too hard.

Either of these two explanations for the purported Biden victory would be the biggest Presidential election story since Washington decided not to run for a third term. Consider, Biden, perhaps the worst campaigner in American political history, managed to get the Presidency purely because everyone hated his predecessor, except for the half of the country who voted for his party. Or conversely that the US is a banana republic with fraudulent electoral systems. You can literally smell the Pulitzer from either of these.

Right now, however, our intrepid journalists are too busy with the daunting task of desperately trying to make Biden’s proposed cabinet picks sound like competent folks who are not failed re-treads from the awful Obama era policies. To be fair this weekend they did start to branch out to other breaking news stories. We learned from NBC that Biden and his wife will not just be bringing their dogs to the White House (if selected, Joe, if selected) but they revealed exclusively to NBC that they would be bringing a cat as well. Maybe the journos will also get round to the story of the century one of these days.