The sort of error that’s made all the time
It’s minor, but it bugs me anyway. An accretion of this sort of thing is how false memes (left or right) are created and reinforced until they become Truths, whether they’re true or not.
Some are a lot more important than this one, but this one is typical. Was it done through carelessness or was it purposeful? In this particular case, I vote for carelessness.
I’m talking about a point made in a piece at PJ by Michael Walsh on the rosy GOP prospects in the Senate in 2018. Those prospects are indeed pretty good, because there are quite a few Democratic senators from fairly conservative states who are up for re-election and might be at risk.
But that’s not the part of the article that caught my eye and concerned me. This did:
This was the year that the Democrats hoped to take back the U.S. Senate; after all, the Republicans were defending 24 seats, and the Dems only ten. Alas for them, the Trump wave pretty much swamped them, re-electing several shaky senators, such as Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania, while sweeping away only the sad-sack from Illinois, Mark Kirk, and New Hampshire’s Kelly Ayotte, who unwisely threw in her lot with the McCain wing of the party and is now unemployed.
And to underscore the point, here’s the photo that accompanies the article:
The implication is crystal clear: we are seeing RINO Ayotte with fellow RINOs McCain and Graham, in happier days. If only Ayotte had “thrown her lot” in with the winning Trump wing rather than the McCain wing, perhaps she wouldn’t now be unemployed. The Trump wave “swept her away.”
What’s wrong with that? Sounds reasonable. But it’s not what actualy happened to Ayotte. Oh yes, she lost her Senate seat, all right. And she hadn’t supported Trump—although she had initially said she’d vote for him, she took that back after his Billy Bush tape surfaced.
But Ayotte did better in New Hampshire than Trump did. There was no “Trump wave” in New Hampshire. In fact, whatever ticket-splitting New Hampshire’s GOP voters did favored Ayotte over Trump. So it’s far more logical to conclude that she would have lost by a larger margin had she supported Trump.
Trump lost New Hampshire by 2,736 votes. If you think that’s not all that much, you’re correct. But New Hampshire is a small state, and a purplish state, and victory margins are often very small there.
Ayotte’s margin of loss was much smaller than Trump’s: she lost by a mere 699 votes. What’s more, she was running against a highly popular two-term NH governor, Maggie Hassan, and Ayotte’s seat was known to be shaky even before Trump ever threw his hat into the ring.
In summary, there isn’t a single reason to think that Ayotte lost votes by not supporting Trump. If anything, she gained them.
You might say, so what? As I already stated, it’s a minor issue. But take that misperception, and multiply it by many factors and many other issues, and you have the way many of us we get our information and form our ideas about things.
My feeling is that Senatorial candidates did better than Trump in most places. Rubio in Florida is another example. This makes sense due to ticket splitting by never Trump Republicans.
TrumpTrain doesn’t need no stinkin’ facts!
I’m not sure I have ever seen a more senseless and unthinking movement than Trumpism. Even Jihadists have a greater coherence to their philosophy.
Right now lots of people are looking for favors from Trump or from his hard core followers. So any hard analysis or acknowledgement of unhelpful data is neglected. Trump holds grudges and wants you to grovel if you disagreed with him so being a loyal supporter is important to many.
It should be noted that the Arch Conservative Manchester Union Leader endorsed Johnson out of their displeasure with Trump, so it’s not clear that he got as much as he might have from Conservatives. A big portion of New Hampshire voters are now retirees who have a very different set of interests than other voters. Many are not big supporters of economic growth where they live and pay close attention to government benefit programs like Medicare and Social Security. Hassan catered to this group as Governor and in her Senate campaign.
*anyone* can vote in NH, there is same day registration, affadavd signing if you have no ID
all the colleges send their out of state students to just vote. How can the actual NH residents compete with that ???? (I think Kelly went down because a mischief maker anti incumbent got on the ballot and siphoned off votes, he says he ll do the favor to Jeane Shaheen next go round)
However NH is one of the states with GOP Gov, & both houses of state legislature so hopefully we can negate this Democrat installed, *Everybody votes no qualifications required*
read to the end quick…
The scythe will cut it down to size says procrustes…
————–
An accretion of this sort of thing is how false memes (left or right) are created and reinforced until they become Truths, whether they’re true or not.
you mean like the american capitalist country of free having its people think like soviets by using soviet terms like Left (opposition) and right (opposition)?
sorry, but the point was lost decades ago when they changed history to social studies… changed personel to human resources (to control the means of production as a resource)… and feminists went communist and all that…
once all that was allowed and socialism was the goal of these agents and agencies, all that stuff your bitching about is normal under that…
the whole idea of keeping amoral behavior went out with the men… so did the idea of representing one group not another as the umbrella covers both sides, making both side meaningles…
[edited for length by n-n]
It’s puffery, as the Trumpkins claim all sorts of victories they’re not entitled to. The rubber will meet the road in January (at least, it will more meet the road).
Dirtyjobsguy Since both Loebs are deceased the paper is a far cry from arch Conservative. Reporters routinely have stories with a liberal bent, eg a 20 or 21 yr old special needs (autism) who no longer qualifies for the 5 day a week activities that are provided. Seems his intact 2 parent family could come up with something or perhaps sponsor him in the same program but pay for it) anyway the reporter wanted everybody to wring their hands over this high functioning young man! & his situation. Stories like that are featured often, as well as a steady diet of the opioid crisis & how these unfortunates are just not able with out taxpayer assistance reject the allure of drugs, invariably ensnaring them when some doctor gave them a script after surgery just causing them to go berserk ! Why all these typically young people required all this surgery is a puzzle to this retired RN !
heck…
we are not even allowed to talk, how can we be responsible for what is said or not said, or lies or the truth?
the doyen harpies have spoken..
how can one pull the big lie without THEM
you cant say manhole cover
you cant say merry xmas
you cant say happy holidays
you cant say lots of things
so any kind of truth pushing is backed by them
otherwise, the offenders would be ended the same way all the other ways of thinking have been verboten
after all, all the famous people who said how to do the big lie are all socialists… the austrian with the mustache, the georgian with the same hand signs (till not), and on and on…
the big lie is a point of the left…
without it, they would have NO power
they lied to women
they lied to blacks
they lied and lied and lied.
they even lie about lying
The philosopher Immanuel Kant said that lying was always morally wrong. He argued that all persons are born with an “intrinsic worth” that he called human dignity. This dignity derives from the fact that humans are uniquely rational agents, capable of freely making their own decisions, setting their own goals, and guiding their conduct by reason. To be human, said Kant, is to have the rational power of free choice; to be ethical, he continued, is to respect that power in oneself and others.
but kant was a pissant.. eh?
for the left the times lied about starving 8 million as americans ate their grain..
for the left, stalin lied until we found out about the pact
for the CPUSA, lying was how they claimed they had no connection to russia
for the fabians, lying was de-reguer and their symbol a wolf in sheeps clothing held such a lie up as a their symbol!
bernie sanders claimed Socialism Is Capitalism, which kind of fits war is peace, truth is a lie, lie is the truth, nuclear weapons and six shooters are peacemakers.
the factories of russia lied as to production, which destroyed the plans..
lattimore lied about being a spy, coined the term mcarthyism, and wasnt found out till a lot later
Clinton lied about the stain on lewenskis dress
stalin lied when he collected money to fight fascism and used that to play communist games…
ayers lied when he said the bombs with nails that killed his friends would not hurt anyone
bela dodd informed us of the lie of communism as a plot of the wealthy… not the poor and downtrodden
LASTLY, the inspiration for this comes from the document i kept recommending to read:
Sergey Nechayev 1869
The Revolutionary Catechism
Sergey Genadievich Nechayev was a man so feared by the Czar and the aristocrat, ruling classes, he became the Czar’s special prisoner. The Czar received weekly special reports on Nechayev’s prison activities.
[snip]
As a human being, he left much to be desired — he lied, cheated, blackmailed, murdered. Of course, he would defend his actions based on the principles laid out in the following document. Regardless his personal attributes, he rejected the authority of the state to his dismal end and, for that, gained legendary status in Russia.
https://www.marxists.org/subject/anarchism/nechayev/catechism.htm
one more post…
The republicans are fools if they do not demand voter fraud legislation right now. With the left in high dudgeon they woudl have a real hard time voting against forcing states to verify a voter. They would still vote against it, but everyone would see who they really are, then release a thorough investigation of Detroits shenanigans, and how they puffed up Hillary’s numbers, and you will cement their reputation. Forget the big hammer of elections like this last one, now we need to slow drip their slime in the public square for the next 4 years.
Remember the Dem’s are only competitive when their voters FEEL superior. Knock that down and they lose.
Living Not By Lies
A gathering of the anti-Communist tribes
http://www.nationalreview.com/sites/default/files/nordlinger_anti-communism07-07-14.html
[snip]
Rarely do I feel more at home than among the anti-Communists. They are my tribe, or archipelago of tribes. I have always been drawn to them, I think, because they tell the truth. They abide by the Solzhenitsyn doctrine “Live not by lies.” And people in the Free World – to say nothing of the unfree world – are always lying about Communism.
No one lies about Nazism, outside of David Irving and the Iranian government. Many lie about Communism.
I remember when Armando Valladares, the “Cuban Solzhenitsyn,” emerged from that tropical gulag to tell the truth about Cuba. Students and professors around me hated him, for his disturbance of their illusions about Castro. Later, people hated Jung Chang, for disturbing their illusions about Mao. Last year, by the way, she was asked in an interview, “What one thing would you change in China?” She said, “Say goodbye to Mao. Take down Mao’s portrait from Tiananmen Square.” I know other Chinese democrats who wish this supremely.
At the VOC luncheon, Ted Cruz said, simply, “Thank you for telling the truth.” In fact, he said it twice. I say it, too. Thank you.
Molly NH:
Actually, NH ID laws are more stringent than most. Here are the requirements. If you don’t have ID and sign the affidavit, it must be proven later and I am pretty sure that if that happens your vote remains uncounted till you prove you are eligible.
See also this.
For what it’s worth, Howie Carr, an important regional talk show host (and Trump supporter) invited Kelly Ayotte on his radio show several times, but she wouldn’t join him, even in the crucial few weeks before the election.
The Clinton campaign was also running anti-Trump ads up to 2 hours before the polls closed on Election Day, in markets that would reach southern ME and NH (Trump made several appearances in ME, but ran almost no ads at all, and he did get that one second district electoral vote from Maine.)
I think it’s possible in NH that dislike for Trump could lead some to vote for another candidate (like Gary Johnson, who got just above 4%) at the top of the ticket, and then vote for Kelly Ayotte, the Republican for Senate.
It’s also interesting to compare the situation to the Senate race in California, where due to that state’s nonpartisan blanket primary law, there was no Republican on the general ballot, and the race was between two Democrats. Kamala Harris ended up winning that seat by a 61% to 38% margin.
The Trump team has brought Democratic playbook to the GOP.
Neo they don t follow that totally at those sites you linked to. I misplaced my drivers license, though I am on the voter rolls. They told me to do an affidavit which was not witnessed by a notary I took that back to the ballot distributor & he gave me a ballot & I had to tell him to draw the line through my name, I voted on a regular ballot that was not sequestered from the other ballots pending verification, I was able to put it through the optical scanner no questions asked.
If they permit same day registration what is to stop a student from Minnesotta to say he is domiciled in NH, heck Bidens daughter voted in 2012 saying she planned to live here as she later caught a flight back to DC. Sounds like the internet info they post dosen t jibe with what happens.
Neo’s example demonstrates how easily swayed we all are by incomplete and erroneous information. Some people are open to factual and reasoned persuasion that forces reevaluation. Many are not. Ideologues the least of all.
Jim,
The republican leadership are not fools. They simply favor the status quo. Clearly voter fraud is against their long term interests. Whenever people appear to act against their own interests, I look for what I term the ‘secondary gain or benefit’. Invariably there is for them a payoff that they deem of greater value. In this case, ‘upsetting the applecart’ is deemed to be “counter-productive”.
They’ve simply persuaded themselves that what’s best for them is what’s best for the country.
Molly NH:
Well, that’s disturbing. My guess is that the people at your voting place were more lax than at many places. In the end, rules like that are only as good as the people who enforce them.
“Was it done through carelessness or was it purposeful?” – Neo
IDK. PJ Media have been a rather strong trump supporters. And they (among many) have been pushing the meme that this was a “landslide” for trump.
Yes, he did win, but neither his margins in the swing states (e.g. in NH) nor his ecv results (lowest quartile of win margins since 1948) indicate a landslide. Neither did he have “coattails” where many Senators who won outperformed trump wrt their win margins (13 of 22 GOP wins, with several more merely approximately tied trump’s margins).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_elections,_2016
Fair and square win, but no “landslide”.
With GOP retaining Congress, it is an opportunity.
.
This election clinton was clearly the loser because the percentage of eligible voters of previous elections didn’t show up in far greater numbers her than those who didn’t show up for trump.
Re: clinton’s loss, a scathing assessment by a left leaning(?) blog…
https://theweek.com/articles/664828/hillary-clinton-blew-most-winnable-election-modern-american-history-fault
trump swung a thin margin of rust belt dem voters his way in key swing states, and that put him over the top.
.
Looking ahead to the next POTUS cycle, can he keep that thin margin, and, if so, will that bring back those now alienated GOP voters, or antagonize them further?
And, will it keep the dems from bringing back the rest of their eligible voters from prior years (since trump out dem’d the dems), with a fresh face in 2020?
We’ll see.
Incumbent senatorial candidates almost always greatly outperform their party’s presidential candidate candidate in the same election cycle. Ayotte should have won the election with Trump coming that close to winning the state. She underperformed expectations, and I think the simplest explanation for why she failed when Toomey and Johnson won is that she was vocally anti-Trump. Indeed, her opposition to Trump probably cost him the state and her the Senate seat.
Yancey Ward:
You are wrong about Ayotte.
I knew she was going to lose before Trump even declared himself as a candidate, that’s how much propaganda there was against her, and how weakly she was supported by the voters of NH. In New England, she was known to be very very vulnerable, and that’s why the Democrats targeted her seat as a possible and even probable upset long before Trump ever entered the race.
Plus, as I already wrote, her opponent Hassan was very well-liked there.
A perfect storm against Ayotte, none of it about Trump at all.
RE: “If only Ayotte had “thrown her lot” in with the winning Trump wing rather than the McCain wing, perhaps she wouldn’t now be unemployed. The Trump wave “swept her away.””
In my view, it didn’t matter that Sen Ayotte supported Trump or not: she was dead to me long before Trump became the GOP nominee. During the last few years, I’ve had to write Ayotte to take her positions apart. I hit my pain threshold at her support for “immigration reform” or Sen. McCaskill’s campus rape bill. At that point I explicitly said that I would not support her again.
In the end, I was convinced that I should vote for her, and I did. But I didn’t give her any money, donate time, or talk to voters. I would have preferred not to vote for either candidate, but Ayotte was the lesser of two evils. She did the minimum to get my support, so I gave her the minimum support in return. Many libertarians and conservatives aren’t going to work for RINOs.
The DNC machine was willing to go all-out to support Gov. Hassan, as a rubber-stamp for President Hillary Clinton’s agenda. [Oops.] Even then it was an excruciatingly negative campaign. Hassan was a barely passable governor, so Hassan didn’t stand on her record and attacked Ayotte constantly. I had numerous volunteers at my door canvassing for Hassan — none for Ayotte.
Q: What’s the difference between a DNC parrot and a RINO?
A: Not enough to care about.
Well, Neo, you certainty about her losing prior to the election looks misguided at best considering she nearly won. Had she done this well while Trump was getting wiped out in the state, then one can imagine that her repudiation of Trump might helped her come close, but the fact that she only managed to lose by about 2200 votes less than Trump did out of 700K cast is pretty conclusive evidence that she killed her own campaign by explicitly running against Trump.
Let me put it another way- if you really were that sure she was toast prior to the election, doesn’t the logical post-election theory have to be that despite her deep and unique problems, Trump nearly dragged (or, since he also lost the state, nearly pushed) her across the finish line?
Yancey Ward:
When I wrote that I “knew” she was going to lose, I didn’t literally mean I knew it. Of course I don’t see the future. However, I am a supporter of hers, and I was extremely concerned that she would lose, and had a very strong hunch (amounting to a near-certainty in my mind) that she was going to lose.
Of course I might have been wrong. But I felt in my gut, very strongly, that she would lose.
The polls were always close, however, with a lot of back-and-forth between the two. My perception was a gut feeling that was simply my own.
And she did lose, although closely. My point is that my strong strong feeling that she would lose, and my strong perception of her vulnerability, was present long before Trump got into the race.
And no, there is no reason to conclude that Trump helped her or that support of him would have helped her at all, since he lost New Hampshire by almost four times as many votes as she did.
If you actually look at the polls for NH there is no support for your theory. The race was close the whole way, with the lead changing hands many times. But the article I was quoting in the post made it seem as though Ayotte lost because of her lack of support of Trump, and there is absolutely no support for that idea, and the available evidence is that it is false.