Great expectations

The New Neo Posted on by

I was planning to write something on the order of this, but Schlicter did it for me [hat tip: AesopFan]:

Our problem is that we set huge expectations, and they simply did not pan out.

How realistic were our expectations? In hindsight, which is the clearest and most accurate sight, not particularly realistic at all.

I don’t include myself in the “we.” I had huge hopes but almost no expectations. In addition to my natural tendency to pessimism, I just didn’t think the high expectations of so many people seemed justified.

Oh, they were justified by events. In fact, purely on events and what the parties were saying and doing, I felt that the Democrats should have only around 20% of the votes – that is, only hard-core leftists. But either there are a lot more hard-core leftists in the US than I thought, or other things – like nonstop lies and propaganda fear-mongering and demonizing of the right – won out.

No one I know who is a Democrat (and I know a ton of Democrats) ever came to me during the past two years and said, “You know, I see now how bad the Democrats have been, and this cycle I’m voting for a Republican.” Not one person.

All the election post-mortems are necessary. Yes, I think abortion played a part. But I think the bigger part were the lies that people believed: every Republican candidate will vote to ban abortion nationwide if elected; every Republican candidate is going to end Social Security; every Republican candidate is a racist bigot and election denier. It has been relentless, and most people don’t have any facts with which to counter it.

Besides, as Schlicter wrote:

People [on the right] were talking about 50 House seats…The fact is that we had won a lot of the red seats in prior cycles and consolidated them – we were reaching for blue seats in 2022. To the extent we failed to hit our goal, it was a pretty hard goal. We were just not realistic about that.

This cycle’s Senate map was always tough. The polls indicated they were close pretty much the whole time.

One problem is that wishful people on the right turned “close” into “Republicans are undersampled so they’ll win close races.” Or “one close poll is more relevant than a host of not-close polls where the Republican loses” (that last bit was for Bolduc of NH, whom I cautioned was very likely to lose).

Another problem was that people turned “the present government is awful in so many ways” to “people will see that and blame the Democrats.” But remember, A Mind Is a Difficult Thing to Change – particularly when barraged by media and social media lies 24/7.

Next day ruminations on the 2022 midterms

The New Neo Posted on by

I could go on and on and on. But for now, here are some of my thoughts:

(1) On this blog you never saw any prediction of a red tsunami or even a red wavelet. There are several reasons for that. The first is that my predictions in elections are few and far between, and I don’t make one unless I have real confidence in it. The second is that unfortunately I have a tendency to pessimism, and therefore I don’t like to air that unnecessarily because sometimes it leads me astray. The third is that my gut feeling – I think aside from pessimism – was that I just wasn’t seeing any red tsunami when I analyzed things, like in my writings about why people would vote for Fetterman or why I didn’t think Bolduc had a good chance in New Hampshire.

Some of the polls predicting victory for Republicans were way off, such as the polls for Kari Lake. I hear there’s a chance she still might win, but if she does it will certainly be by a hair and there’s a very good chance she will lose. Perhaps fraud on the part of Democrats is involved (the Maricopa machine mess); perhaps not. In her case I thought she’d win because Arizona is not a bluer-than-blue state and her opponent Hobbs was so terrible. If Lake couldn’t win there against Hobbs, it’s a very bad sign whether the race was fair and square or whether fraud was involved.

But some of the polls were spot on, especially in close races where the Democrat was slightly ahead and people interpreted that as meaning Republicans were being underpolled and the Republican candidate was actually ahead. In blue New York, Zeldin never was ahead in the polls although he came closer and closer to Hochul. In the end, he got 47% to her 53%, which is a great showing for a Republican in NY (compare to Cuomo’s 62% win in 2010). However – and it’s a huge “however” – he lost. It highlights the fact that at this point no Republican can win in New York however compelling a candidate and however poor the opponent. It’s terrible, but I believe it is true. And I believe it was true of a great many of the races last night, such as in some states such as Washington, which have become one-party Democrat strongholds. Perhaps this will change in the future, but something huge would have to happen.

(2) Last night I wrote that party was everything for Democrats, and I still think so.

(3) I’ve written about New Hampshire before, and I think the state is instructive in terms of purplish states. Republican Governor Chris Sununu won re-election easily in New Hampshire. Prior to the primaries it was rumored that he would run for the Senate and would win and even be responsible for flipping the Senate to the GOP. When he announced he would run again for governor instead, current Democrat Senator Hassan was clearly going to be the winner in that state despite her weaknesses, because no other strong Republican candidate emerged. It seems odd that Sununu could win re-election as governor with 57% of the vote to his Democrat runner-up’s 42%, and yet Hassan could beat Bolduc 54% to 44%, not even close (and by the way, reflective of many of the polls that predicted a 10-point margin there). The combination of those two results requires a lot of voters crossing over, which makes no sense until you realize that Sununu comes across in a likable way that somehow appeals to both sides, and Bolduc came across as an extremist and doesn’t have any particular “likability” factor. Remember also that Trump didn’t win in New Hampshire in 2016 or 2020, and although it was very close in 2016 it wasn’t the least bit close in 2020. A Trumpian candidate wasn’t going to appeal to New Hampshire voters, whatever the reason.

So although in certain states, the Democrat will always win and in other states the Republican will always win, in purple states like New Hampshire that just isn’t true. A candidate has to have more on the ball in order to defeat an incumbent like Hassan. I fail to see her appeal, but apparently she comes across to a lot of people as a kindly moderate, even though she’s voted for every leftist bill that’s come down the Senate pike. I don’t think a lot of people even paid attention to her voting record, though; I think they see her as non-threatening and saw Bolduc as threatening. And by the way, Bolduc’s opponent in the primary wouldn’t have won the election either, had he been the nominee – very bland and colorless and almost invisible. But Sununu would almost undoubtedly have won.

In other words, compelling and attractive personalities of GOP challengers can be important in swing states. Not so in blue states.

(4) Early voting and extensive mail-in voting are abominations, as are ballot harvesting and dropboxes. Whether fraud occurs or not, these voting methods have several big problems: they enable a lot of voting to occur before the candidates have run through the cycle or in some cases even debated (for example, Fetterman), they offer opportunities for fraud and therefore undermine trust in the validity of elections whether fraud occurs or not, and they make the total vote count take too long and therefore delay results. At least, that’s the way it tends to play out if an election is at all close.

Most other countries don’t allow early voting and have very limited mail-in voting, and there’s a reason for that. And the more the Democrats promote those two things, the more suspicious of the process everyone but Democrats will be. This deep distrust is a very bad recipe for our country. The right needs to dedicate itself to tightening up the rules in as many states as possible and re-establishing trust, although in states controlled by Democrats this will be well-nigh impossible.

By the way, even if Republicans wanted to commit fraud it would be harder for them for logistical reasons. But it’s logistically easier for Democrats because in most swing states in statewide elections all that is necessary is to come up with enough fraudulent votes in one big blue city or a couple of them. Fraud can be centralized in that manner.

(5) It’s easy to say the Democrats did so much better than expected because they cheated. And maybe that’s true. But maybe it’s not. We will never know because, as I’ve said many times, once the rules are loosened so much in so many states, it is impossible to prove cheating in those states. Some states like Florida have tightened up the voting mechanisms, and those can be trusted. Others can’t, but unless you can prove cheating it doesn’t matter in the practical sense because winning by hook or by crook is still winning. Right now this country has so many obvious problems that are a result of Democrats in power that the margin of a GOP win should have been way beyond the margin of fraud. That it wasn’t is probably the most horrendous thing about this election: it shouldn’t even have been close.

(6) It’s very tempting to lose heart. I don’t think we should, but we’ve known for quite a long time that things are grim, and this cycle the eagerly-anticipated reversal did not happen. That fear was probably why I was so tense leading up to the election last night.

(7) Trump’s picks didn’t do very well for the most part. Also, I think his instincts for politics have somewhat deserted him of late: picking a fight with DeSantis, and hinting he might announce a 2024 presidential run the night before the election and saying he will make some sort of announcement a week later. These are bad ideas and hurt the Republicans (and hurt Trump himself with his many supporters who like DeSantis), although DeSantis himself doesn’t appear to have been hurt in his own re-election bid. I think Trump’s actions also activated and motivated the anti-Trump crowd in both parties, which is sizable.

For 2024, Trump isn’t one to go gentle into that good night. But I wonder whether yesterday’s results might make him think twice about running again. Could that be why he delayed his announcement? Did he want to see what happened in the midterms in order to make his decision? If I was a betting person, I would bet it did not; his ego is too large and he’s too angry. But I think there’s a small chance, although I may be the only one who thinks so.

I have given Trump plenty of credit for his many accomplishment. But he may have won some battles and helped lose the war. I also give him tremendous credit for persevering against attacks and lies of a tremendously destructive and pervasive nature. But something’s going on with him now – and perhaps since his loss in 2020 – that makes him harmful to both himself and others. I’m sad to see it and sad to have to say it, but that’s my opinion.

If you’re wondering how it could be that Fetterman won…

The New Neo Posted on by

…I’ll recycle the relevant portion of a post I wrote back in early October.

Commenter “huxley” points out the strangeness of John Fetterman, the Democratic candidate for the Senate from Pennsylvania, and asks a question:

Then there’s this Fetterman character running for the US Senate in Pennsylvania who looks and dresses like a tattooed reboot of Lex Luthor, Superman’s arch-nemesis in DC Comics.

Fetterman has had a stroke, which seems to have left him with a large mysterious lump on his neck (usually concealed by his hoodie) and damaged his brain. When asked how he was doing in an interview, he responded bizarrely..

Yet Fetterman has been leading in the polls over his Republican opponent. The race has tightened, but this Fetterman could shortly become a new member of the US Senate.

How does this happen?

There’s probably a solid core of Pennsylvania voters – perhaps a quarter or a third, although that’s just a guess – who are hard leftists and cultural warriors who love both Fetterman’s look and his politics.

Then we have the sizable portion of the electorate who are what used to be called “yellow dog Democrats,” people who would vote for a yellow dog if it had the label “Democrat” next to it.

We also have low information voters who are not paying attention, and some of them are reliable Democrat voters as well. In addition, Fetterman has taken a leaf out of the Joe Biden campaign book in 2020, and to a certain extent has kept a rather low profile with the help of an enabling MSM. For example, there has been no debate [at the time I wrote the post], and Fetterman has only agreed to one debate (as opposed the usual two in Pennsylvania) late in the game (October 25, after considerable early voting will have occurred) with special accommodations:

He has done just a handful of media interviews and no press conferences since the stroke and has used closed-captioning in video interviews with reporters.

Lastly, Fetterman’s opponent Dr. Oz isn’t a traditional conservative and many people on the right aren’t enthusiastic about him.

I will add today – now that Fetterman has won – that the closeness of the race indicates to me that, had the debate occurred before any early voting had taken place, Oz might indeed have been the victor instead. That’s of course why the Fetterman forces put the debate off as long as possible and certainly till after a lot of people had already voted.

Lastly I’ll add something from a comment by “Univ of Saigon 68” in that earlier thread:

There’s also the fact that Shapiro, running for governor, will almost certainly win, and since most people vote straight ticket, he will bring Fetterman with him.

There was probably some of that.

Also, I believe that a significant number of Fetterman’s voters realized that if he really is too disabled to perform as senator and needs to quit, another Democrat will be appointed by their Democrat governor. So no biggee. They vote for the party, not the man. I said as much in this post from about two weeks ago:

I have little doubt that many many Democrats literally do not care whether Fetterman is competent or not. The only thing that matters is whether he’s able to say “yeah” or “nay” as the party dictates. He also can be replaced, and the gubernatorial Democratic candidate Shapiro is significantly ahead in the polls, and therefore probably would get to name Fetterman’s replacement, who would therefore be a Democrat. So voting for Fetterman makes perfect sense if a person’s goal is to try to preserve the Democrat majority in the Senate.

Was there cheating in this race? Perhaps. But if so, I don’t think that was a big factor, because I can think of plenty of reasons Fetterman would have won without it. All I have to do is think of the Democrats I know and imagine them in Pennsylvania. I am virtually certain they would have voted for Fetterman, for the party not the man, knowing he could be replaced by another Democrat if needed later. They would never vote for a Republican, period, because it is deeply deeply ingrained in their hearts and minds that Republicans are evil bigoted fascists, present company perhaps excepted. The abortion issue is a factor, too, but they would have voted Democrat even without it.

What about Florida?

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “grandpagrumble” asks a question:

I have a simple(ton) question. The red tsunami occurred in Florida, but nowhere else. Why?

My answer isn’t all that complicated, although it isn’t simple either. The first element is DeSantis’ leadership. That’s one of those words we used to hear a lot but don’t hear too much anymore, but he provided it. DeSantis came very very close to losing in 2018 to a leftist Democrat candidate who turned out to be corrupt as well. But this year he cruised to victory – although I wouldn’t call what DeSantis does “cruising.” He works hard. He makes strong and courageous decisions, he is very smart, he’s young, and he fights the press but in a very intelligent and articulate way.

Perhaps just as important is that people in Florida can see that the results of his decisions have been good.

In addition, he has helped make Florida’s elections more efficient and secure, so that if there had been a cheating factor before, it is far less likely to happen now. Also, trust in the validity of Florida’s elections has increased as a result.

None of this was easy to accomplish, although DeSantis may have made it look easy. He has a combination of traits that aren’t all that common, and I wish he could be cloned but he can’t.

I will also add that, although I’m not sure how big a factor it was, Florida’s new residents who have fled blue states are probably eager to vote Republican now.

That may not be an inclusive list. My guess is that DeSantis’ leadership has also helped organize the GOP in the state and make it more effective at generating winning candidates down the line.

[ADDENDUM: In this post I wrote that DeSantis “has helped make Florida’s elections more efficient and secure.” I want to add that I was specifically referring to things such as this, from last April:

Today, Governor Ron DeSantis signed Senate Bill (SB) 524, Election Administration, to ensure that Florida continues to have secure and accurate elections. This legislation will strengthen election security measures by requiring voter rolls to be annually reviewed and updated, strengthening ID requirements, establishing the Office of Election Crimes and Security to investigate election law violations, and increasing penalties for violations of election laws. To read more about the bill, click here.

“Twenty years ago, nobody thought Florida was a prime example of how to conduct elections, but we have become a national leader by running the most secure elections in the country,” said Governor Ron DeSantis. “We need to do more to ensure our elections remain secure. We have ended ballot harvesting, stopped drop boxes and the mass mailing of ballots, and banned Zuckerbucks, and this bill will give us more resources to make sure bad actors are held accountable.”

“Governor DeSantis has made elections integrity a top priority from the very beginning of his administration, taking steps to ensure we invested in our elections systems, strengthened our cyber defenses, modernized equipment, updated voter rolls, and improved transparency, and we’ve seen results,” said Florida Secretary of State, Laurel M. Lee. “As Florida’s Chief Elections Official, I share Governor DeSantis’ strong commitment to elections integrity. We want to ensure that every Floridian can have confidence that in Florida, we do elections right.”

“Florida leads the nation in free and fair elections because Governor DeSantis and the Legislature have taken a proactive approach to address any issues,” said Senate President Wilton Simpson.

It can’t be done in blue states, of course, and even in many purple states. But even in a state like Florida, which has Republican government right now, it takes leadership to do it. DeSantis has provided such leadership, without demagoguery or special antics.

Perhaps many people are unaware of this bill in Florida, and so I’m trying to call it to their attention.]

Election 2022 results

The New Neo Posted on by

[Scroll down for UPDATE.]

Here’s a thread to discuss tonight’s election results.

As I said earlier, I’m planning to wait quite some time before discussing the results myself. But I thought I’d start a thread for anyone who wants to talk now.

UPDATE:

It’s very late, and which party will be in charge of the House and/or the Senate still isn’t clear except for this: it has been a deeply disappointing and almost frightening night for the right. That’s true even if we manage to hold onto the lead in the House, and even in the very unlikely event we take the Senate.

I plan to post my thoughts tomorrow on what happened and why, but I’ll just summarize here by saying that indeed, a mind is a very very difficult thing to change. In other words, I believe the country is fairly evenly divided and in order for the GOP to dominate an election, a significant number of Democrat voters must change their minds. That’s not happening in sufficient numbers at all, except in a state such as Florida.

It seems that the Democratic half of the country has no trouble whatsoever voting for far leftists and even people who are cognitively challenged (even far leftists who are also cognitively challenged). The only thing that matters to them now is party designation. There is virtually no crossing over, and party is everything and power is everything.

There is much more I could say, but I plan to save it till tomorrow.

The first musical instrument?

The New Neo Posted on by

You may notice that I’m not making any election predictions. But they’re not hard to find; they’re just about everywhere. Take your pick. I plan to post about the election when results are getting clearer, which probably will be some time tonight.

What I’m doing right now is other things. I’m about to exercise to try to dissipate a bit of my tension. But I thought you might enjoy this interesting distraction:

French violence and French voting

The New Neo Posted on by

An article entitled “France Sliding toward Barbarity and Chaos” was published today by the Gatestone Institute. It presents the situation in France as dire; for example:

The borders between France and other European countries are open and, like all the borders of Europe, porous. Hundreds of thousands of immigrants enter Europe illegally each year. Many head for France and stay there. They have been benefiting, since 2000, from financial aid and free medical care to which even poor French citizens do not have access. If they are arrested, like Lola’s murderer, they are ordered to leave the country, but are not placed in a detention center so the order, never enforced, is not an order at all. In 2020, 107,500 orders to leave France were issued; fewer than 7% took place.

Illegal immigrants in France are the perpetrators of nearly half of crimes committed in the country, according to the recently published L’ordre nécessaire (“The Necessary Order”), by Didier Lallement, former chief of the Paris Police. Approximately 48% of all crimes committed in Paris in 2021, he notes, were committed by illegal immigrants. Murders almost as gruesome as Lola’s — most of which are committed by illegal immigrants — are committed nearly every day. No one even mentions them. The victims often have their throats slit. When the mainstream media report on the murders, they do not talk about slit throats. They say the victim was “stabbed in the neck.”

The French now live in a climate of generalized violence.

The author indicates that the presidential candidates who would like to crack down on this don’t seem to get elected:

Polls show that the French population are seeing violence rising sharply: 68% of French people say they feel their lives are increasingly insecure, and 75% say that the record of Macron and the government fighting crime is poor. 70% believe that illegal immigration is a serious problem. Nevertheless, in May 2022, a majority of voters re-elected Macron and rejected candidates who promised to fight crime and illegal immigration.

In an apparent attempt to explain this odd outcome, many commentators say that the French population now expects the downfall of their country.

As I read this, I began to wonder. Are those statistics about half of crime in France true? I was surprised to discover that Macron himself has said it in an interview, although with great reluctance:

Mr. Macron first refused to acknowledge a “substantive link” between the two, or to “generalize.” “On the other hand, looking at (…) crime, for example in Paris, where there’s a high concentration of illegal immigration for geographical and bureaucratic reasons, it’s very evident in the crime figures,” he said, voicing concerns about “nuances” and “having a feeling for the truth” on such a “sensitive subject.”…

To illustrate his claim, Mr. Macron cited a statistic: “If we look at crime in Paris today, we cannot fail to see that at least half of the crime comes from people who are foreigners, either illegal immigrants or waiting for a residence permit. In any case, they’re in a very delicate situation, often coming in through these [illegal immigration] channels.”

That article about the Macron interview goes on to mention the Didier Lallement book, and to discuss slight disparities in the statements between what Lallemont wrote and what Macron said. But the gist of it is that illegal immigrants commit a ton of the crime in France.

As for why the French keep voting for people like Macron, I can think of a lot of possibilities, not mutually exclusive. One might be ignorance of the severity of the problem. Another might be that other issues take priority. But what I really think is behind their votes is that the subject is so “sensitive” and “delicate” and they don’t want to be on what is labeled the bigoted and non-compassionate side of it. Macron sounds like the good guy, the nice guy.

There is an old Jewish saying to the effect of “he who is kind to the cruel ends up being cruel to the kind.” It has a harsh ring, doesn’t it? But there’s a reason the saying is famous; it’s because it often seems to turn out to be true.

Speaking of truth, if you look up the Gateway Institute in Wikipedia, you’ll find virtually the entire entry is an attempt to discredit them as lying Islamophobes. Interesting. It makes it so much easier for people to discount what the Gateway Institute says without even reading it and judging for themselves.

Well, I voted

The New Neo Posted on by

Just got back from voting, on a beautiful but seasonably cold day.

When I was a young adult, elections weren’t at all stressful to me. I cared about the outcomes, of course. But it seemed that no matter what, the big picture would go on more or less as before.

Now I get very stressed out and can barely stand to watch the returns. In fact, I don’t always watch them till later in the evening, after quite a bit of time has elapsed. That doesn’t help much either, though; the tension is there no matter what.

I am very much hoping for a good night.

Is there a more tone-deaf politician than Hochul of New York?

The New Neo Posted on by

And yet, and yet she has a good chance of winning the election. Zeldin also has a decent chance, but it would be an upset because New York is such a deep blue state.

Here’s Hochul’s latest:

Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul claims her GOP challenger Rep. Lee Zeldin is “hyperventilating” over the crime problems in the state.

During a campaign stop Monday at the 72nd Street subway station in Manhattan’s Upper West Side, Mrs. Hochul said Mr. Zeldin has been “trying to scare people for fun” over the crime issue.

Bill Clinton was campaigning for Hochul, and this is what he said:

The former president joked that Mr. Zeldin “makes it sound like Kathy Hochul gets up every morning, goes to the nearest subway stop and hands out billy clubs [and] baseball bats.”

Har de har har har.

It’s particularly galling, because Zeldin was attacked during his campaign, and also because there was a shooting near his house:

Zeldin, who is running on a tough-on-crime platform ridiculing Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul’s support for cashless bail, said his twin 16-year-old daughters were downstairs in the kitchen doing homework at the time they heard gunfire outside just feet away. The girls locked themselves in an upstairs bathroom and called 911.

Zeldin and his wife were not home and had recently left to attend a Columbus Day parade in the Bronx.

Home surveillance cameras showed three people. One wounded victim was seen lying beneath the porch, while another was seen lying beneath a bush just feet away. The third uninjured person moved around the property freely. The two wounded individuals were Joel Murphy and Elijah Robinson, two 17-year-olds, the New York Post reported.

I am somewhat amazed at the low caliber of so many of the Democrats’ candidates this year. And yet some of these people will almost certainly win. Of course, Biden set the standard for that.