Reps can have their observers as well.
1 Like
Sure. In Atlanta in 2020 the R. observers were thrown out even as loads of unexpected ballots arrived in the middle of the night. It undoubtedly happened elsewhere as well. Nothing happened following and of course the MSM didn’t deign to even report it. As I said - lawless cities are lawless everywhere, especially the democrat controlled election officials in the middle of the night when ballots are mysteriously appearing. They are backstopped by Soros prosecutors who will see no election evil, except for that of R’s. The likelihood we have fair elections anymore is minuscule.
6 Likes
I’m sorry, CW, but this is a conspiracy theory, and thus misinformation. Kamala Harris (she/her) insists that misinformation is hate speech, and assures us the 1st Amendment has an exception for that. Furthermore, Hillary Clinton (peace be upon her) has told us that Americans spreading misinformation should be criminally prosecuted.
Finally, as Brother Tim Walz has said “There’s no guarantee to free speech” anyway. Would he lie? Well, I mean, would he lie about that?
4 Likes
Gavin, I think you have misread my post, or at least misinterpreted my meaning.
I provided an analysis of polling data. FWIW, I defined “independents” as persons who obviously declined to be classified as D or R. Who are these people? Is it a 3rd political grouping? It is a random selection of persons from across the political spectrum, including left-of-D and right-of-R? Or does it include a fair fraction of R-adjacent folks who decline to identify as R?
I provided evidence supportive of the third explanation. I correlated concern percentages with respect to various issues among Ds, Rs, and Is. If the independents (Is) were truly a distinct third political grouping, the D-I and R-I correlations should be fairly low. The D-I correlation is low, but the R-I correlation is high. In other words, if I know that R’s think about things I have a fairly good guess at what these Is think.
Or maybe I should describe them as not Independents, but rather non-Ds. Maybe first and foremost, they are not Democrats … they are non-Ds, or anti-Ds.
I am one. I’ve never been polled but I probably would NOT tell the pollster I’m registered R. Because I don’t feel Republican. Because I don’t vote for Republicans.
I vote against Democrats.
I also registered R so I can vote in primary elections – required in my state – but again I find I rarely vote for a particular candidate, I am voting against someone else.
I rarely find a candidate I like very much. It’s so much easier to identify candidates I despise – and most often, those candidates are Democrats.
5 Likes
It sounds like we are describing different parts of the same “independent” elephant. No – not elephant, that sounds too Republican!
I think we are in agreement that there is a big group of people who will never vote for a Democrat, nor will they vote for an Institutional Republican. And if the choice in a presidential election is between a Democrat and an Institutional Republican (say a Romney or a McCain), they will simply stay home and not vote.
When – very occasionally – a renegade manages to secure the Republican nomination (a Reagan or a Trump), these Contingent Voters will come out and vote – and there are millions of them (us). They are not voting for the “Republican”, they are voting for the man. Or if a credible anti-Swamp third party candidate appears (Perot), they will vote for him.
This analysis is based on the actual vote totals for each candidate in elections over most of the last half century. The short version is that the DC Swamp Institutional Republicans choose to lose. They would rather serve in Hell than reign in Heaven.
3 Likes
Absolutely – I agree. However, I think this comports with my “shy R” hypothesis. I think there are a lot of people who generally agree with R ideas and priorities but they don’t identify as R, and a lot of them don’t vote R or at all, because something about the Rs turns them off, or (more likely) fails to motivate them sufficiently. So when polled, they don’t identify as R but they correlate with Rs.
Give them the right candidate, however, and they will turn out. (Will enough of them turn out to surpass the margin of fraud? To be determined.)
There are people who say that Trump lost the 2020 election for the GOP, as if another candidate could have won. I don’t think that’s true. Only Trump could have won in 2016, IMHO. Only Trump had a chance of winning in 2020. And likewise in 2024. I like DeSantis – he’s competent, for a politician, and I’d vote for him in a heartbeat – but I don’t think he beats whatever marionette the Ds put up. Some people say DeSantis would be 10 points ahead at this point. I just don’t think so.
In this day and age, again IMHO, only Trump (or someone Trumpish) wins.
BTW, I voted for Perot [1]. Twice, I think. I didn’t agree with much of what he said, but I liked him as a candidate and a man – better than snake-oil Clinton, better than fake-ass Bush – despite that nonsense about his daughter’s wedding, whatever that was about. He was a real man, who knew how to run a business, who didn’t tailor what he said based on focus groups, and despite his wealth, he gave a damn about the country and the people who live here.
Sound familiar? Indeed it does.
[1] Actually, I think I agree more with Perot now than I did then.
3 Likes
Do you mean the ideas & priorities that Institutional Republicrats sometimes talk about – or the actual actions of the real DC Swamp Institutional Republicrats? Remember the Wall that Republicrats could not find the spare change to build when they had control of both houses of CONgress for 2 years?
The failure of the Swamp Creature Republicrats to live up to their (sometimes) rhetoric is why there are so many of us Contingent Voters. A Romney or a McCain or their all-too-common R ilk is simply unacceptable.
2 Likes
2 Likes
Yeah, let me rephrase what I wrote. Instead of “I think there are a lot of people who generally agree with R ideas and priorities”, let’s make it “I think there is a sizable overlap and affinity between those identifying to pollsters as R and those who decline to state.” This latter formulation has nothing to do with R leaders or candidates.
A lot of people prognosticate and pontificate regarding how Independents – the ones who bother to vote – will move in any particular election. The fairly large correlation between mean responses of Rs and Is in Pew’s survey suggests to me that, this year, a larger fraction of Independents will move towards R candidates than D candidates – again, for those who show up to vote and spend that vote on one of the two viable parties.
Will it be enough to compensate for the Ds inherent advantage with stupid people, arrogant elitists, billionaires and warmongers, the mentally ill, illegals, and dead people? Election Day is November 6th. We should know by mid-December, for sure.
3 Likes
The Lame Stream Media love to talk about “swings” in elections – based on percentages. Those percentages do not mean what the MediaScum think they mean, since the denominator (number of votes cast) changes. The actual number of “swing” voters – those individuals who change from R to D (always that way, per the media) – is trivial. Based on actual votes cast in presidential elections going back decades, the picture that emerges of “our democracy” is as follows:
- Largest group – those citizens who never vote
- Next largest – those who vote Demoncrat regardless
- Smaller group – those who vote Republicrat regardless
- Still smaller swing group – those who will never vote D, but might vote for a non-RINO R, but will otherwise join the largest group and not vote at all.
If the Republicrats were serious, it is obvious what they should do to win. But Institutional Republicrats are not serious – they are just there for the graft. Which is why, when Trump’s coattails gave RINOs control of CONgress, they did nothing to change the direction of runaway Federal spending, or illegal immigration, or de-industrialization, or unnecessary foreign entanglements, or anything that really mattered.
Sadly, we cannot vote our way out of this situation.
3 Likes
Isn’t it interesting that the CBO calls those who have crossed the border and have no intention of leaving, “other foreign nationals”. The WSJ (and of course, the entire MSM), go right ahead with the big lie and call them “immigrants” - thereby conflating those who have illegally invaded the US with those who lawfully waited to actually immigrate lawfully. We all know, as well, that illegals enjoy considerable perquisites which are denied to legal immigrants and, especially, to the very citizens who pay for them.
Such payments are not trivial. Here’s a small example - where the taxpayers of Indiana must underwrite a convicted murderer’s sex change surgery, because it is “medically necessary”! Of course the ACLU had a major hand in this.
4 Likes
I wonder what was different about Estonia during the early post-Soviet period. Also note the chart ends in 2022, so is pre-Milei.
6 Likes
3 Likes
For years, students enrolling in journalism programs at universities have been saying they are motivated to do so “to change the world”. They have, indeed, succeeded in making it a far more divided (in every imaginable cleavage line) and angry place, ripe for violence. At the same time, they have disenfranchised those with views which differ from their own received wisdom. This latter action makes reasoned negotiation of differing political views and important issues impossible. They are largely to blame for the impending dissolution of the formerly united States.
5 Likes
Note the rise in I has come at the expense of R. It may be largely a rearrangement of the same deck chairs. R is uncool, and identification with R comes with fear of cancellation.
5 Likes
Added:
2 Likes