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NOVEMBER 10-11,  2022

THE SITUATION – AT 3:55 A.M., NOVEMBER 11TH:   It's Veterans Day,  originally known as Armistice Day, which commemorated the end of World War I.  It's a good time to think about the foreign policy implications of what happens here

Put yourself in the position of an intelligence officer advising the president of China, or Vladimir Putin, or the prime minister of a major allied nation.  You look at the United States after this midterm election, trying to figure out the final vote.  It's three days after election day, and the news outlets can't even say for sure who won the House of Representatives.  Several states can't complete their vote counting, even though they are dramatically smaller than nations, like France, who hold elections and provide a final tally on the same day.

Impressive, huh?  And important.  This pathetic show may well influence a foreign leader to think we are a sloppy, third-world, incompetent country.  It may well influence that leader to engage in risky adventurism, like China invading Taiwan.  Our perceived image is important for our safety, and our economic standing.  We must project an image of strength and ability.  But you'd never know it by the way we've come to accept incompetence. 

One reporter estimated that 75% of the votes gained from long voter counts, as in Arizona and Nevada right now, have gone to Democrats.  Hmm.  I wonder how that happened.  I dare not ask.

Oh, add the Biden administration's reckless withdrawal from Afghanistan to the list of images other nations have seen in recent years.  Add the video of neighborhoods burning in our large cities. 

We have work to do, and we don't have a government in Washington willing to do it.

November 10-11, 2022        Permalink   

WHAT HAPPENED? – AT 7:56 A.M. ET:  Like everyone else, I'd like to know how the election wound up where it did.  I have thus conducted a thorough investigation worthy of Holmes and Watson, and have come to the following conclusion:

I have no idea.

The usual suspects are out there filling air time and newspaper space, but the election count isn't even over.  The polling hasn't been analyzed.   We really don't accurately know what groups voted, and in how great a number. 

My advice:  We should all calm down.  My first impression is that much of the actual, published polling came reasonably close to the final result, but that something happened in the last three weeks to give our side the illusion that a red wave was truly coming.  What was that "something"?  That is the key question.  I suspect that the final answer will involve the super-hype provided by some specialized polling that showed a major shift rightward by American women.  Polls also showed a "surge" toward the GOP in the governor's race in New York.  New York is where much of the news media is based.  What happens in New York politics is disproportionately represented in political reporting.  Hey, if it happens here, it must be happening everywhere. 

(In the future, let us understand that a "surge" is only significant if it ultimately puts a candidate in the lead position.  There is no prize, in politics, for second place.  It ain't the Olympics, where you can take home a silver medal.)

Also, the very visible Trafalgar poll, known as a "Republican" poll because it usually seems to show Republican candidates with better numbers than other polls, played a part.  Its polling was highly publicized, and its claim that Republicans were usually underpolled was convincing.  Thus, people on our side started believing that there was some "hidden" Republican vote.

It will be sorted out by historians and pundits.  But right now, I'm more concerned by what will happen four days from now in Mar-a-Lago, when former President Trump will make a major announcement.

I hope he thinks about it carefully, and applies some common sense.

November 10-11, 2022       Permalink   

NOVEMBER 8-9,  2022

Good evening, fellow fanatics.

It's 9:16 p.m. here in New York, home of elegant criminality.  It is very, very early in the vote count around the country, and little has emerged thus far to make definitive predictions about major trends...except in Florida.  Both Governor Ron DeSantis and Senator Marco Rubio have been re-elected with enormous majorities, sealing Florida's position as a critical red state.

The DeSantis victory is especially significant.  It is expected that Donald Trump will announce a new presidential run next week, and already there are voices from his camp literally warning Governor DeSantis to stay out of the presidential race.  The warnings are unseemly, and suggest that Mr. Trump is less confident of an easy path to the nomination than he had been.  But, with the DeSantis landslide win tonight, it will be pretty difficult for even Donald Trump to order him around.  Should DeSantis jump into the race, he will jump in to win.

Just heard the DeSantis acceptance speech.  If that wasn't a presidential speech, I don't know what is.

More later.

3:55 a.m. Wednesday. 

What a disappointment.  Oh yes, in a technical sense we can say that many of the pundits got it essentially right – that the Republicans would take the House, but that the Senate was a toss-up.  But what we all dreamed of, when this night began, was a decisive victory.  We saw Lee Zeldin in the governor's chair in New York, and conservative women, many of them Hispanic, capturing one House seat after the other.

Well, we'll have to settle for less.  The GOP will take the House, but with a modest majority.  Control of the Senate is still in doubt, and may come down to two races too close to call – in Nevada and Georgia. 

How should we react to having our wings unceremoniously clipped?  Not by anger or accusation, although we'll have a heaping serving of both.  But by planning, studying the results and asking ourselves how we can do better.  Our limited victory does not diminish the anxiety and frustration of the American people.  But clearly, those very people didn't find our offerings all that attractive. 

In listening to the acceptance speech of Governor Kathy Hochul of New York, I thought I was back in the 1960s.  She has learned well from the various grievance committees who inform her party.   She might consider getting a calendar.  Like her party, she is hopelessly out of date. 

We will probably enter a national recession, or worse.  We must have a superb candidate ready to enter the White House and lead.  Think of our blessings.  No party in American history has had as deep a bench as the current Republican Party. 

One thing to come out of tonight's disappointment is a sense that the polling industry needs spiritual and technical help.  Its methods are inadequate.