Early Wednesday Morning
I did sleep for a while, fell asleep quickly after 9pm. Now I wake to see the betting markets and the NYT agree that Trump has >95% chance of winning, and the NYT even projects Trump will win the national popular vote along with the Electoral Votes of all seven swing states. For the third time in a row, the polls failed to capture the late break for Trump among those who decided in the final week. It's simply not possible for polls to capture people who hadn't decided yet, or to model which voters are likely to emerge from the shadows to vote for their very first time. But Trump is unusually good at attracting these "low information" voters.
It's also looking like Trump has "coattails", that Republicans will take six Senate seats and will probably hold the House. But calling the House majority will take a while as some of the competitive seats are in California which takes WEEKS to finish counting its votes.
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I'm not shocked or crying like I was eight years ago, because this time I expected Trump to win -- I've been expecting him to win for a long time. I had an open mind about Harris after Biden dropped out, but she was unable to escape the gravity of history. When your party's incumbent President is as unpopular as Biden was, it doesn't matter whether you try to replace him with a different candidate -- by then your hole has been dug too deep.
Inflation over 5% is usually fatal for the incumbent party, and inflation of at least 9% has been fatal every time over the past 75 years. Voters hate inflation, and passing a bill called the Inflation Reduction Act -- that actually did nothing to reduce inflation -- was facile gaslighting. Then proudly calling your failing economic plan "Bidenomics" -- didn't that seal Democrats' fate then and there?
Furthermore, former Vice Presidents have horrible track records as President, not one has served two full terms of his own (not since we changed how VPs are selected, back in the early 19th Century). It's lazy for a political party to nominate their VP, as Democrats did with Biden (and then replacing him with Harris was equally lazy). VPs are hand-picked successors who didn't have to fight their way to the top, and history shows they're not good picks. It's like having a monarchy. [And picking the spouse of a former President, like they did with Hillary? Ugh.]
Meanwhile, Democrats have lost the working class, especially the white working class. Because they don't stand up for them anymore. The most basic measure of support for the working class is the minimum wage, which Democrats blatantly failed to increase during Biden's first two years while they had control of Congress -- the minimum wage is now, after adjusting for inflation, the lowest it has been since 1949. And Biden claimed to be the best ever President for labor unions, after he forced striking rail workers to return to the job with only one day of paid sick leave. One day of paid sick leave is a sick joke. Fuck that shit.
Democrats will get another chance in four years, and now they'll have to pick somebody who was neither a VP nor a spouse. So maybe they'll pick somebody who can both win and govern well. But first we'll have to deal with four more years of Trump, or maybe some years of Vance if Trump kicks the bucket.
It's also looking like Trump has "coattails", that Republicans will take six Senate seats and will probably hold the House. But calling the House majority will take a while as some of the competitive seats are in California which takes WEEKS to finish counting its votes.
-----
I'm not shocked or crying like I was eight years ago, because this time I expected Trump to win -- I've been expecting him to win for a long time. I had an open mind about Harris after Biden dropped out, but she was unable to escape the gravity of history. When your party's incumbent President is as unpopular as Biden was, it doesn't matter whether you try to replace him with a different candidate -- by then your hole has been dug too deep.
Inflation over 5% is usually fatal for the incumbent party, and inflation of at least 9% has been fatal every time over the past 75 years. Voters hate inflation, and passing a bill called the Inflation Reduction Act -- that actually did nothing to reduce inflation -- was facile gaslighting. Then proudly calling your failing economic plan "Bidenomics" -- didn't that seal Democrats' fate then and there?
Furthermore, former Vice Presidents have horrible track records as President, not one has served two full terms of his own (not since we changed how VPs are selected, back in the early 19th Century). It's lazy for a political party to nominate their VP, as Democrats did with Biden (and then replacing him with Harris was equally lazy). VPs are hand-picked successors who didn't have to fight their way to the top, and history shows they're not good picks. It's like having a monarchy. [And picking the spouse of a former President, like they did with Hillary? Ugh.]
Meanwhile, Democrats have lost the working class, especially the white working class. Because they don't stand up for them anymore. The most basic measure of support for the working class is the minimum wage, which Democrats blatantly failed to increase during Biden's first two years while they had control of Congress -- the minimum wage is now, after adjusting for inflation, the lowest it has been since 1949. And Biden claimed to be the best ever President for labor unions, after he forced striking rail workers to return to the job with only one day of paid sick leave. One day of paid sick leave is a sick joke. Fuck that shit.
Democrats will get another chance in four years, and now they'll have to pick somebody who was neither a VP nor a spouse. So maybe they'll pick somebody who can both win and govern well. But first we'll have to deal with four more years of Trump, or maybe some years of Vance if Trump kicks the bucket.