It’s election day in America, as they say, and for some reason this one feels especially dire. The first national election since Jan. 6th, and with so many conspiracy mongers anxious to detect voter fraud and declare victory by default. Republican politicians who say they’ll accept the results of the election, only if they win. This is what America has come to.
So let’s wander through some links from recent days.
To begin, we can stipulate that the party of the sitting president virtually always loses congressional seats in mid-term elections. So if a few Democratic seats flip to Republican, it will be no surprise, even if that switches the balance of Congress. So that Republicans can pass bills that Biden will veto.
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Ezra Klein, NY Times, 6 Nov 2022: Republicans Have Made It Very Clear What They Want to Do if They Win Congress.
I have some predictions of my own. They will not solve inflation. They will not bring gas prices down. If those things do happen, it won’t be because of anything Republicans do. These effects are mostly beyond any direct control by US politicians. They are global issues. That so many Americans don’t understand is a sign of failure of our education system, and yet another example of “prognostic Myopia’ and short-termism, whereby people ignore big issues in favor of the crisis of the day (gas prices).
They will try to impeach Biden. For no reason. Just because. From 10 days ago:
Salon, 28 Oct 2022: Can the Republicans really impeach Joe Biden? Yes they can!
Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who seems to think he’s got a second career as a stand-up comic or late-night talk show host in his future, told his podcast audience in late 2021 that there was a good likelihood that a Republican House majority would seek to impeach Biden. He admitted there was no specific high crime or misdemeanor he could point to, admitting that it would simply be an act of raw partisan power…
Here’s another take:
Jacobin, 4 Nov 2022: Republicans Are Planning an All-Out Assault on the Working Class If They Win Next Week, subtitled “Draconian spending cuts, attacks on labor organizing, stoking war with China, and speeding up climate disaster — these are just some of the things Republicans are planning if they win big on Tuesday.”
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More specific predictions from various columnists and pollsters anticipate wins by Dr. Oz, Herschel Walker, and Kari Lake, which verify to me that you can’t go too low in appealing to Republican voters. They’ll elect anybody, no matter how incompetent.
Anticipating these results, it occurs to me that, at least in the mainstream media of day to day news, you don’t hear very much about what sitting senators or congressmen are doing in their jobs. Rousing speeches in Congress? Who’s to know? So it occurs to me to pay more attention to, say, what idiocies Walker or Lake will be making once they’re in power, if they are.
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Another angle.
Heather Digby Parton, Salon, 7 Nov 2022: From Karl Rove to the Big Lie: GOP loves to claim victory when they feel insecure, subtitled “It’s nothing new for Republicans to promise a blowout victory. The real question is why the media falls for it.”
Republicans are playing the press for chumps, as they do every single time. Of course they may win, but this election is close and they’re not soothsayers. It’s a deliberate strategy.
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Vox, 6 Nov 2022: Democrats limp behind Republicans on the messaging game, subtitled “The GOP has turned to their standards, crime and the economy, to rally voters.”
I saw a similar article in one of the major papers, NYT or WaPo. The way I read this is, as has usually been the case, Republicans are better at creating simple-minded slogans to attract voters who have no patience for nuance. “Morning in America” (Reagan). “Make America Great Again” (T****). There are further examples in that Borowitz book I mentioned a while back, which I’m still sampling.
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The Daily Beast: 4 Nov 2022: ‘And on the 8th Day’: DeSantis Rolls Out Cringe Ad Saying He Was Sent by God.
Apparently this is not a parody, or spoof, and apparently there are people out there who gobble up stuff like this.
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We’re Doomed Dept.
Two headlines from the front page of Sunday’s New York Times.
How Putin and Friends Stalled Climate Progress, subtitled “A handful of powerful world leaders rallied around Russia and undercut global cooperation.”
(Aided and abetted by US Republicans, of course.)
How Republicans Fed a Misinformation Loop About the Pelosi Attack. First para: “Within hours of the brutal attack last month on Paul Pelosi, the husband of the speaker of the House, activists and media outlets on the right began circulating groundless claims — nearly all of them sinister, and many homophobic — casting doubt on what had happened.”
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The Global Perspective
Today: NYT, 8 Nov 2022: The World’s Democracies Ask: Why Can’t America Fix Itself?, subtitled “Conversations across continents reveal alarm over the United States’ direction, as it slides away from ideals it once pressed other nations to adopt.”
