Election Day

I never put in any work for the Mikie Sherrill gubernatorial campaign here in New Jersey.  I never knocked on doors for her, did phone banks for her, or even stuffed envelopes for her, and I never even made the coffee at campaign headquarters.  All I did was vote for her.  Perhaps I should have joined the campaign, as it turns out she needed all of the help she could get.  It's appropriate that she, my congresswoman, is a lawyer by trade, because her campaign for governor of New Jersey has been as exciting as a deposition.  It's been the standard boilerplate campaign of Democratic issues and talking points, apparently based on the strategy that all the moderate Sherrill has to do is repeat the same Democratic bromides to look more progressive than she is in comparison to her MAGA Republican opponent.

But like I said, I was preoccupied with other things, most notably my life.  While the Sherrill campaign was gearing up over the summer for the autumn season, I was in Paris, Berlin and Munich on my first European trip ever.  When the Sherrill campaign got underway in earnest after Labor Day, I was walking through my neighborhood, going cycling once in awhile, and playing with my cats - but mostly taking care of my house.  And as it entered the home stretch, I continued removing burning bushes from the community park in my neighborhood and preparing the park for spring.  And now, with still more cuttings that need to be thrown out and collected this coming Thursday . . . there is the threat of a windstorm that could blow my garbage cans across town if I try to put the bush branches out that morning.  Among other things.

I hope Mikie Sherrill wins tonight.  But I've already been trying to condition myself to receive the news that her MAGA Republican opponent ekes out a victory.  And my sixtieth birthday is tomorrow.  Bummer . . . I took John Mellencamp's advice back in the day and tried to hold on to sixteen as long as I could, but I was only able to hold onto that age for a year.

And if our life goes on long after the thrill of living is gone, you must be in a terminal coma.

Right.  As Sherrill could lose her bid for the New Jersey governorship tonight and I could lose my electricity tomorrow night, I'd better be prepared for anything.   I'll be back later.

Red Wave Rising

Twenty-eight years ago today, when the Republicans won the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time since 1952 (and also won back the Senate) , making Newt Gingrich Speaker of the House, I was in full-blown panic.  Today, I know for a fact that the GOP will take over the House again and Kevin McCarthy will be Speaker - and, although Lawrence O'Donnell insists otherwise, the tight Senate elections  that decide control of that hamber will mostly go Republican and put Mitch McConnell back in charge. 

And I'm quietly resigned to the so-called "red wave" washing over and likely drowning America.

Although a few Democratic candidates for Congress have been responsive to concerns about the economy and inflation - and Lawrence O'Donnell has hosted all of three of them on his show - most of them have stressed the issue of abortion at a time when few people care about the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision and they've stressed the issue of democracy being in danger when even fewer people care about that.  Many Americans still are unaware of the Republican plan to gut Social Security and Medicare.  Democratic bigwigs like Representative Sean Patrick Maloney of New York, who has been in charge of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee,  thought it would be better spend money promoting Republican election deniers in primaries than the spend it warning people about the GOP hit job on the elderly.  Maloney is now in danger of losing his seat. Serves him right. 

Me, I just quietly sit back and shake my head.  I've gotten used to this pattern.  Democrats win Congress in the midterms.  Democrats win the Presidency and the future looks bright.  Then Republicans win back Congress in the next midterms.  Repeat!

And Democrats will learn the wrong lessons from their terrible losses, as usual.  If Tim Ryan, who's been running a great campaign for the U.S. Senate in Ohio by focuses on the economy and avoiding "woke" politics, loses, the "woke" progressives will say, "Well, of course he lost, he wasn't woke enough, he was too moderate."  They don't get it.

Every time I feel like the country is heading in the wrong direction, I've tried to fight back - if not to stop the tide, at least to stem it.  I've written my House members and senators about issues I care (or cared) about, I've gritted my teeth and waited for the next election, and I've even signed petitions and contributed the odd dollar to this cause and that, but I'd always wonder if maybe I should just give up on the United States and find a way to leave it. Then something miraculous would happen - the country would come together after 9/11, Obama would be elected President, Trump would be voted out of office and lose every lawsuit in an attempt to stay in power, Kevin McCarthy and Lindsey Graham would immediately distance themselves from Trump after 1/6 - but then, without warning, America would always go back to being America, and I tear my hair out over it.

This time it's different.  Nothing surprises me anymore - not even the fact that QAnon-believing election deniers are about to take charge and turn the U.S. into der Amerikanische Reich.  Before Trump, before 1/6, I'd never thought that democracy itself would be under threat, because there was always the next election.  Now, it looks like, after 2024, elections in America will have one candidate per office because the Democratic Party will be outlawed.   

In years past, I'd threatened to leave the country, only to have my passions cooled by a major event re-affirming the goodness of America (like Barack Obama winning the Presidency) or the promise of another election when the current election goes the wrong way.  Now I'm on the verge of planning my escape from America.

One hope - one small modicum remains for the future of These States, as far as I see it.  What's that? You'll find out soon enough.  Hint: it involves "new leadership."  

And that doesn't work out, I give up completely.  I'm going to start looking at emigrating before Dear Leader Trump closes the borders not just to those trying to come in but to those trying to get out.

As George Harrison once said, see you 'round the clubs.

Election Day 2021

Today is Election Day.

Vote, dammit! (You know my endorsements.)

Election Day 2020

It's finally here.

I've said all I want to about the Trump-Biden presidential campaign that I want to, and I hope you all voted.  If you didn't, vote in person today.  Because, as Samuel L. Jackson might say, the stakes are too high for you to stay the fuck home.

There, I said it . . .

Let's see what happens.

November 6

There's the zero-year jinx, condemning every U.S. President elected in a year ending with zero to die in office, which was broken by Ronald Reagan (elected in 1980). There's Sam Ervin's curse, the jinx that caused every senator from North Carolina elected to Ervin's old seat from 1974 on to serve only one term, which was just broken by Richard Burr. Now President Obama has his own curse to break - the November 6 jinx.

Since the Republican party was founded in 1854, the Grand Old Party has won every presidential election held on this date, today's date. Obama, a Democrat, will run for re-election in 2012, when the presidential election falls on . . . November 6.

November 6 always falls on the first Tuesday following November 1 - and is thus Election Day - in any leap year starting on Sunday, as 2012 will be, and it also fell on a Tuesday in 1900, a presidential election year that was not a leap year. (End-of-century years not divisible by 400 are not leap years, in order to keep the calendar accurate to the minute.) Here are the results of the six presidential elections that have taken place on November 6 since the two current major parties were both formed:

1860: The Democratic party split into two factions over the slavery issue. The Northern and Western factions nominated Stephen Douglas as their presidential candidate; the Southern faction nominated Vice President John C. Breckenridge, who had the backing of President James Buchanan. A minor party nominated another candidate. With the Democrats deeply divided, Republican nominee Abraham Lincoln won an electoral majority with less than 40 percent of the popular vote. The Southern states seceded, and the Civil War began.

1888: Democratic President Grover Cleveland won the popular vote, but Republican Benjamin Harrison, by carrying New York by a narrow margin, won the electoral vote and thus won the Presidency.

1900: Thanks to a booming economy, Republican President William McKinley handily defeated Democrat William Jennings Bryan in a rematch of the 1896 election.

1928: Republican Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, known for his leadership skills, soundly defeated Democratic New York governor Alfred E. Smith, the first Catholic presidential nominee of a major party, in an era of prosperity that ended a year later with the stock market crash.

1956: Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower easily defeated Democrat Adlai E. Stevenson II in a rematch of the 1952 election.

1984: Republican President Ronald Reagan defeated Democratic former Vice President Walter Mondale in an electoral landslide, 525 electoral votes to 13.

What does this mean for 2012? Absolutely nothing. It's just a quirk in history, really. It's worth noting that, apart from Grover Cleveland, no incumbent Democratic President ran in these years in which Election Day fell on November 6. But if the economy doesn't improve, Barack Obama may have a harder time breaking this curse than Richard Burr had in breaking the Senate curse in North Carolina.

Of course, whether or not this is a curse is a matter of perspective. Republicans obviously would see this as a blessing.

Slouching Toward Election Day

Tomorrow is Election Day, and I am not going to comment on the campaign anymore. I'm all campaigned out. I will, though, comment on the results, though that's obviously for another time.

I hope everyone reading this votes tomorrow. I will vote, even though my own vote will not make a difference in the congressional races. I live in a reliable Republican House district in a state where no U.S. Senators are up for election this year. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't vote.

So, is it over yet? :-D