Originally Posted by Rod Kaufman
Greg and Rich, who are undoubtedly befuddled and perplexed about the outcome of the midterm elections, obviously don't understand the reason for it.
While they have heard, like the rest of us, the old adage that "It's the economy stupid!", that's not what this election was about at all. Why did we have the outcome that we did? "It's the extremism stupid!" While they likely can't fathom why the election denialism replete with Republican candidates pledging the GOP will never lose another election in "their" states, or MAGA types showing up at drop-box sites while armed and in camo, constitutes obnoxious and unacceptable behavior that they seemingly view as normal behavior. No, it not normal or acceptable behavior for backwoods country hillbillies to dress up in camo on the weekends and simultaneously shoot up targets with outlines of a person on them. No, it's not normal or acceptable behavior to drive around town with Trump flags on your pickup trucks while you have them on poles in front of your homes, nor is acceptable and normal behavior to direct threats against poll workers in elections. One can go on and on but guys like Greg and Rich will never get it...
Hi Rod, Since I was big on the economy being
the key issue, I'll admit I was wrong. It is an issue of course, but somewhat mitigated by the other issues this time. Still, with a good economy, and all other things being the same, Biden would have picked up lots of seats, as happens in the midterms from time to time.
I have read from several sources that the voters by and large rejected
incompetence. This is an anti-Trump perspective of course, and it may not be fair to label all of those Trump supported as incompetent. But it is comforting that competence was on the voter's minds. This is a nod to my main theme of trusting the system.
538 has a lot of analysis showing that the voters mostly rejected the more vocal election deniers. This overlaps with the competence issue, but hopefully the days of wholesale election denialism are behind the Rs. There will always be a little of this on each side, but Trump of course took it to a level many magnitudes higher than acceptable. Jim
