“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
―
What do you do when you can’t vote Jimmy Carter out? Jimmy Carter was perhaps America’s kindest President, but simultaneously its least qualified and effective President; the anti-Trump, if you will. Trump is brash but exceptionally effective. Carter is mostly remembered for stagflation, a horrible energy crisis, and an incompetent foreign policy at best. It appears that history repeats itself and in the Biden Administration, we are once again revisiting the Carter Administration.
What do you do when food and formula shortages abound, you’re experiencing massive inflation, global supply chain disruptions, an energy crisis, you’re on the brink of WWIII in eastern Europe, and your president is a dementia-riddled geriatric with a dismal approval rating? You vote in a referendum on their performance.
Historically the axiom goes that people vote with their bellies. That means in times of economic downturn and scarcity, people look for alternative political solutions. So why is it that despite statistically similar circumstances and an enraged electorate, we failed to shift the nation’s course drastically in the 2022 midterms?
While the axiom of voting with our bellies has held for most of our 246-year existence, this axiom never encountered mass mail balloting, a complicit media, and a generation of godless and confused youth like ours. If the exit polling is accurate, we are to believe that abortion was the cornerstone issue of the 2022 midterms and that young women were the determinant voters. I certainly believe this is a part of the issue, in conjunction with illegitimate and insecure voting practices that were codified in the wake of COVID. In the controversial 2020 market of Maricopa County, Arizona, they’re still counting ballots four days later.
Coming out of COVID and a culling of the greatest generation, we are finding a demographic shift in voting. An electorate that was once able to stave off activist youth and voting to maintain a balanced political class is no more. We now have President Joe Biden, who is several strokes and dementia short of capable, and Pennsylvania just elected a disabled stroke patient to the United States Senate in John Fetterman. Fetterman lived off of his parents until he was nearly fifty. What is worse, reminiscent of a high-profile murder case in Georgia, he chased down a black citizen in the streets. He held them at gunpoint until cops could arrive because he mistakenly identified them as a criminal. Black lives didn’t matter when they voted blue, no matter who.
A further post-mortem to unpack the 2022 midterms is probably in order. Much of our current sentiment is driven by the press. The impending red wave that didn’t happen certainly was driven by the press and their polls. They over-polled nearly every market in the country except Florida, where they under-polled. Likely on purpose to elevate their made man Ron DeSantis.
The blame Trump mantra was certainly a pre-written narrative by the same central planners who coordinated to remove him in the first place. But Trump didn’t hold a single elected office or position with the Republican Party. Any shortfalls lie squarely with those in leadership positions who held the keys to the vast RNC money machine and failed to produce.
When pain fails to bring growth and we repeat our mistakes, we’re left asking, what are we doing wrong? It’s painfully clear that what is going wrong doesn’t lie in accountable voting, the part where we show up and prove our identity and are handed a ballot. What is going wrong lies in the unaccountable voting, the part where we shut down voter ID, signature verification, clean voter rolls, paper ballots, the chain of custody, and hand counting. What is going wrong lies in injecting third parties into the voting equation. Our vote is now between us and a unionized postal worker or us and a hardware or software vendor. What is going wrong is we fail basic civics and voting blue no matter who outweighs economic reality.
Photo by Library of Congress on Unsplash
- Christianity & Muscle Memory - August 6, 2023
- Advice For Recent Graduates - June 7, 2023
- A Tale Of Two Countries - May 31, 2023