In full disclosure, I am more than willing to admit when I was wrong with my prognosticating — as were most experts and pundits — so allow me to do some self-reflection before the final election results have been tallied and before Georgia’s run-off, which is another ridiculous predicament. I feel less sanguine today now that I’ve had time to absorb the results. First and foremost, I guess Americans do value their democracy. Second, women and Roe did not save Democrats, as I have long said. Oh, sure, it may have prevented a red-wave wipeout, but clearly, abortion rights were not the driving factor when electing individuals across the board. There is one specific example that indicates to me this was the case, namely the Kentucky Amendment 2 measure in which voters defeated a proposal that said the right to abortion was not enshrined in the state constitution. Yet, on the other hand, the state easily re-elects Rand Paul, who, last I checked, is still a member of the party that wants to ban all abortions. In fact, many of the RepubliKKKlan Senators, being elected statewide, were re-elected or elected for the first time, e.g., Johnson, Rubio, and Vance, to name a few. Thus, while abortion rights were on voters’ minds, it did not save Democrats, as I have long said. And by save, I mean win it all. Did overturning Roe help blunt the red wave? No doubt it did, but red states are just as red as ever, and once purple states — Florida — are permanently red.
Third, again, whether by one seat or 50 seats, RepubliKKKlan control of the House yields the same result: Total control over the committees, so in this regard losing the House is still a disaster because RepubliKKKlans have already indicated they only care about investigating Biden, his family, and his administration. They have no interest in legislating and governing unless it is to hold the government hostage to extract their political aims. Of course, this introduces a whole host of issues for them in the eyes of the public, which I will save for future posts, but suffice it to say, RepubliKKKlans will get their chance to f*** up the Biden agenda and further prove conservatives’ incompetence to govern. Think of Obama’s last six years. All gridlock. Forth, it looks like the youth vote actually came out for once to help prop up Democrats. That’s all I have to say on that subject.
Last, and here is the objective measure of how the elections went. According to The New York Times, “More than 220 Republicans who questioned the 2020 election have won seats in the U.S. House and Senate and in state races for governor, secretary of state and attorney general, according to results as of 9 p.m. on Wednesday. … But even as this group of election deniers and skeptics were winning seats, dozens of other Republican candidates who were also election deniers and skeptics lost their races for higher office, contributing to the failure of a much-anticipated ‘red wave.’ The losses have raised questions over whether election denialism was at least partly to blame. But conversely, the wins could be seen as a signal that election skepticism is not a fleeting fad and that a version of it — perhaps a more subtle version that is harder to dismiss than outright denialism — is already in the Republican mainstream.” So, this is the real chink in the democratic armor, which I was right about all along. America’s democracy will not die overnight nor in one election — although it could. No! Instead, it will be a drip, drip, drip process, and these 2020 election deniers — no matter their intensity of beliefs — are dangerous and undermine the very fabric of democracy. This is the Big Lie metastasizing and becoming mainstream. It will take time to kill the host despite Americans fighting back in the short term.
