William Galston analyzes Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in his most recent Wall Street Journal column. Citing facts and figures he summarizes:
Mr. Biden prevailed because he made enormous gains in suburban America, increasing the Democratic vote share from 45% to 54% in a part of the country that is home to a majority (52%) of the electorate. Mr. Biden’s performance in the suburbs accounted for more than 100% of his 3-point improvement in the Democrats’ national vote share, easily swamping Republican gains in urban and rural America.
It also wasn’t a progressive victory:
Despite liberals’ steadily increasing share of the Democratic Party and of the electorate over the past two decades, moderates contribute more votes to winning Democratic presidential candidates than do liberals, as they have for half a century. Moderates made up 52% of Jimmy Carter’s winning coalition in 1976—and 48% of Joe Biden’s in 2020.
and concludes:
The gains that led to Mr. Biden’s win were broad, a tribute to his ability to balance the interests and beliefs of a diverse coalition. Progressives contributed to this outcome, but they were neither its sole nor even its predominant author. They represent only one of many equities Mr. Biden must consider as he works to pass legislation and help his party in 2022 and 2024. The progressive tendency to equate balance with equivocation and compromise with betrayal is, paradoxically, both self-serving and self-defeating.
I have two question and, sadly, answers for neither of them:
- Is he delivering for his winning coalition?
- Will the same coalition carry Democrats to victory in the mid-terms?
I simply do not have an ear to the ground in the suburbs.
I personally am not relying on the figures placing Biden into office, in the first place. It has become sacrosanct, though, to even talk about anyone’s misgivings that corruption or voting machine manipulation could have catapulted this weak, feeble dem nominee to become the so called “winner†in 2020. Nonetheless, there remain large and growing swaths of people who are suspicious of the outcome, especially with so many irregularities, historic stopping the vote count in swing states, statistical contradictions, and historical patterns predicting election outcomes completely broken.
Accelerating people’s doubts about the election’s veracity is how many obstructions are being put up to thwart state legislators from completing a forensic audit. Subpoenas are being ignored, a county clerk’s office broken into (reminiscent of Watergate high jinx), people fired, threatened, dominion erasing machine data when federal law states anything pertaining to a federal election must be maintained for 22 months – why subvert or deny access to ballots when the Dems say 2020 was a “perfect election?â€
Consequently, I think Biden will have a difficult time in the midterms. Everything he is doing seems to be to the detriment of our republic. Inflation is leaping forward, the border is out of control, people are unhappy with CRT being pushed in the schools, and the tyranny of the left in general. There is an underground of resistance to Biden on the move. And, should the audits being considered, requested or underway (AZ, PA, WI, TX, GA & maybe ever CO) gain traction, all bets are off as to what the future holds for the democrats.
Biden ran as a moderate, but he is governing as an extreme, hard left radical. The US now has one of the most leftist governments in the world. So, I think the Republicans, as stupid as they are, will take back at least one House.
As to the election, I, too, doubt the outcome. Everywhere Trump went, he drew enthusiastic crowds of tens of thousands. The arenas overflowed into the parking lot. He was a rock star.
Biden had very few rallies, and they were attended typically by a few hundred bored people. He could not fill a high school gym.
The election numbers are prima facie bogus.
But this is not the first stolen election. Your favorite Mayor Daley gave John Kennedy the Presidency in 1960. The FBI/CIA/DoD corrected that error.
Not much legislation has passed so I would wait and see what happens. I think we were hoping he would get us out of Afghanistan and that is looking good.
I am guessing that we have multiple “investigations” on the election lasting for the next 4 years. Keeps the donations coming in and people fired up. Just like Benghazi and all of the others nothing will be found.
Steve
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/aug/11/mike-lindells-lead-cyber-expert-says-they-cant-pro/
Steve, I truly believe you wouldn’t believe anything was wrong or askew with anything “your†party or “your†man did, no matter how much common sense evidence was available. Basically, there is absolutely no give in your dislike for the opposing party, or in your loyalty for your own party.
However, what bob Sykes wrote in his post makes sense. The numbers of new registrations for the R party, the palpable enthusiasm for Trump vs zip for Biden, the gains in house seats, and now the aggressive tactics (that the MSM isn’t reporting) to shut down serious statistical and cyber investigations, into the integrity of the last presidential election, just makes it more obvious that something really stinks about the authenticity of the 2020 vote.
If the Republicans take control of both the House and Senate in the mid-terms I predict the following:
1. They will impeach Kamala Harris.
2. They will impeach Joe Biden.
In response to the inevitable question (for what?), show me the man (or woman), I’ll show you the crime. I don’t look forward to the tumult of the next several years.
They impeached Clinton so of course they will take a shot.
jan- There is a pattern. During the BUSH years they replaced a bunch of DOJ people so they could look for and prosecute all of the voter fraud. They didnt find any. Individual state Ads like the bozo from Kansas claimed it was rampant. They couldn’t find any. Trump claimed there were millions of fraudulent votes. He couldn’t find any. He brought in the clown from Kansas to head a commission. Didnt find any. He hired the best legal team in the country to present cases to state courts. Couldn’t find any evidence. (Their defense now since they are being pursued for making false claims in court is that they didnt really mean it.) The Dominion voting machines were the problem. Everyone they sued has apologized and admitted they were wrong, plus there was no evidence. The pillow guy has been pushing bizarre stuff about China. Not going anywhere as shown above. You brought in the cyber ninjas in the hope that they could make up something that at least looked credible. They are failing. Every GOP election official has not supported the Big Lie.
See the pattern? This has been going on for years, unsubstantiated claims.
I really dont understand why enthusiasm at a couple of rallies means you should win. Everyone cheered like crazy at the Eagles games last years so they should have won the Super Bowl? Really? The gains in registration and voting for Ds dont count, just for Rs? If Dems were going to engage in large scale conspiracy cheating (how would they keep it quiet?) why would they not also steal House and Senate seats? Making sure Biden wins but losing so many other seats means he cant really effectively govern. Even your conspiracies dont make sense. Frankly, they are stupid. How can you not be embarrassed?
Steve
People in the suburbs just want to be nice, they rinse out their milk jugs, flatten their cans, and load them into the Suburban once a week for the trip to the recycling center. Content in the knowledge they’ve done their part to Save The Planet, they drop the kids off at the daycare and make the 40 mile commute to work.
When he brought up daycare subsidies, Biden had their attention, but in the first presidential debate, after Trump’s incomprehensible rage against the cabal attacking him from all sides, Biden responded by simply displaying his perfectly white set of dental implants for the camera, he had them.
My! What a nice smile, why, he MUST be a nice man. And if he’s nice, we can trust him, right?
And now, he’s finally addressing those disturbing social issues with what surely must be enough money.
Those dark skinned people will finally get an education and be just like us, right honey? They deserve that much, right? And , it’s only money, just a matter of leverage, and knowing the right people.
I think we’re finally on the right track dear, but remember to check into that private school we talked about, the kids might fit in better there now.
Note how different the circumstances are from the 114th Congress, the last time a Democrat was president and both houses of Congress were controlled by Republicans. There will just have been a redistricting favorable to Republicans. I suspect there will be many Republicans who are thirsty for revenge after the impeachment of Trump. And Democrats have been behaving as though they got a resounding victory in 2020 when the reality is that they just barely squeaked by.
We need to remember that elections are binary. The last election was as much (or more) about voting against someone or voting for the lesser evil as opposed to actual fealty. In 2020, I think Biden benefitted because a lot of people voted against Trump. A normal Republican would have (should have) won handily. But Trump is Trump and he didn’t give a shit about the suburbs and he lost.
In 2016 we saw historically high support for third-party candidates thanks to two very unpopular candidates. Trump barely eked out a win.
As far as the legitimacy of elections, I’d just note that the losers always whine and are motivated to find reasons for the loss other than their candidate sucking more than the alternative. This often manifests in questioning the legitimacy of the election. In 2000 and 2016 it was Democrats whining. In 2020 it’s Republicans. It’s not a coincidence that ideologues suddenly question the legitimacy of the process when their side loses, yet assert that the very same process is unassailable when their side wins.
” In 2000 and 2016 it was Democrats whining.”
Yes, they whined. What is going on now is magnitudes worse.
Steve
Some here might call the flurry of 2020 election objections “whining.†However, to those who are actively looking into election integrity issues, they are more worried than just whining. There simply are not some 3000 people signing affidavits, citing observations of election fraud, for fun. There are not gatherings of grass roots people – middle class moms and dads – who, on their own dime, are seeking access to machines, logs and ballots to reassure themselves that elections are not governed by outside influences. Hundreds of thousands are joining social platforms, exchanging info and data, under one big umbrella of concern – that the election was a travesty of justice.
These citizens are not run-of-mill ideologues either. Most are professional, decent family members, representing what many would consider the heart of American values carried on the reliable shoulders of a strong work ethic. Some have been needlessly intimidated, harassed, or even lost their jobs. There are no big donors waving money at them like a George Soros, Bezos, or tech giants. They are fundamentally fueled by their own instincts that something was very wrong in the last election. The biggest question, however, hovering over this contested election is,†Why aren’t the machines, their routers, passwords, and whatever else is needed to satisfy qualms about the election’s legitimacy, voluntarily shared, inspected etc., if there is nothing to hide?†Earlier, Warren and Klubucher both voiced concerns about the safety of Dominion machines. Maybe, this was because it failed 10 out of 12 standards set for being considered a safe and secure way to handle our ballots.
“There simply are not some 3000 people signing affidavits, citing observations of election fraud, for fun. ”
Follow up is failing to substantiate those claims.
“These citizens are not run-of-mill ideologues either. Most are professional, decent family members, representing what many would consider the heart of American values carried on the reliable shoulders of a strong work ethic. ”
When you are in a cult everyone else in the cult are considered good people. In fact, they are much like everyone else. They all have different ethics, values, motivations. Some are liars some are not. Some are stupid and some are not. Sorry, these people are not all angels. it would never even occur to me to claim that all Democrats are wonderful. A lot are not. Some are crooks, lazy, liars etc, just like Republicans. Neither side has a valid claim to moral superiority.
Voting machines? This is pretty well orchestrated thing by team blue. They have all been audited already but you keep asking to do it again. If some country doesnt want to pay to have it done again it is a conspiracy. Or you ask to have the machine audited again, but dont specify who will audit. The commissioners cant let just anyone tamper with t her machines. (This is what is going on in Tioga, country with GOP commissioners who said no.) So again, all BS.
Steve
The voting machines were “maintained†by Dominion, tinkering with soft wear, and recently wanting to remove the machine’s batteries (not on the list of maintenance protocols), resetting the machines, making retrieval of election data impossible. For example, a screen shot was taken by a whistleblower before Dominion did their “maintenance,†and one after it was done. Basically, the “before†had election data, and the “after†had been wiped clean.
What I find so disingenuous, though, is how people who disagree with mainstream statements are defined as a “cult,†rather than concerned, proactive citizens. Their concerns, their connection of dots creating evidence for their concerns, are then described as “conspiracy theories.†Thinking outside the box, not following the government and one-sided media script, is heckled. I guess what is wanted is a conforming, zombie-like compliance from those who will step down at every questionable juncture involving how fairly our republic really functions.
As an aside, our political parties have changed who they represent. The democrat party “used to†advocate for blue collar, middle class workers, free speech, the right to protest, questioning multinational corporations and Wall Street, anti-war, and individual freedoms. Dems then anointed republicans as the party who contrasted all of the above. Now, the democrat party has become the party of the rich and well-connected. Celebrities flock to the Dems ideology, supporting global tenets and guidance. Tight controls over public thought is enhanced by social and public media censorship. The Republican Party meekly tries to supply a counter balance. But, it has been the more nationalistic direction, voiced and acted upon by the last administration, who seemed to stand for values and rights that had once been seen as the Democrat party’s prerogatives. This is why it is the middle class, blue collar “nobodies†who are collaborating and trusting their own instincts, as to the veracity of the 2020 election, rather than those of the elites or big government. In order to successfully reflect who governs who in the clause “We the people,†and continue to live in a free society, one has be brave enough to defy what they see as wrong in big government governance. That’s exactly what is happening after the widely disputed November 2020 election.