Balladeer’s Blog provides a look at the midterm elections for overseas readers since so many of you have asked for clarification amid the Democrat versus Republican smoke-blowing since Tuesday night. As always I’m a bit moved and humbled when you readers ask me to cut through some of the confusion since you know that I dislike both parties equally. So I will be 100% sincere with my impression of the 2018 midterms.
ONE – There was no “Blue Wave” despite the corporate media’s 24/7 propaganda blitz.
TWO – Historically the political party that does NOT have the White House does very well in the midterms and it is always noteworthy when the President’s party does NOT lose large numbers of seats in Congress.
For instance, in Barack Obama’s first midterms he lost SIXTY-THREE seats in the House of Representatives AND lost 6 Senate seats. Bill Clinton ( Full disclosure: I liked Bill Clinton almost as much as I like Trump.) lost FIFTY-FOUR seats. Here in Trump’s first midterms he lost 30-some.
That math makes it indisputable that he did better than Obama and Clinton in their first midterms. Does this prove he’s more popular than those two? I don’t think so, but I also would not have felt it made him LESS popular than them if he had done WORSE than those two. Too many variables in midterms, especially with a de facto Third Party Wild Card like Donald Trump in the White House.
In addition, Trump’s nominal party, the Republicans, defied the usual midterm results by GAINING seats in the Senate.
THREE – The Democrats’ usual, tired and so-transparent “chance discovery” of thousands of “uncounted” votes has become expected at this point in close races. (Look up Broward County, Florida’s long history of this anywhere you like.)
“Miraculously” this only ever happens in districts controlled by the Democrats and equally miraculously these “discovered uncounted votes” ALWAYS help the Democrat candidates. This has been going on for AT LEAST two decades but the clueless Republicans have always failed to do anything about it.
If Republican districts did this every two years by discovering boxes full of uncounted votes that help THEIR candidates they would rightfully be nailed to the wall by the media, but the Democrats’ media outlets so massively outnumber the Republicans’ media outlets that the Dems’ obvious chicanery is never given the coverage it deserves.
This all goes back to the biggest failure of the money and power people on the Republican side – the failure to keep up with the opposition party in the media arms race. In typical fashion, Republican rich pigs’ obsession with profits to the exclusion of all else caused this. Since you can’t measure media impact on a profit and loss sheet the GOP plutocrats let the Democrats get so far ahead in this area that it causes the loss of many, many OTHER battles in the political arena.
FOUR – Democrat fanatics are ALREADY pushing ridiculous conspiracy theories that Trump will declare a crisis when his two terms (if he gets two) are up and cancel all further elections. I despised George W Bush AND Barack Obama but I NEVER bought into the ridiculous conspiracy theories claiming each one of THEM was going to conjure up an excuse to cling to power when their two terms were up. CAN WE AT LEAST SHOW ENOUGH SANITY TO NOT GO DOWN THIS SAME ROAD A THIRD PRESIDENT IN A ROW?
FIVE – Continue reading