Wishful Thinking in the August of a Mid-Term Election Year
In every August of any given mid-term election year, the most overrated, yet subsequently under-accounted for occupations are those of pundits who, based on nothing more than their own wishful thinking, pretend to have insight into the election taking place that November. Such prognosticators often cite selective polling, essentially using the polling source(s) which bears closest resemblance to their own biases. With a look into just how keen an insight into actual election results they really have, consider 2016 when they got it all wrong- practically to a pundit.
So, it is with such grains of salt that we take reports from our selective news sources regarding yesterday’s special elections in Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio and Washington. The actual voting results in most all of these contests have little or nothing to do with the commentary proffered to explain what the results mean with regards to November. Nevertheless, pundits having little or nothing to otherwise occupy their itching and self-absorbed little minds will all queue up at the “group-think grill” to get their slices of tasty talking points, and make predictions that are conveniently forgotten when the votes are counted in November.
In this mid-term election year of 2018, the group-think commentary of pundits explaining yesterday’s votes already had the “story” written, offering to explain the voting and what it means for November. Whether specific candidates endorsed by President Trump won or lost their respective elections are beside the point. Either way, the narrative coming from all sectors of the mainstream media is that Donald Trump is putting a drag on his fellow Republican candidates…now, get this- based on his tweeting, no less, or so they say…and that’s their explanation as to why either the Democrat would win by any margin, or why a Republican would win by a slim margin. Any Republican winning by a large margin is said to have won…again, get this- in spite of Trump.
There’s nothing like taking on the two things the media hates most about the President- the fact that he delivers his messaging in a way that completely bypasses the press by his tweeting, and the fact that he has become quite adept at manipulating what he knows to be adverse coverage, much as one with a laser pointer can tease and misdirect a pursuant cat. Then, while the media falls over themselves in frantic pursuit of damaging information (select the topic), Trump goes about his business of fulfilling his campaign promises like checking off a list of completed tasks- and this is the guy that all of the “experts” say is about to be crushed under the onslaught of a giant blue wave?
Well, let’s look at that blue wave. It is made up from false and irrelevant assumptions, gained from some (but not all) past mid-term elections, where the party in power loses enough seats to flip one or both houses of Congress. Such a flip coming from a fractured Democrat Party united solely in their hatred of, and impeachment fantasies towards, Donald Trump and one that meanders close to the precipice of oblivion in their party’s creeping embrace of socialism and open borders.
Half of the Democrats, including most of their party’s leadership like minority leaders Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), are the Democrats of old…voted in from the same old diverse array of aggrieved and targeted special interest groups, based on race and other such identities, and who were all in for Hillary Clinton’s nomination and election. When the latter didn’t happen, they refused to acknowledge Trump’s victory and instead went about “resisting” the new President on the orders of outgoing President Barack Obama (who created the resistance movement the day after Trump was elected) and Hillary Clinton, whose coronation was thwarted by a first-time candidate who she despises.
The other half of Democrats are those who have embraced the socialism offered by Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. These charlatans are supported heavily by young liberals who have not been educated in the sad history of the hundred million plus lives lost, in the last century’s struggle with socialism in all its many forms. Their pursuit of open borders, voting rights for illegals and free everything- housing, higher education, and health care for all- is fiscally impossible, but nevertheless represents the shiny new toy to the children of the left, prompting DNC Chairman Tom Perez to identify Ocasio-Cortez the future of his party.
What the pundits would have us believe is that the majority of the American electorate, whose wages have become a little higher, whose jobs have become much more plentiful, and whose overall economy has taken off like a rocket in the wake of the Trump presidency, are going to cast all of that aside and support instead the impeachment of a president and/or the insanity that is emblematic of the socialist movement in America, today.
Yeah…about that !
-Drew Nickell, 8 August 2018
© 2018 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.
author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”
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