Getting Out the Vote: Election Thoughts

We created a haven of freedom in a world governed by brutal tyranny. 

We invented the airplane, mass-manufactured automobiles, and pioneered space travel. 

We produce enough food to feed ourselves and the rest of the world. 

We give massively to charity and send emergency relief to disaster areas around the world. 

We crushed Hitler, bankrupted the Soviet Union, and beat those commie bastards to the moon.

We brought the Apollo 13 astronauts back home using pencils, papers and slide rules.

We have been the freest country on earth, where millions have flourished throughout her history. 

No matter what happens today, nobody can ever take any of this away from us.

-- What was the point of early voting?  Let people vote on Election Day.

-- I was at my polling place before it opened this morning, and there was already a line starting.  By the time I got my ballot and got into my voting booth, the joint was jumping.  As the poll worker looked for my name through her roster of registered voters, I noticed that a lot of people were marked as having already voted. I don't recall things being so busy and lively at the last presidential election.

One Idaho county reports that they ran out of ballots and had to have more printed.

-- While I do not think Donald Trump is another Reagan, I do see similarities between this election and 1980.  Reagan was widely ridiculed by the media and the intelligentsia, as Trump is.  Reagan was not beloved of the GOP establishment, as Trump is not.  Reagan had been divorced, like Trump.  Reagan polled behind Carter, like Trump has polled behind Clinton.  And, of course, Reagan absolutely crushed Carter in a landslide, and repeated his performance on an even greater scale four years later against Mondale.

-- My conclusion about this election is that it is absolutely essential to defeat Hillary.  Trump is in some ways an unknown quantity; we know what he says now about the issues, and that this does not match what he has previously said about those same issues.  Hillary, however, is very much a known quantity, and a very bad quantity.  We can be absolutely certain that her victory would be a disaster.  That is why I decided that it would be a waste to vote for a non-viable third-party candidate.  A vote for a third-party candidate nearly always constitutes a vote for the Democrats.

-- This election also makes me think of the 1990 election of Violeta Chamorro in Nicaragua, when the voters dumped socialist Daniel Ortega.  P.J. O'Rourke covered this election and reported having gone in with a sense of discouragement over the widespread belief that the Sandinistas would win.  He said the high level of turnout should have been a clue that the conventional wisdom was not so wise after all.  People do not show up in their droves, from the ass-end of nowhere, he remarked, to maintain the status quo.

-- Hence my theory of this election: high turnout means a victory for Trump.  I doubt people will flock to the polls to vote in Obama 2.0.

We shall see.