Don's Tuesday Column

        THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson Red Bluff Daily News   11/15/2022

Unobvious lessons on nation divided

This writer, as well as the 52+ million people who voted for Republicans nationwide—compared to the 47.3 million Democrat votes—understandably hate that that numerically solid “wave” failed to bring a Senate majority. Popular vote majorities lost to Electoral College wins by George Bush and Donald Trump. Touché.

It’s the “Al Franken” model: Ballots kept “appearing” in Democrat-controlled Minnesota until his hundred or so margin sent Franken to Washington to be Obamacare’s 60^th vote in the Senate. Suspicion of dragged-out counting in Nevada and Arizona (compared to transparently efficient Florida) fuels cynicism over Republican Laxalt’s unfortunate transition from election-night winner to a week-later loser to Democrat Masto.

Republican control of the House comes down to “hope” for 17 undecided races to yield at least 7 wins for the “R” team (10 have 50+ percent); the 52 million to 47 million popular vote “red wave” won’t produce 30-40 new Republican seats. Similar numbers in past midterms did, in fact, produce dozens of seats for the party getting the most votes; let’s analyze and reflect.

Polling-inspired elation and premature triumphalism? Guilty as charged, but I’m in widespread company including the betting odds that favored Republican wins; they rarely get it wrong. “Gerrymandered” redistricting leaves few “unsafe” R seats in red states, or vulnerable D seats in blue states. The two sides in America’s “cold uncivil war” are solidifying their political and policy power within their states.

Democrats should remove their blinders and see the dozens of Republican candidate and policy “wins” for governor and offices in those red states. Resistance, to “Covid-ocracy” and “Covidiocy,” sprang from the federalism of “states’ rights” in our Constitution. Sensible “heartbeat” and first-trimester abortion restrictions—supported by most Americans and many states’ representatives—flourish, as do loosened restrictions per Dobbs.

The “single women” vote went heavily (68%) for the Dems. Abortion: it’s not a basic human or constitutional right, full stop. Can they be persuaded of the “science” that “it” is a baby with a human heartbeat? Or be convinced to take contraception seriously and avoid sex-for-fun? America’s judgement and demise looms.

Pre-election polling identified age demographics most favorable to Democrats: Millennial/Gen Xers. They are the most fanatically pro-abortion (What baby?); see government as friendly helper/daddy/mommy (and funder of university/party lifestyles); and spout empty euphemisms about how “muh democracy is under threat.”

Boomers as a group were a curse to the nation built by the “greatest generation.” The current crop are brains-full-of-mush, with eyes-glued-to-little-screens; they’re obsessively knowledgeable on trends, but deeply ignorant of history and our Constitution. They fill ads with wildly goofy dancing and self-obsessive superficiality. And they spell a potentially sad end to our “representative republic.”

They, and their older, progressive thought-leaders, are oblivious to the dangers of pure democracy, or “mob-ocracy.” The adages of 3 wolves and 2 sheep voting on dinner, or 5 men and 3 women voting on forced “intimacies,” bear lessons.

“Stuff” gets real when renters can vote to raise taxes on property owners, or non-gun-owners can pass Oregon’s Measure 114, that deprives poor people of their constitutional right to acquire and “bear arms” for self-defense, an actual constitutional right. It requires—before purchasing a weapon—an approved gun course (time and money).  

Law-abiding citizens, perhaps a poor woman who only wants to be safe in her home, must pay and wait for a permit to be approved. She may then be allowed to buy a gun, after a weeks- or months-long process. Shotgun or long gun? Fuhgedaboutit. Meanwhile, Joey or Jose gang-banger, druggie, abuser, skips it all.

There is no money to fund the law’s implementation, or system to expedite people exercising their right to self-defense. But there will be a searchable database—a registry—of who owns guns. No loaning it to a law-abiding relative under threat; no selling or bequeathing them to offspring; no private gun sales.

The same counties that swung the states for Biden—Fulton (GA), Philadelphia, Clark (NV), Maricopa (AZ)—saw questionable delays in vote counts. Provable cheating? Not likely. Brain-damaged “Uncle Fester-man” won because enough PA voters saw him as “one of them,” mumbling and all; and looked at non-local, Turkish-American, upper-class Dr. Oz as Trump-tainted, fair or not.

Which brings up the Sound of Music nuns’ song, adapted: “How do you solve a problem like Donald Trump?” His endorsed candidates lagged other winning Republicans (GA, PA, OH, etc.); the Dems funded Trump’s candidates in primaries, beating them in the general. While polling suggests Trump beats Biden, the aversion by Independents, and blood-curdling anathema by Democrats, toward the 45^th President, gives many Republicans doubts that Trump will deliver our party a win in 2024.

This conservative Republican considers that 7 years of lies—fake scandals, impeachments, sham investigations finding no culpability, and 100% slanted, negative coverage by news media—have created an unjustifiably negative image in perhaps most Americans’ minds. I want Trump to win and to go back to Washington to “kick ass,” take names, issue “you’re fired” notices to anyone fire-able if they worked against him—and see some DOJ/FBI/CIA actors put in jail for sedition.

He deserves a second term no less because they stole much of his first term, before they stole the 2020 election through character assassination and “Deep State” undermining of everything he did. Hunter’s laptop; “2000” mules. That being said, reverting to cheap shots at Governors DeSantis and Youngkin while showing no signs of self-reflection or -correction based on his candidates’ losses, Donald Trump’s value may be in the past, not the future.