From The Bell Tower on November 12:
Rejoice! A Democrat will be in the White House again! It's fine for people (except Republicans) to gather in large groups again - even if you aren't rioting. Not only are the Russians no longer interfering in American elections, lawyers who dare to participate in investigations into election interference should be outed like child molesters. Women and minorities assuming positions of high office are once again moments of profound history to be celebrated rather than a terrible shame to be mocked. Americans are respected in Gaul again and the wealthy Americans who flit through Western Europe's socialist paradise can once again hold their heads high (high enough to avoid the eyes of the beggars and thieves, of course).
Yawn...
We saw much the same baloney after Barack Obama's election, he of the Greek columns and high spectacle. It's time for the media to act like teenagers at a comic book convention again. Maybe Biden will sign reporters' underwear at his first press conference, marking the profound moment our sacred republic was saved.
I voted for Donald Trump, despite my many reservations about him. However, my vote was in anticipation of a Democratic landslide that never arrived. Unless Georgia completely fails us (they can't even beat Florida these days), Mitch McConnel will once again be the most powerful figure in America, standing athwart history and shouting "STOP!" like the Argonath of Gondor. Donald Trump was nowhere near the threat to the republic that he was made out to be in the media but Republicans will do just fine without having to defend his daily Tweets and tantrums. Despondent Democrats, outraged Republicans... nobody really won. Why, this may be the greatest election of our lifetime!
Democracy: The absurd belief that the more people who get involved in the decision making process, the less chance there is for a stupid decision.
Progressives view democracy like Bruce Dickinson views cowbell. The Senate, the Electoral College, the Supreme Court... any institution that can't be cowed by a mob of angry jerks in black Underoos is bad to these people. We could delve deeper into the psychology of this phenomenon but there is no theory or deep political insight at the root of this stupidity. Progressives are like third graders who lost a dodge ball game. I lost, I should have won, this whole game sucks and I'm going home. They hate the president most of all because he behaves exactly the way they have been behaving for the past 60 years.
Democracy is a component of successful government but it also invites tyranny if too much power is granted to majoritarian rule. Mobs are like an alcoholic in a liquor store - they require supervision. The beauty of the American system is that it provides that supervision.
Despite the Boaty McBoatface factor on full display this year, democracy is indeed the vital lifeblood of liberty. The problem is that so many people misunderstand why democracy is so important. Its value does not reside in its efficiency as a decision making mechanism. Indeed, the opposite is true - we benefit from the messy inefficiency of democracy. Efficient government is tyranny.
Nor does its value reside in vast inclusion, though that is certainly a desirable end. The benefits of democracy stem from the fact that it forces our government to be accountable to the people at large. It gives the people a choice, which is very different from giving the people raw power.
Democracy affords people a stake in the decisions of their government. The very popular libertarian trope - "Taxation is theft!" - is bunk precisely because the American Revolution was fought to eliminate that reality. Taxation is not theft because the Constitution preserves Americans' right to participate in the governance of their community. Don't like the taxes? Vote for someone who will lower them, run for office, move to another city or state, leave the country.... Americans are free to impact the outcomes around them and just because you think your vote "doesn't count" doesn't mean you are powerless to participate in your government. In fact, your vote counts far more thanks to the Electoral College and this year's record turnout is directly attributable to that phenomenon. But I digress...
This election season taught us two important lessons about our country. First, in the primaries, the Democratic electorate proved to be much less radical than the intellectually flatulent cloud of Twitter checkmarks wish it to be. Instead of choosing any number of younger, sharper, more diverse and more ambitious radicals; Democrats chose an old, establishment white guy. Why? Because Joe Biden wasn't advocating radical overhaul of our very effective system of government, nor was he disparaging its history and legacy. He also represents a return to the halcyon days of our normal timeline, before old Trump stole the time machine and turned us all into Marty McFly trying to figure out how the hell we got here.
Second, the general election was a significant rebuke of the tomfool idea that America is a center left country itching to tear down our allegedly racist system and build a socialist utopia. Democrats might want a higher minimum wage, an easier path for immigrants, better access to health care and police reform but that is distinct from a universal basic income, open borders, socialized medicine and defunding the police. This reality, as the election proved, is not confined to the accidents of one's birth. It turns out that black people, brown people and women like freedom just as much as white people. They like it so much in fact, that they voted for Donald Trump in greater numbers than any other Republican in history.
Most critically, Americans elevated Republicans while rebuking the president. This tells us that the problem is not with the president's party but with the president himself. Progressives wanted Donald Trump to be resoundingly rebuked and I ask you, what is more damning than your own party succeeding while you personally are cast into the wilderness?
I've said often on these pages that I love gridlock and that's true for a specific reason. The real value of divided government is that it forces us to agree in order to accomplish things. Consensus is the genius of the American experiment. Notwithstanding the vacuous ravings of congressional malcontents, perhaps Joe and Mitch are the best two people qualified to remind America of this. McConnell's first act as majority leader (if he retains this status) should be to fully restore the filibuster. Harry Reid got what he wanted, Republicans got more than they could have hoped for. It's time for Americans to govern like adults once again.
As always, the people have shown us the way.
A Note on Polling
There is once again much bellyaching about how the pollsters have failed us, as if there is any mechanism available to humanity that can accurately predict how 350 million people will vote on a subject. The "science" of polling as a predictive tool is equivalent to the science of picking football games against the spread. The media use it as a tool to keep eyeballs on their product and campaigns use it as a tool to drive narratives and affect outcomes. It is not a crystal ball.
That doesn't mean there is no value to polling. Certainly, campaigns need to pay attention to polls if they want to help their candidate target specific messages to specific demographics, although relying on the media's interpretation of what Americans think vs. actually going out and talking to the American people is partially how we got here. Much like sabermetrics in baseball, polling is a component of a good strategy, not the end of one.
Where we really go off the rails though is when we mistake polling for prediction. At this point, polling just becomes augury, and it serves exactly the same purpose as basing serious analysis on the behavior of birds.
The Romans used augurs to interpret signs and meaning from bird flight. The signs sent by the birds were understood as the voice of the gods. Intelligent and ambitious Romans used that "voice" to their advantage. Whenever the media or politicians interpret the "voice" of the American people based on something other than elections, they are not trying to tell you the truth. They are trying to tell you what they want you to think.
Voter Fraud
Settle down, Republicans. I get it. The Democrats haven't accepted a presidential election they've lost since 1988 - the last time the Dodgers won the World Series. Stacey Abrams, who lost by more than 50,000 votes, has been martyred and beatified like St. Peter across the media spectrum. George W was an illegitimate president because of the 2000 election. Not only have we spent the last four years hearing that Trump was illegitimate because of emails or James Comey or the Electoral College or the Russians or <insert Hillary's latest interview whining here>, but Hillary herself encouraged Joe Biden not to accept the election results under any circumstances just this past August.
And now, all of a sudden, the media are concerned about Trump undermining the integrity of our sacred elections. We've gone from "Denying election interference is destroying this republic!" to "Suggesting election interference is destroying this republic!" within a span of hours. "Not my president!" has become "Trump must concede!" In 1984, when Oceania was suddenly at war with Eastasia instead of Eurasia right in the middle of a huge rally about the war, the rally leader swapped the two enemies seamlessly:
"The thing that impressed Winston in looking back was that the speaker had switched from one line to the other actually in mid-sentence, not only without a pause, but without even breaking the syntax."
This is not to say that the president hasn't acted like a complete jackass, because he most certainly has. That begins with his unbelievably asinine attempt to undermine confidence in voting by mail with his own base. The reason election night played out like an improbable football game is precisely because so many Republicans showed up in person while so many Democrats voted by mail. Who knows how many people failed to show up and vote for Trump because of Trump?
It's fine if the president chooses not to concede until his lawsuits come through but blocking Joe Biden's transition, threatening not to concede and generally throwing his Legos around his playpen because he isn't getting his way is a bad (if typical) look. While it's unlikely to amount to much more than the usual Trumptastrophe, if he really does decide to somehow create an issue when it's time for him to depart, it won't go well for Republicans. They have two vital elections to win in Georgia in January and being forced to balance between independents who are tired of the president's tantrums and his perpetually angry supporters who want to anoint him king for life is a bad place to be.
The kabuki dance of leftist outrage over his legitimacy has become more tiresome than drugstore music. Every bowel movement Trump has is the end of democracy and freedom to these people. The president deserves his day in court because he represents some 70 million voters. He's filed lawsuits, those lawsuits will be heard and the evidence will be examined.
It's virtually impossible for anyone to have fixed the presidential race in this many places on such a broad scale. Just as the Russians did not get Trump elected with their Twitter bots and java scripts, Democratic fraudsters did not get Joe Biden elected by fabricating seven million votes. Donald Trump lost this race all by himself. He lived up to his two greatest features: defeating Democrats and defeating himself.
That is the great benefit of democracy. Americans peacefully decided to reject both the abhorrent behavior of Donald Trump and the abhorrent behavior of radical left wing Democrats in a single election season. You can't ask for much more than that.