Election Reflections, Part I …

 

 

I’m old enough to remember the Democrat presidential primary of 1988 when the drive-by media came together and ran Joe Biden out of the race — denouncing Biden as not having “the character to be president.”  (Of course, all of the drive-bys were then in collusion with then-Mass. Gov. Michael Dukakis.)   It’s tough to find any of those clips on the Internet.  (*I wonder why.*)

 

The 2020 national race has been nasty and is only going to get nastier.  I think it will be a while before the truth is finally shaken out of all this.

 

My amazement at Joe Biden’s performance is rivaled only by that of Stupid Roy Cooper.  Besides not being very smart,  the man has NO positive accomplishments on his record after decades in Raleigh.

 

Two things that I believe hurt Dan Forest from the beginning —  his pledge to not go “negative” and his reliance on the exclusive campaign counsel of one Hal Weatherman.  What some people call “going negative” is called by others  “differentiation” and “explaining the difference between yourself and your competition.”  It happens all the time in marketing the products we see on grocery store shelves.    (The one bright shining moment I saw for Dan during the campaign was his debate performance.  He wiped the floor with Gov. Stupid.)

 

In Forest’s past two elections for lieutenant governor,  Forest was one of the — if  not THE — top vote getter among council of state candidates.  In 2020,  just about every other Republican pulled roughly 100,000 or more votes MORE than Lt. Dan.  THAT would  seem to indicate a purposeful undervote.  We know about the ‘Never Trump’ movement in the party.  Could there have been a ‘Never Dan’ effort going on?  (We heard months ago from countless GOP “stars” discussing a 2024 run for governor as though they believed there would be NO incumbent Republican in that race.) Could that race have been left blank on purpose on many ballots?  Could “Republicans” have marked Cooper’s name?   I still believe Robin Hayes got screwed by his own party in his 1996 race against Jim Hunt.  Could the same have happened to Lt. Dan?  Selfishness trumping “the good of the party”?

 

Another interesting race was for US Senate.  Thom Tillis has STILL not cracked the 50 percent mark.  EVER.   Considering the scandals of Cal Cunningham, and the subsequent beating he took for them,  the race was still too darn close.    I thought the total vote for the two third-party candidates in the race was interesting.  The two of them together garnered nearly 235,000 votes.  They did better than ANY other independent candidate in any race in North Carolina.  Looks like a lot of Republicans (and maybe some Democrats) said “none of the above” and marked a third-party candidate’s name.