Electoral Perspective

Please ponder the following observations in anticipation of the upcoming national election.

Many Democrats want to abolish the Electoral College. They are motivated by the fact that Hilliary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016 and, as such, failed to effectuate her rightful levitation to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Indeed she did receive more of the votes than President Trump: 65,853.514 to a mere 62,984,828.

She received significantly more votes in California that did her opponent: 8,753,788 to 4,483,810. Let’s check the math. Without the California vote the popular vote totals would have been: Trump 58,501,038, Clinton 57,099,726. In other words without the Electoral College California would have elected the President in 2016. Gavin Newsom recently offered the depressing prediction that California represented the future. Do you really want Newsom’s version of California to pick the next President?

Among the United States California is by far the worst governed. The last competent governor was Ronald Reagan who left office in 1974. The roster of US Senators and members of the House of Representatives dispatched to Washington from the not so Golden State includes such luminaries as Eric Swalwell, Maxine Waters, Adam Schiff, Kamala Harris, Diane Feinstein and Nancy Pelosi. Newsom, the successor to Governor Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown, is the largest emitter of verbal phlogiston in US history. This gaggle of elected officials looks and sounds like the cast of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest! Jack Nicholson call your office.

What should we know about California that will help us decide if we want that state to be our bellwether? San Francisco is home to a growing and uncontrolled homeless community complete with such tourist attractions as thousands of used hypodermic needles, piles of human feces (carefully mapped out to keep visitors shoes clean) as well as a large population of rats and the diseases they carry. A number of California cities are bankrupt, crippled by financial promises that can’t be kept. The state is offering free health care to illegal immigrants. People are fleeing the state at record levels. This horror show is the logical extension of the political philosophy purveyed by all of the politicians listed above. Now imagine this as our national future. It is the best argument yet offered against eliminating the Electoral College.

The Democrat candidates for the party’s presidential nomination agree, without exception, that the United States is an immensely wealthy nation. This data point is offered up to justify their collective intent to confiscate as much of that wealth as possible in order to distribute the appropriated loot among those who are on wrong end of what they see as an unjustifiable income inequality. They have abandoned equality of opportunity in favor of equality of outcome. This is the dream of every authoritarian leader in world history. It inevitably results in a downward leveling process.

It would be interesting if one of the Democrat cheerleaders who are moderating the DNC debates (sponsored apparently by Barnum and Bailey) were to ask each of those candidates to explain how America became the wealthiest nation in world history. We would witness a Herculean effort to avoid any reference to the evident success of capitalism. It should become obvious to anyone with an elementary knowledge of math and economics that the inevitable result of their proposed redistribution schemes would forever cripple the creation of wealth going forward. As Margaret Thatcher famously said: Socialism works great until they run out of other people’s money.

Another common theme of the debates is the argument that everyone must pay their “fair share.” According to the IRS the top 1 percent paid a greater share of individual income taxes (37.3 percent) than the bottom 90 percent combined (30.5 percent). The top 50 percent of all taxpayers paid 97 percent of total individual income taxes. If this is not a satisfactory distribution of the tax burden we might want to ask what would be the “fairer share” which the candidates envision.

As each and every Democrat wants to transfer greater power to the bureaucrats in Washington it might be instructive to ask the wannabe authoritarians to provide examples of activities that the Federal government performs well. Years ago I asked a young idealist to provide me just one such example. The answer was delivered after a days meditation…the Post Office. We can make allowances for the not yet developed mind of the typical future voter but if this is the best answer we are in deep trouble.

That said it boggles the mind to listen as the Democrats set forth their laundry list of programs that should be taken over by the national government…health care, free college, open borders, free housing, reparations, forgiveness of college loans, etc. Cost is clearly no object. I kept checking the roster of candidates to see if Rumpelstiltskin or an unemployed alchemist is among those lusting after power.

It has been argued that the fastest way to turn a liberal into a conservative is to have them participate in a negotiation with the EPA (but almost any Federal agency will suffice). One has to bear in mind that the EPA is bound and determined to never solve any environmental issue as a matter of self-preservation. If the problem were solved they would be out of a job and most Federal and state agency employees were unlikely to find a job in the private sector where solving problems is the primary measure of success.

One amusing interlude in the debates was provided by the whimsical Kamala Harris. She wove a tale about a young woman who was a participant (victim?) of forced busing. She made it appear that this was an important and positive part of her life. Busing was not voluntary and it was vigorously opposed by both black and white Americans. In the end it was a total failure because someone with a keen eye for the obvious pointed out that moving young students from one school to another to create “diversity” did not make the schools any better. Busing has disappeared from the bureaucratic toolkit for good reason. Does Harris want to bring it back?

On a lighter note we must comment on the antics one of America’s true clowns…Colin Kaepernick. He has called out one of the truly iconic women in American history: Betsy Ross. She is credited with designing and producing the first American flag. But Senor Kaepernick believes that the 13 star flag was really a symbol of…slavery. As such Nike was shamed into withdrawing a Betsy Ross flag sports shoe which, if nothing else, confirms that the management team at Nike are a bunch of knuckleheads. The irony is that Nike produces much of its product line in third world countries where employees receive “slave” wages.

Kaepernick announced his opposition to the Ross shoe in a tweet with a quote from Frederick Douglass a man who endured slavery, escaped from slavery and became a powerful voice in opposition to slavery. In the same speech quoted by Kaepernick Douglass called the US Constitution “a glorious liberty document” which “will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery.” He did NOT “despair of this country” as he knew that the end of slavery was inevitable. He died a free man, a great man. It is sacrilegious to use Douglass in this manner but it is evidence of Kaepernick’s manifest ignorance.

In Portland we got a glimpse of the true character of Fa Antifa…the Fascist anti-fascist team. They engaged in a physical assault and beat senseless a diminutive gay Asian-American reporter although it should be pointed out that it only took about a dozen of the cowardly thugs to accomplish the task. I await a confrontation between Fa Antifa and Bikers for Trump!

Did you know that in 1976 Hubert Humphrey called Reagan’s factual description of socialism “racist”? The more things change the more they stay the same. Racism is now and has always been the Democrat Party go to insult no matter how stupid the context. Ironic that it comes from the party of slavery.