Comrades,
If there's one thing to come out of the US mid-term elections that no-one has really had a look at yet, it's that devout election deniers who backed DJ Trump!'s fantasy that he had the Presidency stolen from him - are NOT denying the results of this election, not even the hard core insane among them. Aint that strange? You would've expected to see them on the rooftops shouting "We Wuz Robbed!". There was nothing to complain about back in 2020, and there's nothing to complain about now. Despite every state having complete control over how they conduct their elections, and with every state doing it differently - gerrymandering and voter suppression aside - the integrity of the vote nationwide is not in dispute, anywhere. This is nothing less than a supreme victory for the Miracle of Democracy.
After the widely predicted "Red Wave" failed to materialise - in the words of a New York Times headline "We May Have Reached The Limit Of Crazy That Will Be Tolerated" - the only Republican 'declaring victory' was DJ Trump! himself, who everywhere else, even on Fox News, is being labelled as "The Biggest Loser". Never ever underestimate The Donald of course, but he is a pathological batshit crazy narcissist who will not tolerate rejection, let alone humiliation. He's got a lot of face to lose, and by 2024, he could be in stripey pyjama's behind the jailhouse walls anyway, where it must be hellishly difficult to campaign from.
Sure, the "Biggest
Winner" is the 44-year-old Republican Governor of Florida, Ron
DeSantis, who was re-elected in a landslide. But don't forget
he campaigned heavily on his record as an arch enemy of
"wokeness" and Florida having being a "haven of sanity when the world
had gone mad with Covid". This bloke is further right than
Genghis Khan, make no mistake, but he's a shrewd opportunistic politician, lacks the crazy,
has limited charisma, isn't even a great public speaker, but
instead trades on his reputation of 'getting things done'.
He'd be out of his cotton pickin' mind not to make a run for
the White House in '24. The times of elderly, legacy
Presidents are finished.
But back to the
vote - turn out is traditionally much lower in mid-term
elections than Presidential elections, of course - and this
time it was all over the shop, as usual. While the average
turn out was 48% of eligible voters, in states like
Mississippi and West Virginia fully 70% of the electorate simply
didn't bother to go anywhere near a ballot box, while only
eight states had a turn out better than 55%. Nowhere was the
turn out better than 60%. But it's not that surprising that
half the country is simply not engaged politically, as they're far
too busy living a hand-to-mouth existence in the Home of The Brave & the Land of The Free.
All of this happened, even after I failed to wear to bed last night one of my favourite campaign t-shirts from yesteryear for good luck:
