Election Politics

There are a number of complex moving parts that may impact the November presidential and Congressional elections. Here are a few that I see:

- If many colleges move to virtual teaching and do not repopulate their campuses, then this typically liberal student block will be only voting from home ... and not from home or/and from where they go to school. This might help the Republican candidates in New Hampshire and Maine.

- Trump’s polling on his handling the coronavirus pandemic is currently unfavorable. If cases continue to spike ... with deaths to follow, this can’t be good for his re-election chances. However, a vaccine and effective therapeutics might be a game changer if they come soon enough.

- And the coronavirus has also been beneficial to Biden because this is the excuse for his interactions with the media being carefully managed. It might also be the rationale for his ducking some or all the debates with Trump. This would be of great benefit to his chances. Even worse, the pandemic also now eliminates Trump rallies which have provided much of the data for his get-out-the-vote efforts.

- The Durham/Barr investigation may (or may not) culminate with indictments and lots of captured news cycles ... hopefully before the voters go to the polls.

- If mail-in voting becomes pervasive for this coming election, then voter fraud could be a game changer ... and is something that worries Trump quite a lot.

- If it becomes obvious that new cases and/or new death numbers for COVID-19 have been cooked and were used as a Democrat political weapon, this might change things somewhat for those voters who follow such stuff.

-If certain Blue states, like California and New York resist sending their children back to school in September, then their economies will suffer ... possibly dramatically when compared to those states that choose schooling. Generally these are Blue states and I don’t expect that they will flip to red ... but you never know.

- If Biden wins, it will not be because voters adore him ... it will be because they are voting against that onerous orange ogre Trump.

STAND UP FOR AMERICA!

The Granite State

Arnie Arnesen, a failed political hack from the Granite State, New Hampshire, (see: Wikipedia Entry) was just on talk radio here in Boston this morning ... and she said that, if students in New Hampshire weren't on their winter break, Ron Paul would do much better in tomorrow's Republican primary.  I found this a curious statement, so I went to Google and only found Colby-Sawyer to be a New Hampshire college that might still be on winter break.  There could be a few others, but the scheduling information on many of the other New Hampshire colleges is a little sparse on the Internet.

But this brings me back to that old bone I like to chew on ... why do students, who don't really live where they go to college, get to cast their ballots there (see: Representation without Taxation)?  They don't pay taxes there ... even the colleges they attend do not pay taxes there.  (And, besides I strongly suspect that many of them also absentee-vote in their home-town elections.)  Doesn't this liberal push-through rule amount to representation without taxation?  I truly believe that it does.  If these students actually live year-round in or around their college town and pay taxes there, then I have no problem with their also voting there.  But, if not, then they should only be allowed to cast absentee ballots in their real home towns.  Or maybe we should hold national elections in mid-summer?

I realize that I am a hard-hearted martinet ... but big-D democracy does require a little big-D discipline.