Though begun as “Armistice Day,” Veterans Day has expanded in the United States as a day for all those brave men and women who fight to keep us free. But we must never forget those who sacrificed themselves.
Sabaton’s moving cover of “1916” originally by Motörhead.
Over a decade ago, I was talking with a scientist who had immigrated from Bulgaria, had lived under Communism, and had become an American citizen. The words she spoke to me still gives me a chill of terror:
It’s prediction time, yet again… My “official” predictions for the 2024 election are below. There are plenty of perfunctory notes and caveats, especially this year. First and foremost is the skepticism over polling this year. Pollsters may have not been able to get a true representative sample of voters. For most normal people, the election histrionics and fear-mongering has caused them to tune out. I treat polls with a pinch of salt unless I have been given reason by those I trust.
The 2022 midterms showed that people were tired of the performative MAGA candidates and fearful over the end of Roe v. Wade. There are plenty of initiatives on plenty of ballots that could bring out those some voters who favor the right to abortion, but this will be blunted by time and the lack of The Handmaid’s Tale future materializing. While there is still plenty of Trumpian candidates, people tuning out the election might blunt the negative effect they had in 2022. Additionally, time heals all wounds and Trump has been out of sight and out of mind… and doesn’t represent the incumbent party. Many people are unhappy over the direction of the country over the past four years, but ultimately it will come down to if the moderate median voters in the swing states are unhappy enough to vote in the man they voted out in 2020 and continued to reject by proxy in 2024.
The Presidential race this year has been less of election campaigns and more a game of chicken where each side has tried to get a low as possible while ending up only second worst. If anyone could beat out Trump in a race to the bottom, it’s Kamala Harris. The probability seems wide, but it’s probably rather narrow.
So…
With in person early voting over in Nevada, only mail and non-polling place drop-offs are left before Election day. The GOP voter lead stands at 45,102, or ~4.3%, as of the numbers released as of writing, with practically no overall increase from the last day of in person early voting to bolster it. The GOP may be exhausting its pool of voters, but the Dem seem unable to tap theirs. Nevada is looking far more Red with the dissolution of the Harry Reid Machine.
Nevada Republicans’ early in person is 97,103 or ~17.8%. This is a lower percentage than in ’22. However, Democrats’ mail voter lead of 51,001, or 10.3%, is much lower than the leads they had in ’22 of 16.9% and 13.8% in the 1st and 2nd week, respectively.
At this point for Nevada in 2022, mail ballots were the gross majority of votes cast; in 2024 so far, there are more in person early votes than mail/drop-off ballots. This will change in the Democrats favor as four more days through Election Day plus a few more for late arriving ballot, but likely not by enough to give them the margins they saw in 2022.
The Nevada Democrats’ 16,437 lead in Clark is wiped out by just the two rural counties of Douglas and Nye, which give the GOP a voter lead of 10,379 and 8.974, respectively, despite Clark having 14 times the population! The Republicans lead in Washoe is at 9017 or 5.0%. Democrats lead in Clark is only 2.2%. The Nevada Democrats’ problem is that their mail ballot game is poorer than it was in 2022. The institutional knowledge of the Harry Reid Machine seems to have disappeared along with the late Harry Reid.
Political machines matter, and with the death of Harry Reid, the machine the Democrats relied on appears to be collapsing. Their over-reliance on that machine is hurting them now and will continue to hurt them in at least the near future.
With the Presidential election less than a week away, this is a good time to revisit Milton Friedman’s ten-part Free to Choose each Friday before the election as a reminder of why politically good sounding policies are often bad economics.
The tenth episode: How to Stay Free
Here is the silent film classic The Haunted House from 1908.
May it be less scary than all the political ads you’ve been getting!
It feels, especially online, that more and more people are falling into a manichean trap—imposing a false dilemma fallacy upon themselves (and others)—not by categorizing others as being not on your side but by categorizing your side as not being the other. There seems to be a knee-jerk need to take an oppositional position to justify the other side being always wrong and you yourself being always right, even if it means taking a position that you know is wrong. If they have a point, you can’t admit it without feeling like you’ve conceded everything.
becomes worse on a group level where tribalism takes over. No matter what cromulent point they other side make—heck, even just people who generally agree with you but just disagree with you and agree with them on one point or another—you have to deny this in solidarity with your tribal political group. Similarly, you have to refuse to deny if not be forced to outright agree with something you personally thing is a bad point just to remain in solidarity with your own tribal political group.
This is a problem because it raised group think above your own reasoning and subsumes your mind to the collective will of your tribal political group. It is a self-fulfilling antipodal divide.
But perhaps a more eloquent and simpler way of saying all this is to say that “[c]urrent year politics is a cesspool, everyone knows that but what people don’t want to acknowledge it has become a matter of being defined by the opposite of what you are and believe without giving credence to anything that might actually be true because gods forbid, someone said it that you don’t like…”
There are a lot of snake oil salesmen trying to convince us that America is fundamentally broken, or that radical change is necessary. We should beware of snake oil salesmen—they are in it for themselves and you are just a tool. As for you humble author, make mine freedom!
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