One Of The Strangest Elections On The Books

It's one of the strangest elections on the books, as witness the shock among so many on the Democrat side that they did so well. They somehow managed to defy political gravity...

To get the most obvious out of the way, a lot of people are yelling "fraud." Some hinky stuff happened, and apparently we'll have to put up with that forever, because the electorate does not insist on clean, efficient elections even after states like Florida prove it's possible.

Fraud doesn't explain nationwide results, though. Better to consider that Dems took advantage of the pandemic to loosen voter rules to an absolutely insane degree, and they are absolute masters at harvesting what we might politely refer to as the "indifferent" voter. ...

Second, candidate quality matters - and it matters a LOT more for the party that doesn't have a massive ballot-harvesting machine humming away to scoop up indifferent voters early....

Third, and related: money matters, a lot....

... the pandemic changed this country for the long term, and not at all in a good way. A certain despair has settled in... The pandemic brought a deep and enduring shift toward the desire for government-provided "security" at all costs... This happened at a time when the Left's control of institutional power became near-absolute....

Want to know how Dems won PA with a guy who has serious brain damage? Same way they put a senile disaster in the White House and then weathered the midterms. Party power, institutional control, ideological unity, a machine that spits out votes even if the candidate is a turnip...

That Could Have Gone Better, by Kurt Schlichter, The Burning Platform, 20 November 2022.