In Which Will Embraces QAnon

We had a thought last night as we pondered the stunning brazenness with which the Democrat party has stolen the election. What if they did it on purpose? What if they made it so obvious that the legislatures in Pennsylvania, Michigan, etc. would have no choice but to set aside the vote and choose their own electors?

Reader(s) of this blog know exactly what will happen if the GOP legislatures did that. Massive protests, riots spilling out into the suburbs, probably riots staged in the exurbs so as to provoke MAGA folk into opening fire and creating a 'Kent State' incident.*

This is classic Cloward/Piven stuff.

Some of you, but not all, are thinking the election has broken Will's brain. Oh it has, we assure you, reader(s), it has. Remember the week after?

Call us a crazy conspiracy theorist if you like. But just remember the navy has released footage of fighter jets chasing UFO's, they're finding monoliths in the desert,  and Jeffrey Epstein did not kill himself. At this point believing the election was legit is the conspiracy theory.

*This blog endorses the Ohio National Guard completely and without hesitation. 

Friday Morning Ramblings

Whatever happens this election is a disaster for everyone.

People who think it'll be ok because the GOP will control the senate don't understand the stakes and don't understand how the Dems work.

That being said the Dems will get obliterated in the midterms.

Ben Shapiro said the Dems overcoming Trump's half million vote lead in PA is a 'heavy lift'. 

Ben Shapiro is so smart that sometimes he misses important details.

Of course the Dems overtook Trump in Georgia. 

You didn't think they would get to within 20K votes and walk away, did you?

For what it's worth, numbers people we follow say Trump will win Arizona and come back in Georgia due to military ballots.

We're not sure what it's worth.

Dear lord the fraud is so blatant, so obvious, so indifferent to appearances. 

Ace speaks for this blog.

We are impressed with the breadth of Trump's legal offensive.

It seems like they were prepared.

Before election day Trump won a bunch of election related legal victories.

Trump has already won a couple of legal victories in Pennsylvania.

So there's some hope on that front.

We agree that Trump and Rudy being New Yorkers gives them a certain 'street fighting edge'.

Some friends have said the election is in the bag because when it goes to the Supreme Court we have ACB.

We don't know, man. Conservative justices have a way of knifing the GOP. Just ask John Roberts.

We like to think Cocaine Mitch told ACB she was nominated in the expectation she would rule favorably for Trump.

The base is rallying. One didn't see GOP protests during the Florida recount.

Make it absolutely fucking clear that GOPs not publicly supporting the president can't count on the base's support.

Anyway, we reduced our election info intake by some yesterday, but not enough.

This needs to get down to seeing what's happening in the morning and then catching up over evening coffee.

We deleted our Twitter account. That thing was useful election night, but turned into crack.

There's nothing we can do, no point in mainlining it.

We started a book on the Allied war effort in Western Europe. But it didn't read well, you know what we mean? The pages were long and the type small. It was hard to feel like one was making progress. And the book was so big it was physically hard to hold.

Embracing the Horror Part I: Acceptance

Yesterday we allowed ourselves to consider the possibility that Trump would lose. It wasn't pleasant. 

We recall election night 2000. When it seemed Algore won, we retired to our small study and poured ourselves a drink.

Yesterday evening we retired to our library. In 2000 we had three book cases. Today we have twelve.  We searched for comfort in the row on row of books, more than a thousand of them. We found none. Perhaps we could bury ourselves in a reading project, we thought. But we found no inspiration. We looked upon the books and thought, We're forty-seven. What's the point of all this anymore?

On a whim we picked up P.J. O'Rourke's Republican Party Reptile and re-read his account of a 1982 Volga River cruise in sponsored by The Nation. The essay was no less insightful and funny than when we first read it in 1997 or so. 

Out of the blue our closest friend facetimed us from Ireland, where he's lived some fifteen years or. We said our ancient greeting,  'Aye lad!'  He raised a glass, 'Oh good, you're drinking...' we said with irony. For no reason whatsoever we showed the man some of our books.

'Look!' we exclaimed, The Story of Civilization! Sure lots of people have it, but I've actually read about half of them!'

'Check this out, you see this book on Guadalcanal?'

'Um, yeah...'

'I bought that 30 years ago and still haven't read it!'

'Okay...?'

'Look at these, The American Heritage Series. I've got all of them! And see that shelf? That's all medieval history. Look at those primary sources, monks motherfucker!'

'Dude....Are you doing coke?'

'No, why do you ask?'

We talked amiably.

Indeed the library did seem futile. Some of those books have been unread for decades. We'll never read them. 

Bah, maybe it's just mood. We've had foot problems for over a month now. First gout in the right foot, then the lingering damage and general pain requiring three cortisone shots. Then our left toe got a gout and inflammation attack.  It was red and purple. A few days ago our oldest dropped a plate. We broke out the vacuum to clean up the shards and promptly ran over that same toe. It was at least as painful as getting kicked in the nuts. Once the toe healed we got another gout attack in the ankle. A month of this crap. A month of hobbling around, waking up at night feeling like out ankle or tow is in a vice.

And all that might be followed up by a Trump loss. By Adon's Ban...

Will Tells the Ruski's about the Proud Boys

 Our latest bit of Russian collusion:

So, President Trump contracted the Wuhan Virus. As of this writing it is unclear exactly how he got it or when, though the announcement of Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court is widely suspected. The president tested positive Thursday night and spent most of Friday at the White House before checking into Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Trump stage-managed every moment...

Click it, you know you want to.

Bibi for the Win

The Israeli election is tomorrow.

This guy pretty much agrees with us and has Likud winning 31 seats and the right bloc 66 overall out of 120, which means Netanyahu will be asked to form the next government.

This will also be an interesting opportunity to see if the Stroock Effect, whereby polls underestimate conservatives by a couple of points, still holds.

Gantz and the Blue and Whites (a great party name, btw) may have laid the groundwork for the future, but this time around they didn't convince us.

Someday Israel will have to have it out on these secular v religious issues. Today is not that day. When that day comes, we'd vote Blue and White.*

Besides, another Netanyahu victory will just kill liberals and that will be fun to watch all over again.

*Reminder, we do not have a vote in Israel.

How you got Trumped

The estimable Sean Trende writes a great analysis. Go read it.

Two salient points I think.

First, stop thinking that you've figured out politics that you have the winning formula. Politics never changes. Every four years you start at zero and have to get to 270 Electoral Votes. It's a 50/50 country, and usually is. Americans aren't prone to great political swings one way or the other and are inclined to split the difference.

Bottom line, the only difference between FDR and Reagan are small details.

Second, he goes into John Judis and Roy Texiera's The Emerging Democratic Majority, written in 2002. This is pretty much where the whole demography and destiny argument began. I vividly recall reading it and thinking, 'Oh crap.' Well how's that working out for the Dems?

I've got a counter to the Demo is Dest theory. Demography is destiny, but the Dems have reversed it. All these hipster douche-nozzle's rioting for safe spaces and safety pins, how many kids do they have? How many are they gonna have?

Me, I have three adorable little girls.

Any questions?

Wednesday Q&A With Will Stroock

Post Election Trump Edition

Q: How did you get the election so right?
WTS: I payed attention.

Q: Are you always right about elections?
WTS: Generally speaking, yes I am always right about elections. But I blew it big time in 2012.

Q: Are you a member of the Alt-Right?
WTS: No.

Q: What is the Alt-Right?
WTS I have no idea.

Q: C'mon.
WTS: I guess one could say its a lose amalgam of old time conservatives, Buchananites, Perotistas and some of the new Red Pill, Gamer-Gate types. See Milo, Vox Day, Mike Cernovitch.

Q: Ok, I guess.
WTS; Right.

Q: If you aren't in the Alt-right, what are you in?
WTS: The international Neo-Con conspiracy.

Q: What the hell is that?
WTS: We're the ones who subscribe(d) to the Weekly Standard. We have all these neat policy ideas. Also we supported invading Iraq as the first step toward winning the war on terror. Also we support Israel.

Q: Have you changed your mind on any of this?
WTS: Absolutely not.

Q: Iraq?
WTS: What, you think the world is better with Saddam Hussein in it?

Q: But the war, the money, the casualties.
WTS: That's war, boy.

Q: Chickenhawk.
WTS: Call me that again I'll fuck you up and cock slap your face.

Q: Really?
WTS: Try me, motherfucker. I'm 6-0 and displacing about 240 lbs. Anytime, bitch.

Q: Getting back to Neo-conservatism...
WTS: Please.

Q: Why are so many Neo-Cons Jewish?
WTS: Because of the international Jewish cabal secretly runs things. Also the Queen, the Colonel, the Gettys...

Q: No seriously.
WTS: I dunno.

Q: If you're a Neo-Con why did you support Donald Trump?
WTS: Mr. Trump is not Hillary. Also, he's our first Jewish president.

Q: What?
WTS: His mannerisms, his work life, his family, everything about him says 'How you doing Maury? Give me a bagel and a schmeer'.

Q:Wrapping up...
WTS: Thank god.

Q: Ah, yes.  What do you think Hillary is doing now?
WTS: Her Majesty? Plotting her 2020 presidential run.

Q: Seriously?
WTS: What else is she going to do?

Q: You think she can win?
WTS: She won't even get the nomination.

Q: Why not.
WTS: Pretty hard to do when your dead. Even for a Democrat.

Q: Huh?
WTS: If the Parkinson's doesn't get her, the STD will.

Q: You're a mean bastard.
WTS: I'm sorry, I thought you knew.

You've been Stroocked

Yeah, I got it right. I saw the signs, yes, I saw the signs.

I honestly don't understand why so many people are stunned by Mr. Trump's victory.

Let's take this number by number, real slow, so that even a J-school trained media stenographer of the kind working at the Times or the Post can understand it.

1-There were plenty of polls that showed the following:

1.1- Trump locked up Ohio. He locked up Florida. By the last week Mr. Trump was campaigning in PA, MI, WI, and Minnesota. None of these states had gone GOP since the 80's. Minne-frakin-sota!

1.2-We've had five major elections in the western world in the last few years: the US midterms, Israel, Canada, Britain and Brexit. In four out of five of those races polls consistently underestimated conservative turnout. The one exception was Canada. Why Canada? Because there was no social cost for supporting Prime Minister Zoolander.

2- You need three things to win. Circumstances, candidates and ideas (thanks Rush).

2.1- Well, the circumstances for Hillary! were terrible, weren't they? The economy stinks. Our foreign policy is a wreck and it is really, really hard to replace an incumbent in your own party.

2.2 - Hillary! had all the charisma of a damp rag (to borrow from Mr. Farrage) and a low grade bank clerk, (to borrow from Mr. Farrage again).  She was a horrible candidate. She's Bobdole without the Viagra.

2.3 - Hillary! had no ideas. Hillary!'s idea was Hillary!

3- We all got Trumped

3.1 He had circumstances.

3.2- He had a couple of very sloganable ideas.

3.3- He turned into a good candidate. He was fun and exciting.

4.0 Anecdotal

4.1- You could feel it. You could see the Trump stickers and the Trump yards signs. They were everywhere.

4.2- He packed them in, everywhere he filled arenas.

4.3- This made for a vast enthusiasm gap.

5 Trump was underestimated

5.1 He vanquished the best slate of candidates the GOP has fielded in a generation. Ted Cruz is picking up Trump's dry cleaning. Rubio wants to know what time his cheerleader wife should be at Trump's suite, and Jeb Bush's political skull is being used as an ashtray for Mr. Trump's victory cigars.

5.2 Yet still the Dems underestimated him. Morons.

You all listened to a bunch of number-crunchers with a lot of high-falootin degrees analyzing distributions and regression lines; I don't even know what that is. Old Washington hands assured us that is was over when the tapes came out (I'm looking at you, Chuck Todd, who I'm pretty sure interviewed me for a job at Roll Call in 2000). Mike Murphy and Bob Shrum assured us all Hillary! was gonna win. Check the resume's of those two clowns, see what they ever won.

Meanwhile, me with my on-line degrees, my little free blog,  and my self-published books, saw what they couldn't.

Bow down. Bow down before me. Not because I have the sight, the clairvoyance, or even the Force. Bow down because I opened my freaking eyes.

Jerks.

Beware the Silver Svengali

Every election has its Svengali, its schwamie who can look at the data and predict what will happen.

This year it was Nate Silver at 538. I never paid him much attention, though I admit he called 2012 on the dot. Most of my liberal friends check him daily to see that 'everything was all right'. Well he blew it. He shouldn't feel bad, he's not the first.

After the '96 election the best pollster was John Zogby. He nailed the vote percentages that year and picked up Gore's last minute movement in 2000. Then he wrecked himself in 2004, waiting till 5 PM on election night to make his predictions, after the exit poll data came in. That data was deeply flawed. Zogby predicted Jean Francois Kerry (A-hole, France) would win 390 electoral votes. He didn't.

The big winner in 2004 was Scott Rasmussen, who became something of a cult leader among us poll watchers. I was the leader of that cult. He nailed the 2002 off years, 2004, 2006, and 2008 (which was easy) and 2010. He was dead last in 2012 and was ousted by his own board.

So now Nate Silver goes down. I guess the IBD Poll is the new Svengali. I wonder how they'll get it wrong in 2020.

Election day Cometh forsooth

I don't really have anything interesting to say on the matter or any special insight.

My sense is this: Mr. Trump peaked at the right time and then surged. He seems to have locked up Fl and OH, IA and NH and has Clinton fighting like mad for PA and MI. If Mr. Trump wins either state then its all over.

Facts:

Early voting totals, once thought to be one of Hillary!'s strengths, now look very good for Mr. Trump.

It seems Mr. Trump is getting about 19 percent of the black vote.

Mr. Trump seems to be doing no worse with Hispanics than Romney.

Via the IBD poll yesterday, it seems Mr. Trump has picked up a lot of female support (there's a joke in there someplace).

As in British parliamentary elections, the Brexit Vote and the Israeli elections, the press and pollsters have underestimated the conservative vote by a couple of points.

The Trump people are really, really motivated.

It is hard to replace the sitting president in your own party, ask Nixon or Algore.

Its a change election. Hillary isn't change.

The economy stinks.

Our foreign policy is a disaster.

At some point, people just want something new, and it doesn't matter how flowed the opposition candidate is. Just ask Bill Clinton.

For these reasons I think Mr. Trump win decently with no election night drama.

We'll see.

Trumpsuaded

This is a persuasion election as Dilbert's Scot Adams likes to say.

That seems obvious but it isn't really.

2012, 2004 and 2000 were turnout elections. The GOP didn't understand that in 2000 and lost it inthe last week. They figured it out in 2004, upping their vote total by 20% and blew it 2012.

2008 and '96 were cooked. The circumstances absolutely favored the guy who won. Ditto 84 which was a coronation for Reagan.

I'm not quite sure where 88 fits into all this.

The last persuasion election I recall was 1980. There, Reagan had to persuade America that he was a viable alternative it Carter. He did in the last week.

Something similar has happened here with Trump. By my reconing he already has 270 (with NH, NV turning red) and the battle is in PA, MI and and CO. I strongly suspect he will win PA and MI.

We'll see of course.

These are my new year's predictions:

-Hillary Clinton will not be the Democrat Party nominee for President
-She will drop out of the race and site 'health reasons'
-Chelsea Clinton will lay the groundwork for running for office in New York State, possibly as the successor to Senator Charles Schummer
-Joe Biden will be the Democrat Party nominee for President
-Marco Rubio will be the next President of the United States
-Governor Nikki Haley will be the next Vice President of the United States
-Israel and Hezbollah will fight ten years after the last fight
-The economy will slip into recession
-Justin Trudeau will become a laughing stock
-Vladimir Putin will take the measure of Trudeau and shift his emphasis to the Arctic
-Everywhere Social Justice Warriors will be on the defensive
-The New England Patriots will win the Superbowl
-The Washington Nationals will win the World Series.

Heh.