I’ve always enjoyed the slogan “Often wrong, never in doubt.” I’ve become more mellow in my dotage, but I fully identify with the urge to be dogmatic. Likewise, though, I’m pretty reliable when it comes time to admit a mistake.
Four years ago I was nearly alone among my associates in thinking that Trump would win. I saw that the conventional wisdom said that he didn’t have a chance, but I also saw his rallies on YouTube and realized that the conventional wisdom was responding to a media blackout. “There’s more going on than they are admitting,” I said.
I didn’t see that this time. Yes, the rallies were still there, but everybody knew it now. I didn’t perceive any stealth movement afoot. And the polls showed a seven-point spread in the popular vote.
After a hard day’s work, it didn’t take long for me to tire of watching the election returns last night. I did wake up at 2am and took a few minutes to see how things played out. Contrary to my expectations, Trump has done well and might even win. According to the polls, he should have gone down in flames.
I saw a headline this morning: ‘Election Day asteroid’ predicted to come close to Earth likely has passed already, astronomer says. My sentiments exactly, but it would have fit better four years ago.
I think that Trump has mishandled his presidency pretty badly. For the first two years his party had the majority in both houses of Congress. We radicals watched in tears while he frittered it all away, never implementing the agenda he ran on, except for appointing Gorsuch and Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Then the reactionaries handed him his head in the midterm elections and he lost the House. And we just barely missed losing the Senate yesterday. (Thank you, Antifa and BLM!)
One might say that gaining three seats in the SCOTUS is hardly “frittering away,” and I’d be willing to concede the point on the basis of lexicography, but the point that has to be made (and nearly no one is making it) is that Trump’s original issue, immigration, is paramount. As a vivid example, look at this election. If Harris had won (and she still may) and the Senate had flipped, of what use would the conservative majority be in the SCOTUS? You can bet your sweet bippy that those revolutionaries wouldn’t be tweeting and playing golf while their clock was ticking; they’d have had the heavy equipment roaring and we’d be seeing, in Obama’s words, the fundamental transformation of the United States. Specifically, third-world immigration would achieve record levels, and immigration determines who can vote. Immigration, therefore, determines the disposition of every other issue. Trump could have made a massive interruption in America’s demographic suicide. He didn’t. How he won Texas yesterday is a mystery to me–but it won’t happen again with the trends we’re seeing.
A tipping point, by definition, means a point of no return. All of my adult life I have faced “the most important election ever.” It’s always been hype. Indeed, elections have consequences and issues can be very important to a lot of people’s lives. Our society has been declining and we have averted disasters despite some bad election outcomes. But we’ve never been at a tipping point until now.