The Red Wave Becomes The Red Wedding – Flopping Aces

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, despite the worst “wrong track” numbers in memory. Probably no single explanation, but a few factors

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. What’s the point of talking about “momentum,” late-breaking events, or even how candidates perform at debates when a huge chunk of the vote is banked by mail before the debates even happen? Robotic party-line voters and harvesting matter more than campaign skill.

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.