Today, it is eight days before a midterm election perhaps like no other in our nation's history. I'm sitting here on Halloween, hoping that the spirits being summoned by the electorate are our very best ones, the ones that put freedom and justice ahead of the darker passions that afflict the human soul.
And, honestly speaking, though I'm as sure as I am of anything when it comes to what I think American voters should do, I'm not at all confident that they're going to do it.
There's every reason to think that disaster might be lying in wait for our democracy next week. As MSM outlets are fond of reminding us all the time, the President's party gets punished in the midterms, meaning the Democrats in this case. Despite a growing economy, with growing employment, people are anxious about the cost of living, which, for a sizable number of voters, is their leading concern going into Election Day. And turnout for midterm elections tends to be on the low side, which is never good news for Democrats, always the party needing to rely on millions of votes to cancel out millions of Republican dollars.
And, to tell you the truth, if the mood of the country was calmer and more mutually respectful, it might be the case where I might view what will happen on November 8 as not the end of the world when it comes to what I and other progressives hope for from our politics. I might, depending on the state of my own life, view things through the prism that so many Americans view our politics: that of sports and entertainment. Your team loses the World Series or Super Bowl this year? It's OK. Wait until next year. There'll be another chance.
But what I fear from these midterms is not mere disappointment. It is existential dread. At times, it comes close to sheer terror when I consider the worst of the possibilities. Because this time we truly have absolutely no certainty that there will be "another chance."
I try to take comfort in the possibility that the polls, which suggest we're at jump-ball when it comes to who will win and who will lose, are undercounting the number of Democratic voters who would not normally make a point in coming out for midterm elections, who see the current anti-democratic trend in our nation and understand that this is no time to (pardon the cliche) make the perfect the enemy of the good. And there is some news on the early-voter front that suggests that this possibility may be a reality.
But it's a possibility. Until the votes are counted, it's an unknown. It's not the sort of trend that pollsters pay much attention to in part because it's an outlier in voting history. Pollsters owe their continued existence to being right, and, good corporate entities that most of them are, they take the more conservative approach of guidance via historical norms.
And pollsters do their work hand-in-hand with other good corporate entities which all of us collectively know as the Press. And, since freedom of the presses belongs to their owners, they likewise tend to take a conservative approach to protecting their property interests. Indeed, they will go so far as to exaggerate, or even lie about, the results of poll resorts on which they report in a manner that promotes the prospects of Republicans. Here, for example, is a report from a Florida newspaper suggesting that Democrats should be scared to death about a Republican lead in early voting that amounts to about 1% of the votes cast so far.
Or even more perniciously, they will pretend that MAGA Republicans are really just "moderate" folk, no more dangerous than the next-door suburban neighbor you meet at your children's soccer matches. As was the case in Virginia last year, they can sometimes fool enough voters in a purple state with this nonsense so as to get them to vote against their interests. This may very well happen again this year.
So. November 8 may be a total disaster. Or it may not. And my own estimate of my persuasive powers is far from exaggerated. But too much is at stake to do nothing. So I will take my chances.
And I will do so as simply as I can. By reminding all of you of the reasons why November 8 could be at total disaster. Especially if the Republicans not only win, but win big.
Let's start with the never-ending, Diogenes-style search for the perfect, reasonable, "moderate" Republican. All you media folks out there, put down your lanterns. The search is over. And the bad news is this: there aren't any. If any of these folks were reasonable, well, they stopped being Republicans a while ago. If anything, the contemporary Republican Party is a 100% poster child for what happens to a party when it heads down the rabbit hole of extremism. Take, for example, the Federalist Society, those wonderful folks who believe in the nonsense of constitutional "originalism" and have now, with the help of "moderate" Republicans, enshrined that nonsense in our legal system. They're not going around pretending to be "moderate." Hell, they're not even going around pretending to be "conservative" anymore.
To that, let's add the reality that pollsters, while operating as slaves to historic trends, in fact are infected with enough corporatism that an increasingly large number of them operate with a bias toward Republican-flavored outcomes. These polling organizations are used in an attempt not to measure public opinion, but to openly shape it. Don't have any doubts about the reality of this; it is literally happening right now.
And this should not be surprising, given the plethora of openly right-wing leaning media outlets that have always operated without any pretense of presenting an objective perspective on current events. Rather, they exist to feed an audience that pretends to want secret truths, but actually wants what even it knows on some level to be bald-faced lies, the better to grease its prejudices and narcissism. That feeding, it should now be apparent, is a never-ending process, in which each day's red meat has to be redder and meatier than it was the previous day.
The best, choicest, most succulent meat of all? Racism. Racism that went beyond the dog-whistle stage a long time ago, and is now served up on television and computer screens everywhere, without pretense of being anything decent. I could give you multiple examples but, when it comes to this garbage, you can always count on Tucker Carlson to sum it up for you.
Why do Republicans and their MAGA supporters need all of this corrupt help? Why does all of this meant that, if it actually helps them, November 8 will be a disaster?
Well, I called this post Part I for a reason. There will be a Part II later on this week. As they used to say in the days when broadcast programs dominated the news media environment, stay tuned.
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