False conscious stasis
Everybody believes in a “false consciousness” when their candidates and platforms fall short, and democracy when they win. So I gaze over the dailykos and see a bit about the white women of Georgia not voting for Stacey Abrams as way of jumping aside from a storyline on Black males slumping off of her due to vast “disinformation campaigns”. Abrams neither saint nor devil, and certainly not entitled to a victory — and I have yet to see anything untortid in a campaign by Republicans for black male votes that she faced up against — she forever has the taint of not conceding her 2018 loss.
The National Review is hilarious. It is a partisan political game where by any rights no matter the realistic size of a Republican victory, their pre-election prognostication should still be able to get called out on. But, realistically, even a tiny good night for the Republicans would have left them sweeping all things aside — ignoring their celebration on the impending defeat of New York governor Hochul and coming inauguration of Zedel. The magazine’s website did manage to get ahead with a column proposing that Hochul will be saved by some population mass exodus of New York Republicans. It is a variant on false consciousness doing in their politician. I suppose they all moved to Florida and contributed to DeSantis’s landslide.
It is worth pointing out New York Republicans had a good night, in that their House victories are responsible for the narrow Republican House and Speaker of the House McCarthy. Funny thing. In 2020, the Democrats won the House and lost expectations game, where in 2022 they lost the House and won the expectations game. Partisans wise we are at a point of stasis, fault-lines in the two parties all too apparent
For the question that haunted this election where in many respects I don’t much care — the Trump “insurrection” ploy and who runs the mechanics of election counting in 2024 — it is likely Trump’s January 8er has his governor in Arizona — and on that, though the Democratic tactical game in propping up some candidates worked well, it failed in one important instance.