Election Strategery

With under four weeks to go, I went to the New Hampshire Secretary of State website to check out my sample ballot:

At my age, I need to keep my voting algorithm pretty simple:

  • Shudder a bit when looking at the choices for President/Vice President, and then leave that line blank.
  • Otherwise, vote for the Republicans.
  • Unless the same person appears as a Democrat, then skip.

Yes, I'm a RINO. Sue me.

And, as a geezer, I'm leaning "No" on that constitutional amendment.

I like the stoicism behind Chris Stirewalt's general election advice: Don’t Vote Like Your Life Depended on It.

The most important election is always the next one. Politicians and media hype merchants tell us every cycle that this is the most important election in history, but the truth is that in a nation with stable system of elections held in a free, fair manner and abundant constitutional protections for political minorities, the knowledge that no election is the final word helps us to live in relative harmony. If you don’t like this year’s outcome, the Tuesday after the first Monday in November of every even-numbered year will give you the chance to try, try again.

That’s why the rhetoric about the death of democracy and rise of fascism we hear from both parties is so dangerous. In trying to get the dropouts into the electorate with this kind of talk, partisans are discouraging the appropriate kind of we’ll-get-’em-next-time back and forth that characterizes voting in a healthy American republic. Raise the rhetorical stakes high enough, for long enough, and you end up with a mob smashing in the windows of the Capitol. 

Can't help but mentally add "Or worse" to that last sentence.

Fun fact: Stirewalt self-identifies as a "displaced Appalachian American with a bust of Calvin Coolidge on his bookshelf."

Further fun fact: I couldn't find a bust of Coolidge at Amazon, but they do have a bobblehead for the low, low price of $29.95. And if you really need a bust, here you go.

Also of note:

  • Meanwhile, back in the states, Brittney Griner gets back to vaping hash oil. The WSJ had a page one item yesterday: Putin’s ‘Merchant Of Death’ Gets Back To Work.

    Viktor Bout, the Russian arms dealer known as the “Merchant of Death,” walked out of a U.S. prison almost two years ago in a trade with Moscow for U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner. Now he is back in business, trying to broker the sale of small arms to Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militants.

    The 57-year-old, whose life reportedly inspired the 2005 Hollywood movie, “Lord of War,” starring Nicolas Cage, spent decades selling Soviet-made weapons in Africa, South America and the Middle East before being arrested in 2008 in a U.S. law-enforcement sting operation.

    Since his release, Bout has joined a pro-Kremlin far-right party and won a seat in a local assembly in 2023, seemingly turning the page on his days as an arms broker. But when Houthi emissaries went to Moscow in August to negotiate the purchase of $10 million worth of automatic weapons, they encountered a familiar face: the mustachioed Bout, according to a European security official and other people familiar with the matter.

    Sounds like a fun guy.

  • Because of course she does. Elizabeth Nolan Brown updates on the latest "respectable politician" assaulting free speech: Hillary Clinton Wants To Repeal Section 230.

    Hillary Clinton said on CNN this weekend that repealing Section 230 of federal communications law should be a top political priority.

    The former secretary of state's comments are a reminder that this vital protection for free speech is far from safe, even if we seem to be on the other side of peak anti-230 politics.

    Just as a reminder:

    A lot of politicians hate Section 230 precisely because it makes it more difficult for them to censor what is said online, while others hate Section 230 because it allows private companies to avoid hosting speech the politicians like. The bottom line is that both Democrats and Republicans would like to weaken or abolish Section 230, and that doing so would give government authorities more control over the internet.

    During Donald Trump's presidency, he was an enthusiastic advocate for repealing Section 230. This sort of anti-230 sentiment and action from both major parties has continued into Joe Biden's. And while anti-Section 230 sentiment has quieted down a bit in recent years, Clinton's comments serve as a good reminder that a lot of powerful people still have it out for this law.

    So: "Help us Kamala, you're our only hope?" Nope: "Not only does Trump oppose Section 230, but Democratic nominee Kamala Harris has been crusading to weaken Section 230 since her days as attorney general of California."

  • All the better to transport us down the Road to Serfdom. Rich Lowry "has the receipts" and concludes that despite her denials: Yes, Kamala Harris Wants You Out of Your Gas-Powered Car.

    Kamala Harris is an automotive libertarian, or so she maintains.

    “Contrary to what my opponent is suggesting, I will never tell you what kind of car you have to drive,” the vice president said at a campaign stop in Michigan the other day.

    She will, however, favor regulations to drastically change the mix of gas-powered and electric cars that are manufactured in the United States, regardless of what consumers want.

    The Biden-Harris administration has been working to regulate the American car market more to its liking. In 2023, the EPA proposed rules to make electric vehicles as much as 67 percent of new light vehicles sold by 2032. The agency then backed off a little, to electric vehicles constituting 56 percent of such cars in 2032 (another 13 percent would be hybrids, leaving purely gas-powered cars at less than 30 percent).

    From the relevant Wikipedia article (translated from its original language): "Plan is law, fulfillment is duty, over-fulfillment is honor!"


Last Modified 2024-10-12 7:47 AM EST