Well, I’m almost back to my version of live blogging. (This is being written in the afternoon of New Year’s Day.) What better time than the present to catch up on what transpired while I was “away”? (I never left the states of North Carolina and Virginia.)
Tag Archives: voter intimidation
Wrong, But For How Long?
This article was written well ahead of scheduled publishing in order to accommodate my travel plans.
I predicted the possibility of massive voter intimidation in 2022. For the most part I was incorrect. However, I fear I may have just been premature. The Republicans severely underperformed in 2022. Their MAGA base will never blame it on bad candidates and/or the lack of a platform that addressed the voters’ concerns. The professional political class of Republicans have spent at least since 2009 ignoring the issues and are simply obsessed with winning at any cost including American democracy and the welfare of much of their current base. In fact, their goal is eventually to eliminate voters from the equation.
Divert, Delay, Dissuade
I saw this coming. In fact, I have warned of it before in this column. On Monday Trump’s hand picked RNC Chair, Ronna McDaniel, (she dropped the Romney middle name when Trump became uncomfortable with it despite her blood relation to Mitt Romney) told Breitbart News that the Republican party had recruited over 45,000 poll watchers in battleground states for the 2022 elections. This has nothing to do with the advertised integrity and everything to do with voter intimidation and other undemocratic intents.
America Has A Problem
The first step in solving a problem is recognizing that it exists. America, in the person of President Joe Biden, took that first step on Thursday night.
Fear
Baseball movies are usually far from the best in cinematography. That said, probably my favorite baseball movie of all time is the 1957 film, Fear Strikes Out. It portrays Jimmy Piersall’s (who was a very good major leaguer) fight against mental illness exacerbated (I’m probably being kind) by his father. In baseball basically the worst thing a hitter can do is strike out. It is the ultimate failure in any particular at bat. Piersall was afraid of failure/failure to please his father.