Posted on 11/07/2020 5:19:59 AM PST by Kaslin
It's crazy political times like these that I long for how quickly, simply and peacefully the 1980 presidential election ended.
That was the year President Jimmy Carter called my father at 5 in the afternoon of Election Day - while he was in the shower - and congratulated him on winning the presidency.
Votes were still being counted and probably half the country hadn't voted yet, but by early evening Carter already knew he was being swept out of office by the Ronald Reagan landslide.
On Tuesday, Democrats were expecting to see a repeat of 1980.
They thought President Trump would be so far behind by dinner time that he'd have to call Joe Biden and concede.
For months they and the country's inept pollsters, blind pundits, and dishonest journalists had convinced themselves that a mighty Blue Wave was coming.
A Biden Blowout was going to sweep away Donald Trump, half a dozen senators like Lindsay Graham and dozens of Republican House members and put Democrats in charge of both houses of Congress and the White House.
But their Great Blue Wave turned out to be a Blue Mirage.
It looks like after a few weeks of legal challenges and a recount or two, Joe Biden is going to win, which would be a huge and impressive victory for the Democrats.
But otherwise, Election 2020 has been a political disaster for their party.
Democrats lost at least six seats in the House and legislative majorities in several states. But most important, Republicans appear on course to keep control of the Senate, dashing dangerous pipedreams of the party's old and young socialists to get rid of the filibuster and pack the Supreme Court.
Ditto for Joe Biden's promises to implement the Green New Deal, destroy our energy industry and punish the rich by jacking up taxes on incomes, capital gains, and corporations.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump may be on his way out but his Republican Party will live on and haunt the Democrat Party.
In four years Trump has single-handedly enlarged, energized, and diversified the old GOP, turning it into an energized America-first movement for millions of everyday citizens.
And though he was unfairly called a racist and a white supremacist by Democrats and the media every day for almost five years, he shocked the Democrats and impressed the liberal media this week by capturing a historic number of black, Latino, and Jewish votes.
Based on early exit polls, Trump won 26 percent of non-white voters. For a Republican, that's huge.
Instead of 8 percent he won 12 percent of the black vote, 18 percent of black men, and 8 percent of black women. More impressive, he won 32 percent of the Hispanic vote and 36 percent of Hispanic men.
President Trump was on his way to doing what many of us in the Republican Party knew we needed to do decades ago.
During the Bush II years, when I spoke to a few hundred fellow Republicans during a breakfast meeting in Florida, I told them the party had been more diverse when my father was president.
I said we needed to reach out to minorities. To prove my point, I said, "Will all the blacks and Hispanics eating breakfast with us this morning please stand up."
They all looked around at each other. No one stood. The only blacks and Hispanics in the room were serving breakfast, not eating it.
I told those Republicans that if the Party of Reagan was to survive it had to reach out to blacks and Hispanics every single year, not every two years or four years, but no one really listened until an outsider named Donald Trump came along.
President Trump's days may be numbered. But whether you are a Republican who loved him or hated him, you should give him the credit he is due.
He's shown Republicans the roadmap to the black, Hispanic, and Jewish voter. If we hope to take back the House, keep the Senate, and win the White House in the future, we need to follow that map.
WTF Mike. Surrendering already? This is not going away after a couple of recounts.
Maybe I’m too “caught up” in all the election-related news, but it really really annoys me to hear people writing off the presidential election as a loss this early. In my mind, it is nowhere near close to settled.
The old school theme that we must just accept the impressive Biden victory. Typical GOPold. Oh shucks, they put together a hell of a fraud machine. We have to tip our hats and move on. We will get em next time.
Even if Trump isnt successful here, the smart politics for anyone hoping to be the nominee in 2024 is to defend Trump to the bitter end. The GOPold is delusional to think that anyone in their camp will have the Trump expanded party without embracing the man and his agenda.
Bush v Gore wasn’t settled until mid December.
I contributed to WinRed last night. I suggest y’all bput your money where your mouth is. Recounts cost money.
I can’t imagine anyone with half a brain voting for Byedone or Rats for that matter. Of course I’m looking through a prism of truth and decency. I was listening to Catholic radio before the election and they said they couldn’t support one candidate over another. My God. The Catholics are so hooked on social justice and confused about immigrants rights they don’t realize they’re voting for baby killers when they vote democrat. Not all of course but Jesus said that you’re either with me or against me.
Trump is opposing Amnesty. He’s building The Wall. He’s not “reaching out” the way Reagan opines.
He’s being honest. He’s attempting to do what is right.
It’s a respect for his fellow Man that Lindsay Graham will never understand.
Nor most, or all, politicians.
Those Catholics are confused. They are so worried that if they promote one candidate over another, that their tax write offs will be negated, and then theyll be up Schitts Creek.
Whats amazing is that Facebook, Twitter, and others actually do this already, but Congress does nothing to change their status.
Real Catholics know the Truth. Trump is the most pro-life president in our lifetime. He deserved every Catholic vote. He got mine. Again.
Good point. I would also get off this stupid blather on how much better Trump did among different racial/ethnic groups. Hispanics may be one story; but this fixation on black voters is mystifying. If Trumps share of the black vote was 12% and Mitt Romneys was 8% in 2012, then that sounds impressive until you realize that blacks are only 13% of the population. A four point increase in that group is an impressive gain that only results in a 0.5% change in your support at the end of the day.
It all sounds familiar. The king is dead, long live us on the victories he won and the progress he made and the prosperity he brought us, but he was SUCH an embarrassment!
It’s often been this way for nations and for companies. The founders, the creative forces, the unpolished “old man,” belong to rude frontier days. Tip of the hat to him but let’s be civilized now. Feast on the corpse with the correct fork.
All these never-Trumpers make me sick.
I wouldn't have thought him a RINO, but there you go.
People seem to forget that both Reagan and Nixon had enemies in the GOPe.
The Catholic Church in the U.S. isnt a religious institution anymore. Its a giant non-profit organization that gets billions of dollars in taxpayer funds to finance its charitable efforts.
I know. There a lot of faithful Catholics. If they used their power as a whole for good our country would be a much better place. When you have the left having no problem with pope Frankie that tells you everything.
I agree; the real path to victory lies with the Hispanic vote. While Trump was able to increase his percentage of the black vote and was really the first R candidate to reach out to the black community since Reagan, we still witnessed huge majorities for the Ds, including against wonderful candidates like John James and Emily Kieczak.
President Trump, on the other hand is the only President for the last several decades who has pushed back on Chinese expansionism and aggression.
It is critical that all of us fight back through every legal, editorial, and communications means to overcome the obvious cheating encountered during this election.
Good for him.
Bush v. Gore was about flipping 327 votes in four Florida counties. And the guy who was behind in the count lost.
Trump is behind by tens of thousands of votes in states he will need to flip. Anyone who thinks that Amy Coney-Barrett is going to step in and award Trump the tens of thousands of votes he will need to win the EC is high. It's not going to happen.
Simple fact is, Trump told his voters to NOT vote by mail. It couldn't be trusted. And then he told voters to vote by mail and again in person. WTF? Joe Biden sat in his basement with his mask on and told voters to simply fill out a piece of paper and drop it in the mailbox. 104 million Americans did just that, and most of these mailed-in ballots had Biden's name on them.
Was there fraud? Probably. Did this fraud benefit Democrats? It always does. Are they going to find tens of thousands of fraudulent ballots across multiple states and flip the election? That's highly unlikely.
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