I started this right after the election, and last typed on it, before now, on December 8.
My how things have changed since then.
On December 8, it was easy to suppose that the Republicans would win in Georgia and we'd have divided government. Even if we didn't, the Senate divide would be so close that it would have been unlikely, we would have supposed, that there's be any really divisive Biden agenda.
And then Donald Trump started to refuse to acknowledge defeat and to spin lies about winning . . .and things in Georgia and the nation started to look different. So we held off, as the tide was changing
Then came January 6 and a Trump inflamed insurrection in Washington D. C.. The first real strike at the government since 1860 and the first insurrection of any kind since 1917, which came on the same day that Trump's extreme insistence that he won, or his extreme lies on the same, brought the Democrats into control of the Senate.
Things are sure different now. Indeed, I've just posted on that:
2020 Election Post Mortem XI. The Post Insurrection Administration and Congress.
Here's what I'd last written in this thread, before all the turmoil and the insurrection:
So now that the semi delusional youthful street dancing and spontaneous celebrations are over, the dust settling, and AOC contemplating becoming a homesteader in the realization that the past election wasn't a left wing tidal wave, where does that leave Wyoming?
Wyoming, as has been noted here before, has been a Republicans state since its inception. Only in the wake of the Johnson County War have Democrats controlled the state, and only then briefly. Still, the state once had a serious Democratic Party and it wasn't all that long ago that it had a Democratic Governor.
Starting in the 1990s, something really began to change, as we've noted before. During the Clinton Administration, the state's Democratic Party began to die. It was in real trouble well before Barack Obama became President, but it more or less completely collapsed during his two terms in office. It rebounded just a bit this cycle, which may or may not mean much.
In the meantime, Wyoming has become a one party state, and that party has been the GOP. But as with any democratic body, the formation of what George Washington termed as "factions" is inevitable, and during the last eight years the Wyoming GOP has become badly split into two factions, one the old time "mainstream" Wyoming GOP, and another an insurgent nearly alt right GOP. That latter faction is on the rise and it gained ground in the last election, as it has the last few before it.
Now what?
Well, what we know is that the US opted to go right down the middle of the road. If we don't have a divided government after the January runoffs, we darned near will. All politics is local, of course, but the country seems to have moved to the right, sort of, while opting to have a slightly left brake on things. Or it really moved slightly to the center right and just voted to hold Donald Trump in personal contempt.
What it didn't do, however, is take a giant jump to the right.
If you'd listed to the 2020 campaigns in Wyoming you'd have been justified in believing, at least occasionally, that we were preparing to take Washington D. C. in a Trump populist storm. Cynthia Lummis campaigned her support of Trump, and against Progressives. The Democrat Progressives are now in disarray but Trump is leaving the White House.
So what does this all mean for Wyoming?
It means we probably better rethink some things.
It probably means that one of the really big issues here, gun control, is amazingly back off the table, which I wouldn't have predicted just two months ago. There's not going to be Congressional support for that, so as an issue, it's probably in the background once again.
It will mean, however, that oil, gas and coal are not going to be favored industries.
It isn't as if they actually were in Washington in the first place. The Trump Administration did do a good job of addressing a lot of regulatory burdens
Solid analysis, in my view, in early December.
And wrong now.
Big changes are coming, and the state's in for a gigantic shock.
The state and its political leadership is largely unprepared to handle any of this. On the same day that insurrectionist stormed Congress the head of Wyoming's Republican Party, which as steadfastly supported the administrations absurd and dangerous fantasy that Donald Trump would still get a second term after he'd obviously and clearly lost, was in Washington D. C. at the gathering that developed into an attempted coup or something like it. Cynthia Lummis, the newly elected Wyoming Senator, voted, even after the attempt to force the defeated President into an illegitimate victory, to reject Pennsylvania's electoral vote on a basis that, if it had logic to it, would have made her own election invalid by implication. On the same day the most conservative members of the Wyoming legislature were at a protest in Cheyenne demanding that the two remaining members of the Wyoming delegation in Washington, Senator Barrasso and Congressman Cheney, be hauled in front of the legislature in order to explain their allegiance to the Constitution rather than their support for a doomed effort to subvert democracy.
By todays' date, the new world and what means is starting to sink in. Ted Cruz of Texas who could imagine himself as the Presidential candidate for the GOP in 2024 is defending himself against cries for his resignation and he is now likely to go down in defeat in his next Senatorial campaign to a candidate much to his left, something he only barely held off during his last election. Cynthia Lummis is explaining away her actions on the basis that she didn't intend it to actually defeat the Pennsylvania vote. The head of the Wyoming GOP has urged everyone to wait until the facts are all in, which they have been since the very day of the event, but he's also noting that he was back in his hotel before the insurrection commenced. The head of the Wyoming Democratic Party has called for Lummis to resign. Other Republicans are being quiet hoping the storm will blow over.
Democrats are not going to suddenly sweep into office in Wyoming. The party has gone much to far to the left. There's a reason that Wyoming hasn't elected a Democrat to the Senate since the last one left in 1977. But that doesn't mean that Wyoming Republicans should take comfort in that.
Indeed, it may be noticed that two of Wyoming's counties have become Democratic in the last few years, those being Teton County and Albany County. Fremont County remains a heavily Democratic County as well, a legacy of its earlier blue collar status and also due to the fact that the Wind River Indian Reservation, which contributed a candidate to the House of Representatives race this past year who took about 25% of the vote, a not unimpressive result in context. The Democratic challenger to Cynthia Lummis took about 30% of the vote, which is also impressive in context. Republicans running form Teton County and Albany County, and perhaps Laramie County, now will face bigger challenges than they did previously.
But beyond that, much more is now going to occur.
Within the Republican Party itself in Wyoming the open spit that now exists in the party nationally had already developed by 2018. The insurrection by the Trumpist populist wing will spill back into Wyoming and quickly. Chances are that the now minority establishment wing, in the Wyoming context, will hit back and quickly as the insurgent populists, living here in isolation, are going to choose Trump as the hill they are going to die on.
And the party itself may die. There's a very good chance that in the next couple of weeks to the next year the national Republican Party becomes two parties. If that occurs, it will occur in Wyoming as well. The insurgent wing in Wyoming is very well funded, and indeed its funding explains its rise, but if that occurs, the conservative establishment party is likely to become the majority party in Wyoming and the Democratic Party will definitely revive.
Irrespective of that all of the things that the Republican Party has used in Wyoming as talking points and stalking horses are about to actually occur.
Prior to the election The Economist, the respected European center right journal that has wide intellectual circulation in the United States (since the demise of The New Republic) flat out urged for an end to coal as a fuel source. That will now be the official policy of the United States and there will be steps taken to bring that about. Coal leasing on Federal lands is now over, at least for four years.
Oil and gas leasing may be over, on Federal lands, as well. Knowing that this might be coming, and throwing out a bone to part of its industry support, the Trump Administration rushed through a lease sale in Converse County that has already occurred. However, that's now been challenged in Court. Should the challenge prevail, that sale is likely dead if the new administration chooses to cease oil and gas leasing.
If both of these things come about, in a state that has as much public land as Wyoming does, the mineral era in Wyoming is effectively over. There will still be oil and gas exploration on private lands and on state lands, but the lands available for the extractive industries will be reduced beyond measure.
All of that sounds dire, and for Wyoming's budget, it will be. It's possible, of course, that oil and gas leasing, and in particular exploration for gas, will continue on. But it shouldn't be presumed that it will be the same. In part it will not be the same as the new administration, now unleashed due to the insurrection, will definitely "go green" in transportation.
This is something that is already happening and industry is well aware of it. But the state has been insistent, at the street level, that it just won't. The common statement that "well you can't go into the hills with an electric pickup" never really was any kind of an argument in a nation where most vehicles haul kids to soccer games. But the argument is about to simply not matter. Sympathy for the argument wasn't supporting the industry anyhow, which in actuality gets by largely on its own. But an administration that's actually hostile to it and which will seek to accelerate the change to a carbonless world, which the Biden Administration will do, will have a real impact on the state.
Indeed, Wyoming hasn't faced a financial disruption of this type since the Great Depression and it hasn't seen an industry disruption like this since World War Two. We're not prepared to handle it. The legislature has been struggling with revenue issues for several years but without much success. There's no reason to believe that they'll be successful this year. Next year, however, may present a new world that can't be ignored.
Additionally, much of the regional conservative and populist (and they aren't the same) projects are about to be frustrated, probably permanently.
The anti Wyomingite "take back the land" movement that's been a feature of the hard right in Wyoming is now dead at the Federal level. That movement was always a horrifically bad idea, but its over. Indeed, the state can now expect an expanded Federal presence on the Federal domain with some land being permanently "withdrawn" from development. There will be a renewed emphasis on the "multiple use" aspect of the Federal domain that Wyoming hasn't really seen since the 1980s.
An issue much on the mind of many Wyomingites, gun control, will actually be back for the first time since the Clinton Administration and there will be legislation without a doubt. Conservatives and populist have long decried Democratic support for gun control but in reality the Democrats have done nothing on the topic since the 1990s and there's been less gun control in the nation since that time since at any point since the 1960s, save for some measures actually brought in under Trump. That will now end as the insurrection has evaporated Democratic tolerance for this topic overnight. Gun control will be back and new gun control measures will pass Congress in 2021.
The Democratic Congress will also be a boon to left wing social positions that conservatives have long held, but which they've been uneven in making progress with the public on. These issues are national issues, not unique to Wyoming, but Wyomingites are now going to have to accept a retreat on some conservative advances that have been made over the last twenty years and an acceleration of some liberal or progressive advances that have been made in the last twelve years. Indeed, if the Democrat's have a worm in their apple, it is that they'll be tempted to push these hard and potentially provoke a conservative counter reaction by 2024.
And its 2024 that all eyes are on now. The GOP came out of the last election nationally figuring that they might take the House in 2022 and the Presidency back in 2024. They might do the latter, if they still exist as a party, but its far less likely. Indeed, they'll likely lose seats in the House and Senate in 2022 as they're likely to still be in disarray at that time.
And locally, it'll be about 2022 when the results of what just occurred last week really start to sink in here. The Federal Government doesn't care about Wyoming's budgetary woes and it doesn't care about the economy of a state where fewer people are employed than in a mid sized Mid Western city. They also don't care about our "lifestyle" and those who have now come into power know that politically we're irrelevant. It's only in our own self isolation that we imagine that we matter.
And peoples that don't matter have the unfortunate task of making themselves relevant by some means or reinforcing their own irrelevancy.
It's a new world now. What we make of it is yet unknown.
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