The 2024 Election, Part XXVI. Touching Down

If a man continually blusters, if he lacks civility, a big stick will not save him from trouble….It is both foolish and undignified to indulge in undue self-glorification, and above all, in loose-tongued denunciation of other peoples.

Theodore Roosevelt, 1901.

August 20, 2024, 7:00 p.m.

And the primary results are in!  We're off and running for the general election.

Of course, the biggest race of the year, pitting a meandering, lying, babbling Donald Trump and his National Conservative running mate J. D. Vance against a fairly committed left wing but cogent ticket made up of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz wasn't on the ballot.  At one time, in Wyoming primaries, you actually did get to voice your opinion on who should run in the Republican or Democratic Party for President, but it was just that, an opinion vote.  The ticket was still chosen at conventions, with the Democratic one being open, and the Republican one being closed.

I guess that was confusing or pointless, so that isn't done anymore.

By way of a full confession, I started typing this out before August 20, and I'm posting right as the polls close, so the first part are predications, but probably fairly safe ones.

John Barrasso, twice endorsed by Trump, will have handily defeated Reid Rasner, who is a genuine Trumpist.  At one time it looked like Rasner had a chance, but Barrasso out Trumped him and easily won.

Barrasso will face Democrat Scott Morrow.

At least that's what I think occurred.

Harriet Hageman I'm sure won race against the Quixotic effort of Steve Helling.  Hopefully Helling quits these races at this point as this is embarrassing.

Hageman will face Kyle Cameron.

cont:

Senator Barrasso's  victory was a total blowout.

So was Harriet Hageman's.

Locally, Senator Anderson beat Bryce Reece, but only barely.

Given the campaign Reece ran, that's disappointing.  Reece was backed by what frankly were lies.

The longest serving legislator in the U.S. currently, Sen. Charlie Scott, beat out challenger Rob Hendry handily.

Elissa Campbell took retiring House member Jerry Obermueller's seat, keeping the seat in the rational Republican category.

Julie Jarvis handily defeated incumbent far right controversial populist Jeanette Ward for her House seat.  It'll be interesting to see if this trend crosses the state, and it'll also be interesting to see if Ward moves on.

For County Commissioner in Natrona County incumbent Dave North came out on top followed by new candidate Casey Coates.

For Casper City Council veteran former legislator Pat Sweeney came out on top with incumbent Amber Pollock second for Ward I, which makes for an interesting reentry into politics for Sweeney.

The Natrona County Senior District passed, but only barely.

August 21, 2024

The big new of the night is that the Freedom Caucus, while Ward went down in Casper, gained in the House overall and there will now be a populist House of Representatives, a very bad development for Wyoming.

Wyoming Freedom Caucus Has Huge Republican Primary, Could Gain 11 Seats

To clarify Ward I for Casper, Pat Sweeney, Amber Pollock, Ken Dockweiler and Julie Collins-Thiel, made it through the primary.

The senior district passed by only 110 votes.

cont:

Freedom Caucus Firebrand Jeanette Ward Upset For House District 57

Rod Miller: The Wyoming Freedom Caucus Wins Some Big Pots

Of note from Miller's article;

There are already about a hundred and fifty thousand voting-eligible Wyoming citizens who don’t even register. If voter ennui and negative politics drive more of our neighbors away from the polls, then decisions affecting the Big Empty will be made by fewer and fewer people. 

The effective head of the Democratic Party issued an immediate statement:

cont:

Mike Schmid Beats Cat Urbigkit In Highly-Watched Sublette County House Race

August 22, 2024

Mary Peltola finished first in Alaska's primary, one of the view in the country which actually makes sense in the modern era.  She got over 50% of the primary vote.

Republican Nick Begich III,  son of a prominent liberal political family in Alaska, who turned right wing and who has been endorsed by the  House Freedom Caucus, came in second with 27 percent and will face Peltola in the general election.

As if having the world's most boring musician artist, James Taylor slated to sing at the DNC, the Democrats had Opera Winfrey speak yesterday.  Winfrey is an example of pop baloney that plagues American culture, on both the left and the right, with her particular bland thick cut left of center baloney.

Bill Clinton, who noted that he's younger than Donald Trump, spoke as well, demonstrating a remarkable political recovery.  Republicans immediately took to social media to attempt to criticize him for his affair with Monica Lewinsky, which of course just serves to point out Donald Trump's behavior with women.  Clinton's flights on Epstein's plan, which did occur, were noted as well, but then Trump flew on it nearly as much.  So the point of the criticism was . . . ."

On Trump, Tammy Duckworth was on one of the weekend shows and outright called Trump a "five time" "draft dodger",  and called him a "draft dodging coward" in a speech at, I believe, the DNC.  Four out of the five deferments Trump had during the war were student deferments.  

It's interesting who the ghosts of the Vietnam War is returning to haunt once again.  I haven't heard somebody use student deferments to equate with draft dodging for years, although I have heard it.

August 23, 2024

Names for the Natrona County Senior District election, just approved, must be submitted by August 30.

And more proof that the National Conservatives may have shot their bolt:

Trump running away from Project 2025 and its authors.

Trump apparently spent a fair amount of the Democratic Convention basically live tweeting it, which is weird.

This showed up on Twitter, where somebody made this comment, so I'm not the only one who has had this reaction:

Am I the only one kinda floored that the GOP candidate for the United States President, is trolling social media like a disgruntled teenage boy who's girlfriend just dumped him? 🙄😬

cont:

Robert Kennedy has dropped out of the race and endorsed Trump.

Frankly, I doubt that makes any difference in the race whatsoever.

August 24, 2024

The third place finisher in the Alaska House race dropped out in hopes of throwing the race to the GOP.

And here, a real rambling string of Trump weirdisms:  Babble.

August 25, 2024

Relic of the 1970s Cornel West is not eligible to appear on Pennsylvanian's Presidential election ballot.

August 26, 2024

Trump's now mad at the network hosting the upcoming debate and threatening to back out.

August 27, 2024

The Harris campaign wants to unmute the mikes in the upcoming debate, should it occur.

That was a rule that the Biden team imposed for the last debate, but now its the Trump team that wants to keep it, fearful that Trump's inability to mute himself will sabotage him.

And frankly, Trump has grown increasingly incoherent on occasion, prone to going off on long wondering weird babbling.

On Twitter this morning is a clip of an extremely tired looking Donald Trump (he looks absolutely fatigued) rambling about climate change.

Okay, having lived through the dementia of one of my parents, this is frightening.  He sounds, frankly, like somebody in the early stages of it.

August 28, 2024

Chuck Gray Skeptical Independent Candidate Got 68 Signatures In 10 Minutes

How a progressive slate dominated the Laramie City Council primaries

‘I’m afraid of the place the state is going’: Wyoming’s House minority leader reacts to primary election results

Reid Rasner Said His Polls Showed He Was In A Dead Heat With Barrasso, But He Lost Huge

There's some sort of lesson in that last one.

One of those is believing your own propaganda.  It had been obvious for months that he was gong to lose.

August 29, 2024

J. D. Vance at a rally stated:

Kamala Harris is disgraceful. We’re going to talk about a story out of those 13 brave, innocent Americans who lost their lives, it’s that Kamala Harris is so asleep at the wheel that she won’t even do an investigation into what happened, and she wants to yell at Donald Trump because he showed up. She can…she can go to hell.

Vance is a co-religious of mine and this statement is sinful.  First of all, telling somebody they can "go to hell" is sinful.  Secondly, this is a lie.  Harris would have had nothing to do with the American withdrawal from Afghanistan as Vice President, which is what this statement is about.  He well knowns that.  Moreover, while the withdrawal was done badly, any withdrawal following Donald Trump's surrendered to the Taliban would have been difficult.

Afghanistan, it might be noted, has been in the news, now that the Taliban is back in control.  Taliban control can be attributed to Donald Trump.  He surrendered.

August 30, 2024

J.D. Vance, who is cutting a pretty wide swath, has been speaking a lot.  I suspect that's because Trump isn't really up to it.

Anyhow, Vance was booed by a firefighters union in Boston and then went on to try to mock Kamala Harris with a video of Miss North Carolina giving a poor answer to a pageant question.  Given Vance's prior cat lady comments, that's drawn the comments that his misogynistic, which were already out there, and ironically the figure he lampooned in that fashion, a Miss North Carolina, is a big Republican supporter. 

And, from another recent Trump address:

Some people don't eat bacon anymore. This was caused by their horrible energy. Wind. They want wind all over the place. When it doesn't blow, we have a problem.

cont:

I do the weave. Do you know what the weave is? I’ll talk about 9 different things, and they all come back brilliantly together. And friends of mine that are like English professors say, ‘It’s the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen, but the fake news say, ‘He rambled.

English professors?

Horse shit.

Well, let's see. First the earth cooled. And then the dinosaurs came, but they got too big and fat, so they all died and they turned into oil. And then the Arabs came and they bought Mercedes Benzes. And Prince Charles started wearing all of Lady Di's clothes. I couldn't believe it. He took her best summer dress, put it on and went to town.

Jacobs, Airplane II.

August 31, 2024

Seemingly feeling the heat, Trump is now against the Florida abortion measure.

Matt Malcom, who lost in the primary, is now suing to get on the ballot as an independent, in his Cheyenne district.  A Wyoming law prohibits a primary loser from doing this.

September 2, 2024

Casper sent out a mailer with its Sixth Cent  proposals:

“Proposition 1: $7,300,000 and interest earned thereon to the City of Casper to reconstruct the aging, failing, and undersized Metro Animal Shelter to better provide for animal health and safety.” (The current shelter is located at 2392 Metro Road.)

“Proposition 2: $5,000,000 and interest earned thereon to the City of Casper to fund a portion of the total construction costs of a second sheet of ice adjacent to the existing Casper Ice Arena.” (The arena is located at 1801 E. 4th St.)

“Proposition 3: $4,200,000 and interest earned thereon to the City of Casper to install a new quad capacity chair lift to replace the aging and outdated lift and add lighting at Hogadon Ski Area.”

“Proposition 4: $4,000,000 and interest earned thereon to the City of Casper to construct two fastpitch softball fields for league competition and high school use.”

“Proposition 5: $4,400,000 and interest earned thereon to the City of Casper to partially fund costs associated with the replacement of the City Casper’s outdated Fire Station #1.”

“Proposition 6: $5,000,000 and interest earned thereon to the City of Casper to fully replace the outdated and obsolete equipment for the 911 Dispatch Center.”

“Proposition 7: $3,600,000 and interest earned thereon to the City of Casper to build a new auxiliary gym to provide much needed space for programming at the Casper Recreation Center.” (The Center is located at 1801 E. 4th St.)

“Proposition 8: $1,500,000 and interested earned thereon to the City of Casper to design, reconstruct, and preserve the historic Washington Park Bandshell.”

September 5, 2024

Liz  Cheney endorsed Kamala Harris for President.

September 6, 2024

Donald Trump proposed giving Elon Musk a government role as an efficiency expert.

He also proposed to cut the corporate tax rate to 15%. The corporate tax rate should be hiked, not cut.

Ugh.

I am promising low taxes, low regulations, low energy costs, low interest rates, secure borders, low, low, low crime.

Americans seem incapable of grasping the fact that they are grossly undertaxed, which is a big part of the reason the US deficit is out of control. Rates in the past have been much, much higher than they currently are, particularly on the upper income tax bracket Trump and Musk are part of.

Also, energy costs, interest rates and crime is all low when judged by almost any historical standard.

In a meeting of businessmen Trump was asked a question about health care costs and then went into tariffs.

?

Some good political news:

Perennial Candidate Rex Rammell Says He’s Done With Politics, America Doomed

Gadfly candidate Rammell says he's giving up on politics and his interview with the Cowboy State Daily is his last.

cont:

Former Vice President Dick Cheney has endorsed Kamala Harris.

September 8, 2024

George and Laura Bush will not be endorsing anyone this election cycle.

In doing so, a spokesman noted that President Bush had retired from politics "years ago".

He's one month younger than Donald Trump. . .

cont:

Donald Trump has indicated that in Florida he intends to vote yes on a ballot measure to legalize marijuana.

September 10, 2024

The White Stripes have sued the Trump campaign over its use of the song Seven Nation Army.

cont:

I would have asked the states to submit alternative slates of electors and let the country have the debate about what actually matters and what kind of an election that we had,

J. D. Vance.

Absolutely shameful.

Related threads:

Something for Wyoming populists to consider.

Carpetbagging Carpetbaggers criticize carpetbagging.

What on Earth does the Republican Party stand for?

Odds

Second and Third mortgages.

Last editions:

The 2024 Election, Part XXV. Primary Election Day, Wyoming's real election.

And:

The 2024 Election, Part XXIV. Brat Girl Summer*

Labels: 2020s, 2024 Election, Blog Mirror, Commentary, Coronavirus Pandemic, Donald Trump, Education, inflation, J. D. Vance, Kamala Harris, National Conservatism, Populism, religion, Tim Walz, Wyoming

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Questioner: "Why did you leave the Republican Party?"

George F Will: "The same reason I joined it. I am a conservative."

If I were to listen to people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, or some of the Freedom Caucus here in Wyoming, it would be go.

If I listen to lifelong residents here in the state, including some lifelong Republicans whom would currently be classified as RINO's by the newly populist Wyoming GOP, it would be stay.  Alan Simpson, who is an "anybody but Trump", former U.S. Senator, and who the Park County GOP tried to boot out as a elected precinct committeeman, is staying.

The problem ultimately is what time do you begin to smell like the crowd on the bus?

Konrad Adenauer of the Christian Democratic Union, West Germany's first post-war chancellor.  He worked towards compromise and ended denazification early, even though he'd speant the remaining months of World War Two in prison and barely survived.  By CDU - This file was provided to Wikimedia Commons by the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, a German political foundation, as part of a cooperation project., CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16173747

To put it another way, I'd give an historical example.  It's often noted that quite a few Germans joined the Nazi Party as it was just a way to get by, or advance careers, etc., during the Third Reich period of German history.  When I was a kid, there was a lot of sympathy, oddly enough, for that view amongst those who were of the World War Two generation, although at the same time, there was a widely held belief that militarism, combined with radical nationalism, were something that was basically in the German DNA.  The US, as is well known, didn't even particularly worry about letting former Nazis into the country.

The Germans themselves pretty much turned a blind eye towards this, so many of them had been in the Nazi Party.  Even post-war German politicians who had spent the war in exile did, as it was the programmatic thing to do.

Since that time, however, that view has really changed.  It started to in 1968 when German students rioted and exposed former Nazis in the police.  Germans haven't really come to terms with it, but having been a member of the Nazi Party is a mark of shame, and it's become to be something despised everywhere, even if a person did it for practical reasons and wasn't really involved in the party.

And it should be a mark of shame.

Americans have been sanctimonious about that for a long time, but starting in the 1970s lots of Americans became ashamed, in varying degrees, of our own ancestors in regard to various things.  Ironically, the backlash to that, symbolized by Confederate battle flags, is part of what brings us to our current crisis.

Ed Herschler, former Marine Corps Raider, and Democratic lawyer, who was Wyoming's Governor from 1975 to 1987.  Herschler probably wouldn't have a home in today's Democratic Party in Wyoming.

I registered as a Republican the first time I was old enough to vote. The first Presidential Election I was old enough to vote in was the 1984 Presidential election, in which I voted for Ronald Reagan. The first election I was old enough to vote in was the 1982 off year election.  I honestly don't know who I voted for Senator.  Malcolm Wallop won, but I very well have voted for the Democrat.  Dick Cheney wont reelection that year against Ted Hommel, whom I don't recall at all.  I probably voted for Cheney.  I know that I voted for the reelection of Democratic Governor Ed Herschler, who was one of the state's great Governors. 

A split ticket.

Split tickets were no doubt common in my family.  My father would never reveal who he voted for in an election.  The first Presidential election I recall was the 1972 Election in which Nixon ran against McGovern, and I asked who he voted for when he came home. He wouldn't say, and I don't know to this day.  

I knew that my father registered Republican, but not everyone in my father's family did.  My grandmother, for one, registtered Demcrat,somethign I became aware of when we were visiting her, which we frequently did, at her retirement apartment here in town.  She was pretty clear that she was an unapologetic Democrat, which made sense given that she was 100% Irish by descent.  Most Irish Americans, at that time, were Democrats, and all real ones were Catholic.  Reagan, who claimed Irish ancestry, woudl have been regarded a a dual pretender for that reason by many of them.

My father's view, and it remains mine, that you voted for the person and what they stood for, not hte party.

But being in a party means something, and that has increasingly come to be the case.

I switched parties after that 1984 election.  I was, and remain, a conservative, but the GOP was drifting further from a conservative center in that period, and as I've noted, the election of Ronald Reagan paved the path for Donald Trump, although I won't say that was obvious then.  And also, Democrats were the party that cared about public lands, as they still do, and cared about rural and conservation issues that I cared about and still do. The GOP locally was becoming hostile to them. So I switched.

Campaign image for Mike Sullivan, Democratic Governor from 1987 to 1995.

I remained a Democrat probably from about 1984 until some time in the last fifteen years.  Being a Democrat in Wyoming meant that you were increasingly marginalized, but finally what pushed me out was that it meant being in the Party of Death.  The Democrats went from a party that, in 1973, allowed you to be middle of the road conservative and pro-life.  We had a Governor, Mike Sullivan, who was just that.  By the 2000s, however, that was becoming impossible.  Locally most of the old Democrats became Republicans, some running solid local campaigns as Republicans even though they had only been that briefly.  Even as late as the late 1990s, however, the Democrats ran some really serious candidates for Congress, with the races being surprisingly close in retrospect.  Close, as they say, only counts with hand grenades and horseshoes, but some of those races were quite close.  The GOP hold on those offices was not secure.

Dave Freudenthal, Democratic Governor from 2003 to 2011.

Before I re-registered as a Republican, I was an independent for a while.  Being an independent meant that primaries became nearly irrelevant to me, and increasingly, as the Democratic Party died and became a far left wing club, starting in the 2000s., it also meant that basically the election was decided in the primaries.  Like the other rehoming Democrats, however, we felt comfortable in a party that seemingly had given up its hostility to public lands.  And frankly, since the 1970s, the GOP in Wyoming had really been sui generis.  Conservative positions nationally, including ones I supported, routinely failed in the Republican legislature. Abortion is a good example.  The party nationally was against it, I'm against it personally, but bills to restrict it failed and got nowhere in a Republican legislature.

The Clinton era really impacted the Democratic Party here locally.  Wyomingites just didn't like him.  That really started off the process of the death of the Democratic Party here.  As center right Democrats abandoned the party in response, left wing Democrats were all that remained, and the party has become completely clueless on many things, making it all the more marginalized.  But just as Clinton had that impact on the Democrats, Trump has on the GOP.

Throughout the 70s and 80s it was the case that Wyoming tended to export a lot of its population, which it still does, and then take in transients briefly during booms.  In the last fifteen or so years, however, a lot of the transient population, together with others from disparate regions, have stayed.  They've brought their politics with them, and now in the era of Trump, those views have really taken over the GOP, save for about three pockets of the old party that dominate in Natrona, Albany and Laramie Counties.  A civil war has gone on in some counties, and is playing out right now in Park County.  In the legislature, the old party still has control, but the new party, branded as the Freedom Caucus, which likes to call its rival the UniParty, is rising.  The politics being advanced are, in tone, almost unrecognizable.

Like it or not, on social issues the old GOP's view was "I don't care what you do, just leave me alone". That attitude has really changed.  Given a bruising in the early 1990s due to a Southeastern Wyoming effort to privatize wildlife, the party became pro public lands for awhile. That's change.  The party was not libertarian.  That's changed.  

Money helped change it, which is a story that's really been missed.

Like the Democrats of the 90s, a lot of the old Republicans have started to abandon the party.  If there was another viable party to go to, floods would leave.  A viable third party might well prove to be the majority party in the state, or at least a close second to the GOP, if there was one.

There isn't.

So, what to do?

While it'll end up either being a pipe dream or an example of a dream deferred, there's still reason to believe that much of this will be transitory.  If Trump does not win the 2024 Presidential Election, and he may very well not, he's as done as the blue plate special at a roadside café as the GOP leader.  Somebody will emerge, but it's not really likely to be the Trump clone so widely expected.  And the relocated populists may very well not have that long of run in Wyoming.  Wyomingites, the real ones, also tend to have a subtle history of revenge against politicians who betray their interests.  Those riding hiding high on anti-public lands, anti-local interests, may come to regret it at the polls later on.

The Johnson County invaders of 1892. The Republican Party, whose politicians had been involved in the raid on Natrona and Johnson Counties, took a beating in the following elections.

Or maybe this process will continue, in which case even if Trump wins this year, the GOP will die.  By 2028, it won't be able to win anything and a new party will have to start to emerge.

We'll see.

None of which is comfortable for the State's real Republicans.