Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Sunday, April 17, 2022

Grim Old Reaper

 A question that I don't think we are going to get a truly satisfactory answer to until 2024 is whether or not the Republican Party is killing too many of their own voters. I've argued before that the dismal governance of Red States actually creates more Republican voters, because their lives generally are worse off. They ascribe this to Woke CRT MS-13 Groomers rather than their own fucked up Republican administrations, but the unpleasantness of many of these places is real.

Given how polarizing the vaccine became, one has to think that the overwhelming majority of those currently dying in the US - and it's still hundreds every day - are unvaccinated and therefore Republicans. The only age demographics that Republicans win are 50+, and there highest margins are among those over 75. Now, old people vote at much higher rates than young people. With Gen Z and Millenials supporting Democrats at very high numbers, Gen X leaning Democratic and Boomers leaning Republican, only the Silent Generation shows high support for the GOP.

The preeminent question is whether the normal mortality among those over 75, combined with Covid and Covid-related increased mortality, combined with more younger people being added to the voting rolls will create enough demographic shifting to offset legitimate - if misplaced - concerns about inflation.

If the GOP nominates a pack of lunatics in some of these Senate seats, I could see the House switching hands, narrowly, and the Senate actually adding Democratic seats.

The GOP is a minority party that our weird institutions allows to govern the country even when in the minority. If they are dying off, even that avenue will be closed off to them.

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