2020 Election Recap: Stick a fork in the polls

Super Tuesday has come and gone. Ah, yes. The day like The Purge, where people can vote for policies and people to do things they would never imagine doing in-person themselves, like forbidding consenting exchanges of money and spending other people's money on things whether they like it or not. People get pissed off or overjoyed or possibly riot because the government changes (or doesn't change) the color of its tie.

The polls that predicted a massive shift toward the Democrats didn't come, nor did the Biden landslide victory come to fruition. Is it really surprising to so many people that polls that intentionally omit candidates like Jo Jorgensen, who was on the ballot in all 50 states, explicitly to exclude her from the Presidential debate stage, were wildly inaccurate? Polls largely seem to now be arms of the political duopoly. Far more accurate, as usual, was election betting aggregation which was predicting a much more slight Biden win at around 61%-37% odds about a week before the election. Other, more unorthodox metrics such as political swag sales in Yiwu, China, pointed in the opposite direction. 

Of note in the election:

Marshall Burt, badass. // photo from his website

Libertarian Party gets a WIN! Marshall Burt, who I admittedly have never heard of before the election results, has won Wyoming state House District 39 against a Democrat, 1,696 to 1,420. He is the fifth person the Libertarian Party won a state legislative seat with a candidate running exclusively under the LP banner, the first in almost 20 years. From his website, his top three priorities appear to be to remove regulations from businesses, expand options for education, and to protect gun rights. Sounds pretty libertarian to me.

Bethany Baldes, running for Wyoming state House District 55 unfortunately lost her race by a mere 32 votes to a Republican. This one really hurt. I had really high hopes for her taking this seat. She is a great candidate and I hope she runs again. She lost the race two years ago by 53 votes so she's moving in the right direction. I'll donate more to her than I did this year if she does make another run at it. She has been a major focus of the Frontier Project and had the backing of local, state, and national parties.  Brian Doherty at Reason surmises that Wyoming's Trump fanaticism is an indication of why Burt won, running against a Democrat, and Baldes lost, running against a Republican.

Kalish Morrow, freedom fighter. // photo
from her website

Fellow Californian Kalish Morrow won her race for Hanford City Council, earning 43.79% of the vote compared to the incumbent's 31.62%. This wasn't a major surprise among the California Libertarian Party, with confidence in her win extremely high weeks before the event. Her platform illustrates a good understanding of the libertarian philosophy and weaves in certain planks that are clearly near and dear to residents' hearts while reconciling as much libertarian credo as possible.

Elsewhere in California, Wendy Hewitt won her city council seat in Calimesa. It's a small town, but she joins her libertarian husband Jeff, the most influential officeholder elected under the Libertarian flag, in the public sphere. Two more California libertarians whom I've never heard of, Bob Karwin and Kate O'Brien, won Menifee city council and Rancho Simi parks and recreation board, respectively.

Ricky Harrington Jr, liberator. //
photo from his website

Ricky Harrington Jr. has battled the atrocious auth-right Tom Cotton for his Arkansas US Senate seat. Unfortunately, Republicans have too much power in that state, but despite this, Harrington received an impressive 33.3% of the vote, winning three counties, with no Democrat running in the race. I don't know how much Cotton or Harrington spent on their campaigns, but you can bet the house that Harrington didn't spend anywhere close to a dollar for every two that Cotton spent. Cotton likely has presidential aspirations in the future and hopefully, this result puts a major dent in his dreams. I wouldn't trust Cotton to babysit my half-eaten sandwich, let alone run the country. Harrington appeared on a PBS "debate" which Cotton refused to show. Harrington answered questions directly from the journalists and honestly, while he oratorical skills were excellent (he is a preacher, after all), I didn't really like his answers from a libertarian perspective. When asked what his favorite thing about Trump was, his answer was his executive order to increase spending on autism studies. I understand that is an issue really close to his heart, but really? Not Trump's Gorsuch SCOTUS pick or his energy deregulation? You know, something that's not unlibertarian? However, his positions on his website are rock solid. Either way, judging from his other answers and his website, if he had been elected to the US Senate, he would have been at worst, the third-best senator in DC, with a very high chance at being the best. And he would have replaced one of the worst US Senators in the country.

Justin Amash elected to retire instead of run again, leaving Thomas Massie to be potentially the only remaining libertarian Republican in the House, after bids by Eric Brakey and Matt Gurtler unfortunately never materialized past the Republican primaries.

There may be hope yet for California. The people in the state got most of the propositions right. Californians rejected Proposition 15 which would have increased property taxes on commercial properties, a small business killer. Proposition 16, which would have allowed racial discrimination in universities again has also been rejected amid a wash of NO ON PROP 16 signs in my area. Proposition 17 passed, allowing released prisoners to vote. If you've paid your debt to society and it's determined you're no longer a danger to it, you should regain your rights. Proposition 18, on the other hand, would have allowed minors to vote in certain instances but was defeated. How many of us look back to when we were 17 and think we had a good grasp on the reality of politics? If you said yes, you probably have not grown intellectually. Proposition 19 which allows the transfer of lower property values passed, though I'm suspicious of this proposition as it broadly increases tax revenues elsewhere, indicating this is a tax hike disguised as a tax cut. I had a pleasant surprise with Proposition 21, with the voters rejecting rent control measures. Proposition 22 easily passed with no surprise, given just how unpopular AB5 was and how unpopular a conversion to employee status was for Uber and Lyft drivers. Proposition 23 was roundly rejected, which if passed, would have resulted in large cost increases for dialysis treatments with burdensome regulations. 

Oregon became the first state to legalize psilocybin as well as small amounts of cocaine, heroin, and meth. Good job, Oregon, for reducing the ability of the state to throw people in a cage for peaceful, nonviolent actions. Try not to screw it up with overregulation and crippling taxes like California did with marijuana. Pot legalization was also a big winner, with multiple states legalizing the possession of a plant that grows in nature. I just may live to see the day the drug war is ended, ceasing the mass incarceration of nonviolent "criminals".

Maine's presidential election results were a bit disappointing, given they have ranked-choice voting now. Third parties don't seem to have received much of a bump from the voting change. I'm hoping that, since this was their first major vote with this new system that they're just not used to it or not sure how it can work yet.

Robby Soave opines that despite the election of The Squad, the election results were a rebuke of socialism, stating that Biden rose to the top above the more socialist Warren and Bernie. Encouraging is Scott Wiener's reelection in San Francisco, of all places, over socialist Jackie Fielder. Scott Wiener, far from a libertarian, has made some good strides toward loosening housing regulations and Fielder sought to undo them with a seeming lack of understanding of how government "affordable housing" projects tend to be funded or built.

It looks like Republicans will hold on to the Senate and the Democrats will lose seats in the House, despite the anticipation of a "blue wave" that never materialized. This is the best thing to happen if Biden ends up winning the presidency. If Trump ends up winning the presidency, this will be worrisome. Nothing good ever happens when one party controls both the legislative and executive branches and is really the best hope a libertarian can have for national politics: there will be enough fighting between the two parties that nothing will get done.

The big one - the presidential race, has not been called yet and it's probably going to take a while as recounts and lawsuits fly. It is very close, but Biden is pretty much the winner. Of course, Republicans have all kinds of conspiracy theories of voter fraud along with Trump bizarrely wanting vote counting to stop in states he was winning and keep counting in states he was losing.

Jo Jorgensen didn't continue increasing vote counts from Gary Johnson's 2016 campaign, but this was a significantly different year. Johnson got a lot of media time since it was thought he would siphon more votes from Trump than Clinton, but that turned out to not necessarily be the case, and it was a year that had two really bad candidates, leaving people searching for other options. Jo didn't get that kind of media time, and although the two main candidates are just about as bad as 2016, this year has been far more polarized than 2016, with fear causing people to vote for one of the two evils. Still, her vote total of about 1.12% at this point is the second-largest presidential vote total in Libertarian Party history.

There were certainly a lot of missed opportunities. I doubt her social justice warrior tweets did her any favors, turning off people with massive followings like Tim Pool who was genuinely searching for an option outside the duopoly. For some inexplicable reason, Jo never appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience, although Joe did mention during his election livestream that he did vote for Jorgensen, notching the second presidential race in a row that he voted on the Libertarian ticket.

Republicans have already started blaming libertarians for their trailing position, but they don't seem to understand that I don't care whether the boot on my neck is red or blue. Although votes are still being totaled, it seems that Jorgensen has achieved vote totals well within the voting margin between Trump and Biden in several states, even if the people that vote third-party typically would just elect to not vote, otherwise. Good. Whichever side ends up losing. I hope you did lose because of libertarians. Suck on your own tears. You don't own my vote. If you want us to vote for you, start by nominating someone that isn't a complete turd.