2023 Elections

Another election cycle, another loss for the American people.

Did you throw your vote away again by voting Democrat or Republican? // photo my own

Another election cycle has come and gone, with much fighting between the aisles, but the ultimate loser was, yet again, liberty for the people, though there were some small bright spots here and there.

Starting with something that happened back in the primaries, Democrats funded fringe Trump-backed Republicans across the country to the tune of millions of dollars, with the idea that these candidates are more easily defeated in the general election. It looks like this paid off well for the Democrats as many of those Democrat-funded Republicans lost to their Democratic opponents. This is very bad news, even ignoring which team is Your Team. All this does is facilitate a race to the bottom as the worst possible candidates are funded at a higher rate than, well, not quite as bad candidates. Just wait until the GOP retaliates in kind. If you're not voting for a third party, you're part of the problem.

Speaking of third parties, Larry Sharpe, as well as other third party members such as Howie Hawkins of the Green Party, were wiped off the ballots when Andrew Cuomo gave New York one final gift in the form of a giant middle finger, tripling the signature thresholds for parties to get on the ballots. As a result, this marks the first year since 1946 that there would only be two choices for governor on the ballot. Democracy!

Interestingly in this race in a Democratic stronghold, Democratic incumbent Kathy Hochul beat Republican Lee Zeldin 52.9% to 47.1%, the lowest margin in two decades. In 2018, Andrew Cuomo beat Molinaro 59.6% to 36.2%. It was much closer in 2014 with a Cuomo win over Astorino 54.3% to 40.3%. It was a much higher margin than that in the prior two elections, all the way back to 2002, when a Republican, George Pataki, actually beat the Democratic nominee, Carl McCall, 49.4% to 33.5%, though independent Tom Golisano gained 14.3% of the vote. I thought maybe since so many red voters were fleeing to Florida, this might have been a wipeout, but possibly, those that stayed were also pissed at the COVID policies of the Cuomo reign. In Kings County in 2018, Andrew Cuomo won 82.8% to 13.4% while in 2022, Hochul won 71.5% to 28.5%, signaling a steep decline in Democratic support in the most stricken COVID policy area in the state.

Looking at Florida, Ron DeSantis blew his challenger out of the water, a strong endorsement for his COVID policies (post-initial lockdown, at least) and possibly his anti-critical race theory overtures, though there were some polls that relatively few cared about his issue. Florida is a swing state, but DeSantis cruised to a victory by nearly twenty percentage points. Contrast this with 2018 where he narrowly beat the Democratic opponent by a mere 0.4%, and the endorsement is striking. The synthesis of DeSantis and Cuomo may have turned Florida into a red state. The Florida GOP also picked up four House seats, though they were supposed to pick up several anyway, due to the nature of midterms.

Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota who didn't impose any COVID lockdown at all, blasted her challenger by nearly a whopping 30 percentage points, a gargantuan increase over her 2018 win of 3.4%.

Gavin Newsom in the People's Democratic Republic of California won the state handily, but his margin went down from 23.8% in 2018 to 15.8%. The difference likely has the same sentiment that put Newsom in the recall election, with his COVID mandates while flouting it at the French Laundry.

However, it wasn't all in this direction, as Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of one of the worst COVID lockdown states, Michigan, won by pretty much the same margin as she did in 2018. Maybe she was the beneficiary of sympathy votes for being the target of a kidnapping plot, egged on by the FBI.

Jared Polis, the slightly libertarian-leaning Democrat, gained a sliver of margin in his gubernatorial victory in Colorado, as he was one of the earlier governors to lift COVID restrictions. The difference in the margin, however, was very slight and likely not statistically significant.

These results seem to signal that voters generally leaned away from the COVID tyranny that swept across the country, even in some deep blue states.

Overtime struck in Georgia as Democrat Raphael Warnock will face off against Republican Herschel Walker in a Senate race runoff election. Warnock received 49.4% while Walker received 48.5%, neither receiving the 50% required. Chase Oliver, running for the Libertarian Party received 2.1%, beating the margin. Of course, the establishment blamed Oliver for "spoiling the election" to which he had the fantastic response, "You can't spoil what's already rotten."

Excellent. You want the libertarian vote? Put forth better candidates. Our vote doesn't belong to you.

Also in Georgia, Stacey Abrams, who claimed voter suppression and refused to concede her 2018 election, then blasting anyone that claimed voter fraud in 2020, has lost again to Brian Kemp in her quest for governor. She finally conceded the loss in 2022, following a rematch loss by a margin quite a bit higher than in 2018. Don't worry, she already had an excuse queued up: misinformation!! The media darling, after losing two in a row, may be losing her luster.

After eating my way through Texas late last month, I wondered how the governor race went, after seeing giant BETO signs all over Austin. Like Abrams, Beto was made as the next Democratic superstar, and now has a string of three L's next to his name, racked up in four years. His loss to the incumbent Abbott is pretty much the same margin as Abbot's previous win.

Just because they've been so front and center, the Dr. Oz versus Fetterman showdown was like a bizarre redux of the Trump-Biden fight. It was a serial liar versus someone with a debilitating mental disorder that you hate to see run anything but you have to feel sorry for. In the race between liar and incognition (hey, if it's in the Urban Dictionary...), the voters chose incognition. Or...they could have picked Erik Gerhardt, the actual good candidate. But nope, the voters were determined to Fetterman all over their ballots.

The Senate race in Arizona was a big deal in libertarian circles resulting in much infighting. The Mises crowd wanted the Libertarian Marc Victor to drop out so as to not siphon votes away from the Republican Blake Masters who was a Mises guy that strayed. Still has somewhat of a libertarian streak, but a few concerning flips in ideology, like being hawkish on China. Still, the argument went, he would be head over heels better than his opponent Mark Kelly, therefore, Victor should drop out to give Masters the best shot possible. The Reason libertarians argued that Masters was just another Republican now and not worthy of support, therefore, Victor should stay in the race to provide a viable candidate to vote for. Eventually, Victor met with Masters and was convinced enough to drop out of the race and endorse Masters, but his name was already on the ballot by that time and received over 2% of the vote anyway. Either way, Masters lost with a margin higher than that.

Masters, endorsed by Trump, was not the only casualty of the Trump train. Trump endorsed candidates did particularly poorly, like Oz, as well as Kari Lake and Doug Mastriano, even against terrible opponents. It seems like the sheen is coming off the Trump cult and come 2024, it seems like it's Ron DeSantis's candidacy to lose.

Libertarians didn't do particularly well, either, which may have been due to at least in part, a result of factional infighting. So much time and effort was wasted on the old guard throwing a fit and trying to screw up the party as much as they could with things like voting to disaffiliate in two states. California Libertarians, where the infighting started heating up within the past two years, got slaughtered. Jeff Hewitt, though he was hampered by a malicious sexual assault lawsuit funded by upset unions, lost his race to retain his Supervisor seat. The Hanover city council trio lost their positions in the race. Only one Libertarian Party member in California won a local race. Marshall Burt, the Libertarian state legislator that was elected the last cycle, also lost his reelection as he was crushed by the Republican in the hyper-partisan election cycle 74.4% to 24.7% (he won his election against a Democrat in an area that was heavily swinging red). Similarly, in Wyoming, Bethany Baldes came within a hair's length last election cycle against a Republican, losing by only 32 votes, but was gapped this year by several hundred against the same candidate. On the other hand, the Libertarian in Arkansas, Michael White, that laid utter waste to his debate opponents, received 4.7%, more than doubling the Libertarian two cycles ago in the same district.

As California continues to circle the drain with its representatives, the Propositions yielded the same mixed results as usual: some bad propositions were blocked and some bad propositions were passed. Two of the bad propositions, 28 and 31, passed. Proposition 28 was to push more funding to art and music education in K-12 schools as if throwing more money at the problem always would be successful. The proposition doesn't pull new funds but rather earmarks a minimum funding of existing school funding to these programs. California already is ranked the worst state in several key metrics. Not to say music and arts are not important, but if they come at the cost of other subjects, why is it Sacramento's business to say and not the parents and communities? Do people really not understand that education in San Francisco might be a little different than education in Placerville? Proposition 31 was to uphold a ban on flavored tobacco, using kids as props, claiming it's to curb youth use of tobacco products. In their vigor to shine a light on the existing problem of youth vaping, the yes on 31 crowd inadvertently made the case of why this is a bad proposition. It already is illegal to sell tobacco products, of any kind, to children, and yet, it's a problem, showing that prohibition doesn't work particularly well. This proposition would only serve to prohibit adults from using flavored tobacco, and to deadly consequences. Vaping products have been shown to reduce the incidence of smoking cigarettes, which is far deadlier than vaping. All those deaths from vaping that the media and politicians breathlessly condemned a few years ago were all from black-market THC cartridges. Now that one can only get these cartridges in the black market, what do they think would happen?

The good news is that two clearly bad propositions were shot down: 29 and 30. Proposition 29 is yet another attempt to shove through burdensome regulations on dialysis clinics to try to unionize dialysis clinics by requiring certain staff to be on-site simply just to be there. It would have certainly raised costs on dialysis clinics, restricting the supply of them in the state. It would make restrict access for people to get dialysis, a life-threatening proposition for these people. Proposition 30 is another attempt at a millionaire's tax that has been effective in making wealthy people flee California, to give more subsidies to electric vehicles and wildfire suppression programs. I have no idea what Californians had in their minds when they voted this way since this is one of those that goes against the grain of the Californian progressive. Maybe they weren't happy that electric car subsidies are subsidies for the upper middle class and the rich on the backs of the poor. They certainly don't understand that pouring money into state programs doesn't help like privatizing the management of forest land does. They probably still deny that the rich flee the state when taxes are raised on them. So, who knows. But I'll take it.

The big takeaway is that the "Red Wave" never materialized. It looks like the Democrats will hold onto the Senate by tiebreaker and the House, while it should go to the Republicans, looks like there are still some races too close to call. My guess, as it was in the summer, is that the Roe v Wade ruling gave the Democrats a lot of ammo heading into the election. But who the hell knows. I'm hoping the GOP takes the House just to have some kind of resistance, but whether it's from a donkey or an elephant, we're still screwed.