Editor’s note: Miss some of this week’s news, public policy, and politics? Stay current, keep up, and get out ahead of the pack with Liberty Nation’s Sunday News Round-up. Yeehaw!
Has Early Voting Cleared the Tracks?
Generally speaking, Republicans tend to vote on Election Day – or, as some are calling it, End of Voting Day – and there are still a lot of registered Republicans left to turn in ballots. Having said that, the 2020 early vote has blown the 2016 election out of the water. It’s November 1, and already nearly as many people have voted early as voted all together last time around. While we don’t “know” who all these early voters picked yet, we do know their political affiliation. Republicans account for 51.4% of the early voters to the Democrats’ 38.8%. The remaining tenth or so we can’t account for, but given the number of Trump voters who aren’t card-carrying members of the party, it isn’t looking good for old Joe, who – once the Election Day hordes have spoken – might even lose a few states once considered Democrat guarantees. Biden may be okay with the way Antifa and Black Lives Matter carry out their “peaceful protests,” but it looks like a hefty chunk of his base isn’t. This is good news for Trump in states like Minnesota, Oregon, and Washington. Unaffiliated voters in Minnesota have gone up to 22.7%, 5.5% more than the previous presidential election. What does this mean for Joe? Liberty Nation’s Onar Åm explains:“Studies have shown that counties and their neighbors that had experienced race riots in the late 1960s gave a significant boost to the law and order candidate Nixon. Minnesota is ground zero for the George Floyd protests that turned into violence and looting. In Minneapolis, Democrats do well, but they have experienced a drop of between 10 and 30% in most counties. Many of these have become ‘unaffiliated’ instead. Thus, there appears to be a massive hidden Trump vote in the early ballots.”And we can see the same pattern in Oregon and Washington after Portland and Seattle were besieged for months by Antifa and Black Lives Matter activists, who looted and torched locally owned business and, in general, spread chaos.
What to Watch for
When the votes are tallied, Minnesota, Oregon, and Washington will probably still belong to Biden – but how close will it be, and what will it mean for the overall popular vote?Barack Who?
Back in 2016, then-President Barack Obama did his best to get Hillary Clinton elected as his successor. “Whatever credibility I’ve earned after eight years as president, I am asking you to trust me on this one,” he said to voters in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Judging by who sits in the Oval Office today, he hadn't earned much. But if Obama couldn’t drum up enough support as the president of the United States, how can he expect to move the needle today? Liberty Nation’s Joe Schaeffer sums up the former president’s arc nicely:“In 2008, a young, unknown, fresh-faced Democratic presidential candidate named Barack Obama routinely attracted tens of thousands of people to his campaign rallies. He energized Americans eager to move on from the George W. Bush years with his ‘Yes, We Can’ sloganeering. On Oct. 24 in Miami, Obama spoke before a sterile and lifeless parking lot on behalf of 2020 Democrat nominee Joe Biden, awkwardly asking his vehicle-encased audience members to ‘honk if you’re fired up. Honk if you’re ready to go.’ The comedown was complete.”The people can’t be blamed for their lack of enthusiasm for Biden. Even Obama – Joe Biden’s presidential partner for eight years – was slow to endorse him during the primaries.
What to Watch for
With just a couple of days left to go, expect to see the former president keep doing his best to help out his old pal – but don’t expect much in the way of results.Washington Whispers & Other Juicy Tidbits
Be on the lookout for:- Team Trump is confident that the president is headed for re-election by a landslide. While Trump has warned that we might not know the outcome of the election right off thanks to the battleground states that have extended the deadline for mail-in ballots, campaign adviser Corey Lewandowski doesn't think it will be a problem. "I think this election is going to be won on election night with Donald Trump carrying Florida and North Carolina, and Ohio and Michigan and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin," Lewandowski said. "And if that's the case, there will be no need to continue to count because there will be a resounding victory." But Joe Biden's folk don't think that's going to happen. Campaign officials for the former vice president "feel very good about our pathways to victory," according to Anita Dunn. Both candidates think they'll win, but as any fan of the old Highlander movies know: "In the end, there can be only one!"
