Analysis by Kyle A. Lohmeier
Well, after nearly two years of bullshit leading up to it, this day has finally arrived, Election Day, 2016.
Like so many hyped and highly-anticipated events, today cannot help but be a fizzle. Nothing could actually pay off the anticipation with which this day was greeted – at least nothing within the context of a typical Election Day. Unless, that is, you’re a naïve Hillary Clinton supporter – which is of course a redundant phrase in and of itself but, – it does require an extra bit of naivete to have ever worried she was in danger of not being made president on January 20 of next year.
So, I suppose that with the headline, actual photo from the future and the above graph, I’ve kinda given away my not-at-all bold prediction for what the returns will tell us tonight: Hillary Clinton will win the election because she was always going to be inaugurated on January 20 of next year. You don’t go to Bilderberg Group meetings while colluding to rig the primary election only to lose the general election to a guy whose only claim to fame is that he’s “really, really rich” but yet doesn’t get invited to said Bilderberg Group meetings – that’s just not how the corporatist oligarchy works, folks.
Pretending our votes matter at all – hell, I even joined in the fun this year and cast a ballot just for giggles – and knowing no matter what, Hillary wins, I guess the most I can do is hope for some other takeaways to come out of the election. Well, that and hope every tax renewal or increase on my local ballot goes down in defeat. In my dare-to-dream moments, I’d like to see Donald Trump finish third behind Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson, just for the fundamental shakeup of the GOP that would theoretically have to result. Obviously, that’s not gonna happen.
The “win” for me in this election would be seeing the Libertarian Party get five percent of the vote and therefore become an official “minor-party” under the Federal Elections Commission’s rules. This would entitle the party’s 2020 candidate to a share of the Presidential Fund for use in campaigning. Already detractors have pointed out the apparent hypocrisy of a Libertarian Party candidate taking “government” money to fund a campaign. These are the same people who derided Ayn Rand for accepting Social Security, because, how dare she go to the ATM and withdraw the money she was forced to put into it?
The nice thing about the Presidential Fund is that it is the only thing that ever appears on your annual tax form that is actually voluntary – you don’t have to donate to it and when it runs short, no other public money is used to shore up the shortfall. The only money that is ever put into that fund comes from taxpayers who volunteered specifically to fund presidential campaigns. The philosophical conundrum for a Libertarian Party candidate in taking the money is non-existent – and obviously no-where near as odd as a self-styled anarchist talking about election laws and voting. No, philosophically I don’t think humans need government; yes, pragmatically I realize we’re stuck with one for the foreseeable future and I don’t find it a betrayal of principle to at least try to make it suck less hard. Even knowing the game is rigged anyway, it would be nice to see the Libertarian Party nominate some actual Libertarians next time round and then run them against Clinton and Kaine.
As for the GOP, the best we as Americans can hope for is that the abortion of a presidential candidate they’ve put forth doesn’t poison down-ticket races. The best-case-scenario for Americans given the inevitability of Clinton’s victory is that the Republicans manage to keep the House and Senate and the latter with enough numbers to keep the Supreme Court down to eight members for the next four years minimum.
“That government is best which governs least,” Henry David Thoreau pointed out brilliantly centuries ago, only to have that sentiment treated as blasphemy by our rulers today.
Today, all government wants to do is govern the ever-loving shit out of us serfs. Ergo, today all we can hope for is a government that does as little damage as possible because it’s been allowed to do as little governing as possible via congressional gridlock. Maintaining a stasis that allows exactly none of the Hildabeast’s policies to be enacted and none of her appointees seated is the best we can hope for out of the election results today and out of the mid-terms in 2018.
Who knows? Maybe tomorrow I’ll be filling this space with an embarrassing retraction and election results that are quite different from those I’ve reported here with 0% of precincts reporting nationwide. Maybe, but I doubt it.
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