What’s really going on?

VIEWPOINT

By Ralph Hardin Evening Times Editor Let me first say that I am decidedly not a conspiracy guy. Sure, I like to read about all these conspiracy theories, in the way that I enjoy reading Stephen King, John Grisham and other works of fiction, but no, I do not think we faked the moon landing, I don’t believe that the Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax, and I don’t believe that 5G cell phone towers or vaccines cause autism or whatever.

But, something with the past two presidential election does have me scratching my chin (or it could just be season skin irritation). I don’t believe that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen” by the Democrats or anyone else. I really don’t. But … some interesting things have occurred this time around that I can’t help but notice. In 2020, we were told this was the most important election in the history of our country. And it was an sell. There was a global pandemic,we were in the midst of an economic crisis, and Trump was turning out to be less of a “stable genius” than we had previously been led to believe.

So, come election times, more than 155 million Americans went to the polls – the most ever to vote in a presidential election – despite all of the restrictions in place due to COVID-19. In that race, Trump received more than 74 million votes, losing the popular vote by more than 7 million votes and losing the electoral college by a lopsided 74-vote margin.

Fast-forward to 2024, and Trump again received more than 74 million votes, only this time, winning the popular vote by more than 3 million votes and securing the win in the Electoral College by 86 votes to reclaim the presidency after four years. Oh, and literally all of the swing states that Biden won in 2020 went to Trump in 2024.

What? What happened? Well, the numbers tell the tale. Not only were there 10 million fewer ballots cast this time over last time, somehow, they were all (statistically anyway) Democratic votes.

Yes, even though we were (again) told this was the most important election in the history of our country, 10 million voters looked at the race and said, “Oh, no thank you.” So … did the Democrats rig the 2020 election? Did they flood the key ballot boxes with Biden votes to beat Trump? Oh, not so fast … it turns out that Democrats can play the election conspiracy game too.

I don’t know if you know this, but Donald Trump has a new best friend, billionaire Elon Musk. It turns out that Musk might have used his Starlink satellite to hack the voting machines to favor Trump. I mean, something happened to 10 million Democratic voters, right? Now, yes, I realize that the voters in 2020 and in 2024 aren’t the exact same voters. Over those four years, millions of voters died and millions of new voters became of voting age, but still. Did 10 million fewer people exercise their right to vote?

Maybe. Now there were definitely efforts in some states to suppress voters in the name of election integrity. Georgia passed election laws that were so restrictive that they lost billions in business revenue by people pulling events out of the state. And Arizona purged hundreds of thousands of voters from its rolls and very few made the effort to get reinstated ahead of the election.

These efforts were a pretty thinly veiled attempt to reduce the minority vote, which is a little ironic considering the gains Trump had with Black and Hispanic male voters. It’s possible that those moves paid dividends for the Republicans, but it’s hard to picture that impacting every single swing state.

So, if there’s no conspiracy, then why did Kamala Harris fare so poorly? Well, you definitely have to consider racism and sexism. Some voters simply were not going to vote for a Black person (and yes, Jamaican-Indian, which is just “Black” to a racist.) But Obama got elected … twice. Yes, which brings me to my next point. Some voters simply were not going to vote for a woman (see: Clinton, Hillary in 2016.) Male Latino voters, according to poll data, were particularly uninterested in having a woman president. Having both of those things working against Harris may have simply been a bridge too far for too many voters.

But really, the main thing here, I think, is that the Democrats simply bungled the whole 2024 election from the very beginning. By not getting an early commitment from Joe Biden to not seek re-election, the Democrats were behind the 8-ball from the word go. By not having a primary process and by basically tossing Biden out and wedging Harris in, the Democrats just looked uninspiring, un-united and unorganized (but sure, they were able to rig a whole election four years ago.)

Look, I (mostly) don’t think there are any real conspiracies here. But, as long as I’ve got you, can someone please, please stop RFK Jr. from taking the fluoride out of our water?