I have never really accepted Trump's loss in Ohio, since election day. I knew too many people across a range of geography and class levels who were psyched up to vote Trump, and the economy and history are ripe for a win for the Trump movement. The surrounding states are all Trump wins as well (Indiana will be verified on Tuesday). What gives with Ohio?
At first I rationalized it as the favorite son, popular(ish) sitting Governor getting more of the non-Trump voters to coalesce around him. After all, Trump did get the same percent of the vote as in neighboring Kentucky and Michigan, during a similar stage of the primary season (high 30s).
Now that we're looking toward the general election, with Trump the presumptive nominee, I started investigating whether or not he could flip Ohio from blue to red. Most counties vote Republican, but the ones that vote Democrat have big chunks of the population. So I wondered what the primary turnout was for Democrats and Republicans, regardless of candidate, for some of the highly populated counties that vote Democrat in general elections.
I noticed something very unusual -- in the counties home to the three largest cities, which in 2012 went heavily for Obama, the percent of primary voters casting a ballot in the Democrats' contest was a lot closer to 50%. At first that sounds promising -- if that held in the general election, the Republican nominee could win those three biggest cities and clear a major hurdle in a key swing state.
However, they voted overwhelmingly for Kasich, not Trump. Everywhere else this season, when would-be Democrats turn out in yuge numbers to vote in the Republican primary, it's to vote for Trump. They're the populist and class-oriented Dems, and Trump is the most promising populist candidate of any party that they've seen in perhaps their entire lifetimes.
Nowhere have we seen would-be Democrats turning out in droves for Kasich, on the idea that he's a closeted homosexual liberal Democrat, and let's make sure he wins over that bully Trump. We should have seen that in New England, and yet Kasich didn't come close to taking any of those states. Those disaffected Dems clearly turned out for Trump.
On the day of the Ohio primary, MSNBC had reporters in two locations covering the "Democratic cross-over" narrative. Tony Dokoupil was in, I believe, Mahoning County, home to Youngstown, and part of the Appalachian Rust Belt area of Ohio. He reported that there was a lot of Dem cross-over, and from what he heard from those voters, they were mostly voting Trump. And sure enough, Trump carried the Appalachian counties in Ohio handily.
Then a blonde woman reporter was shown somewhere in, I believe, Cuyahoga County, home to the major city of Cleveland. She said that there was a lot of cross-over there as well, but that those voters were largely voting against Trump and for Kasich.
I didn't think that these Democrats who had invaded the Republican primary just to sabotage Trump could have made all that large of a difference in the big picture, though. Maybe it gave Kasich an extra few points over Trump, but it couldn't have actually decided the primary, could it have?
Well, it did -- big league.
In fact, there's really no other way to explain the outcome than that Kasich, the re-elected sitting Governor in control of the local political machine, "got" a massive number of Democrats to invade the Republican primary to ensure he won his home state, to avoid humiliation. He either bribed them, threatened them with firings (there are a lot of Democrats who work for the government in one way or another), targeted the black Get Out the Vote ringleaders to steer the black voters toward the Republican ballot and Kasich, or some other damn scheme.
That's why Kasich was so confident and matter-of-factly telling every interviewer that "Oh, I'm gonna win Ohio," weeks in advance. The fix was in, on his orders.
The upshot? See the Appendices for the calculations: I estimate Trump should have won Ohio with 45%, and Kasich coming in second with 35%. Those could be off by a little bit and still give Trump the win. And since Ohio was winner-take-all, he just needed to win by a single vote in order to take 100% of the delegates.
Trump should have done better in Ohio than in Kentucky, since there aren't as many Cruz Cult cucks like there are in western Kentucky (which lies south of Indiana, not Ohio). And he should have done better than in Michigan, since western Michigan has a cuck pocket and does not have the stretch of Appalachian territory that Ohio does, and Appalachia is one of the most heavily Trump-favoring regions in the nation. So 45% doesn't sound unreasonable, when he got in the high 30s in Kentucky and Michigan.
I realize that this investigation won't affect the delegate count, number of states won, popular vote, etc. But just so we understand where Trump performed best within the Republican primary, and where Trump can do well in the general, Ohio is clearly Trump country. It was only through a concerted statewide effort by the sitting Governor's political machine, including various degrees of incentives, bribes, and threats, that a huge chunk of the Democrat voters invaded the Republican primary to keep Kasich afloat.
Fortunately, Kasich's shenanigans won't keep Trump from clearing a majority of delegates. And a key swing state now looks much more favorable for the general election.
Appendix 1
There are 17 counties that Obama won in 2012. They ranged from around 50% to 70% Democrat. And yet when you take the 2016 voters in the Democrat primary as a percent of all primary voters, in each of these same counties, they only run from around 30-50%. Within each county, between 10-20% of the primary electorate switched from would-be Democrats to Republicans. (See the county results for Republicans and Democrats.)
That is big in percentage terms (double digits), and also in sheer numbers of voters, since these blue counties are home to the major population centers. In several counties, this amounted to tens of thousands of Democrats posing as Republicans in order to prop up Kasich. Remember, Ohio was winner-take-all by statewide vote, so whoever had the most in sheer number of voters took all of the delegates.
Overwhelmingly this benefited Kasich, who won 13 of these 17 Obama counties, including the major population centers of Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Dayton, Toledo, Akron, etc. The 4 that Trump won were all Appalachian and smaller in population -- Ashtabula, Trumbull, Mahoning, and Athens.
To weed out the Democrat invaders whose only mission was to sabotage Trump and prop up Kasich, we assume that for a county's 2016 primary voters, the percent voting Democrat should be the same as the percent who voted Democrat in the 2012 presidential election. We apply that percent that should be Democrats to the total primary turnout, and get the number of primary voters that should be Democrats. This is much larger than the actual number voting Democrat, and the gap is mostly due to them voting for Kasich on the Republican side.
So, subtract the size of this gap from Kasich's number of voters, and place them in the Democrat primary (doesn't matter whether they'd vote for Hillary or Bernie). This shrinks Kasich's number of voters, and therefore the number of Republican primary voters. It does not affect Trump's number of voters, since he didn't benefit much from this huge invasion. (He did on a much smaller scale, and mostly in counties that are outside of these Obama counties.)
With this new count of total Republican voters, Kasich voters, and Trump voters, we compute the percent voting for Kasich or Trump in each of these counties. Trump wins every one of them except for Franklin, home to the state capital of Columbus -- perhaps not surprising that the center of the political Establishment would have gone for Kasich even without the Democrat invader shenanigans.
I estimate Kasich would have won Franklin 55 to 28, not so far from the actual result of 64 to 22. However, Trump would have won Cuyahoga (Cleveland) 44 to 40, Lorain (suburban Cleveland) 46 to 38, and Hamilton (Cincinnati) 37 to 36. The other blue counties he would have won by anywhere from 10 to 50 points.
Pooling all of these blue counties, Trump should have gotten 45% to Kasich's 36%. Since Ohio's primary was statewide, winner-take-all, county by county results don't matter -- only the grand pool of all voters. Trump should have handily won these blue counties, and he did handily win the Appalachian counties with nearly 50%. I figure the remaining sparsely populated red counties would have shown a similar correction as in the blue counties -- that Kasich's machine got local government employees mobilized on his behalf.
Even letting those stay with Kasich, though, they don't compare to the size of the populations in the blue counties, and are mostly balanced out by the Appalachian counties.
So, I see no reason to move away from the rough estimate of Trump legitimately winning 45% of Ohio, to Kasich's 35%. In any event, he would have won by single digits and taken all of the delegates.
Appendix 2
To see how huge the change from blue to supposedly red counties was, here are a few relevant columns from the whole spreadsheet.
First column is the counties won by Obama in the 2012 Presidential election.
Second column gives the percent of the vote that Obama got in 2012, from greatest to least.
Third column gives the percent of the 2016 primary votes that were cast in the Democrats' contest rather than in the Republicans'.
Fourth column shows the decline in the percent voting Democrat.
Fifth column gives the end result of calculating how many extra Republican ballots were cast (overwhelmingly for Kasich), on the assumption that the percent casting a Democrat ballot in the 2016 primary should be the same as the percent voting for Obama in the 2012 general election. At the bottom of this column is the total.
| County | Obama % 2012 | Dem % 2016 | Change | Extra R votes |
| Cuyahoga | 69 | 59 | 10 | 34747 |
| Athens | 66 | 60 | 6 | 862 |
| Lucas | 64 | 52 | 12 | 12437 |
| Mahoning | 63 | 51 | 12 | 8022 |
| Trumbull | 60 | 54 | 6 | 3921 |
| Franklin | 60 | 49 | 11 | 33553 |
| Summit | 57 | 31 | 26 | 58376 |
| Lorain | 56 | 46 | 10 | 8149 |
| Ashtabula | 55 | 41 | 14 | 3127 |
| Erie | 55 | 44 | 11 | 2474 |
| Hamilton | 53 | 41 | 12 | 28091 |
| Portage | 51 | 41 | 10 | 4134 |
| Ottawa | 51 | 38 | 13 | 1589 |
| Wood | 51 | 37 | 14 | 4836 |
| Montgomery | 51 | 39 | 12 | 16990 |
| Sandusky | 50 | 32 | 18 | 3087 |
| Stark | 49 | 36 | 13 | 14116 |
| 238510 |
Notice that of these counties that voted for Obama, only 5 or 6 out of 17 were still blue counties in the 2016 primary. Seeing several of the counties in the deep-blue NE Ohio region casting only 30-some percent of their ballots in the Democrats' primary is a big fat tell. We're really supposed to believe that all these Great Lakes industrial counties suddenly turned deep red. Maybe if they were turning red-for-Trump, but not red-for-Kasich. Total hijacking on Kasich's orders.
Trump has won all the major metro areas around the Great Lakes, except for Milwaukee and Green Bay way over in Wisconsin. Detroit, Chicago, Rochester, Buffalo -- all Trump victories. He should have claimed Cleveland and Toledo and their satellite cities as well.
In the last column, notice how many of these counties delivered tens of thousands of votes to Kasich. In total, these blue counties delivered well over 230,000 votes to Kasich that would have otherwise been cast in the Democrat primary. Kasich won the state by roughly 220,000 votes, which is about how many extra votes he coerced out of these 17 counties. Not to mention the other red counties that he got to vote for him.
The 4 counties that Trump won did not show such gigantic numbers of cross-over votes: Athens (under 1,000), Mahoning, Trumbull, and Ashtabula (all under 10,000). Even throwing those out of the estimates since they did not favor Kasich, would not impact the overall conclusion, since they're so few compared to the hundreds of thousands of coerced votes that Kasich got around the state.
Here's a worked example of the calculations, without uploading the entire spreadsheet or clogging up more of the post.
ReplyDeleteTake Cuyahoga County, big population center and home to Cleveland.
In 2012, 69% voted Dem. All primary voters this year total 337,620, and if they were as likely to vote in the Dem primary as they were for Dems in the 2012 Presidential election, there should have been 232,958 voters in the Dem primary.
There were in fact 198,211 (only 59% of all voters, down 10 points), for a gap of 34,747. That's tens of thousands of would-be Dems propping up Kasich.
Kasich got 76,674, and subtracting the above out, he should have gotten only 41,927. Trump actually got 45,884 -- more than Kasich's corrected numbers.
The lowered number of should-be Republican voters, after subtracting those crypto-Dems voting for Kasich, is 104,662.
Trump should have gotten 44% to Kasich's 40%, in the deep blue county home to Cleveland.
When you pool all of these blue counties, the calculations proceed the same way.
It is certain that election fraud will be even more widespread in November.
ReplyDeleteI assume that Kasich got some promises from the RNC if he would help stop Trump.
ReplyDeleteIt seems that back in 2012 Ohio was being scrutinized for fraud back then too.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/kasich-voter-fraud-polls/2012/11/01/id/462374/
"Ohio Gov. John Kasich defended his state Wednesday amid reports alleging possible voter fraud at early polling places, saying that bipartisan teams of election officials are watching over the voting process "like a hawk.""
Hmmmmm, a hawk that wolfs down pancakes no doubt.
@Avraham, Trump is going to have to beat Hillary by an additional 5% points to make up for the voter fraud and illegal alien votes.
ReplyDeleteI keep hearing that the 12 candidates (or whatever the number was) running at the time of the first election (Iowa), with many hanging for subsequent elections, prevented both the GOP elites and voters from galvanizing behind a non-Trump candidate. Presumably Cruz, or less plausibly, Kasich.
ReplyDeleteErr, the presence of so many also-rans made it possible for Cruz to run his con for months before being completely exposed. Had it been, say, Cruz and Rubio Vs. Trump from the beginning, Trump (and just about everyone else) would've dug deeper into Cruz and would've found the writhing maggot infested putrefaction that is barely concealed by his used car salesman affect.
Though this wasn't to be at the beginning, Cruz still has only gotten about 21% of the vote. His bible bashing, victim complex, destroy the government paranoia only had resonance in handful of credulous and rootless areas. The plains and upper mountain states are geographically sizable but in terms of population and cultural cache are negligible. The mountains and big parts of the Southern plains are full of weirdo true believers and ammo stockpilers (or shallow lifestyle strivers if they'd rather ski than shoot guns), while the Nordic upper plains are full of grumpy wimps. Colorado has more easily available pot than anywhere else; why care about voting (Colorado's GOP cancelled the vote) when you can get high? In a more rooted area, cancelling the vote would've been treated as an outrageous offense. But there's no sense of violation among people who are united more by shallow striving than any sort of camaraderie or integrity.
It's only been the last month or so that everyone has seen through Cruz. Bragging about winning voterless elections and than defending the integrity of the results, and over the last few days making a flimsy effort to distance himself from John Boehner. Boehner called Cruz Lucifer and a miserable son of a bitch. Cruz responded by claiming that he barely dealt with Boehner; well, Cruz once worked as a lawyer for Boehner! Liar.
And Cruz's scripted style and whiny voice (everything he says has the same rhythm; he always sounds like his delivering a closing argument in a Lifetime B-movie) have worn people out. Had Trump been able to focus on Cruz at the beginning there's no way he would've had so much of the vote.
Then in that case I would think that people ought to get organized in several directions. (1) Stop voter fraud. (2) Get out the vote for Trump voter by voter. One by one. That is go into neighborhoods of regular white folks and try to convince people to get to the election centers. (3) If people need a ride then to offer to drive them.
ReplyDeleteThat is to do everything possible to make sure the election is not stolen. And to start now.
WRT Ohio, there's gamesmanship and than there's cheating. Since Ohio's primary was open, it's hard to get that worked up over Dem crossovers. This is why some states are closed in the first place; because in the decadent late 1800's unpopular parties/candidates would coerce a surge of voters in their favor shortly before an election. Part of reform was essentially requiring an established oath via party registration in order to be eligible to vote in the first place. In light of the Ohio chicanery, maybe all states should be closed. I'm not exactly sure just how you would get so many Dem voters to go against Trump but I suppose the black pastor/community organizer effect isn't too tough to harness especially in your back yard.
ReplyDeleteOf course, there's always good old fashioned box stuffing and not counting the opponent's votes. And if it was done on a computer it's really easy to rig. Bribing or intimidating election officials to help the cheating or just look the other way.
Given the nature of Cruz and Kasich, and how protective they are of their home turf, I have a hard time accepting the integrity of either the Texas vote (which I believe was mostly done on computers) or the Ohio one.
I'm not surprised Kasich won Ohio. For starters, there's an effective open primary system. Ten years ago, you'd have to have been already registered with a party, then show up to the polling place and they would already know and hand you the appropriate ballot. One couldn't change parties last minute. Now, they ask AT the polling place.
ReplyDeleteSecond of all, the business people here are reticent of change of the status quo. They're fearful of losing what they have. Those on the political right can see that the ship is going down, but they're not quite there yet on the this being a question of existential question of survival nationalism versus the status quo flood our neighborhoods with violent foreigners globalism. Also, although the state is limping along economically along with the rest of the country, it's not doing as badly as its neighbors.
You can look at a map of the state and trace Kasich's support. From the government sector down in the bottom left-hand side of the state in Columbus, up to Toledo, over to Cleveland over to the southbound I-279 corridor that houses many upper middle class types who work for one of the many corporate and regional headquarters along that highway.
Trump won the more rural and farm-based Ohioan counties.
Ohioans are a little bit different. I called the state for Kasich and warned my Trump supporting friends that they had to vote; that the business types around here along the I-279 corridor want to protect their (often newly) acquired status of wealth, and that Trump was seen as a step that could rock their boats.
I'm an Ohioan of a little more than a decade now. I voted for Trump in the primary. Ohio's result was not surprising.
Correction: I-271
DeleteShould have proofread....
"Since Ohio's primary was open, it's hard to get that worked up over Dem crossovers."
ReplyDeleteIt's not the open primary that's the problem. It's Kasich's stick-and-carrot steering of a huge bloc of voters to keep him from failing, and thereby canceling the will of those who had a genuine interest in the Republican primary (regardless of who they chose, but that would overwhelmingly be Trump).
If the primary were closed, Kasich's machine simply would have steered those Dems to re-register as Republicans before a deadline, and then vote for him as required. Same outcome.
"Of course, there's always good old fashioned box stuffing and not counting the opponent's votes. And if it was done on a computer it's really easy to rig. Bribing or intimidating election officials to help the cheating or just look the other way."
ReplyDeleteThese seem to play a minor role, if any, given the Herculean effort that Kasich's machine made to have actual voters cast their vote for him -- albeit by more or less bribing and threatening them.
If you're going to rig an election, it's best to make it seem like a normal process, where people go in to the station and cast a vote for the intended winner. Fiddling with the machines and bribing officials is too nakedly corrupt.
"the business people here are reticent of change of the status quo."
ReplyDeleteWell it's not only government-connected businessmen who voted in the primary.
CNN's exit polls show Kasich dominating by double digits with nearly every group:
http://www.cnn.com/election/primaries/polls/oh/Rep
He wins by double digits with the oldest group? Kasich's comparative advantage is with the youngest.
He wins even more with non-whites than with whites? They don't even know who he is. But they do have government jobs, and can follow orders if the machine threatens to take them away.
Kasich won with first-time voters? Trump always wins that category, the disaffected voters. Except these aren't disaffected people turning out for Trump, but those who have government jobs and were ordered to show up to vote in a primary for the first time, or else.
Kasich never wins those groups, nor did his fellow country club candidates when they were in the race -- Bush, Walker, Rubio, etc.
The only plausible results are that Trump won with the least educated, poorest, rural residents, and those from the Ohio Valley region. That shows up in his winning the Appalachian counties.
Other than that, though, the demographic results stink.
"You can look at a map of the state and trace Kasich's support."
ReplyDeleteKasich won more than just the urban centers, although that was a big part of it. He won all the smaller counties outside of Appalachia. In the 2012 primary, all the non-urban counties went for Santorum, not Romney (green Santorum, orange Romney):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ohio_Republican_Presidential_Primary_Election_Results_by_County,_2012.svg
So why on Earth would these Santorum voters suddenly switch to Kasich, who is even more liberal and Establishment? They should have gone for Cruz or Trump. In other words, Kasich's machine canvassed the entire state and threatened everyone with damnation, so he won even these smaller counties that weren't that necessary, but he didn't want to take any chances.
The only people who told him to go shove it were the Appalachians.
"Those on the political right can see that the ship is going down"
ReplyDeleteAgain, the main reason Kasich won was not right-wing or Republican voters, but a huge bloc of Dems who invaded -- and not out of genuine interest (such cross-overs always go to Trump, we've never seen Dems in an open primary invade to block Trump and help a liberal country club type).
Here's another damning example. Summit County, home to Akron, part of the greater Cleveland metro area, and the solid blue NE Ohio region.
ReplyDeleteIn both 2008 and 2012, 57-58% of the voters chose Obama.
In the 2016 primary, just 31% of the voters cast a Democrat ballot!
For some reason, these consistently blue voters decided to abandon their own party's primary. We're really supposed to believe that the electorate plummeted from about 60% to 30% Democrat? That's too radical of a change to be believed.
And of course these phony voters helped Kasich, who won the county 51% to Trump's 36%.
In sheer numbers, Dem ballots were 68,325 and Repub ballots were 153,957. If 58% of the electorate had cast a Dem ballot, according to the past two Presidential elections, Dem ballots should have numbered 126,701. That leaves a gap of 58,376 would-be Dem voters who invaded the Republican primary in order to prop up Kasich and block Trump.
Tens of thousands here, tens of thousands there -- pretty soon we're talking certain victory.
To reiterate one last time: Kasich won due to the Dems more or less abandoning their own primary and invading the Republican one (would have been the same if it were closed -- they simply would have had to re-register before a deadline).
Since that happened nowhere else, and since Kasich is the sitting re-elected Governor who controls the political machine, it stands to reason that it was his unique ability to "incentivize" the would-be Dem voters to 1) turn out, 2) to vote in the Republican, not Dem primary, and 3) to vote specifically for him, not Trump.
My dad used to be heavily involved in Democrat politics here in Toledo. A lot of democrats who knew him started calling him in the days leading up to the Ohio primary asking if they should crossover and vote for Kasich. I think a lot of democrats were experiencing a brief hysteria about Trump due to media brainwashing.
ReplyDeleteMy dad told them to vote for Sanders, as Hillary is definitely going to pass TPP and TTIP and kill the remaining manufacturing jobs.
I strongly suspect if it hadn't been for Democrat flippers, Trump and Sanders would have carried Ohio. People here are way too naive and easily manipulated by political rats.
In the 2004 general, the DNC machine stood ready to steal the election for John Kerry in Ohio, just as it had sought to steal the 2000 general in Florida for Gore, but at the 11th hour, Kerry decided against it.
ReplyDeleteNicholas Stix, Uncensored
Sheesh, did tens of thousands of people really cave to the pressure? I never heard anything about this on Alex Jones (who'll mention any kind of scheme). Which isn't to say it didn't happen.
ReplyDeleteIf it's true I'm pissed at people being that easily pushed around for one thing, and for another the many people who were not within the grasp of this scheme who could've and should've shown up to vote Trump or Sanders.
"Fiddling with the machines and bribing officials is too nakedly corrupt."
Well, the Supreme Court and Florida's government openly stole the 2000 election (and Al Gore, the relatively honorable Democrats still left by that point, and various "neutral" parties weren't going to protest what with poppy Bush attempting to kill Reagan for having the audacity to best Bush in 1980). Getting party hacks to rig things to some degree (including vote tampering) in such a decadent era ought to be expected.
Thing is, Trump's support is so overwhelming, along with the elite's own infighting and confusion, that they can't get the desired results. They don't even have a solid opposition candidate since the "vetting" process for gaining the privilege to run with party support only produces either total hacks (Bush, Kasich), eager young lapdogs (Rubio), or mercenaries who are coughed up by a nihilistic period (Cruz).
When the populism worm turns (as it clearly has), the rules of the game change. We're not listening to our owners or the referees anymore. It looks like the elites of conscience or a sound instinct for listening to the changing tune of the people can function as a conduit for reform and appeasing popular wishes. To really avert a mess we're going to need them to persuade and council the greediest and most stubborn of elites (like Charles "inequality is genetic!" Murray).
The so-called intellectuals who excused the disgrace of the last 30 years are even more sad than the people they apologized for. Don't insult our intelligence anymore; Ya'know that pricey late model car you got, or that 5 bedroom 4 bathroom house ya got? A pity if something happened to those status banners.
Let's not forget the map of Trump support from late last year:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.motherjones.com/files/blog_trump_support.jpg
Pretty accurate for the primary outcomes, since Trump voters have been on board for a long time.
Ohio is clearly part of Trump country in that map, particularly the NE region where heavily populated industrial cities like Cleveland, Akron, Canton, etc. are located.
We're really supposed to believe that all those Trump voters evaporated within a few months. Fat chance -- Kasich organized a Democrat invasion to swamp them in the polls.
Good thing Kasich is term-limited from running again. We won't forget this betrayal and corruption of the democratic process.
"I never heard anything about this on Alex Jones (who'll mention any kind of scheme)"
ReplyDeleteThis one was a little hard to catch. I didn't catch it at the time, and I was already skeptical of the results on the night they were announced.
You have to not only be looking at the Republican contest, but the Democrat contest as well, and how the size of the voters compared across parties within a county. That cannot be caught by casual observation.
But once you scrape beneath that surface, it's totally obvious. Counties that went 60% for Obama are suddenly 70% Republican? I don't think so -- unless they crossed over to Trump, part of a well established pattern. But not for Kasich -- no broader pattern there.
Also I think the Alex Jones audience is more into the witchcraft kind of stories, like rigged voting machines.
ReplyDeleteThis is more like the GOPe effort to defeat a primary challenger to Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran in 2014. They paid off a bunch of black Democrats to vote in the Republican primary, in favor of the Establishment incumbent.
That's more subversion than outright cheating. The fact that The Powers That Be are obsessed with making it subversion rather than cheating, is at least a silver lining. They know that the public has a hair trigger for blatantly anti-democratic shenanigans, and will quickly yank them off the status pyramid if they're caught.
The Trump phenomenon is one great big cane yanking all of these Establishment shills off of the Vaudeville stage of American politics.
OT, no comment:
ReplyDeletehttp://bipartisanreport.com/2016/04/28/trumps-behavior-explained-rumors-swirl-of-early-dementia-or-alzheimers
This is true analysis not the usual whining of soreheads or the ppompus pronuncements of the Polysc professors I lamentably once respected.Is there any chance that this talent can be called upon to help Mr Trump carry Ohio in November.
ReplyDeletea
It is common for totalitarians to label their opposition as being mentally ill.
ReplyDelete"...if any, given the Herculean effort that Kasich's machine made to have actual voters cast their vote for him -- albeit by more or less bribing and threatening them."
ReplyDeleteI'm quoting this because its representative, not because I specifically disagree with this statement.
But I'd like to hear how you think, in concrete terms, this occurs. How does a governor 'strongarm' or 'bribe' tens of thousands of citizens? I suppose in the good old days, you could buy them beer, or a political machine, where local pols literally tell their immigrant citizens how to vote (in exchange for forgiving the rent this month, or a bag of groceries, or whatever). But concretely, how does it happen today?
I've lived in four different states in the recent past, am over 50 years old. I've never had any kind of contact in with a governor, or mid-level state executive, or local pol. I've never heard of this kind of machine. I've never known anyone who gets his voting orders from some state bureaucrat.
I have known governors (and state employees) encouraging support for a particular view (for instance, libraries having signs to support the library in the upcoming vote).
I could also imagine some kind of individual bribery (local construction company bribes state employees to get the road contract, for instance). But this local, widespread, subterranean, illegal network of bribery that extends to, as this theory requires, tens of thousands of people? That is so hidden that nobody publicly acknowledges it, investigates it, or questions it? I simply find it hard to believe.
What I would believe (and I personally believe happens essentially all the time) is ballot stuffing by voting district officials. Given that 1) 1/7 of people move every year, and 2) some percentage of people die every year, and 3) only a low percentage of even registered voters actually vote, I believe voting rolls are so inaccurate (I'd guess 50% wrong in any given presidential election), that voting district officials can, and do, stuff ballots when necessary to swing close elections.
So I could see ballot stuffing swinging an election. But I'm skeptical that 40,000 voters commit voter fraud, or even vote, under orders from the governor.
anonymousse
Is this what Soros' money went to organizing?
ReplyDelete"Is this what Soros' money went to organizing?"
ReplyDeleteKasich does have heavy Soros money, unlike the other candidates.
"I've never known anyone who gets his voting orders from some state bureaucrat."
If you worked for the government, the suggestions would sound more persuasive. There are enough people who work for government in one way or another to make it happen.
And for Kasich, it's not even that hard of a sell -- he's a closeted homosexual liberal big-gov Democrat who dresses up as a Republican, not too different from Bloomberg.
Throw in the spin about how it's more important to deny Trump the Republican win than it is to hand Clinton the Dem win -- which will happen by itself (Clinton did win Ohio) -- and it sounds less arm-twisting.
But the point remains that the political hierarchy sent the orders down, and those whose livelihood is connected to the government played along.
I don't think ballot-stuffing was how it happened, since that would have created a discrepancy with the exit polls of actual people coming from the polling stations. The exit polls would have said Trump won, the ballots said Kasich won.
ReplyDeleteSo then you'd need to believe that all of the media people who do exit polls were also in on the ballot-stuffing, and agreed to make up exit polls that reflected the rigged ballots.
Too many suppositions and criminal actions to believe, when there's a simpler explanation.
Good news I suppose, I'm not sure about how the methodology of the polls stack up http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-leads-clinton-by-two-points-in-rasmussen-poll/ar-BBswIB2?li=BBnb7Kz&OCID=DELLDHP
ReplyDelete"If you worked for the government, the suggestions would sound more persuasive. There are enough people who work for government in one way or another to make it happen....
ReplyDeleteBut the point remains that the political hierarchy sent the orders down, and those whose livelihood is connected to the government played along."
Again: in concrete terms, how does this happen? The governor tells people how to vote (how to cross-over from the Democratic to Republican primary), and tens of thousands of state employees just do what he says?
For this to happen (in spite of the fact that we don't know it happened):
1) the 'order' from Kasich would have to be secret
2) that 'order' would be either communicated via email (where there is a record of it), or via personal communication down the chain of command, through literally thousands of upper-level to low-level managers (managers typically control around five people). That many state managers are corrupt enough to strongarm employees, even though it is illegal, and even though a substantial number of them wouldn't even agree with the Republican governor?
3) The 10,000 state employees all do what their told, in spite of the fact that it is a secret ballot, and thus noncompliance is not traceable
4) Noone of these 10,000 says anything, in spite of the fact that even in Ohio's state government there are plenty of people who disagree with the governor (as there are in every state , and every organization, in the country)
5) the press is unable to learn of this, in spite of the press being Democratic and Kasich is a Republican?
I've never experienced any of this type of political pressure, in jobs in the private sector, federal service, military service, and academia. I've never heard anyone I know say anything like this has ever happened to them. Yet it was widespread enough, specifically in the Ohio State government to sway an election?
You are still typing theoretical concepts that, if thought about, make no sense.
anonymousse
How do crooked politicians lean on their vast network of state employees? Beats me. But somehow they did.
ReplyDeleteWhat the skeptics have to explain is more unexplainable -- how so many counties that were solid blue for Obama in 2012 suddenly turned 60-70% Republican for Kasich.