A Post Conventions Analysis

In March of 2012 Andy Andrews explained to Mike Huckabee that twice in the last six presidential elections the voting age population (VAP) exceeded the actual number of voters by over 100-million people.  In 2008 the voting age population was 206-million people & the actual number of voters was 131-million people so 75-million people eligible to vote did not vote – & of these 75-million 65-million call themselves Christian believers.  This statistic has not changed much since – there are tens of millions of Christian believers who will not vote in 2020.
 
More recently, in the dramatic 2016 presidential election the voting age population exceeded the actual number of voters by over 113-million & the VAP turnout was 54.7% meaning that almost half the country that was old enough to vote didn't.  See graphic below. 

  click on graphic to enlarge

Typically a presidential election draws about a 60% turnout meaning that the victor does not receive half of the votes of the people old enough to vote but rather approximately 30%.
 
Off year elections draw a significantly less turnout – Bill de Blasio was originally elected mayor of NYC with 18.72% of the votes of registered voters in a 26% turnout & AOC won her first primary for Congress in a 12.9% turnout election in 2018 receiving less votes than she cost her district in high quality Amazon jobs thereby showing how important it is to know what is going on & to vote.
 
You can see why many people have no respect for people who don't vote – it opens the door for people like de Blasio & AOC to slip in.  Many people also have little respect for those who do vote – they don't understand the issues or concentrate on superfluous issues & that opens the door for people like BO & Pelosi.
 
Blogger Wayne Dupree focused on both of these types of people when he wrote on July 20 – "Let's consider the typical American: They can't balance a checkbook, knows all the Kardashians but not their kid's middle school teachers, can't find Iraq on a map, can't name the past six presidents; thinks the U.S. won the Vietnam war; pays someone to mow her lawns so they can free up time to walk on a treadmill at the gym; spends 20 minutes looking for a parking space & waiting in two lines to pay $4 for a 69 cent cup of coffee just so they can enter her office with a 16 ounce 'symbol of conformity' in their hand.  They can't name their state's senators; they don't know what a mutual fund is, never heard of Douglas MacArthur. They spend more money on hair and nails and man caves than retirement saving and have been brainwashed to think diversity is a strength.  Did I miss anything?"

Well, only that 40% of the population say they could not readily afford an unexpected expense of $400 without selling something or borrowing - this is a $58.74 expense in constant 1970 dollars.  And twelve percent of adults say they would not be able to pay such an expense by any means.  See graphic below for breakdown by generation.

  click on graphic to enlarge

Further in this financial irresponsibility line - less than half of working Americans over 60 feel their retirement savings are on track to retire any time soon & less than13% had no retirement savings @ all.  Source - Federal Reserve report in 2019.

 
With regard to the above typical American who votes I can only add to Wayne's description that I know someone who votes for the person on the debate stage who wears the nicest tie – whether or not that person is even a candidate.

And of course students of the Constitution know that the Founders were too smart to let the people described above anywhere near the voting booth - the Founders rejected the direct popular vote of the President.  There is no constitutional right for the people to directly vote for the President.

The Electoral College was implemented via the Constitution to select the President.  People do not vote for President, they vote for electors, who assemble in their state capitals on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December, to cast their ballots & officially select the next President of the U.S. – December 14 this year.  

The Founders @ the Constitutional Convention were well aware of the human shortcomings described above & wanted to prevent incompetent people or other enemies of America from taking office so they limited the direct popular vote to people of substance & then only to direct voting for Members of the House of Representatives – the representatives who were closest to the voters & therefore would more directly answer to them.

The Founders were extremely careful in writing the Constitution to limit voting eligibility for President only to people appointed by each states' legislature.  The people so chosen (appointed) were known as electors - they cast the actual votes for President.  The states' legislatures' method of choosing electors was by popular vote with the voters in 1789 being property owners - white males & free negroes in five of the thirteen states, to wit, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, & North Carolina.  Source - Mark Levin, Men In Black, page 15.

The idea was that the election was to be made by men (electors) most capable of analyzing the positions of the candidates on the significant issues. It was important to the Founders that the electors had the information & discernment requisite to making a full investigation before casting their vote.

 

The Founders wanted the voters to be people with skin in the game & to keep elections as local as possible.  The original constitutional popular voting power did not extend past voting for Members of the House of Representatives.  Senators were chosen by State Legislatures & the President still is actually chosen by electors who are chosen in a "Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct."

So in essence the only people who originally could vote in America were property owners - white male & free negroes in the states indicated above - they voted for electors who they thought would best study all the presidential candidates & their positions on the issues.  These property owning voters were also the ones who elected Members of the House.

In The Federalist No. 68 Hamilton wrote regarding the guarded way in which the President was to be selected "that if the manner of it be not perfect, it is @ least excellent."

The Founders were well aware of the principle I refer to as Death Of Democracy - they knew as students of history that a democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship.

 

The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:

From bondage to spiritual faith;

From spiritual faith to great courage;

From courage to liberty;

From liberty to abundance;

From abundance to complacency;

From complacency to apathy;

From apathy to dependence;

From dependence back into bondage.

Over the decades the American system of voting eased until today people who receive government checks to pay for a large part of their existence vote & actually cancel out the votes of people who pay the taxes that these people rely on.  Can't express the Death Of Democracy clearer than that.

This is why America is a constitutional republic - not a democracy.  "A republic, madam, if you can keep it" was Benjamin Franklin's reply to Elizabeth Powell's question @ the end of the Constitutional Convention about what sort of government the delegates of the Convention had created on September 17, 1787.  

The political conventions of the past two weeks gave the Democrats (Biden & Harris) & Republicans (Trump & Pence) the chance to showcase what they plan to do if their candidates are elected.  And by "their candidates" I include Democrat governors & mayors who are the ones who have allowed the tyranny, rioting, looting, destruction, & the ruination of innocent lives in their own states & cities under the pretense of peaceful protests.  They have allowed paid out of town professionals & opportunistic looters, after dark, to agitate & really destroy whatever peaceful elements of the protests ever existed - instead of arresting these looters & agitators, finding out who is paying them, & then bringing them all to justice.

The Democrats spent much of their convention blaming President Trump for the deaths & hardships caused by the Wuhan coronavirus but of course they never called it that in deference to the Communist Chinese.  Conspicuous by its absence was any mention whatsoever during the Democrat convention condemning the rioting, burning, & looting in neighborhoods of people they think of as their constituents.  Finally on the next to last day of the Republican convention, nearly a week after his own convention, Biden put out a video criticizing the violence & looting - but only after focus groups started to show defunding the police & supporting, even tacitly, rioting & looting were still political losers in America.  But like the Wuhan coronavirus Biden feels that Trump is responsible for the riots & civil unrest.

And of course Biden is wrong on both the virus & civil unrest counts.  The national government's functions do not include police powers – principally safety & health matters which are the responsibility of the states or cities.  With the exception of banning travel to the United States from places like Communist China, where the Wuhan coronavirus originated, the President has no direct power or authority under the Constitution for health issues including any involvement in the current Covid-19 pandemic.

The Constitution's enumerated powers specifically grant Congress the power to call out the militia (Militia Clause - Article I, Section 8, Clause 15) & the President the authority to command the militia (Commander Of Militia Clause - Article II, Section 2, Clause 1) when needed in the active service to the U.S. Starting in 1792 with the Uniform Militia Act (also known as the Calling Forth Act) Congress delegated to the President the authority to call out the militia & this delegated authority remains today for the President to suppress civil disorders, insurrections, or rebellions when governors do not exercise their authority to call out the National Guard (descendant of the colonial militia) when it is obviously necessary.  An example of presidential primacy in this regard is President Kennedy calling out the National Guard to integrate the University of Mississippi in 1962.

In the case of Washington state, Governor Jay Inslee seemed oblivious to the take over by thugs of blocks of Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood from June 8 to July 1 in a police free zone that resulted in Carmen Best, the first Black woman Seattle Police Chief, to resign.

Governors & mayors have their own police departments & control of their state National Guards as well as the cooperation of President Trump in providing resources to quell the current violence in short order, if asked.  Absent the action to accomplish this you can only conclude that the violence you see is what the people in the affected areas want & will continue to get.

Biden has said he would shut down the entire economy, if president, if scientists told him that was the best way to fight the virus.  Sounds more like the job of a project coordinator than a project manager & being president is a project management job.  Since he has no authority over the states on this matter, just what would Biden do that Trump has not tried to do if the states ignored him?

The Democrat convention did not focus on the details of any policy agenda.  It certainly did not mention the impracticality of the Green New Deal like grounding airplanes or the astronomical trillion dollar increases in taxes required to fund their programs.  You wouldn't expect them to point out the poor decisions that Biden has made over his 47 year government career or his flip flopping on practicing Catholic matters like abandoning the Hyde Amendment that forbids taxpayer money to fund abortion.

And whether Biden would ban fracking or new fracking permits or ban drilling for oil on federal lands or everywhere it is safe to say that he is no fan of any of this & AOC will be the enforcer to make sure he only gets more vehement regarding eliminating fossil fuels.

Click here to hear Biden's acceptance speech.

The Republican convention highlighted one inspirational speaker after another including Nick Sandmann, the student from Kentucky who had a hateful encounter on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 2019, & Ann Dorn, the widow of retired police officer David Dorn who was killed during a protest of June 2.

Both Trump & Pence called out the Democrats' shift toward socialism & this was met by resistance from readers of this blog - as being too easy on them.  Economics501 wrote that Trump's speech was a missed opportunity to detail the dangers of Democrat Marxism to the electorate & that the speech should have explained that Marxism extends socialism with the gamut of individual freedom restrictions like speech & religion.

Of course I agree with this assessment except it may be too advanced for @ least some of this electorate described hereinbefore - an electorate educated in government schools that are more dangerous to America than al Qaeda ever was.  The portion of the electorate I am referring to thinks socialism refers to some social media they have not yet tried so what in the world will they think Marxism is?

Rudy's speech on the socialism topic wrapped all of this together for the most elementary to understand when he said "He's (Biden) a Trojan horse with Bernie, AOC, Pelosi, Black Lives Matter, & his party's entire left wing just waiting to execute their pro-criminal, anti-police, socialist policies."

EW wrote - "Would have liked to hear him (Trump) say after going through Biden's platform, this is what I will do. His wife, & Ivanka, showed up really well.  Nancy against the debates, doesn't she know that doesnt look good for Biden."

Click here to hear Trump's acceptance speech.

In summary, everyone should think back to last February & see if you were not doing better under Trump than you had under BO/Biden.  Unemployment was 3.5% & Black, Hispanic, Asian, & women unemployment was @ or near record lows.  The gap between Black & white joblessness had dropped to the lowest level ever since these records were first kept in the 1970s.  Wages were rising. 

We don't know when the Covid-19 pandemic will end.  In fact with the CDC changing their recommendations on such basics as wearing masks & not needing to be tested if coming in close contact with confirmed Covid-19 cases if you don't have symptoms or the WHO now declaring that lockdowns are more harmful than helpful we have no confidence that anyone really knows how to combat the Wuhan coronavirus.

What we do know is that if the pandemic passes any time in the next four years that Trump has a proven record to restore our prosperity & no indication that Biden, based on his 47 years in government, can.

Just about as important as the presidential election is the election of senators, governors, & mayors that stand for reelection in 2020.  As detailed above, voting out the type of Democrat governors & mayors who have tolerated the destruction, looting, burning, & killings in Portland, Seattle, Minneapolis, Chicago, Baltimore, & other cities is the fastest way to return America to normalcy.