Context In Elections

One thing about the election season; there’s always a lot of people willing to predict this or that, even half a year before the election. The thing is, they forget events that change the outcome, sometimes just the margin, but sometimes everything changes.

It’s too soon to know the impact that the aborted Air Bomb plot will have on the midterm elections, but it seems clear to me that there will be an effect. A candidate could goof by trying to make political gain on a crisis; people do not much like a politician pretending to be a security blanket. But a politician would be very foolish to try to pretend that there is not a real National Security issue raised by the continuing war on Terror. The plotters in England sent a clear rebuttal to the sneering condescension from Leftists who try to wish America back to sleep about the threat. Considering the difficulties caused by the new restrictions on carry-on luggage – think about a 2-hour wait and you can’t have a drink, cosmetics, or any number of other ‘comfort’ items to pass the time – and compare them to the broad acceptance of these conditions as necessary, and you will see that the unconscious behavior of Americans shows they understand the issue at a gut level, and they are on the President’s side in general. That does not mean that Republican ‘X’ will get any more support in his race just because of that, but if his Democrat opponent tries the now-familiar ‘terrorists are not an issue’ claim again, it will make a difference.

Every election in the same season is affected by national and international events, but it should also be remembered that every individual election has its own character. The ‘generic ballot’ is laughably stupid; people vote for specific people, not the least because neither the Republicans nor the Democrats enjoy the deep or broad confidence in their party to drive most people to vote just because of the party. Speaking a bit harshly about the modern media, I think that many of the fancy-hair media are just not willing to do the kind of digging and real investigation it would take to even figure out which races are really the competitive ones. Every election season has a few surprises, not least because the news crews spend more time and attention on makeup and lighting than in finding out what’s really on the public mind.