Is this a Political Realignment?

From the perspective of three generations of sucking up 02 and exhaling dreaded C02, I think I have noted some changes in the political landscape. This is certainly evident in this year’s Presidential election.

In decades past, the south was solidly Democrat as was the industrial north as union members and blacks voted almost exclusively for the Democrats. But in those days, the Democrats were not nearly so radically leftist. John Kennedy, for example got tax cuts and regulation reduction causing an economic boom. So did Reagan and Trump after him with the same result.

The Republicans were regarded as the party of the rich and the intellectual classic liberals like William F. Buckley. (The classic liberals would be characterized as conservatives today and, of course, modern liberals are now more socialist.)

Over the decades the “administrative state” has grown exponentially and the government workers now comprise 9 million workers or 6% of the total. With this growth comes the unionization of government employees. This, of course, does not include people employed by state and local governments. The teachers’ unions and the postal workers’ unions care more about serving themselves than results. As a consequence, school performance by students and efficiency at the postal service both continue to decline despite bags of money thrown at them every year. Their generous retirement benefits are billions in the hole.

Naturally, these government employees will continue to vote Democrat to protect their self-interest. While public employee unions were growing, traditional manufacturing and construction union membership declined as manufacturing moved offshore and immigration cut into construction jobs.

In recent national elections, if you look at the counties who vote GOP in red vs counties voting Democrat in blue, the map is mostly red from coast to coast. The blue counties are typically in and around big metropolitan areas. These counties are populated by “urban atheists”. They also have a large population of blacks and other ethnic minorities. However, the raw numbers in the blue counties far out weighs the vote tallies from the rest of the state.

The “left coast” states of California, Oregon and Washington demonstrate the results. Washington has not had a Republican governor in 35 years, Oregon 33 years. Schwarzenegger was the last GOP governor in California and he left office in 2011. All 6 senators from those three states are Democrats as are the mayors of all the major cities. The situation is the same in the major cities on the east coast too.

The west coast cities in particular are a mess. Homeless encampments line the sidewalks with filth and rampant drug use. Theft to support drug habits goes unpunished by liberal prosecutors and a revolving door policy. At the same time, as violent riots plague these cities, they decide to “defund the police”! The blacks who live in these cities can see it and favor more police to protect their neighborhoods.

This election is about weather or not you prefer style over substance. The working class, the previous Democrat supporters, the blacks and the Hispanics, seem to be clearly falling on the side of substance. Democrats are worried that they may lose their huge support from the minority voters and the working class of the rust belt states who turn out in massive numbers for Trump’s rallies. These people are primarily working class and middle class voters, not rich Republicans. The wealthy and especially the super rich from Silicone Valley and Wall Street are now Democrats. That’s why Biden has twice as much money in his coffers as the Trump campaign.

The questions are, can the swing states manipulate the numbers in the counting process? And are their enough Democrats and RINOS who hate Trump sufficiently to provide a winning count?

As I said, here has not been a Republican governor in Washington in 35 years. The last Republican to threaten the Democrat establishment was Dino Rossi in 2004. Dino won on election night and won on the first recount and the second recount. But on the third recount he lost by 42 votes. In King County, the home of the heavily Democrat city of Seattle they kept finding votes, some in the trunks of cars.

I think that’s what we can expect in this election. That and riots.