Schrodinger’s Election – by Glenn Harlan Reynolds
We re not hearing much about the urgency or sanctity of voting, weirdly, with less than a month until the election. If people aren t able to vote in large areas, will the North Carolina legislature fail to certify its results? Might a Republican House refuse to certify North Carolina results if large areas of the state were disenfranchised? There s real potential for drama there.
Or maybe voters elsewhere in North Carolina or Georgia, angry that their state seems to have been shortchanged by federal relief efforts, will vote for Trump as a response. It s even possible that Virginia, a likely-Harris state that s adjacent to North Carolina and has had some damage itself, will respond unfavorably to the lousy treatment of their neighboring state.
On the other hand, there will be an uncertain, but possibly large, amount of cheating, almost entirely in favor of Harris, in a number of swing states. That could swing the balance too.
It’s possible to build up all sorts of entirely plausible stories leading to a Trump or Harris victory. It s also impossible to tell which ones are right at this point. And with a month to go, who knows what will happen next in this crazy season that might tip the balance? Aliens?
Well, pundits and pollsters make their livings by predicting things and pay little price for being wrong which encourages them to make predictions, even wrong ones, to satisfy their audiences. But for the rest of us, none of the stories really matter.
If you re a Trump supporter and you expect Trump to win, that s no reason to slack off. If it s not close, they can t cheat, as Hugh Hewitt once said in a book by the same title. And the bigger the margin, the more Trump can do when in office. If you expect Trump to lose, though, that s still no reason to slack off. The closer the margin the better, even if he loses, and the more down-ticket candidates elected the better in terms of restraining whatever nightmarish policies the Harris administration produces. We ll know soon enough.
I feel Glenn’s pain. It’s time to practice stoicism overtime, me thinks. Anything can indeed happen and many of the possible consequences are bad, and some of them dire. Time to focus on the things you can control.