Trump has a 39% approval rating – which sounded fairly horrible until I looked at the other side and saw that the Democratic party has a 38.3% approval rating. Kind of suggests that I’m part of the majority for once – and the midterms, across the nation, will be an election where my fellow countrymen can hold their noses and vote for the lesser of two evils.
Pollsters are predicting a blue wave. I’m old enough to have seen landslide elections – and this election does have the possibility of turning the majorities in both house and senate over to the dems – but the problem is that neither party is trusted – both are distrusted and disliked by folks in the political middle. My own call is that, looking at polling inaccuracies in the past, the Dem candidate needs to be up somewhere between two and three percent in polling to make the race a real tossup. Thing is, I think that makes sense, but I can’t bring it through the calculation if I want confidence. More pollsters disagree with me.
I’d like to see a return to moderate democrats – that would give me a choice. In the past three elections, I’ve been pushed into marking the oval alongside Donald J. Trump because the alternative – Clinton, Biden, Harris – was worse. In general, Trump has been good for a gunnie. I can’t complain about the improvements in border security. That said, there are a lot of spots where a decent alternative could shift my vote.
Here, in Montana, my vote in the midterms doesn’t matter. In Lincoln county, the balloting will go Republican. And I remember that both parties voted to take away local election places and replace them with successive scandal-ridden election administrators and balloting by mail. I can’t even write in a protest vote against an unopposed mediocre candidate.
All I can do is vote against candidates who have voted against my beliefs and interests – when they are opposed. And I encourage everyone to leave the oval blank when there is an unopposed candidate. I think it would send a message if unopposed candidates were successful with a smaller vote total than the losing candidates in a Trego school board election. It would make a statement if the county superintendent of schools (yes, she is unopposed) were re-elected with a smaller vote total than a Trego school trustee. The statement would show how our Montana state representatives and senators, of both parties, have worked to reduce the value of our votes in electing leaders.
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