I voted today and after all the garbage we have been forced to listen to and watch over the last year, it sure felt good to do something. Now I am not one to sign on to conspiracy theories, but there was a major car accident at the entrance of my polling station today (the first day of early voting in my neighborhood) and it took hours to clear. I'm not saying the FBI had anything to do with the accident....
I also finally hit the wall last Friday night and decided not to engage in any political conversation until after the election and certainly not to watch any more cable news. I've even sworn off of Nate Silver's fivethirtyeight.com, which I was literally checking ten times a day for the past month. I'm just done, over it all (although I guess this little note would then have to be counted as my one free pass). Here's my prediction for the election and this is the last thing you will hear from me.
Forget about Trump's failure to disclose his tax returns or his failure to pay any federal income tax for decades. Forget about his sexual predatory inclinations. Forget about "Bad Hombres." Forget about fraudulent Trump University. And forget about Hillary's e-mails, even those on Weiner's lap(top). Forget about Benghazi. Forget about Bill's sexual misbehavior. Forget about both candidate's unfavorable ratings. None of it will matter in the end. I have no idea what will happen to the Senate, but if I had to guess I'd say the Republican majority will hold by a seat or two. I am, though pretty darn sure what the outcome of the presidential election will be. It won't be a runaway, but Hillary will win the popular vote by a couple points and the electoral college by a comfortable margin. Trump will win a little over 40% of the popular vote, maybe even 43%. The reality is that voter entrenchment has set in and almost nothing can shake it, not even Mr. Trump. The vast majority of the Republican party will not desert him. Concerns over his character and his ability to govern have and will move some millions of people away from him, but the party base, largely white evangelicals and white non-college voters, will turn out. Trump will win Texas and Georgia. Mark it down. The same will be the case for Hillary's base, African-American, Hispanic, Asian-American, and white college graduates. They will turn out. The truth is that nationally, her base is bigger than his base and size matters.
It's certainly possible the Republicans could have put up a candidate that had some appeal to the independent voter, the few that remain anyway, and given Hillary's unpopularity, she could have lost, but that didn't happen. Absent a different kind of candidate coming from the Republican Party , the national numbers just work in favor of the Democrats. We will be left once again with a government that is unable to function and that will be miserable for all of us and for our country.