Republicans Are Convinced They’ll Win The White House Regardless Of Their Nominee

I suppose it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Republicans are convinced that they are going to win this Presidential election. They were absolutely certain they were going to win the last one when they faced off against Barack Obama, and Karl Rove had his famous disagreement with FOX when they called Ohio for Obama. This election is much like last time, but with a few differences.

I know there are a lot of people out there, especially Democrats, doing all these mental gymnastics showing how there is no chance in hell that any Republican can win according to the Electoral College numbers. To them, I would remind them that Ronald Reagan won his re-election with only one state going blue, even though many states had not seen the economic recovery promised and many of those states always go for the Democrat. So don’t assume that California or New York is in the bag along with states that have traditionally gone to Democrats.

There are other factors that are also going against the Democrats that they are absolutely counting on. The Millennials are going to be the largest voting block from now on, and they support progressive policies most often. However, there are a lot of roadblocks for them and others who would normally be voting for the Democrats.

The youth always vote in lower numbers than the rest of society. They usually don’t see it as part of their civic duty, and some feel this generation sees it less of their duty than the last. Our economy has shifted more toward service jobs, with crazy schedules and low pay. If you are younger and working that sort of job, you can’t afford to miss a day or even a few hours to take time off to vote.

Then you have the issue of the strict new voter ID laws that are going into effect, which will likely hit the youth disproportionately. If these laws follow the Wisconsin pattern, which will go into effect this election, it will not accept student IDs without a ton of other verifiable documentation or Veteran IDs which are picture IDs that young people would have.

There are other IDs they will take. State issued IDs like a driver’s license you have to pay for. You can get a free state ID, but here are the weird things about it. You can’t have a driver’s license if you have the state ID, so turn that in and forget about driving. Then you have to remember to check the tiny box on the form before turning it in, and hope you don’t face any harassment at the DMV, because no one there is going to believe you can’t afford that measly ten dollars for their little, laminated license.

You also have the issue involving the aging and possibly corruptible voting machines. They are breaking down, which means fewer of them are available in places, which means longer lines and longer waits. That may turn off voters or cause them to walk away before they even vote. Then there have been accusations more than once that some voting machines have been tampered with to change the votes for candidates that the person didn’t vote for.

All of that certainly gives the Republicans confidence in any election now, but that really isn’t why they think they will win this particular election. They just swept the 2014 election, and they usually do strong during the off-year elections because Democrats often don’t show up for those in large numbers. So their confidence is up, but the biggest reason they believe they will win is because they are absolutely certain that they will be facing Hillary Clinton.

Arthur Laffer, the man made famous for bringing us supply-side economics and for helping Sam Brownback completely devastate Kansas, said that the Republicans will win between 45 and 47 states this election no matter who they have running. The reason, he says, is because Hillary’s time is over. He even states that this election is about issues, and yet he boils it down to an election against Hillary Clinton.

They did the same thing in 2012. They lost that election for that reason. They made their entire campaign a smear of Barack Obama. That worked great for their base, and infuriated the Democrats. The GOP refuses to realize that they can’t run their personal smear campaigns and hope to win the majority of the people. But, that’s why they have placed all these impediments in the way. Unless we actually show up in large numbers to replace all of these people, everywhere, we can’t get rid of these laws and truly end this tyranny of the people by the few.