Programming note: Tomorrow, Wednesday, I'll be here for our midweek Clubland Q&A taking questions from Mark Steyn Club members live around the planet at 3pm North American Eastern - which is 8pm British Summer Time/9pm Central European. Hope you can swing by.
~On Sunday, in the wake of the latest attempted assassination of Donald Trump, I cited part of an eight-year-old column of mine. Other parts of that piece bear reprising. Assuming the Republican candidate manages to stay alive till November (which is by no means certain at this stage), the election will come down to whether he can attract enough voters to put himself beyond the ever more brazen shenanigans in half-a-dozen big blue cities in America's "swing states" - the only electoral precincts that matter, the only ones where any real contested election is happening.
As I have often said, it doesn't matter if you have the greatest constitution in the world if you have the crappiest election system in the world ...well, to be more precise, in the developed and much of the developing world. The American right's complacency about this question is part of the reason why we're in the present pickle. Here's what I wrote eight years ago. For dimpled chads, read mail-in ballots, but otherwise nothing has changed, except that it's even worse:
You gotta love the massed ranks of the media huffin' an' a-puffin' about how disgraceful Trump's remarks about "rigged" elections are. As I said on yesterday's John Oakley Show, America runs, at best, the most incompetent and, at worst, the dirtiest elections in the developed world. Ballot-wise, there's no such thing as a "presidential election"; there are instead a gazillion county elections with multiple voting methods of uncertain reliability. That's why, as I've said for many years, Republicans have to win "beyond the margin of lawyer" - because otherwise the Democrats will discover an extra 3,000 votes in a dumpster round the back of DNC HQ and then find a friendly judge with impressive powers of divining the true meaning of lightly dimpled chads. This doesn't happen in Canada, Britain, Australia, France, Denmark, etc. As I wrote three presidential elections ago:
What happens on Election Day is that the Democrats lose and then decide it was because of "unusually long lines" in "minority neighborhoods." What "minority neighborhoods" means is electoral districts run by Democrats: in Ohio in 2004 as in Florida in 2000, the "problems" all occur in counties where the Dems run the system. Sometimes, as in King County, Washington, they get lucky and find enough votes from the "disenfranchised" accidentally filed in the icebox at Democratic headquarters. But in Ohio, George W. Bush managed to win not just beyond the margin of error but beyond the margin of lawyer. If there had been anything to sue and re-sue and re-re-sue over, you can bet those 5,000 shysters the Kerry campaign flew in would do it. Instead, Mrs. Boxer and Mr. Conyers and Co. are using a kind of parliamentary privilege to taint Mr. Bush's victory without the flimsiest pretext.
But unlike Trump nobody accused them of undermining the integrity of American democracy. Whether he's right on Mexican rapists and Muslim immigration is a matter of opinion. But the crappiness of US electoral integrity is surely beyond dispute. Don't take my word for it, ask the Democrats. Even without a Republican in sight, their elections are the usual overflowing toilet of corruption:
[Democrat candidate] Dixon, who received more than 46,000 votes during the primary, narrowly lost to [Democrat candidate] Pugh. The former mayor has questioned the legitimacy of that result, citing hundreds of irregularities that were uncovered by a state review.
The Dixon campaign also has accused the Pugh campaign of paying poor people for votes by offering food and jobs.
"This is the first time in the history of the state of Maryland that an election was decertified," Dixon said. "There were questions in 71 precincts. There were provisional ballots that were thrown out. Judges allowed independent voters to vote during the primary."
Dixon told listeners she is "not a sore loser," but that state officials reviewing the city's election "literally threw up their hands because it was such a total mess."
She suggested that boxes full of votes for her and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders weren't counted...
The Pugh campaign has denied any wrongdoing.
Is Ms Dixon also undermining faith in the integrity of American elections? Don't be silly, she's a Democrat.
[UPDATE: Reader Michael Mullinix adds:
Candidate Dixon is the former Baltimore Mayor who resigned after pleading guilty to stealing gift cards intended for poor Charm City citizens.
As I said, this is an intra-Democrat fight. As Bernie Sanders discovered, Dems can't run a clean election, even with no Republicans to screw over.]
~Also on yesterday's Oakley show, I pointed out that Donald Trump is in the unusual position of running against both the Democrat and Republican parties. That is literally true. The National Republican Congressional Committee has a new ad out praising Representative Bob Dold (R - Illinois) for his opposition to the party's presidential candidate:
"Dold is an independent voice who stood up to Donald Trump months ago," the narrator in the ad says. The ad then shows a clip of Dold declaring, on CNN, "I think Donald Trump has disqualified himself."
So the party machine is funding attacks on its own voters' choice of presidential candidate. The Beltway notion that, once Trump is defeated, the GOP can resume business as usual in service of the donor class seems unlikely to me.
~There are arguments across the airwaves today about whether the race is "tightening". Maybe. I certainly don't believe we're in for a Hillary landslide. But, as you listen to reporters on the ground in, say, "the swing state of North Carolina", you can't help noticing that almost all the so-called "swing states" used to be Republican states. Indeed, some reliably red states are passing through the "swing state" stage via the express lane and moving straight to blue-state status in a couple of electoral cycles - Virginia, for example.
The #NeverTrumpers blame this on the weakness of the candidate. But I'd say it's basic demographic arithmetic. As I wrote back in February:
These three electoral maps - 1988, 2000, 2012 - are a portrait of remorseless Republican decline... What about another 12 years? In Arizona, a majority of grade-schoolers are Hispanic: Are you entirely confident AuH2O country will still be red a decade hence? In 2010, seventy per cent of births at Dallas General Hospital were "anchor babies": If the GOP loses Texas' 38 electoral votes, there is no conceivable math that on the Rove turnout-model model gets them to the magic 270 - or anywhere near it.
I'm on record from September predicting a Trump victory. But, if he doesn't, don't pin your hopes on 2020, when half the purple states will be blue and another handful of red states will be purpling. As I put it eight months ago:
The GOP has done a grand job of screwing itself out of electoral viability.
~In this eighth year of The Mark Steyn Club, we're very appreciative of all those who signed up in our first flush and are still eager to be here as we cruise on towards our first decade. We thank you all. For more information on the Club, see here.
