Go McMullin! and other t-minus-7-days thoughts

Last updated on: November 1, 2016 at 9:42 pm by Jane the Actuary

Go McMullin! and other t-minus-7-days thoughts 2016-11-01T21:42:05-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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Hillary’s e-mails are a big nothingburger, says the Left. She was careless, but has admitted as such, and no spies have died as a result, and the so-called “classified” information was really nothing serious.

Hillary’s e-mails are yet another instance of corruption, says the Right. She thought she was above the law, and she set up a private server in order to hide her Clinton Foundation dealings, and it’s all part and parcel of a massive scheme to enrich the Clinton family.

James Comey is a crook, making decisions in order to affect the election, says the Left.

James Comey is a hero, impartially seeking justice no matter the personal cost, says the Right —

Oops! Except that prior to Friday those two opinions of Comey were reversed.

It’s nuts.

I am still convinced that Comey knows something we don’t, because the accusations that he’s intervening without justification for his own personal gain or to get his preferred candidate elected, simply don’t make sense. What he is doing is destroying, not aiding, his career, and I find it equally improbable that he simply made a big mistake.

What exactly was uncovered, no one knows. But what spooks me is the prospect that, after Clinton is elected, or, if not then, then after she takes office, these various investigations will be quashed. After all, the latest news is that the individual heading up the new investigation is another crony, close to Podesta.

And, yes, I said “after Clinton is elected,” rather than “if Clinton is elected,” because at this point, so far as I can see, Trump has to win pretty much every “battleground” state, as currently defined, and that seems altogether too improbably, though, to be sure, fivethirtyeight.com does grant him a 30%-ish chance of winning after the weekend’s news.

So what, by the way, does that have to do with McMullin?

Consider what I’ve already said: if you’re in Utah, vote for McMullin. If you’re in a non-battleground state, vote for McMullin. And if you’re in a battleground state?

That’s the challenge, isn’t it? There’s an argument to be made that battlegrounders should vote for Trump, even if they want McMullin to win, because the only way a McMullin scenario works is for Trump to win the necessary states, to ensure that Clinton doesn’t get a majority. But if you’ve reconciled yourself to Clinton winning, despite it all, because even wide-scale corruption isn’t enough to make Trump palatable for enough people, then McMullin has something to offer: if Clinton wins against Trump, end-of-story, then it seems to me that the political landscape post-election would be different if there is a significant showing for McMullin, representing “I believe in conservative/Republican principles but oppose Trump,” as opposed to Trump or nothing (or write-ins that don’t get counted, or only voting down-ballot).

After all, what does happen post-election is a big unknown. Will the messages of protectionism and immigration enforcement/restrictionism be taken seriously, or laughed away as discredited by Trump’s loss? Will Republican principles, broadly speaking, be likewise declared by the media and conventional wisdom, as similarly dead? I don’t know, but I do think that, though I don’t know exactly how, the calculus would be different with McMullin, and measurably McMullin votes, in the picture.

And in the meantime — well, this is the year when the Cubs have made it to the World Series, and to game 7 of that series, to boot. So anything can happen, right?

Politics

Election 2016

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