About Michigan

 

Just to get this out of my system even though everybody else has taken their swing at it--I can't help but note that if President Biden got about 80% in Michigan, and Donald Trump got 69%, then it translates to Biden having a better hold on his party. It just does. Biden's one competitor lost to literally "Nobody" and "Someone Who Dropped Out". Biden is overperforming polling and Trump is underperforming. 

A lot got made of the Democratic "Uncommitted" votes, and I've got one good thing and one bad thing to say about that. First, I get that 13% isn't far off from previous Michigan primaries, and you can't really tease out the extent to which this is a protest vote for the primary only, having no bearing on whether these voters will commit in the general election--that that's the good part. But on the other hand, the fact of an organized protest vote bothers me in ways even disingenuous or "op" candidates do but more so--

A "put-up" candidate can, in the flesh, be disappointing. A vote for an ideal, or what a voter has been convinced is a cause? That's different. Now, I think using voting this way is just absurd and nonstrategic, and if voters are being given the impression that voting for absolutely nothing is getting them their goals--as in, they think a ceasefire specifically will result from this sort of thing, yikes. 

Gifted Amateurs

 

Andrew Yang and Marianne Williamson seem to be suggesting that Democrats shouldn’t prioritize Black voters because it will disenfranchise… racists. pic.twitter.com/CjT4FV36L6

— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) March 10, 2023

Is it possible that the professional Democratic party folks understand what shapes their constituency better than 2020 presidential party also-rans? I'm not going to presume malice or racism, to explain Williamson and Yang here when they are just echoing the common wisdom that both parties in our two-party system are equally responsible for the polarization.

Yang represents the Forward Party (not right or left, but forward, whatever that's supposed to mean). You all know how I feel about third parties (they make no mathematical sense). Williamson was caught on a hot mic saying the following:

"What does it say that Fox News is nicer to me than the lefties are? What does it say that the conservatives are nicer to me?" Williamson said after an interview with Eric Bolling on Sinclair Broadcast Group's America This Week last week. 

"It's such a bizarre world," she added. "I didn't think the left was as mean as the right, they are," the activist and author asserted.

She feels the heat from the left more because she's closer, but she also doesn't seem to understand that the right-wing hopes she does bleed support from Joe Biden, so that Democrats will lose. They aren't being "nice". 

 I'm not saying Yang and Williamson are bad people. They are people who have some good ideas and some not-so-good ideas, but that doesn't really mean they "get" what are polarization is about or what we need to do about it. 

See, I'm not even siding with actual fascists to fill potholes. And there's one party that will fill potholes while not being fascists, and another that is calling for child labor and the elimination of trans people. This is why I greet the opinions of gifted amateurs with annoyance and even some condescension. They don't represent a new direction or an opportunity for healing. They seem naïve and a distraction.