Most Democrats wish Biden wasn’t running for reelection. Only a small majority of Republicans are OK with Trump running for election again. Yet the vast majority of them are going to go and cast a ballot in 2024 for a candidate they don’t approve of.
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Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication, WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "The Stringer."
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The system’s defects are growing. Do the deep-dive. When you look at the presidential elections, even further back than Coolidge, when elections were carried out with stone knives and bear skins, the results tend strongly to be blowouts. One guy wins, and he wins bigly. But starting with Kennedy/Nixon in 1960, the “nail-biter” election for Electoral College votes has become more and more common. Kennedy/Nixon (1960), then Carter/Ford (1976), Bush/Gore (2000), Bush/Kerry (2004), Clinton/Trump (2016), Trump/Biden (2020). Each of those was decided by a relative handful of votes. (Swaying 50,000 voters from one side to the other would have done it.)
I find it particularly interesting that the gaps between the nail-biters consist mainly of significant historical/cultural/political events. 1964-1976? JFK’s assassination/Vietnam/Watergate. 1980-2000? Reagan-Bush-neo-liberal Conservatism. 2008-2016? First black president.
“Yet the vast majority of them are going to go and cast a ballot in 2024 for a candidate they don’t approve of”: Perhaps that means that a majority of them would also vote for ranked-choice voting. How do we get that on the ballot?