Tuesday November 8, 2022 is Election Day in the United States of America. In addition to Congressional "midterms" at the federal level, many state governors and other more local offices are up for grabs. Given how things shook out over Election Day 2020, things could get a little crazy.
...or, perhaps, not! But here's the Megathread for if they do. Talk about your local concerns, your national predictions, your suspicions re: election fraud and interference, how you plan to vote, anything election related is welcome here. Culture War thread rules apply, with the addition of Small-Scale Questions and election-related "Bare Links" allowed in this thread only (unfortunately, there will not be a subthread repository due to current technical limitations).
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Notes -
Does anyone care, other than a few weirdos like me? It sure seems like most people are willing to chalk up even the worst excesses to something along the lines of, "well, we just didn't know".
Among the GOP primary electorate, yes, I think a lot of people care.
(My older Fox News watching relatives, who I perceive to be well represented both in Trump's base and in the GOP primary electorate, care a lot).
A large fraction of that electorate wants the government to be small, and mostly leave them alone.
Covid response was the largest government intrusion into the average person's life in nearly everyone's lifetime (maybe since WWII?).
In large part, that happened on Trump's watch, while Trump's didn't directly cause much of it, he didn't do much to prevent it. (Its not obvious that he had the authority as President to prevent much of what happened, but those nuances tend to get lost in the branding of these things [and can probably quickly be summed up as 'he had the authority to fire Fauci, and didn't']).
One way to think of the GOP is break it out into 3 group - Bush style establishment, Trump loyalists, and anti-libs.
Bush style establish has a very limited voting block (ballpark, maybe somewhere between 5-25% of the GOP), but is over-represented in the various positions that have levers of power.
If the field clears for DeSantis, that might very well be helpful for him, I'm skeptical it will be decisive.
Trump loyalist will vote for Trump based on personality - it's not a winnable demo for anyone who's not Trump.
Anti-libs have largely supported Trump, but not because of who Trump is, but who he's against. They're happy/grateful that Trump got to nominate 3 SC justices, they're distrustful of GOP politicians who seem to get more liberal once they get to Washington. But it's what Trump stands for, not who he is personally.
Personally, they were embarrassed by Trump's twitter antics, they were embarrassed by "grab them by the pussy", they don't love that he's on his third wife, but they looked around, and voted for what they perceived as the lesser evil.
That's a winnable demo for someone who might be perceived as a better standard-bearer for the anti-lib perspective.
DeSantis's anti-Covid record gives him real credibility with that demo.
The exact breakdown on what percentage make up the Trump loyalists and what percentage makes up the anti-libs I think is somewhat of a mystery. And I think will ultimately determine who winds up the nominee.
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