Let’s do some recapping.
When we take a look at the races it’s just been a mess.
Trump and Hillary are going at it and Hillary had serious problems with the FBI and emails.
Kind of makes you forget about Trump’s 2005 video…unless you’re a Hillary supporter.
In the governor’s race we had more revelations about vindictive higher-ups in state government, this time the Commerce Department.
Dems could only counter this news with more of their sales tax scare tactics. My how those grow tiring.
For some reason there was also this belief that Juneau had a chance, mainly because someone, somewhere decided to inject $500,000 in ad spending on her behalf.
Then the Dem blogs really trotted out the ‘support Juneau’ posts. Even I was starting to think, ‘does she have a chance?’ but then I remembered we live in Montana.
And then there was the news that she was being considered for either Education or Interior under Hillary.
It was clear to me at that point that she was not going to win her race this year.
Did any of the news about these races make a difference in voter’s minds?
I don’t think it made much.
Thankfully it’s done and now’s the day.
Let’s discuss that and more.
Montana Political Blog Happenings
I saw yet another post on RD defending the right not to vote. As you know, there’s been a back-and-forth spat between that site and Flathead Memo on voting or not voting.
Oh, and by ‘not voting’ we’re talking about burning our ballots.
I spoke in favor of voting in the comments on Monday, and also mentioned that I’d take that site off my bookmark bar if they didn’t vote.
I just don’t want to listen to someone complain when they don’t even bother to vote.
The anonymous writers on the site justify their stance, and that’s fine.
I’m not even going to waste my time on that, nor will I waste my time on that site.
It’s a shame – they were putting up some good stuff.
Still, I find when you stop visiting a site you forget about them pretty quickly.
I’m confident many, many people have stopped visiting my site.
Also on Monday I was banned from commenting at Intelligent Discontent (at least for that post) after leaving the following comment on a post by an anonymous writer:
It's sad that Democrats are just now talking about this. It's also sad that they rely on anonymous voices to do the talking.
That comment was met with the reply:
“This anonymous voice thinks you should stick to writing anti-Semitic screeds.”
And that was that. Busy day, huh?
I tried to leave a long comment, but it was not allowed. This was my comment:
That's fine. I'm not too concerned with what anonymous voices say. Democrats are. Without anonymous voices, I'm not sure they could think. For years now the MT Cowturd blog's anonymous voices have guided Democrats. What good has it done them?
I'm looking forward to what the Dems will do after the election. It'll be interesting to see them sift through the ashes of their many defeats around the state.
Will they take a hard look at themselves at that point, maybe have a good hard talking with themselves...or will it just be continuing on with business as usual.
Should Bullock win I feel it'll be the latter. After all, it was pretty clear his was the only real office worth fighting for, and that was all the way back in January before anyone filed!
The way the teacher's union just rolled over on the AG race was especially sad.
I feel Dems will cling to their veto pen and the defensive capabilities it gives them. They've done a good job crafting this narrative that they don't need to win the legislature, that they can rely on moderate GOPers to get their legislative agenda through.
It'll be interesting to see if that works out for them again come a few weeks. We'll know the general makeup of the legislature and the committees. I suppose Dems will spin their election losses as some kind of success at that point, saying how much they can do with their press conferences and friendly-reporter news pieces.
Come the end of April, however, I'm not sure what on the Dem agenda will have been accomplished. Right now it seems to be equal pay, public lands and no sales tax. The agenda is kind of to keep what we have. Again, the defense.
Maybe things will change, maybe the Party will do some real soul searching. They'll have to at some point and sooner rather than later is a good idea.
There is no Dem bench to speak of, but maybe that's not a mistake. It's always been a kind of wait-in-line candidate selection process before the primaries even start, and I'm sure the line for 2018 and 2020 is already written up on some bulletin board somewhere.
I just don't think running old Democrats again is the answer. It didn't work out to well in 1988 and I don't see it working out in 2020, if that is indeed the plan, as Chuck Johnson alluded to on Friday.
Again, what is the plan, or agenda, or even message? I wish Dems would discuss that more, and make it clear to voters.
Anyways, I'm sure Missoula Dems will be having their post-election meeting soon. It'll be interesting to see what they say.
Pretty long comment, right?
One of the reasons Democrats banned me from that site (turns out for just that post) and from MT Cowturd (forever) is because I’ll use their platform to get my message and my ideas out there.
They hate that.
Democrats hate that people can think for themselves, that they don’t fall lock-step in line with the party message and mentality.
Look how they’ve treated Caron Cooper.
I hope she wins that race, but if her running denies the Democratic candidate, I’m fine with that.
We need more independents to run so the two parties know they have to change. Maybe I’ll even go around and get 160 signatures so I can run as an independent in one of Missoula’s House districts.
Of course, the GOP would then mark that off as a probable win for them and they’d throw money into the race.
Democrats would of course put up a candidate against me while calling me anti-Semitic with their anonymous writers.
Welcome to Montana politics…doesn’t it make you sick?
Like I said in my not-allowed-comment – Dems need to do some real soul searching and figure out where they want to go.
A Strange Last Week
I’m sure you heard many, but let’s review a few.
First, last Tuesday I was on KECI here in Missoula, which is an NBC Montana station.
Why?
To talk about Obamacare and our family’s premium hike of $170. You can see me in the video in that link.
Here’s a map showing Obamacare rate hikes. From what I’ve heard, Arizona is getting it the worst.
Next, there was some good reporting on where the candidates went during this past week by Corin Cates-Carney on Montana Public Radio.
You can see the post in that link, which has some very good maps. Gianforte’s map looks very similar to the 30-city tour map he had this past spring.
The GOP hit those spots many, many times. Dems are just getting to them during the final week.
Then, there was an interesting tiff involving Motl and Missoula Representative Brad Tschida over an ethics complaint.
Matthew Monforton, Tschida’s lawyer, had some very biting words for Motl on KGVO radio.
He also put up a blog post detailing his response to Motl, which you can see in that link. Be warned: it is heavy on legal jargon.
Here’s an excerpt:
“Rep. Brad Tschida and other members of the Legislature have both a right and a duty to investigate the executive branch. Governor Bullock has turned the State Capitol building into his own personal brothel, complete with state-paid paramours in his Cabinet, state-paid attorneys handling his personal ethics violations, and gimps like you who attempt to penalize (or jail) anyone who objects.”
Finally, Montana students held a mock election last week and the results are like so:
- Trump 55%, Hillary 25%, 3rd Party/Other 20%
- Zinke 56%, Juneau 27%, 3rd Party/Other 17%
- Bullock 51%, Gianforte 33%, 3rd Party/Other 16%
Gosh…we haven’t even gotten to the presidential race yet!
Do we want to?
At this point…probably not.
I’m pretty sick of it, and I doubt anyone had their minds changed over the past week.
But it’ll still be fun to get a pizza and watch the results come in tonight.
And oh the maps!
Here are three that caught my eye on Friday, the first from 270towin.com, the second from CNN, and the third from Fox News
Finally for the maps, here’s one that the Washington Post had up all day yesterday.
There’ll be a lot more of these maps tonight, and they’ll change frequently. Make sure you have enough pizza to get through it.
Honestly, the corporate press – right when the polls in that state close – will call that state for whatever candidate they called it for weeks if not months before.
I’ll be looking to see what states the media has to backtrack on, meaning putting the states back in the toss-up category after they did the close-of-the-polls call.
We’ve seen the corporate media play this game since 2000.
It makes me want to puke.
Hmm…on second thought, might be best to skip the pizza.
My Voting
Then I headed to the school’s gym to vote.
Boy, it was busy and for the first time in years I had to wait in line.
I know some people will be offended, but I’ll go ahead and tell you what I did.
I voted for the following people:
- President: Trump
- Governor: Gianforte
- U.S. House - Blank
- AG – Blank
- SoS – Blank
- Auditor – Laslovich
- OPI – Romano
- Court – Sandefur
- County Commissioner – Dave Strohmaier
- SD 49 – Dick Barrett
- HD 91 – Ellie Hill
- Medical Pot – Yes
- Trapping – No
- Brain Research – No
- Marcy’s Law – No
- Missoula Library Bond – Yes
- Judges – Voted against retaining every one of them
So I voted for 6 Democrats, 2 Republicans, and I left 3 races blank.
I voted for 2 of the initiatives, against 2, and voted for one local bond issue…even though I don’t pay property taxes (my landlord does, however, and that’ll be passed on eventually).
I also skipped the Justice of the Peace race – I didn’t know enough about the candidates.
So…what am I?
I guess I must be one of those Montana independent voters.
Now, About Tonight
I expect that results will start to come in around then, with the absentee ballots coming first.
Then we’ll have a lull as counting goes on. Smaller counties will report first, and likely finish first.
Larger counties like Missoula will update numbers, but the count will go on until 1 or 2 AM if not longer.
Also, expect a lot of problems with the Secretary of State’s website, which we saw 2 years ago.
Don’t even get me started on the presidential race. I expect we’ll see a lot of very, very strange things happen.
And my goodness, the voting lines. Already in St. Louis they’ve had serious problems. It’ll happen elsewhere.
I’ll be here that whole time, updating my last post of the day…just as we did on election night 2014 when I stayed up till 2:40 AM.
So stop by, get some results, and get some analysis.
You can comment too. I don’t ban people here, even when they don’t agree with me and even when they call me names or stupid or whatever.
Say what you like.
This blog has free speech, as does the country.
That said, I’m not expecting a lot of comments later tonight.
I feel many, many people will be disappointed with the results…and some races we might not know for days.
It’s been a contentious election, and feelings have been hurt. They won’t be un-hurt in just one night.
The healing process will take some time, and that goes for both parties.
They’ve been run through the ringer, as we all have.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens as November moves forward, then December. Hell, it’ll be 2017 soon!
Anyways, let’s just get through tonight.
I’ll see you later.