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Oct. 21, 2022 - RadixJournal - Richard Spencer
18:14
Midterms Prediction
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I think what we're going to see in two and a half weeks is the ultimate mixed bag of a midterm.
Because there are some countervailing forces that I think are going to cancel each other out, basically.
And it's going to be really hard to come up with a firm.
One of the most interesting countervailing forces is just simply the psychological fact that midterms usually go well for the party out of power.
So this was actually the economist in the 40 midterm elections.
To have taken place since 1862.
So they're going back to the Civil War.
The President's Party has lost seats in the House of Representatives 36 times.
So that is a remarkable trend.
And then you can even look in the modern political era post-FDR, and 11 of the past 13 presidents have suffered midterm losses two years after being elected.
So there seems to be this macro collective psychology to the stuff where two short years after a president is elected, there's a hangover.
People have buyer's remorse, etc.
And they knock him out of power.
Or they knock his party out of power, rather, in the Congress.
And so I just think there is this natural tendency that really is kind of irrational and is based on collective psychology, the madness of crowds, you could say, that is pointing towards a GOP victory.
And this certainly played a major role in 2018, where we saw a huge wave election.
One that was obscured a bit by the Senate, but was still real and was a way of election very much like 2006, 2010, 1994, etc.
And in some ways, even more powerful.
So there's this other factor that comes into play, which is the turning point or the inflection point.
Or the kind of major event where you might even be seeing a kind of realignment take place.
So in 1992, Bill Clinton won 75% of the non-college-educated white vote.
And by 2016...
That had reversed.
Trump was winning 75% of that vote.
And 1994, even though this trend, this general realignment was happening for a long time.
It was even happening in the 70s, and you could certainly see it in the 1980s.
But by 1994, we just had this polarization where you had...
Recognizable red states and blue states.
And we'll shortly get to a point where Clinton and Al Gore will lose their home states in the presidential election, which was pretty unimaginable in previous times and now is just certain.
You know, in a presidential election...
Mississippi is going to be red.
There's no question about it.
It's not debatable, etc.
And 1994 kind of crystallized that.
In 2002, the GOP actually won a resounding victory, and they increased their dominance.
Whereas if you had looked at that kind of like midterm trend, you would say, ah, that...
2002, George W. Bush won in 2000.
It was actually a hotly contested election.
This will be a time for a shift.
But it wasn't a shift because it was pre-Iraq War and post-9-11 enthusiasm and terror war mania.
There was actually a famous case.
A man, I'm forgetting his name at the moment, but he was a Southern Democrat and he had lost multiple limbs in Vietnam.
And he was accused of not being a patriot and being on Team Osama bin Laden when he lost.
Pretty remarkable.
It was also the age of freedom for eyes and all that kind of stuff.
By 2006, the...
Public opinion on the Iraq War had shifted dramatically, and Bush kind of had his comeuppance then.
I think it was called the thumping, where he lost big in the House, Nancy Pelosi took over, etc.
Nancy Pelosi also immediately said that she would not impeach George W. Bush.
Again, so that was a kind of...
So, 94 was a kind of inflection point, turning point.
It solidified realignment.
And I think 2006 was kind of an inflection point in the post-9-11 era.
2018 was definitely an inflection point in terms of the anti-Trump coalition, particularly suburban whites, so college-educated whites.
Going over to the Democratic Party, which they did to a huge degree.
And so, you know, you could say that 2022 might be something similar.
It might be a kind of inflection point macro election when it comes to Roe v.
Wade.
Roe v.
Wade is...
Popular.
It is more popular than it was just six months ago.
You could make the argument that that's just, there's going to be a shift, even if, you know, and just out of pure hatred of, it's not like you elect congressmen and they can reverse a Supreme Court decision, but they could codify Roe v.
Wade, of course, but it's just a kind of...
This macro trend maybe does indicate some kind of realignment, this ongoing realignment, which I've been talking about for a long time, which is actually the exit that is whites moving to the Democratic Party, moving away from the so-called populist party of Trump, and the Democrats achieving a kind of high-low coalition of high-IQ whites.
Low IQ blacks in a coalition that is against the midwit IQ whites and Hispanics.
I think that is the new coalition as we understand it.
And I think that will actually last a long time.
And it's going to be major.
And all of the kind of majority strategy stuff and sailor strategy, I think that is increasingly going away.
There is not going to be a white ingathering in the GOP, as Sam Francis wanted and prophesied.
So I do think that's a factor, although I also think that the Democrats have blown it a bit here.
They haven't...
I don't see the urgency.
And, you know, for instance, I've told this anecdote before, so you guys might be getting tired of it, but I'll tell it again.
So last Good Friday, I was actually meeting someone for dinner down in Kalispell, which is, you know, if Whitefish is a resort town.
A little snobby, maybe a little hippie as well.
Kalisville's definitely, you know, it's nice, of course, but it's definitely a blue-collar place.
And I was driving down there, and so it was Good Friday.
And maybe I was being a bit sinful, you know, eating, drinking cocktails on Good Friday, but we'll put that aside.
We'll put the fate of my soul aside for a moment.
And there's this massive rig that was driving down there, and there was a pirate flag on the back of it.
And it was honking its horn really loudly and rubbing its engine.
And I was just thinking, like, what is going on?
What is this?
And then as I got down to Kalispell to park, there were this car that had a Confederate flag and a Trump flag and an American flag.
And it was doing wheelies.
So it was like, or donuts rather.
So it was slamming on the brakes and slamming on the accelerator at the same time.
And so basically, you know, it was burning rubber, basically.
Smoke was flying up in the air.
And then the light turned green and it like sped down the road.
There's all of this honking.
And I was just thinking, what in the hell is this?
And I turned to this woman who was just standing next to me.
She was a fairly nice-looking woman.
And I was like, what is going on?
I was like, is this about Good Friday?
She was like, it's the Trump people.
And she was obviously annoyed.
So every Friday, for effectively no reason, they go out and just...
Raise hell on behalf of Trump.
And I think even the fact that they were doing this on Good Friday might be somewhat significant in the sense that they were mostly secular.
But it was a class-based populist revival, effectively about nothing, about no real issue.
Other than maybe the 2020 election, or Donald Trump himself, or just, let's go, Brandon.
You know, we hate liberals.
And as I was walking out a couple hours later, walking out for dinner, and this car pulled up, and a guy got out, and he just yelled at me.
He said, fuck, fuck Joe Biden, fuck the liberals.
And he got back in his car and drove back.
And I was just thinking, what has just happened?
And I don't think at all he knew who I was.
I think he just saw me as a guy who was fairly well-dressed and thus must be liberal.
And thus it reveals a kind of class aspect to this.
I was wearing, you know, a hip leather jacket and some jeans and whatever.
It's not like I was wearing a tuxedo or anything, but...
I was dressed differently than the kind of working-class wear out here, which I guess is like, what is it called, Carnhart or something?
I see a lot of that.
Anyway, it's a secular, class-based revolt.
So in the primary season in Kansas...
They put abortion on the ballot and they basically protected it, generally speaking.
And that won in a landslide.
And it outperformed Democratic candidates who are running.
So that should also kind of tell you something, that there is some kind of force that might be a macro trend and towards realignment that's out there.
But I'm wondering whether it's going to be enough.
The other interesting factor is that you have some major Republicans who are underperforming Donald Trump's 2020 score.
And these are actually the teal Republicans.
This, you know, the new wave of populism, the smart populist.
And so I'm thinking of J.D. Vance and Blake Masters in particular.
So Arizona was 50-50, more or less.
And Masters is pretty significantly underperforming the Democrat Mark Kelly, who is a kind of centrist candidate, is also a good candidate.
J.D. Vance is also...
Apparently leading, although I have seen polls that show Tim Ryan leading.
Tim Ryan is a very centrist Democrat, and that's actually his brand.
So it's not like he's running against AOC or something, but nevertheless, Trump won Ohio by more than 55%, and J.D. Vance might very well lose.
And you can see a similar story in Pennsylvania.
Oz is a weird candidate.
Pennsylvania is quite even.
Oz has been five points behind, although from everything I've heard, I checked on this morning, Oz is still losing, but it is a lot closer.
So basically, there are these countervailing forces, and I don't know which one is going to overwhelm the other.
There's the midterm force, this weird collective psychology.
There is the middle to upper class white realignment and a kind of enthusiasm based on Roe v.
Wade that's out there.
There is still a kind of burgeoning class dynamic of Trump supporters.
That's out there.
There is also the factor of redistricting and that makes it to the point where the Democrats really have to win about 55 to 57 percent of the vote to make gains in the House.
And I'm not sure they're going to...
That is the total vote spread out, nationally spread out, as articulated in these districts.
Because basically, the way we do elections in the United States just favors rural voters.
I mean, in the Senate, it's almost ridiculous the degree to which Wyoming is favored over Canada.
They both have two senators.
Wyoming has 500,000 people.
California, did I say Canada?
California has 60 million.
It's the size of Germany.
I just feel like there are these countervailing forces.
It's very difficult to predict it.
And I think we're just going to end up in this weird mixed bag.
I kind of want to make the call that Democrats are actually going to take both the House and the Senate.
But looking at the numbers, I think it's hard to really justify that.
And so I am going to go with what I think is pretty much a consensus opinion, which is that the Republicans are going to take the House.
I think they're going to take it by a small amount.
And I think the Democrats are going to cling on to power in the Senate.
It will be 50-50 again.
If they get a 52, that would be considered a victory.
I think it is just going to be this mixed bag or wash.
And both sides are going to claim victory.
Both sides are going to see it as a loss.
That is my prediction at this point.
But in a weird way, or not so weird, but I do think it's worse for Republicans.
Because this, it's just set up for them to have a roaring victory.
And if they can't achieve that, I think that is going to be, that is going to tell them something important.
Or tell us something important.
Whether they learned their lessons.
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