Reflections

When I woke up Tuesday morning these was a heavy rain falling outside. While I do have religious beliefs I do not wear them on my sleeve, but that rain seemed to me to be a divine sign.

This was the first Presidential election since we moved to Texas. I decided weeks -- if not months -- ago that I was was going to vote in person on election day, dammit! While I could vote while I lived in Canada, obviously I could not do it in person. I have not voted in person for a Presidential election in twenty years.

I have voted in just about every election since moving here. I may have missed one small election that I didn't even know about until a couple of days before. In the grand scheme of things that election was probably less important than voting for Dog Catcher.

As I walked into the polling place I asked the man at the door if it had been busy. He said that by 9:30 they had 126 people vote.

My ballot had 66 things to vote on, all but one a political race. That one was a ballot measure to approve a slight increase in property taxes for flood control measures. The measure was to replace an expiring measure. They were asking for a tax rate increase, presumable because costs have gone up. I understand that costs have gone up, but so have property tax assessments.

I had a printout of what I was voting for. After I voted and printed out my ballot, I studied my ballot to be sure it reflected what I voted for. The sheet had a column listing the candidates' political party. It was easy to see that all was in order.

There were a number of judicial positions that only had a Democrat candidate. After results came in, I noticed that some of single candidate races had fewer votes than the leading candidate in two-candidate races. Perhaps many people, like me, were not going to vote for a Democrat even if they were literally the only candidate in a race. There were four races for Trustees for the local Community College District. I had no idea on those races so I did not vote for them.

There is something I do not understand about elections here. It would probably be easier to find out the Nuclear Code than it is to find out what is going to be on your ballot. That is one thing Washington State, or at least King County, was good at.

When the results came in, the local races were a mixed bag. Sean Teare, the local Soros candidate for District Attorney won. Just as before the Primary, the only legal issue he addressed before the General Elections was to imply -- but not outright say -- that he would not enforce Texas abortion laws. It was as if Harris Country did not have home invasions, robberies, assaults, murders, or any other serious crimes. He ran strictly on a platform of "protecting women's reproductive rights." Cashless bail and no prosecution for shoplifting under $1000 coming soon to a Harris County near you.

Ted Cruz won handily. One of his canvassers came to my door before the election. He asked if I was voting for Cruz. I restrained myself from shouting "Hell yeah!" He asked if he could put a sign up. I said "Sure." I never had a campaign sign in my yard before. 

Dan Crenshaw won as well. Maybe we could get a better candidate at some point, but he was what we had.

The Presidential race came as no surprise to me, not that I thought it was a shoe-in. It amazes me how so many celebrities who claimed they were fighting to protect democracy said they will leave the country if Trump won. Democracy has spoken, but they want to throw temper tantrums because they did not like the results.

The Democrats brought this defeat on themselves. The last figures I saw showed Donald Trump with over 71,800,00 votes -- a bit lower than he did in 2020. But we are still supposed to believe that Joe Biden won  81,000,000. Considering how both sides felt that there was a lot at stake in this election, that would suggest that either we would have similar numbers this year or that Ol' Joe did not do as well in 2020 as we have been told. Between Trump and Biden in 2020 there were 155,507,476 votes. In 2024, there were 138,829,262 between Trump and Harris. Considering all the vitriol on the Democrat side and the attitude of "We're not going to let it happen again" on the Republican side, do they really expect us to believe that there was more than a 10% drop in votes for the two main candidates? Mark Loftus said on Guttfeld Wednesday night, "It's nice to go to sleep and then when you wake up, the same guy is still in the lead." Amen. And that he didn't have fewer votes than he did when you went to sleep.

We can all take a deep breath, but we cannot rest on our laurels. I pray that those who are despondent will start to remember how good things were when 45 was in office, and how they are improving under 47. Maybe they will sit back and realize that Harris had absolutely nothing to offer. They were mad at Brett Baier for asking her tough questions, but they believed she would stand up to the evil in the world?

Maybe we didn't luck out on Tuesday. Perhaps it was divine providence.