Republican States

Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia (WANG)–The States Likely To Decide The Presidential Election Of 2024!

Professor Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia Center For Politics has come out with an estimate of what is likely to occur in the Presidential Election of 2024.

Sabato projects that the Democrats are ahead in states that add up to 260 electoral votes, ten short of the number needed to win the Presidency.

The Republicans are said to be ahead in states that add up to 235 electoral votes.

Democratic leaning states that are not solid include Maine, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Michigan, Minnesota, and New Mexico.

Republican leaning states that are not solid include Texas, Florida, Ohio, Iowa and Alaska.

So according to the Sabato estimate, there are only FOUR states that are truly “Toss-Ups”—Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia or the “WANG’ states, with a total of 43 electoral votes combined.

If everything as estimated occurred, Georgia with 16 electoral votes would be enough for the Democrats to win, while Arizona with 11 electoral votes, or Wisconsin with 10 electoral votes separately would also be enough for the Democrats to win, and with Nevada only having 6 electoral votes, so not enough to win.

Of course, this does not include the possibility of the two states which allow splitting of electoral votes–Maine and Nebraska–having a district vote for the opposition in that state’s popular vote count.

In 2008, Nebraska went for John McCain but gave one electoral vote to Barack Obama in the Second Congressional District; and in 2016, Maine went for Hillary Clinton, but gave one electoral vote to Donald Trump in the Second Congressional District.

“No Labels” Independent Group A Disaster In The Making!

The “No Labels” Independent group is an organization forming to provide a potential third party choice for the Presidency in 2024, due to many in the group and nationally having strong feelings that the nation deserves a choice beyond Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

This group, which has both Democrats and Republicans who are flirting with the effort, include many who most Americans have no awareness of, but also some major names:

Joe Lieberman, former Democratic and Independent Senator from Connecticut
Joe Manchin, Democratic Senator from West Virginia
Pat McCrory, former Republican Governor of North Carolina
Larry Hogan, former Republican Governor of Maryland

In a theoretical scenario, this group thinks the potential of the following Electoral College result is possible:

Republican states Texas (40), Nebraska (5), and Florida (30)–75
Democratic states Virginia (13), Illinois (19), Washington (12)–44
“Swing” states Arizona (11), Michigan (15), Pennsylvania (19)–45

A total of 164 electoral votes, denying either the Republican or Democratic candidate enough electoral votes to win the Presidency!

and 37 percent of the popular vote, causing the House of Representatives, one vote per state, to choose the Presidential winner, and with 26 states at the moment having a Republican majority in the House delegation!

The theory is that six out of ten moderate-independent voters are open to supporting a third party ticket at this point!

But the likelihood is such an effort would lead to Donald Trump winning over Joe Biden, a horrendous development!

This would be extremely destructive, and there is no possible way for an independent candidate to win the Presidency, as the closest we have ever reached that was Theodore Roosevelt, Progressive (Bull Moose) candidacy in 1912, winning six states, 27.5 percent of the popular vote, and six states with a total of 88 electoral votes.

But TR’s candidacy helped Democrat Woodrow Wilson to win, over Republican incumbent William Howard Taft!

The Insanity Of The South And Western Rural States Defying Common Sense And Science On Vaccines!

It is mind boggling that the rural states of the South and West are defying common sense and science on the subject of vaccines and the COVID 19 Pandemic!

These states are Republican states and very ‘Religious” states, at least in theory, but their population wallows in ignorance and hatred of science, education, facts, and truth!

The 13 lowest states in vaccinations are from Number 51 (including DC) down to 39 the following:

Alabama
Mississippi
Arkansas
Wyoming
Louisiana
Idaho
Georgia
Tennessee
West Virginia
Oklahoma
North Dakota
South Carolina
Missouri

Only 33 to 40 percent of the population in these states are fully vaccinated, as the Delta Variant is spreading like wildfire, endangering not only those states, but people all over the nation.

Only 20 states and DC have 50 percent or more of its population fully vaccinated, and they coincide with Democratic or “Blue” states, making this pandemic political, as if the rural South and West are striking out against modernity, urbanization, science, facts, and truth!

This “head in the sands” mentality is undermining the long term future and health of America!

Nebraska District 2 And Maine District 2 Could Decide Presidential Election Of 2020? Really? Yes!

Maine and Nebraska are the only two states that allow a split electoral vote, with Nebraska having 5 electoral votes and Maine having 4 electoral votes.

But in 2008, Barack Obama won one electoral vote in Nebraska, while the state majority went Republican.

And in 2016, Donald Trump won one electoral vote in Maine, while the state majority went Democratic.

Assuming Joe Biden won back just two Trump states from 2016–Pennsylvania and Michigan, but failed to win back Wisconsin, Ohio, Iowa, and Florida, other Obama states in 2012 lost by Hillary Clinton in 2016, the following possible scenarios could occur!

We would go from 306 for Trump and subtract 20 for Pennsylvania and 16 for Michigan, and Biden would win with exactly 270 electoral votes!

But if the one Maine district stayed with Trump, the electoral vote would be a tie, 269-269, and the House of Representatives would choose the President, as they did in 1800 and 1824, with each state having one vote based on the majority of either party holding Congressional seats in each state.

But the 269-269 vote could be overcome if the one Nebraska district switched to support of Biden, as it did for Obama in 2008, and Biden would have 270 electoral votes!

Right now 26 states have Republican majority delegations, but that could change, if the Democrats were able to win two more states with a majority delegation of their party.

Of course, seven states only have one House member, so that person alone determines the state vote in those seven states.

Also, if we ended up with 25 states having a Republican and 25 having Democratic majority delegations, then there would be a massive constitutional crisis with the tie that would exist!

We could have Inauguration Day approach, and no certainty that either Joe Biden or Donald Trump would be declared the winner.

So then, Nancy Pelosi, assuming the House of Representatives stayed in Democratic hands, would become Acting President until, somehow, the deadlock was broken!

“Red” States Are Suicidal In Thinking They Are “Safe” Due To State Lines, As If CoronaVirus Pandemic Does Not Cross Borders!

We have now seen about 44,000 people die from the CoronaVirus Pandemic, increasing more than 2,000 per day.

Twenty thousand of these deaths are in the Tri State Area of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.

But there are even more deaths in the other 47 states, and not just the coastlines, meaning not only the Pacific Coast and Atlantic Coast.

The virus has hit everywhere, although not equally, but there is no certainty or security that numbers will not grow dramatically, in the so called “Flyover States”.

And yet, the “Red States”, the Republican states of the “hinterland” are living in a delusion that they can conveniently “open up” in the next few days or week, particularly in the Southern states of Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas, and Florida planning to join this “suicide mission” in effect soon, as well!

These states, which tend to be highly religious, as compared to most of the nation, and are so oriented toward Pro Life on the issue of abortion, seem ready to sacrifice loss of life because the capitalist system demands opening up, even if workers are endangering their own lives, and that of their families!

And we have people who cannot tolerate delaying haircuts, having their nails done, going bowling, and a myriad of other activities, and are not concerned that they are endangering their own family members and friends, and strangers too, along with themselves, because they are so spoiled and only think of “Me, Myself, and I”!

We are losing an American life every 32 seconds right now, and have lost more than the top five European nations combined, but profit and greed still rule in Republican states, as if the virus does not cross state lines!

Within the next two weeks if not sooner, we will have lost more Americans in two months than all of the years of the Vietnam War–58,000–which took 12 years, not 60 days!

When will Republicans and Southerners value life over profits? This is what Donald Trump has done to the party of Lincoln, TR, Ike, Reagan and H. W. Bush, a total disgrace!

The Fifty States And Educational Levels

A new 2018 survey of education in the 50 states reveals the following:

The top ten states are found in New England and the Middle Atlantic states primarily–with Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont and New Hampshire in New England; Maryland, New Jersey and Virginia in the Middle Atlantic area, with Virginia greatly influenced by the educational level of its Northern Virginia suburbs outside of Washington, DC; and also the states of Minnesota in the Midwest, Colorado in the Rocky Mountain West, and Washington State on the Pacific Coast. All of these top ten states were Democratic states in 2016.

States, including California, Florida and Texas rank lower on educational attainment because of large numbers of immigrants with lower accomplishments due to language barriers, but are rated higher in quality of education ranking. New York, Illinois, Delaware, Oregon and Hawaii are among the states which are ranked in the second ten best states, all Democratic states in 2016.

Meanwhile, the ten lowest states in educational levels are all Southern States, except for Nevada, Oklahoma and New Mexico—Mississippi, West Virginia, Louisiana, Arkansas, Alabama, Kentucky, and Tennessee, not at all surprising. All of these ten were Republican states in 2016, except for Nevada and New Mexico.

Notice that the higher educated states are “Blue”, while the lower educated states are “Red”, and this is the basic split within the nation–the educated vs the poorly educated.

Time To Move Against Electoral College Distorting Popular Vote, Through National Popular Vote Interstate Compact Agreement

The issue of the Electoral College having failed to elect the popular vote winner of the Presidency for a total of five times now, and twice in the last 16 years, continues to plague us, particularly when the present incumbent of the White House lost the popular vote by the biggest margin yet, 2.85 million votes.

There is no other political election in America where the person with the most popular votes is not the winner of the election.

The Founding Fathers might have seen the Electoral College as a necessary bulwark against mass popular control at the time, but once we began having popular votes in the 1824 Presidential election, it was an advancement of democracy, and the idea that a popular vote loser would win the Presidency was appalling.

It happened in 1824 in a four person race, but then, it occurred in 1876 with a two person race, and then in 1888, again with a two person race.

Since it did not happen again for more than a century, it was assumed to be flukes that would not happen again, and over the years of my teaching career, I was often asked whether it would happen again, and I responded, that while it could happen, it was highly unlikely that it would.

And then came the Presidential Election of 2000, where George W. Bush won with Supreme Court intervention stopping the recount in the state of Florida, winning that state over Al Gore by 537 votes out of six million cast, and therefore barely winning the Electoral College, despite a 540,000 popular vote lead nationally of Al Gore.

In 2016, the situation was even worse, as Donald Trump won by very small margins in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, and lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton nationally by 2.85 million popular votes, so five and a half times the popular vote lead for Clinton over Trump as compared to Gore over Bush in 2000, but Trump winning the Electoral College, but only 12 national elections with a smaller electoral vote majority out of a total number of 58 national elections.

The problem is trying to end the Electoral College by constitutional amendment is dead upon arrival, as it requires a two thirds vote of the House of Representatives and a two thirds vote of the Senate, followed by a majority vote in both houses of state legislatures (except in the one house of Nebraska) in three fourths of the states (38 out of 50). Clearly, that will never happen, particularly with Republican majorities in both houses of Congress, and four of the five times that the Electoral College failed, the ultimate winner was a Republican, and the loser each time was a Democrat.

But the alternative is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact Agreement, developed in recent years, with 10 states and Washington DC with 165 electoral votes agreeing by legislation that they would support the popular vote winner nationally, instructing their electors to do so. The problem is that the 10 states and DC are clearly, at this point, Democratic or “Blue” states—California, DC, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington State.

Once states with 105 additional electoral votes agree to pass such legislation, it would go into effect, but that is the more difficult matter. At this point, 12 states with 96 electoral votes have had one house of the state legislature agree to such a law—Arkansas, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Michigan, North Carolina, New Mexico, Nevada, Oklahoma,and Oregon. Also, two other states have had committees in the state legislature approve it unanimously, with these two states—Georgia and Missouri—having 27 additional electoral votes.

So if all these states that have taken partial action completed the process in the next few years, we would have 24 states and DC, with a majority of the total popular vote and population, being capable of awarding the Presidency to the winner of the national popular vote, and this would end the idea of a popular vote loser becoming President.

Republican reliable states—Arkansas, Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Georgia, and Missouri—are part of this group, but the question is whether they will take the steps to put it into effect.

While there is no certainty this will ever happen, there is optimism that it will eventually occur, as otherwise, the possibility of a return of 2000 and 2016 is highly likely in the future, and not just once.

If this were to occur, it would promote a truly national Presidential campaign, instead of the present focus in recent decades on 12-15 states, and ignoring the clear cut “Blue” and “Red” states in favor of the “Purple” or “Swing” states alone.