Advertising! That was the biggest winner in Indiana's primary elections yesterday. There was a big uptick in ad money, largely spurred by supporters of President Trump's efforts to unseat the seven State Senators who thwarted redistricting efforts.
Turnout was unusually high -- in Marion Country, nearly double that of the previous two primaries. And that's half of the story.
The other half is not so great. All that money pouring in, those TV ads painting that candidate as a closet liberal* and this candidate as a true-hearted America First† stalwart did bring people to the primary polls in record numbers, but that record still amounts to a 14.9% turnout instead of the usual single digits. Just over eighty-five percent of registered voters are, apparently, okay with whoever the rest of us pick. I'm honored, I guess -- but should you really trust me when you have a chance to put your own two cents in?
(And by the way, my thanks to the two parties, especially the GOP, for spending the big dollars buying airtime from my employer, whom you otherwise revile. You helped keep my paycheck from bouncing, in a market where my industry's share of dwindling advertising dollars continues to shrink.)
Looking at horserace-level results, of the seven primaried Republicans, five lost to nearly indistinguishable challengers, replacing Tweedle-don't with Tweedle-do. One held on, and the seventh hung in the balance over a difference of three (3) votes for a long time before being called for the incumbent. Still okay staying home for the primaries?
Don't look at me to lay a feather on the scales against either candidate's heart in that close contest.‡ I voted in the Democrat primary. These are times to pick a side, and downstream of the 2021 insurrection, I'll never vote for a Republican. They could have cleaned house, tossed out the vandals, religious extremists and authoritarians. They chose to retcon recorded history and double down instead, so I'll content myself with picking the best Democrats I can find. (As the late P. J. O'Rourke said of Hillary Clinton in 2016, "...she’s wrong within normal parameters.")
The 2026 Indiana primary is done. The main event is in November -- and the future of the country is on the line. Nobody's coming to save us, nobody except for us.
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* Despite, in every instance I could check, a voting record somewhat to the right of Genghis Khan and fulsome support of the incumbent President on nearly every issue except redistricting.
† Seriously, when did they stop teaching U. S. History in our schools? That slogan has an ugly history, only barely outside living memory. Yes, the surface meaning of the words is just fine -- in much the same way as an English word of Scandinavian origin meaning miserly has utterly no relation to a vile racist slur and swastikas have a long and innocent history in Greek, Indian and Native American art. People of good sense avoid 'em anyway, because the negative associations are far too strong.
‡ Indiana Senate District 23 isn't my neighborhood anyway.
History certainly isn't taught the same as when we were in school. We were taught a lot about the causes of World War II. We were shown the films of the concentration camps, the walking skeletons, the piles of bodies. It was horrible to see, and I hope it made the intended impression on most of us. The generational decay of that knowledge is sad, and it seems we're heading straight into that kind of horror again, and we have almost no air left in the reservoirs to apply the brakes.
ReplyDeleteGrich, I am impressed. Please forgive if memory should give me the answer but I wonder during what years you were impressively taught about WWII. The only American history I recall being taught beyond Columbus and Pilgrims was the American Civil War. (I heard about the "Spanish-American" war from my great-grandfather who had served in it.) I do recall, in high school world history (in about 1952), that the Japanese emperor was taught that he was of divine origin which caused my instant rebellion against childhood brainwashing, becoming a life-long Agnostic/Atheist.
DeleteI graduated from high school in 1980, so the beginnings of that actually started in the mid 70s in junior high. We got a decent cursory overview of American history, but I was drawn toward WWII for some reason, probably because of all the movies that came out on the 1960's (I did a book report on Paul Brickhill's Great Escape book, comparing it with the movie).
DeleteIn college, the history instructor used The Killer Angels as a study guide for his Civil War class, and for the postwar and Korean War period, Plain Speaking by Merle Miller...both a bit unconventional for classwork, but kept me engaged. Dad served in Korea, and had a copy of Plain Speaking, so I was already familiar with that version of the Truman presidency. I still have the tattered paperback copy of that book.
Class of 1992 here, and the course of history education in my public schooling was not, as they say, good. Happily, we had a set of the Time Life WWII books and an old copy of Reader's Digest 'Secrets and Spies', which really kindled my interest in the topic of WWII, not to mention history in general.
DeleteFunny enough, my German friends have a better grasp of WWII, even if they generally don't like to talk about it.
Thank you, grich (and Joe in PNG) for humoring me. I should ask the younger of my two children (HS grad 1980) what she recalls from her history courses. I was graduated HS a few years earlier (1955), remembering not the start of WWII but the birth of a younger brother just 5 days after congress declared war on Japan on 12/8/1941.
DeleteI went from being a registered Libertarian to Republican as my local area elections tend to be won or lost in the primaries.
ReplyDeleteMy heart is still with the Wookie Suiters though.