Republicans in some places around the country chose not to take the COVID-19 vaccines as a form of protest against the government telling them what is good for them. Like with booze and cigarettes, some people choose to harm themselves as an expression of their freedom and then die early.
What is not well established at this point is the effect of thousands of Republicans dying when Democrats took their vaccines and, even if they got sick, it didn’t kill them. Nobody has thoroughly studied the impact the deaths along partisan lines may have on the 2024 election and beyond.
The only national election since 2020 was in 2022 when there was supposed to be a national “Red Wave,” with Democrats tossed out of Congress on their ears. That Red Wave did not happen. I wonder if it is because COVID culled Republicans of a stripe who refused their vaccines.
Someone needs to do a study and cross-check those counties where a net loss of Republican voter lives happened, shifting the county toward Democrats. This should be done at the state level also.
Biden may have stumbled in his debate, but if the Republicans who would hand the election to Trump are dead from their own choices, who knows what will happen? I don’t know, but the election for Congress and the president may hinge on these facts.
Steve Schneider says
What a background.
Good luck with your lawsuit to increase access to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Jack Jones says
It almost looks like a Darwinian nightmare for the Republican Party. Until people actually start to think for themselves and judge based on evidence, or country will continue in stupidity and take the wrong course of action as usual. When I was younger the adults in the room had more common sense. People in general were more akin to being an intellectual and were generally well informed by just pleasure reading, watching the news and flipping through the paper. It’s a shame and a curse to our longevity as a nation that informed intelligent people are looked down upon or who may buck the trends of the ignorant mob. This article is a perfect example of explaining the virtue of common sense, investigate for yourself and live to help yourself and your country to fight another day. Great article, Andrew!
David Anderson says
Excellent point, Mr. Straw. We don’t pay enough attention to partisan demographic shifts as we should. They’re rare but important.
Think of the age differential between pro-Brexiters vs anti. A decent sized slice of the Brexiteers are, a decade nearly on… dead.
These kind of “background numbers” can change the game in unexpected ways.
cheers,
D.A.
NYC
Andrew Straw says
Just consider on Election Day the margin of victory in the swing states. If more than that died on the Republican side, the Republicans have no one to blame but themselves for killing themselves in protest of vaccines.
ANDREW U. D. STRAW says
Two things shifted the 2024 election to Trump.
Being shot, blood drawn, while campaigning.
The felony convictions during election year. The country clearly felt like that was another bloodletting, regardless of the merits of the case against Trump. It didn’t add anyone to the Democrat side and it fired up Trump’s supporters, who feel Democrat judges were out to get their candidate.
If those things had not happened, I think it would have been far closer. Maybe Democrats would have kept one of the houses of Congress too.
The question in 2026 is whether Trump overplayed his hand and went too far. A president in lame duck mode, as Trump was from day 1 this second term, tends to do things that don’t require a political consensus.