WHY 2020 IS SO IMPORTANT

 

[Published on Newsmax]

Anyone still doubting what will happen if the Democrats take the White House and the Senate this November need to look at what just happened in Virginia.

In November 2019, Democrats won the governorship and control of both houses of the state legislature for the first time since 1993. While they had a 10-seat majority in the House of Delegates, their margin in the State Senate was a razor thin two seats.

As 2020 dawned, the newly sworn-in Democrats moved with lightning speed on a broad legislative front. It was a relentless Leftist Juggernaut.

During the 60-day legislative session, Democrats passed 1,900 bills. The governor signed every one of them into law.

Every Leftist dream came true.

First came eviscerating gun rights. The gun control bills were so groundbreaking, Gov. Ralph Northam held a special signing ceremony. The bills expanded background checks to include private sales, created severe penalties for leaving firearms near children, including inside a private home, limited handgun sales to one a month, and created red flag laws.

More importantly, new laws empowered local governments, as Virginia is a "commonwealth," to regulate the possession, carrying, storage or transport of firearms, ammunition, components or any combination of those things, and to ban guns in public spaces, including public buildings, parks, recreation centers and during permitted events.

This included authorizing local governments to establish stricter gun laws than exist at the federal and state level.

A second wave assailed Virginia history and culture. Lee-Jackson Day was eliminated as a state holiday. All protections for Confederate monuments ended.

Then came social legislation. The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), long past its ratification deadline, was ratified anyway, providing the 38th state needed for final adoption. A hoped-for court challenge will try to overturn precedent and force the ERA into the Constitution.

The "Virginia Values Act" added sexual orientation and gender identity to all Virginia anti-discrimination laws. It granted the attorney general the power to take action against anyone "engaged in a pattern or practice of resistance" to the rights guaranteed by the new laws.

Abortion rights were dramatically expanded, rolling back existing provisions including a 24-hour waiting period before an abortion, ending a requirement that women seeking an abortion to undergo an ultrasound and counseling, eliminating the requirement that abortions be provided by a physician, allowing nurse practitioners to perform them and ending building code requirements on facilities where abortions are performed.

Virginia's felony larceny threshold was raised from $500 to $1,000. Sponsors stated this will lead to fewer Virginians with felony convictions on their records.

Possession of marijuana was decriminalized and replaced with a $25 civil penalty.

The minimum wage went to $9.50 per hour. This will increase to $11 in 2022, $12 in 2023 and by another $1.50 in 2025 and 2026.

Virginia increased its gas tax 5 cents a year for two consecutive years.

A new tax on plastic bags was established.

Finally, they changed the rules for voting. Virginians no longer need to show a photo ID in order to vote, and they no longer need to provide an excuse to cast an absentee ballot.

Virginia became part of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, awarding the state's electoral votes to the national winner of the presidential popular vote, instead of the state's own popular vote.

Democrats have an even longer wish list at the national level, including the "Green New Deal," raising taxes and the minimum wage, and national gun control measures.

They are invoking racism and atoning for the 1619-based "America is a slave nation," to promote reparations and other laws that will eliminate America as we know it. The Left wants to erase freedom of speech in favor of "woke" sensibilities and political correctness and, of course, erase the right to bear arms.

The biggest national movement is to end "institutional racism" and "white privilege" by eliminating the Electoral College, make U.S. Senate seats based on population, granting statehood to the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, and packing the Supreme Court. 

Every one of these "reforms" is designed to solidify the Left's power forever.

The only thing standing in the way of Democrats recreating the Virginia Juggernaut at the national level is the U.S. Senate's filibuster.

The crusade for ending the filibuster is already underway. Even though it has been integral to the Senate since its founding, it is being portrayed as a recent racist manifestation.

The filibuster is the only protection for minority rights in Congress. Both parties embrace it as they know one day they may be out of power and need it.

The Left is banking on the November election giving them eternal power.

The Great Republican Hope: Political Hysteresis

[Guest Contributor - Donald G. Mutersbaugh, Sr.]

I am writing this blog to offer optimistic thinking to the Republican Party: maybe there is a chance of winning the 2016 presidential election – but not necessarily because of anything that the Republicans may do. It has occurred to me that over the years the baton for the office of President has been passed back and forth between the Republican and Democratic parties. I was curious as to what the relationship was between the years. The more studious historians will, of course, have many explanations of why elections are won and lost: employment or unemployment; interest rates; tax policies; disposable income and voting one's “wallet”; monetary policies; balance of trade; deficit reduction; quantitative easing; wars; the list goes on and on. And I agree with them: there have got to be logical, motivating factors that drive people to the polls to vote for one candidate or the other. But I also thought about the cyclical swings: today a Republican, tomorrow a Democrat. This mood of the country – the zeitgeist – manifests itself in the actual electoral outcome.

When I started to write this blog, my intuitive feeling was that there has to be a political cycle that causes these swings; the questions are what is this cycle and is it predictable? I have decided to call this behavior Political Hysteresis: the tendency of an electoral outcome to vary about the central tendency of moderation based upon past and current candidates for the office of President. Granted, it is the candidate’s position and the Party's platform that drive the election. However, I would like to propose a simpler reason: hysteresis. “Hysteresis is the dependence of a system not only on its current environment but also on its past environment….To predict its future development, either its internal state or its history must be known.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hystersis]

What if we look at the history of Presidential elections to try to determine if there is a central tendency throughout time? I found the perfect analogy under the Control System definition of hysteresis to explain how this might apply to the election cycles; think like a thermostat and a heating system. The analogy is the following. The election is the thermostat. The unit “on” is the Republican Party (conservative) candidate; the unit “off” is the Democratic Party (liberal) candidate. The actual temperature is the electorate. And the value the thermostat is set at is the mood of the country. The temperature rises (conservative), the unit shuts down; the temperature cools (liberal), the unit turns on. But the question – which is really food for thought since this is not a scientific presentation – is: using political hysteresis, who's going to win the election in 2016?

I would like to share some of the results of my analysis. Using the 156 years from 1861 (the beginning of the Republican Party) to 2017, the average years between officeholders is 5.8 for Republicans and 8.7 for Democrats. Allowing for terms with the assassinations that occurred during this time, the total number of terms is 45: 27 were Republican and 18 were Democrat. Republicans were in control 60% of the time, and Democrats were in control 40% time.

If you start in 1861 and add the average of 5.8 years to the beginning year of office, you can correctly predict the Republican in office subsequently 25 times, or 56%; using 8.7 years, you can correctly predict the Democrat in office subsequently 16 times, or 36%. If you add the average of 5.8 years to the ending year of office, you can correctly predict the Republican in office subsequently 24 times, or 53%; using 8.7 years, you can correctly predict the Democrat in office subsequently 16 times, or 36%. (Note: these tables are not shown.).
But consider the following:

Republicans have an average of 12 years of continuous term control; Democrats average 8 years (black is a correct prediction; red is an incorrect prediction).

However, if you start in 1861 and use these averages (i.e., 12 and 8) president by president, then a Republican will win the White House in 2017 (predicted terms): 1873, 1897, 1909, 1921, 1945, 1957, 1993, 2005, 2017. By adding 12 years to the beginning date of 1861, this methodology has correctly predicted (over the years) a Republican win 77% of the time; the Democratic prediction has been less accurate at 47% (data not shown).

The lessons to be learned: 1) Barring voter registration fraud, stuffing the ballot box, and the Republicans managing to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, political hysteresis smiles favorably upon a Republican Party win in 2017. 2) It appears that voters generally prefer a Republican as President; they just need a Democrat once in a while to remind them why….