Blue wave or election day blues?

It’s almost time for another election in America and Democrats are searching for the right combination of messages and methods to regain control of the government. They are pinning their hopes on the prediction of a “blue wave” that will carry them to victories in House and Senate races in blue and red states alike.

Polls indicate they are well on their way to doing that, bolstered by expectations of a massive turnout of women voters angry over the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court and any number of other misogynistic policies of the Donald Trump administration, as well as a social media post by pop singer Taylor Swift that supposedly lit a fire under a large bloc of previously apathetic young female voters.

So I have a few comments about all of that:

(1) If elections were based solely on polls, Hillary Clinton would have been elected president by a landslide in 2016. I’ve stopped paying attention to polls, for the most part, and I blame Nate Silver and the misguided 538 for that.

(2)   While Taylor Swift encouraged young people to register, and many people did, no one knows how many of them registered Democrat, how many became Republicans or Independents or how many of them will actually show up to vote. I’m also not assuming that every one of them will cast a vote for the big blue wave, because they won’t. Thinking otherwise would be a mistake.

(3)   Despite everything that has happened in the last two years to turn people against them, Republicans remain smart enough, clever enough, devious enough and corrupt enough to manipulate, gerrymander and disenfranchise their way into keeping their ill-gotten power. This is what they do best, because actually governing certainly isn’t their thing.

(4)   Democrats, meanwhile, still like to claim the “moral high ground,” which means that every day when they show up to school with lunch money in their pockets, the Republicans come along and steal it. I mean, face it my friends, nobody lies, cheats and steals like today’s Trumpaloon Party, and no one has been able to stop them yet.

That said, I won’t be shocked if Democrats are able to retake the House of Representatives. I wouldn’t bet money on it, but they only need to flip something like 23 seats and some pundits are saying that 50 or 60 seats are in play. Winning the House would be good. At least it would get subpoena power away from Trump stooges like Devin Nunes and open the door for someone to finally investigate all of the current administration’s crimes.

As for the Senate, it’s highly unlikely that the pro-GOP majority will change. Consider this, from one of my previous blogs:

California has nearly 40 million people and operates the world’s fifth largest economy, yet it sends only two U.S. senators to Washington. By comparison, Wyoming has a population of 574,000 and also gets two senators. The same is true of South Dakota, population 878,000; North Dakota, 755,000; and Alaska, 738,000. Even Montana, with just slightly more than 1 million people, elects two senators even though it has barely half as many people as little West Virginia and far fewer than Greater Pittsburgh.

I’ll do the math for you. Wyoming, the two Dakotas, Alaska and Montana have a combined population of 4 million, or one-tenth that of California, yet combine for 10 Senate seats to California’s two. When it comes time to count Senate votes, five deep red states are 5X greater than one very blue one, and states like California, New York and Illinois are effectively neutralized by the scarlet waves of grain.

Knowing that, do you think anything is going to turn those states from red to blue? I don’t, and if you do, please give me a call. I’ve got some VHS tapes and landline phones for sale.

Now, there is a way to fix this problem, and obviously I have a plan. First, we amend the law to say that any state with less than 1 million people has to forfeit one Senate seat. Then, every state will add one senator for every 10 million people. That would give California four more and add two each to Texas, Florida and New York. Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Georgia and North Carolina would get one more each.

You can google for yourself, but when everything shakes out, I see a net gain for the blue states and a net loss for the reds, plus four swing states with 5 additional senators. If Pennsylvania comes back to blue where it belongs and half of the “swings” veer left, the Democrats could take control of the Senate.

So this could actually happen, right? All it would take is for everyone to put politics aside and agree on what is best for our country and our people. (Wait! Did I just say that out loud?) Well, okay, there’s one other way the good guys can get the country back. We can all go vote on November 6, so that the big blue wave doesn’t turn into the election day blues.

Like it did in 2016.