Tuesday, November 12, 2024

Part I

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Something Isn’t Adding Up: The Someone Needs to Explain the Outlier Voting Numbers From 2020

Well, as you look at election statistics for the last several presidential cycles, the numbers turn out to be really interesting. For some people, they are deeply troubling. In 2012, 129 million voters, total voters voted in the presidential election. 2016, 136 million. 2020, 159 million. In 2024, 146 million. Now, one of these things is not like the other. The outlier here is the year 2020 when, at least according to official numbers, 159 million Americans voted in the presidential election. The problem is you’re looking at a massive leap between 2016 and 2020, from 136 to 159, and you’re also looking at a backwards movement as you look at 159 reported for 2020 and 146 reported for 2024. So even as one of these things is not like the other, there is no obvious reason why that total number is so much larger.

Now, the interesting thing here, if you look at the other side of the equation, is what about the vote for Donald Trump? Well, it turns out that the vote for Donald Trump in 2024 is remarkably close to the vote he got in 2020. But does that tell us that there was some kind of fraud? Is there some kind of distortion going on here? Well, for one thing, it simply is not true that there were more voters than those registered to vote in 2020. That’s just something that’s easily documented. But when you look at that leap during COVID to 159 million voters, a record total vote, and then you look at the fact that, according to the official numbers, Joe Biden received 81 million votes, the most votes cast for any presidential candidate in history. Well, you look at that and you have to ask how in the world is that possible?

For one thing, in 2020, we were talking about the lockdowns for COVID. We’re talking about a severe disruption in our entire social system. But voting analysts will also come back and say there were remarkable adaptations made to allow people to vote even under the circumstances of COVID. So you had mail-in voting and early voting, non-traditional voting in many settings. The argument is that that turned out 159 million total votes. Now, almost immediately, at least on the Republican side, there were huge questions about these numbers. How could there be a jump from 136 million to 159 million under the circumstances of a pandemic? Furthermore, there were very aberrant decisions made. For instance, in states like Pennsylvania where you had state courts basically overruling election law and election rules in order to allow votes and ballots that otherwise wouldn’t be counted to be counted.

State by state there were various responses which were similar to what happened in Pennsylvania. That’s one of the reasons why Donald Trump, then President of the United States, protested that there was voter fraud. There’s another reason why he offered that protest, and that is because the early reporting on the 2020 election didn’t turn out to be what the final reporting numbers looked like. And so even as you had a red surge early in the reporting, it turned into a blue victory according to the final official results. So Donald Trump and many of his supporters joined in saying something is aberrant here, something’s wrong here. Some even went so far as to say the election was stolen.

Well, what does it look like now, four years later? And of course, it’s not just that we’re four years later than we were, we are also looking at Donald Trump winning a very clear, decisive victory in the electoral college in 2024 and also winning the popular vote. So that basically puts to a stop the urgency of answering this question, but it still does leave a question. Why is 2020 such an outlier in American political history? And I just have to state quite honestly that I have been looking at all the responses offered by think tanks, by university centers and others trying to explain this, and none of it in the end finally adds up. And I want to be clear, I’m not saying there was voter fraud widespread that would have changed the election. I’m not saying there’s even anything intentional here.

I am saying for the credibility of America’s electoral system, for the credibility of our democratic process in presidential elections, there needs to be further detailed explanation of why 2020 is such an outlier. So again, let’s just summarize. I’m not saying that there was widespread voter fraud that would have changed the electoral results. I’m not saying that this is an immediate emergency to which the United States and all of its government should immediately offer some kind of response. I am saying that it isn’t satisfying–morally or politically–to have an aberration like 2020 go without further explanation, especially when the main explanation is, “Well, people had all kinds of avenues of access to voting under the conditions of COVID.”

Well, that raises a host of issues. And for one thing, you have to ask, in 2024, where are about 13 million missing voters? Where are they? And the answer is, at least coming from those who would defend these numbers and say they’re absolutely accurate, they would come back and say, “Well, evidently you had a fall off in voting participation at that level.” Now, is that true or false? I am in no position to tell you. One further clarification is that we don’t yet have an official number of the total presidential vote in 2024. It might turn out to be something like 6, 7, 8 million more than the votes now tabulated in terms of this total count. Now, the votes are counted, the election is over, the winner is clear. There is no chance there is a change in this pattern, but there is the opportunity, indeed the responsibility, that there will be further detail in the numbers going forward.

It is interesting that a lot of the analysis of the 2020 election is dated late 2021 or even 2022. It takes some time to crunch all of these numbers. But I’m not primarily interested in the numbers today. I’m interested in the cultural conversation. I’ve had so many people raise the issue, as in the larger public square, in anticipation of the election. An awful lot of Republicans were raising the number in 2020 and saying this points to something fundamentally wrong. Now, on the other side of the 2024 election, let’s just say the pressure’s off on that argument. But the question hasn’t gone away, and it does raise some very interesting questions about why 2020 is such an outlier.

I’ve looked at all the arguments; they fundamentally just don’t add up. For one thing, it points to an enormous increase in voting among the young. Younger voters, did that actually take place? Well, at this point, I’m not going to question that it did. I’m just going to say the numbers still do not add up to totally explain this differential. And so it’s going to be very interesting to see if we do have prominent think tanks, basically respected by both sides, if we have major universities, centers, institutes, if we have major organizations, major media come back and say this is an interesting pattern, we ought to take a closer look. But this is also a good time to raise the fact that there are several states that really need to take a closer look at their voting procedures.

You look at the states in which the numbers came in so slowly. You look at the states that have such a loose balloting system that it takes days upon days to have a total count. You look at a state like Pennsylvania, that allows persons basically to mail a mail-in ballot even on Election Day, and you recognize this doesn’t strengthen democracy, this doesn’t strengthen our constitutional system, it doesn’t strengthen our republic. Indeed, it weakens it, and this is a good time, as we just completed a national election in which thankfully, we should note, the victory in the electoral college is matched by a victory in the popular vote and no one is questioning these numbers. Well, that’s a good time to go back and ask the question, can we improve this?

And here’s where, as Christians, we understand the truth is what we’re after. The truth is what we rightly demand. And when you have a system like this in which the truth comes down to numbers and the numbers matter so much, someone had better ensure, and that someone is of course a lot of people, a lot of institutions, a lot of accountability had better make certain those numbers are absolutely right and that Americans have confidence in them. You would think that in the day of digital automation it would be easier, not harder, to get this done.

Part II

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Will a Woman Ever Be Elected President? It’s an Interesting Question But More Complicated Than You Might Think

Well, next, let’s look at another interesting question. An opinion column in the Sunday edition of the Raleigh News & Observer asked the question, “Will America ever elect a woman President?” The subhead, “Experts weigh in.” Well, it is interesting. Here you have, of course, the reality that in 2016 and in 2024, the Democratic Party nominated a woman as the party standard-bearer, and in both cases that woman candidate was defeated, in both cases by Donald Trump as the Republican nominee. And so in the entirety of American history there have been two, and only two, women nominated at the top of a presidential ticket by one of the two major political parties. So, where are we headed with this? Of course, one of the big questions is, did Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris lose because they were women?

I would argue at this point that there is no sufficient data indicating that they lost because they are women. In both cases, the ideological layout of the election is almost assuredly enough to answer why the candidates were not elected. But then again, you don’t really know why voters voted as they voted. You don’t have the ability to read their minds. Even with exit polling and surveying, you can ask voters, “Why did you vote the way you voted?” But even within the thinking of an individual voter, it might not be clear, or might not be honestly clear about why an individual voted A or B. In her column, Mary Helen Moore writes, “Most Americans say they don’t believe the President’s gender matters, according to a peer research survey conducted last year.”

She continues, “For the roughly 40% who do think gender makes a difference, they tend to think a woman would perform better, especially on things like working out compromises or maintaining a respectful tone.” She went on to say, “That sentiment is most commonly held by Democratic women, and least pronounced among Republican men.” Now, one of the persons quoted in this article, remember the subhead, “Experts weigh in.” One of them was Dianna Wynn, identified as President of the Non-Partisan League of Women Voters. She said, “There is still sexism and there are biases against women, and we see that in politics.” “However,” she said, “I think we are making progress.” The article goes on to state, “Three in four Americans believed in 2023 that it was likely a woman President will be elected in their lifetime.”

Well, you look at this and you recognize this is a live question. It’s an interesting question. There have been two, and only two, women at the top of a presidential ticket in one of the two major parties and both of them have lost, and both of them at one point were predicted to win. With Hillary Clinton, the prediction went all the way up to Election Day. And when it comes to Vice President Kamala Harris, the argument that the election was at least too close to call went all the way again up to Election Day. But as it turned out, in 2016 it was pretty close, but President Trump clearly won. Hillary Clinton did win the popular vote, but she didn’t win in the Electoral College, Donald Trump did. In 2024, it wasn’t that close. It was pretty much a sweep, indeed a sweep of all of these so-called swing states by Donald Trump, who won not only in the Electoral College but the popular vote.

So what does that tell us about whether or not Americans will one day elect a woman? Well, you look at all of the experts, as they’re identified here, who weighed in on this article, and I’ll say that there’s something missing here. And that is the question, and this is very interesting in a worldview perspective, the question I think is whether or not it will be more likely that a Liberal woman would be eventually elected President of the United States or a Conservative woman. I’m actually going to make the argument that it is more likely that it would be a Conservative woman who’s eventually elected President of the United States. And I want to tell you why. It’s a matter of math, but it’s also a matter of worldview.

Now, it’s no surprise to listeners of The Briefing that I have great admiration for the late former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. She was the first woman Prime Minister of Great Britain, and she had an incredibly important role to play in history. It’s not true that I agreed with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, later Baroness Thatcher, on every issue. That’s not the case. But I did tremendously admire, and that’s an understatement, her leadership on the world stage. Looking backwards, it is very clear that US President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher formed a very clear coalition that in large part deserves credit, if not for causing then at least for successfully managing the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is also clear that both of them were defined ideologically as Conservatives in what was perceived to be a more Liberal age.

That was true when Ronald Reagan was elected President of the United States. It was true when Margaret Thatcher won a national election as head of the Conservative Party and became Prime Minister of Great Britain in the late-1970s. You look at that and you recognize that in retrospect, and at the time it was understood to be in political and in moral and cultural terms, a pretty liberal age, but it was two Conservatives who won massive victories and, quite frankly, helped to reshape the entire political landscape. But the question raised in this article is, “Will America ever elect a woman President?” Well, if you had asked that question in Great Britain, you might think, “Well, yes, at some point Great Britain will have a woman Prime Minister.” And perhaps people thought that would come from the Labour Party, the more liberal of the two parties.

And remembering, Great Britain, the Prime Minister is the head of government, not the head of state. The Monarch is the head of state, and the head of government is a prime minister who is the leader of the party that wins a majority in Parliament. So this is not a directly-elected office, but the votes of the citizens have a direct effect on who will become Prime Minister. And even as the American system is, in one sense, moving closer to the British system in terms of, say, electing a government in every presidential election, the reality is that the British elections were also moving more in keeping or in tone with American elections, with the head of the parties basically becoming very much the focus of the campaign. But enough about that. Let’s go back to Margaret Thatcher.

She was elected as a clear and very identifiable Conservative. Not only was she a Conservative and holding to Conservative beliefs, she was loud about them, articulate about them, and courageous in defending those Conservative beliefs. My point is this, the British people elected the Conservatives to lead the government with Margaret Thatcher at the head, not because so much they wanted a woman Prime Minister, but because they overwhelmingly agreed with the Conservative principles that Margaret Thatcher so clearly articulated. I think when you look at Ronald Reagan, he was elected because he was understood to be able to bring about the Conservative change that Americans overwhelmingly wanted.

The point I’m making here is that when British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher took office, and shortly thereafter American President Ronald Reagan took office, they were both in office precisely for the same reason. It was because voters overwhelmingly supported their principles, their articulation of vision, their leadership. But when we talk about Reagan and Thatcher, the interesting thing is that Margaret Thatcher was the Conservative leader who came to such prominence in Britain in that generation. And that stands out precisely because she was the very first woman to become Prime Minister of Great Britain in the entire nation’s history. A little footnote that makes Britain a little different than the United States.

Because in Britain, the Monarch is the head of state. Parliament chooses the head of government.
Britain has had illustrious Queens in its history, and those Queens have often been dominant figures in their age. Just think of Queen Elizabeth I at her age. Or for that matter, when it comes to Monarchs, Queen Elizabeth II in her own. But the reality is that Queen Elizabeth II was a head of state who was not directly involved in politics. The Prime Minister is directly involved in politics. So the election of Margaret Thatcher was a genuinely new thing. So again, the bottom line, I’ll just go out on a limb and I’ll say that I think it is likely by this argument that the first woman President of the United States might well be a conservative who’s elected because of her conservative principles, her conservative values, and her conservative courage, and you have men who otherwise might not vote for a woman who will vote for that conservative woman.

I will also offer and argue that there are millions upon millions of Americans who are going to vote against a Liberal candidate regardless of whether or not that candidate is a man or a woman. So again, I think that just increases the likelihood, not the absolute necessity, but at least the likelihood that when there is a woman President of the United States, she is more likely to be elected because of her conservative principles rather than liberal principles.

Part III

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Margaret Thatcher and Feminism: Why the First Woman to Serve as British Prime Minister is Not a Heroine to Ideological Feminism

But that points to another interesting factor, and that is that you would think the first woman Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, of Great Britain, would be a heroine to feminists. That’s not true. And that’s because when you look at ideological feminism, and most feminism today is extremely ideological on the left.

You look at ideological feminism and they want a candidate who agrees with their ideological feminism. And when it comes to Margaret Thatcher, she never apologized for being a woman, but she was never identified with ideological feminism on the left, or for that matter, any ideology of the left. Therefore, she is not a heroine to ideological feminists. No, ideological feminists want not only a woman as President, they want a very Liberal woman as President. And that just reminds us, in worldview reality of the fact that these issues are all connected. When it comes to ideological feminism, it’s very much tied to the LGBTQ activist movement.

Now, as I say, there’s a tremendous barrier there when it comes to the transgender revolution. But in political terms, these groups are locked together in activism. And you look at a host of other issues in which the dots all get connected and you understand why people on the Left, they would rather have someone from the Left than someone who might be symbolically, say, a feminist heroine simply for being the first woman elected as President of the United States. Which is to say that if it is true that it is a conservative woman who is the first woman elected as President of the United States, the feminists won’t vote for her and they won’t celebrate her election. And that gets to the fact that ideas matter even more than whether or not the candidate is a man or a woman.

But for Christians, that raises another question. Should we support or oppose the idea that a woman would serve as the chief executive of the nation, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces? And I’ll say, as you look at a biblical worldview, two things are clear, and that is that men are assigned leadership in the home and in the church. The Scripture is just absolutely clear about this. And that’s essential to understanding complementarianism, as we believe is clearly revealed in Scripture. And by the way, the church has understood this through 20 centuries, and until very recently there was no confusion about these issues. But that doesn’t answer the question as to whether the same principles apply to the state. The Scripture doesn’t say that a woman cannot serve as head of government or head of state. So is it biblically allowed or is it biblically unimportant or is it biblically mandated?

Clearly it’s not mandated, but I would also say clearly it is not prohibited. But it does come down to a matter of Christian moral reasoning, biblical reasoning, and it comes down to a political context. And so what I’m saying is this. I think that in the main, it’s not an accident that men have served primarily as the rulers of the nations, as Prime Ministers and as Presidents. I think that it is much more natural in this sense for a man to be forward-focused in terms of that kind of leadership. I don’t think that’s an accident, nor do I think it is some kind of oppressive patriarchy. I think it is nature. It’s even creation order showing itself.

But I do want to say this. If I had been in Britain at the time that Margaret Thatcher was the head of the Conservative Party, I would have voted for her in opposition to the Labour Party, the more Liberal Party, at one point an openly Socialist Party. I would have done it not only once, but every single time, without apology and without hesitation. It’s just an honest reminder that there are huge worldview issues at stake here, but we also have to take those issues in the context of the electoral framework that is presented to us. We don’t get to invent candidates. As we were reminded in 2024, we had to vote, when it came to the two major parties, between two very clearly identified candidates. Given the way issues are going in this country, it’s hard to believe that the choice in the future is going to become any less clear.

Part IV

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Mad at the Election So Leaving the Country? The Media Love an Interesting Story, But the.Story of These Women is Even More Interesting Than They Think

Okay, another very interesting report. The mainstream media is looking, as they always look after an election like this, to ask the question, what’s an interesting cultural story? So, USA Today yesterday ran an article. Here’s the headline, “A Number of US Women are Moving Abroad.” Subhead, “Relocating has become more feasible than ever.” Kathleen Wong’s the reporter in the article. And we are told, with the timing being the election here and the election of Donald Trump once again as President of the United States, the implication here is that women opposed to that development, and furthermore, you can anticipate this, opposed to the 2022 Dobbs decision by the Supreme Court on abortion, have decided they’re going to pack up and move, move overseas, leave America.

The article begins, “Just a day before the 2024 presidential election, Dee Segler got on a plane and moved to a country she’d never been to.” The article continues, “The timing for her reelection from the US to the Netherlands, also her first time living overseas, was coincidental. Mostly, it’s been a long time coming.” Well, as the article unfolds, we’re told that there are a number of women, and there are a number of Americans, frankly, both male and female, who are just so disgusted with the Conservative movement and with Conservative power in the United States, the Dobbs decision in 2022, what they would describe as threats to abortion rights and all the rest, that they’re packing up and leaving. Some of them are also raising other issues. But this article’s not just about men and women. It is particularly about women who are moving overseas.

Here’s the tie to abortion made clear. “Her decision became set in stone during the summer of 2022 when Roe v. Wade was overturned, erasing the constitutional right to abortion.” The report then states, “Segler is just one of the growing number of American women who are either realizing lifelong dreams to live overseas, or the fact that their quality of life could be better for societal, health and safety, or political reasons, somewhere else.” “In 2021, a little less than half of American expats, that’s expatriates working abroad, were women, according to a survey by InterNations.” But as you might expect, a closer look at this kind of report, this kind of article indicates that there’s a lot more going on here on the one hand, and a lot less on the other. Let’s deal, first of all, with what’s less.

What’s less is real numbers. We’re not talking about any major movement here. So it tells us that the mainstream media, especially the more Liberal media, love to find this kind of story and make a headline out of it. But when you look at it, we’re talking about a very thin slice of the American people. Furthermore, there’s more to the story. And that has to do with the fact that even as the implication is it’s the election of Donald Trump that caused this, it’s the reversal of Roe v. Wade that caused this, well, that’s not untrue, but the fact is, it’s a far larger worldview issue here. And frankly, there are just a lot of issues that are playing out here.

One of the women leaving the country, who was featured in the article, said about the pressure she wanted to escape. “There’s that pressure to get settled down and have a family and have your life figured out. And those of us out there who want something else, we can feel other or maybe weird about making a different choice.” So in other words, this woman says she’s leaving the country because here she is surrounded by people who think she ought to get married, settle down, and have a family. And evidently that’s weird. Well, I’ll just point out that in this case, it looks like it’s not an exotic foreign culture that is the lure, but being somewhere where people don’t know you and presumably aren’t making, or making fast, such moral judgments about how one should live one’s life.

But I’ll just notice again, what we’re looking at here is an explicit rejection of creation order. We are looking at the suggestion that a society’s wrong that expects young people to grow up, get married, and start a family. This tells us something about what’s going on, not only among young people in general or younger Americans in general in a time of vast social and worldview change, but in particular how some women are seeing this equation playing out. And this is where the trip wire also becomes personal autonomy, autonomous individualism, self-care, and all the rest.

The first woman cited in this article came back and said in conclusion, “I’m a woman in her early-50s who has tried to do her best every single day for decades.” She went on to say, “I’m burned out in certain areas. I want to take care of me.” In this case, we are told that this taking care of me is going to now take place in the Netherlands. Interestingly enough, I don’t think USA Today is going to come back with a follow-up story to tell us how that worked out.