It Was Too Close

^[1]2,691 words

Despite suffering heavy losses in the House of Representatives, many on the Right seemed somewhat relieved after the 2018 midterm elections. Yes, they could have been a lot worse. Historically speaking, the President’s party usually fares badly during midterms; the only exceptions since the Civil War occurred in 1938, 1998, and 2002. In recent history, the Republicans seized control of the House of Representatives and the Senate in 1994, two years after Bill Clinton’s election to the White House. Similarly, the Democrats crushed the Republicans in 2006, taking back both the House and the Senate. The Republicans returned the favor in 2010, recapturing the House with a 63-seat gain and expanding its minority in the Senate by 6 seats. In 2014, the GOP completed its rout by retaking the Senate and expanding its majority in the House.

This time around, the Democrats enjoyed a net gain of 39 seats in the House (as of this writing) and took back the majority. They also flipped seven governorships from the GOP. Yet, the Republicans showed some life in the Senate, gaining four seats to the Dems’ two and upping their majority (with the special election in Mississippi still pending). No doubt, President Trump’s unflagging popularity and aggressive campaigning, as well as GOP candidates keeping Todd Akin-esque gaffes ^[2] to a minimum, had a lot to do with this. Efforts by James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas, which embarrassed losing Democratic campaigners Claire McCaskill ^[3], Beto O’Rourke ^[4], Joe Donnelly ^[5], and Andrew Gillum ^[6] probably didn’t hurt, either.

While some may be celebrating because it could have been a lot worse for the Republicans, there really is little here for which to cheer. Many of the races were very close – much closer than they needed to be, given that the economy is extremely strong. If people were voting according to their economic interests, the GOP would have won more elections and by greater margins. History supports this theory. In 1994, conservatives were mobilized by the threat of Hillarycare and the promise of the Contract with America. In 1998, the economy was strong and the Democrats did fine in the midterms. 2002 was an outlier despite a so-so economy, with the fresh memory of the 9/11 attacks placing great pressure on Americans to rally around the party in power. 2006, 2010, and 2014 all occurred during lackluster economies (involving the Housing Bubble, record unemployment, and Obamacare, respectively) alongside midterm victories from the party not occupying the executive branch.

Although the economy wasn’t the only major factor in these elections, the “It’s the economy, Stupid!” meme has shown to be quite durable. It’s hard to beat a political party that is overseeing good times. And economically speaking, times really can’t get much gooder than they are right now. Unemployment has been 4.1 percent or lower ^[7] for the past year (right now, it’s at 3.7 percent), and reached record lows ^[8] for blacks and Hispanics during this time. The GDP growth rate reached 4.2 and 3.5 percent ^[9] in the latter quarters of 2018, and under Trump has remained at two percent or higher so far. This should be a welcome change from the roller coaster ride of the Obama administration, which oversaw four negative GDP rates ^[9] (one as low as negative eight percent) and rates less than one percent on three occasions. The stock market has admittedly tanked recently, but the worst of it came after the midterms and after the tremendous gains of the past year and a half. The Dow closed at 19,827.25 ^[10] on the day Trump was inaugurated, and as of late November stands at 24,464.69 despite the battering it’s received. Sure, people can quibble about the deficit ^[11], the national debt ^[12], or other economic indicators, but you can do that with any president. But it cannot be denied that the country is in a much more comfortable spot in 2018 than in 2010, when it had endured a ridiculous unemployment rate of over nine percent ^[13] for the previous two years.

Then throw in the various freakshows the Left has treated us to lately, such as the protests at the Brett Kavanaugh Senate hearing, the approaching Caravan, the counter-protest at the Unite the Right 2 rally, the public harassment of Republican officials, and the ongoing circus act that is Maxine Waters (whom Trump accurately referred to as a “low IQ individual” ^[14]), and you’d think we were gearing up for another 1998.

But, no. Although they got a few good licks in, the GOP for the most part got drubbed. Furthermore, many of the races that the Republicans pulled off were uncomfortably close. That Senator Ted Cruz squeaked past Beto O’Rourke by less than three percent in reliably red Texas should be a wake-up call for anyone right of center. (Many polls indicated he was up by more than twice that margin.) Although Texas is still red, its creep towards purple continues as the GOP lost two Congressmen to the Dems in 2018.

More worrisome were the gubernatorial and Senate races in Florida, and the Senate race in Georgia. All three of these races were tight, featured loathsome black Democrats, and were ultimately all won by the Republican. In the cases of the Georgia and Florida governorships, a white candidate took on a black candidate who endorsed radical Leftist policies and behaved badly during and after the election. In the third race, two whites vied for the Senate, but it was Brenda Snipes, Broward County’s black Supervisor of Elections, who very nearly stole the election for the Democrat.

Given how the demographics of the United States are so rapidly changing, white people of all political stripes should view these three elections as especially instructive. They are a harbinger of what our politics will be like in the near future if we don’t change our attitudes about politics and race today.

In Georgia, where black State Representative and romance novelist Stacey Abrams took on white Secretary of State Brian Kemp, we had a Democrat who openly supported giving illegal aliens the vote. In a speech ^[16] in early October, she stated that the so-called “blue wave” would be “comprised of those who are documented and undocumented.” Here is the full quote:

The thing of it is, the blue wave is African American. It’s white, it’s Latino, it’s Asian-Pacific Islander. It is disabled, it is differently-abled, it is LGBTQ, it is law enforcement, it is veterans.

It is made up of those who’ve been told that they are not worthy of being here. It is comprised of those who are documented and undocumented.

Of course, this is outrageous and illegal, but the Democrats voted for her anyway. It is in their interest to bend and break laws preventing illegal immigrants from voting, since most illegals are non-white and vote Democrat. Notice also the condescension Abrams shows toward whites whom she most generously includes in her blue wave coalition. Never mind that whites founded this country and made it great. Never mind that whites invented practically every single machine, device, and gadget she uses every day to make her life comfortable and productive. Never mind that whites have granted her race more wealth and freedom in greater numbers than blacks ever could have imagined back in Africa. Never mind that whites – white men, especially – are the very architects of the modern world. According to Abrams, whites are on the same level as blacks, Hispanics, and other voting demographics to whom she will cater if she feels like it.

Didn’t this used to be our country?

Just as appalling to the Right, Abrams ran on an aggressively anti-gun platform ^[17]. To call her merely pro-gun control would be an understatement. The woman not only promised to ban an entire category of firearm and repeal campus carry laws, she also promised to put gun confiscation laws in place. From the perspective of white racial interests, that’s strikes one and two right there.

But it was Abrams’ pre- and post-election behavior which should be strike three in the eyes of whites. She just wouldn’t concede after losing by 55,000 votes. She constantly played the race card ^[18] while campaigning; she accused Kemp of racist voter suppression ^[19] despite 1.4 million more Georgians voting than in the last gubernatorial election; and afterwards she declared Kemp’s governorship illegitimate ^[20] and promised to file a federal lawsuit ^[21] to challenge the election results. This partially boiled down to officials in the primarily black Randolph County proposing to shut down seven out of nine voting precincts because of violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Both Kemp and Abrams opposed this move (as did the Georgia GOP), yet because one consultant (who was later fired) inaccurately claimed that Kemp recommended the closures, Abrams had enough reason to play the race card. It doesn’t matter, of course, if there is legitimate reason to do this. All that matters is to throw accusations at one’s opponent to make him look bad. And Abrams showed absolutely no shame in this department. She effectively called Kemp a racist and compared modern-day Georgia to the Jim Crow South ^[22].

As Kemp pointed out ^[23], however, the decision to open or close those precincts fell to local officials in Randolph County, most of whom are Democrats.

Then there is Abrams’ not-entirely-successful attempts to register voters. Apparently, 53,000 voter applications were not fully processed, largely because Abrams’ New Georgia Project used paper forms, which allowed for many inconsistencies, instead of the state’s Online Voter Registration (OVR) system, which doesn’t. Since the Supreme Court’s Shelby v. Holder ruling, which allows states with a history of racial discrimination to change their voting laws as they see fit, Georgia now requires that each voter show a picture ID, and that this ID must match what’s in their databases. In other words, Georgia wants to make it hard to cheat. Stacey Abrams, however, wishes to make it easy to cheat, and she is not above petulant behavior and the basest smear tactics to achieve this dishonest goal. Because her opponent is white, you see, he doesn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt. And she has the nerve to call him a racist.

3.9 million Georgians voted for Brian Kemp, yet he defeated Stacey Abrams by 55,000 votes. Considering Stacey Abrams’ astounding sense of entitlement and how anti-white the Democrats are these days, Kemp’s victory was far too close to comfort.

In Florida, Democratic Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum took on former US House Representative Ron DeSantis in a race that should have been a slam-dunk for the Republican. Gillum is a radical Leftist who openly proposes a fifteen-dollar-per-hour minimum wage, universal health care, and a corporate business tax rate as high as forty percent. He also, quite frankly, stinks of corruption, and it’s a wonder voters took him seriously at all. He is currently the subject of an FBI investigation ^[25]. Alleged offenses include arranging for his former campaign manager’s restaurant to receive tax dollars, failing to disclose $400,000 in mortgage debt on financial disclosure forms, failing to disclose $4,386 in contributions ^[26] made by an undercover FBI agent, unethically accepting gifts from lobbyists, flying to meet with donors ^[27] on Tallahassee’s dime while claiming to be on official business, and lying about the illegal perks he has enjoyed as Mayor. Add to this the Project Veritas’ undercover reporting ^[27], which revealed how Gillum’s racist black campaign staffer Omar Smith referred to Florida as a “fucked up” “cracker state,” and claimed that Gillum had no intention of fulfilling his campaign promises.

Yet Gillum lost by less than half a percent. Like Abrams, he refused to concede after the votes were tallied. Also, like Abrams, he has accused anyone who brought up his alleged corruption of racism ^[28]. That a disaster like Andrew Gillum got within 35,000 votes of the Florida governorship during a strong economy is a bullet dodged for sure, but one in which we nearly got knocked over by the breeze.

Also in Florida, former Governor Rick Scott faced Senate incumbent Bill Nelson in another tight race. Although Scott had collected a slim majority of the vote, the recount process shed some unflattering light on Florida, most of it falling on Brenda Snipes. Snipes, who has a history of corruption and incompetence, engaged in so much shady business during the recount (all of which, uncoincidentally, benefitting Nelson and Gillum) that she resigned shortly after the election.

Here is a quick rundown of the low-lights ^[30] of Brenda Snipes’ career ^[31], prior to the train wreck that was the 2018 election in Florida:

• Lost 58,000 absentee ballots during the 2004 general election.
• Ignored requests by Fair Elections International to observe the election in Broward County in 2004.
• Discovered nearly a thousand uncounted ballots one week after the 2012 general election.
• Destroyed ballots during the 2016 Congressional primary race between Clintonista Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Tim Canova, an ally of Bernie Sanders.
• Posted early voting results online a half-hour before polls closed during the 2016 general elections.
• Left a medical marijuana initiative off the ballot in 2016.
• Opened mail-in ballots in private, and prevented people from challenging if they were filled out properly.
• Allowed felons and non-citizens to vote.
• Allowed thousands in her county to use fraudulent addresses in order to vote.

This was the woman who oversaw the Scott-Nelson recount in Broward County in 2018. And to no one’s surprise, there were quite a few irregularities ^[32] which always seemed to work in favor of the Democrat. There were so many that a list is called for once again:

• Missed the midterm recount deadline by two minutes. Had she made the deadline – which many claim she could have ^[33] – both Scott’s and DeSantis’ leads would have increased.
• Misplaced over 2,000 ballots.
• Oversaw volunteers counting the wrong ballots.
• Mixed 20 rejected ballots with 205 valid provisional ones.
• Offered little explanation for how the Broward County vote count rose by about 80,000 in the days following the election.

Fortunately for the GOP and for the Right in general, Rick Scott managed to defeat Bill Nelson by a tiny margin (10,000 votes). Of course, like Abrams and Gillum, Snipes is playing the race card, claiming that white-on-black racism ^[34] is the real culprit here, despite the overwhelming evidence against her. The debate still rages as to whether it was incompetence or malice on the part of Snipes that almost sealed the deal for Nelson, but from a white identitarian standpoint, it really doesn’t matter. Both are bad, and both are what you are likely to get when you put blacks in charge of elections, or when they run in elections as well. That Snipes had replaced another corrupt black woman in Broward County in Miriam Oliphant ^[35] in 2003 only strengthens this point.

For those remaining skeptics, please check out this link at Transparency International which ranks nations by their corruption perceptions ratings ^[36]. In 2017, four of the ten countries with the lowest ratings came from Sub-Saharan Africa: Somalia (a rating of 9), South Sudan (12), Guinea Bissau (17), and Equatorial Guinea (17). Tack on an additional five in the bottom twenty: Angola (19), Eritrea (20), Chad (20), the Republic of Congo (21), and the Democratic Republic of Congo (21). Of the 60 most corrupt nations in the world, 27 are in Sub-Saharan Africa. Meanwhile, the highest-rated Sub-Saharan African nation is Botswana, with a rank of 34 and a corruption perceptions rating of 61. For comparison, the United States came in 16th place and scored a 75, while the highest-rated nation, New Zealand, scored an 89.

Is it any wonder that, when we have imported so many Sub-Saharan blacks, we import their corruption as well? Are whites prepared to deal with such corruption once their dwindling majorities can no longer stop people like Abrams, Gillum, and Snipes? American whites endured similar corruption and abuse during Reconstruction, and if we don’t adopt a racial nationalist attitude soon, we will be enduring it once again.

After the election, Fox News gave a nice interview with Brian Kemp ^[37] in which Kemp dismantled Stacey Abrams’ claims of racism. He starts off the interview, however, with something very telling (emphasis mine):

I’m moving on. I’m the governor-elect. The election’s been certified. This is indeed over and I’m looking forward to serving hard-working Georgians – and that includes all of them, by the way.

This last bit is a very white thing to say, because once black politicians take charge in many parts of the country, they won’t be looking forward to serving white people at all.

Spencer J. Quinn is a frequent contributor to Counter-Currents and the author of the novel White Like You ^[38].