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Dead Data

One of the talking heads this morning said that after all the years of political math and arithmetic and algorithms over all the years he was completely surprised at the result of the election.  The media class needs to understand what they don’t know.  They have tried over the years to tell people what to believe rather to report what is happening and they have cloistered themselves and embedded themselves into the ruling class so completely that they have no conception of what the “average American” thinks or feels.  One of the commentators was almost in tears over the fact that if you have Biden and Beyoncé, Michelle Obama and Katie Perry on your side there is no way you can lose and yet what happened happened.

People were stunned that Trump won Wisconsin.  Those people never probably traveled to places like Ladysmith or Barron or Spooner.  If they would have they would not be impressed, but they would have seen Trump signs everywhere.  Traveling from Wausau north and west and crossing the St. Croix at Danbury and continuing into Minnesota lake country there was not one Clinton sign anywhere that I could see.  That is anecdotal of course but in my mind it was telling.  As of this morning Minnesota is still too close to call  and that in itself is stunning.

The polling, punditry, and analyses class was wrong and probably should be disbanded.  They refused to go into rural America and just get a feel for folks, instead they decided what those folks thought.  They overlaid on people a label like racist or stupid and believed that they were standing in corn fields clutching their Bibles and guns and had no understanding about how difficult governance of the hoi polli really is.

Perhaps the biggest mistake was making this race a referendum on Barack Obama whose personal popularity is off the charts.  It is possible for thinking people to have a high personal regard for someone and detest what they have done or are doing.  Those who saw this as a referendum on the policies of the sitting president will probably back off of that statement now, but it is true.  We are all going to have to learn the obverse of what was just said, and that is that it is possible to personally dislike someone and approve of what they do.

The Christian is tasked with being a good citizen and praying for good government and peaceful times.   Those prayers should never end until time itself is ended.