I had a totally different draft for this post prepared months ago. I decided not to finish the draft and post the piece I originally wrote because my perspective on both life and politics has undergone a bit of a paradigm shift since I created the original draft of this blog post.
I was prepared to issue a “mea culpa” of sorts for being wrong in my prediction that former Vice President Kamala Harris would win the 2024 presidential election. However, to be wrong about something that has an equal chance of being right and that doesn’t matter much in the grand scheme of things isn’t something to lament over, but rather offers an opportunity to reflect and analyze your own thought processes.
I certainly can’t be apologetic about being wrong about a prediction. That’s as illogical as being elated about being proven right about something that had an equal chance of being wrong.
In my previous post stating my reasoning as to why Harris would win, I had a bit more “optimism,” for want of a better word, that America was ready to elect its first woman president.
I further wrote that I had sufficient time to think and reflect, and that I was ready to proffer my reasons, post-mortem, why former Vice President Harris lost the election.
The oft-cited reasons she lost, those reasons being her ethnicity and gender, might have played a significant factor with some people in the electorate, but I acknowledge that these are far from the only reasons. In fact, I venture to say those reasons are somewhat tangential factors.
Particularly the gender aspect.
The reality is that people tend to vote with their emotions, regardless of their stated political beliefs or ideological views. They also vote according to their personal, collective perceptions.
Political analyst James Carville said it best. “It’s the economy, stupid.”
It’s really that simple.
Only time will tell if America made the right choice.
I don’t touch on political topics nearly as much these days because it’s difficult to have an honest, dispassionate conversation on the subject with most people.
Few people realize that the fact that they live in country where such impassioned, if idealistic, misguided, and uninformed, rhetoric is not only tolerated, but encouraged and parroted by many of the political elites is unprecedented in much of the rest of the world and is a sign of political freedom and stability, not instability, chaos, and impending fascism.
The midterm elections are certainly going to be interesting…
-The Rational Ram
The Rational Ram 