The Patioboater Guide to the 2024 Presidential Election

Honestly, do any of you need or want any guidance for the 2024 election? Anybody? 

These two guys have been around on the public scene for a long time, so I can't imagine there's anybody left undecided, unless they've been in a coma for the last 20 years.

Okay, here's the quick guide: on the one hand, we have a failed president who led the worst Covid response of any industrialized country, then attempted to overthrow the government when people voted overwhelmingly against him. On the other hand we have a decent guy who has led the best economic recovery from the pandemic among industrialized nations, and who passed a series of very effective economic and environmental bills through a narrowly divided Congress.

Choose wisely.

But for those who sat down with a cup of coffee for this read, here's my longer take on the election...

It has probably not gone unnoticed by many of you that my Facebook page has been a quiet place in recent years, mostly filled with photos of sunsets, dogs, and old British cars. This was a conscious decision to focus my space and time back to its original intent, which was to get nice little glimpses into the lives of my family members and friends. I recommend it for peace of mind. I also made myself a rule that I'm not going onto other people's timelines to rebut whatever crapola they post. Again, I recommend it for peace of mind. I have yet to see anybody win a Facebook argument on that basis.

As part of that shift, I've been posting a lot less about politics myself. It isn't that I suddenly don't have opinions, thoughts, or insights. But I also grew tired of the inevitable wave of right-wing misinformation and lies that piled up on those posts, which required me to then spend my time moderating and deleting crapola from the worshipers of the Cheeto God. I could spend a long, long blog post opining about the Age of Misinformation. This isn't that post, but it's important to acknowledge the context for this election.

Since there are very few truly undecided voters to be found, this presidential election is going to end up being a turnout election. The convicted felon is going to spew his Big Lie about the 2020 election to get his base fired up. They will be fired up and they will vote, presumably having also been told that the fix is in so they will have to vote in overwhelming numbers. At the same time, he and his allies and a bunch of Russian 'bots will be spewing a firehose of negative disinformation about Biden, mostly by way of getting people to bring it into the open so that dimwitted pundits will opine about it as if it's not utter made up crapola. ("Meanwhile, is President Biden planning to ___[Crapola]___? Some people say yes. Stay tuned after the break and we'll explain...."

The convicted felon also needs to convince people who would sigh and dutifully vote for Biden that it's not worth it and they should either throw away their vote on a 3rd-party candidate or stay home altogether.

On the flip side, Biden has a different problem that also is based in turnout. He wasn't particularly anybody's #1 choice going into 2020, so there's not really a passionate base supporting him personally. Heck, he wasn't my top choice, either. But he's done a much, much better job with a difficult situation than I expected. Not flawless by any means. But if you sit down and evaluate the job he's done fairly, he's done extremely well.

But the polls sure as heck don't show that. There are some genuine reasons, but a lot of it is also the public reaction to the unrelenting drum of negativity that buzzes of our televisions 24/7 nowadays and seeps into the rest of the news sphere. In any case, he needs to convince people who would be inclined to vote for him to actually show up and vote for him. 

He also needs to convince Republicans who won't vote for him but can't stomach another four years of Trump to at least not do the thing that Republicans do in overwhelming numbers: vote for the R on the ballot, regardless of who it is.

So that's what we're going to see in this election: from the GOP and the Russian bots an unrelenting torrent of crapola about how the country is somehow now a hellscape compared to 2020, despite a lot of facts like economic and crime statistics that compare favorably to 2019 before Covid hit, much less 2020. (Does anybody actually remember 2020? Anybody? Because that was *not* a good year!) And from Biden we're going to see some general feel-good marketing reminding people to take a look around because 2024 is mostly pretty good. Plus, there's going to be a lot of targeted campaigning to people who might show up because they support a specific issue or set of issues -- hello, women. And there'll be a fair amount of targeted campaigning to whatever's left of the non-MAGA Republicans asking them to take a very close look at their guy before pulling that lever.

It's going to be a bumpy four-and-a-half months.

If you're looking for something you can do in the midst of all of that to help keep a failed President and convicted felon from somehow getting back into the Oval Office for a revenge tour, here are my suggestions.

1. Vote for Joe Biden.
2. I mean it. Vote for Joe Biden. I don't care what your specific beef with him or the two-party system is. If you care about the future of this country, vote for Joe Biden. You can bring your beefs to me on Wednesday, November 6, and I'll hear you out.
3. Make sure your friends and family members also vote for Joe Biden. No sitting this one out just because we're all tired.
4. If you're looking for more to do, find a local candidate that you like and help with their campaign. In some elections the top of the ticket has coattails that carry the candidates lower on the ballot. My guess is that in this one the top of the Democratic ticket is most likely to benefit from good campaigning and get-out-the-vote campaigns from the rest of the ticket.
5. If you have a few extra bucks to put into this, donate to Joe Biden's campaign. You will probably feel that the money gets spent asking you for more money, but that's okay. Marketing campaigns are expensive, especially when they have to counter a firehose of crapola.
6. If you have a few extra bucks to put into this, donate to other good candidates. They will make a difference in who shows up to vote.

And that's about it. I'd advise steering clear of the 24/7 television news industry for the next few months. It's going to be ugly and uninformative. If you need a peaceful place, stop by the ol' Facebook page. I can't promise I won't ever post on politics between now and Tuesday, November 5. But if I do I can promise I'll be using the ol' delete function energetically in the comments. In truth it'll mostly be sunsets, Benny Beagle, and old British cars.

Here. Have a pretty sunset photo. If you read to the bottom you've earned it.