One of my favorite quotes is from 1966 when longtime California state senator Dick Tuck was defeated. His comment to the media was, “The people have spoken, the bastards.” At my age, having been on both losing political teams and winning political teams, I prefer a more gracious approach.
On a more cynical note, however, even the Wall Street Journal compared Harris’s and Trump’s economic agendas to “dumb and dumber,” suggesting that his plan would be even worse than hers regarding both inflation and worsening the budget deficit. Time will tell.
On the home front, marijuana received 47% of the vote, which makes it more popular than the leading Democrat, who received 33% of the vote. Apparently, many conservative North Dakota voters have no problem “going high.” The elimination of real estate property taxes lost big. Apparently, even the potheads in North Dakota may have a better grasp of economic reality than the extremist wing of the Republican party. If the legislature doesn’t address the real estate tax issue in the next session, can they blame it on the Democrats, who will be caucusing in a phone booth?
Finally, thank you to the over 60% of eligible North Dakota voters who exercised their responsibility to city, county, state, and country. Many people have suffered to preserve that right. To the 30-plus percent who didn’t bother to vote, I forgive you. Your choices were not awesome, but compare America to the rest of the world. We may not be a perfect union yet, but there is still hope and still a lot to love.
