by Jonathan Reisman

2024

The ongoing 2024 Federal and Maine state elections are stressing me out because the stakes are high and the country is polarized (not the best state for thoughtful and careful listening, analysis, and voting/decision-making). Much of the media, in my opinion, should not be trusted, other than to be stenographers for Democratic talking points. Everyone has an axe to grind, but some are less than open about what type of axe they are carrying. Mostly they seem to be carrying water for Kamala Harris and the Democrats. 

This election has corresponded with an increase in legal sports and political gambling across the country. I have a pretty libertarian attitude towards governmental/community efforts to regulate and suppress “vice”- be it gambling, alcohol, tobacco, drugs, and/or sex, mostly because governmental suppression efforts like Prohibition have all sorts of negative side effects, including black markets, scofflaws, and the Kennedy bootlegging fortune. Regulatory and legislative efforts to gag political speech (also known as campaign finance reform) are even worse, threatening core 1st Amendment freedoms. I might even call it a Threat to Democracy, but I would not want to commit political plagiarism.

I am not laying any bets down because I am terrified of the consequences:

• to freedom and prosperity should Kamala win;

• to American cohesion as we enter a state of permanent, paralyzing polarization if Trump prevails.

As if that wasn’t enough to cause election stress dysfunction, I’m also concerned that one or more “black swan”/October surprise events may well be visited upon us, whether by Providence, the deep state/intelligence community, Barack Obama, George Soros, Vladimir Putin, and/or that evil Canadian tyrant Justin Trudeau. My current best black swan guess is a widening regional war in the Middle East between Shia Iran and their terrorist clients vs. Israel and some of the Sunni Arab Abraham Accord nations. The conflict would close the Suez Canal and the Persian Gulf and send the price of oil and gas soaring. 

The problem for Kamala is that she’d get blamed, (although the legacy media would try hard to blame Trump), and short of draining the rest of the strategic petroleum reserve, there is nothing she could do about it, except cry that her values haven’t changed and reiterating her fracking flip flop. I do not think that will fly in Pennsylvania. Whoever prevails there will be our next President, but the country they preside over may be ungovernable and permanently polarized.

All this 2024 election stress and dysfunction has caused me to reflect back on past elections in 1994, 1996, and 1998. Marley’s ghost of elections past is haunting me.

1994

Thirty years ago, Newt Gingrich led a revolutionary election by capturing the House for Republicans and ending what seemed to this baby boomer a generation of Democratic domination. In Maine, Independent Angus King narrowly won the Blaine House over former two-term Democratic Governor Joe Brennan, Cohen staffer/McKernan commissioner/Bush 41 appointee Susan Collins, and Farmington Professor Green Jonathan Carter. King opposed car testing as the means to implement George Mitchell’s 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments. Collins, Brennan, and Carter all supported it, but the Maine electorate did not. I wrote about it here: Maine Implements the Clean Air Act: Federalism, Environmentalism and Interest Group Accountability (umaine.edu)   (https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=13...)

The 1994 election also saw Bangor’s John Baldacci win the 2nd Congressional District seat as Olympia Snowe moved up to the Senate, replacing George Mitchell and beating uber-progressive 1st District Congressman Tom Andrews handily. In 1995, I recall getting a note from newly elected Congressman John Baldacci congratulating me for my appointment and work in the King administration. Neither of us mentioned it in 1998 when I ran against him (and was crushed).

1996

The 1996 Presidential election featured incumbent baby boomer “slick willy” Bill Clinton, aged Bob Dole, and wealthy Texas marketer/businessman Ross Perot, who garnered strong support in the 2nd Congressional District and Bangor area. In Maine, Susan Collins and Joe Brennan, the two major party candidates who lost to Angus in 1994 squared off to replace retiring Senator Bill Cohen. Susan has been there ever since. I do not always agree with Susan, especially on climate alarmism, but I would rather have her than any of her Democratic opponents since (Chellie Pingree (2002), Tom Allen (2008), Shenna Bellows (2014), and Sara Gideon (2020)). I hope Susan does not follow Dianne Feinstein and Angus’s lead by staying in the Senate beyond her 75th birthday.

1998

John Baldacci comfortably won reelection in 1996 and, in the fall of 1997, as I was leading the opposition to the endangered species salmon listing on seven Downeast Rivers (Washington County First!), it became apparent that no established Republican would challenge him. Several good friends encouraged me to run, and I am glad I took the opportunity to travel Maine’s 2nd Congressional District.

I campaigned on school choice and for equal protection by ending affirmative action and racial preferences. Twenty-five years later, the Supreme Court has ruled that racial preferences in college admissions violate the equal protection clause. The woke imposition of critical race theory and DEI fascism is eroding the quality of our public schools and is the best argument for school choice. Woke Commissioner of Maine Education Pender Makin is now proposing that Maine should scrap many of the existing testing metrics in favor of unspecified alternatives that reflect social-emotional learning goals and pedagogy. (Translated that means a woke curriculum backed by Planned Parenthood and the League of Women Voters.) You can read about it at:

https://mainepolicy.substack.com/p/maine-doe-unveils-baseless-changes-to...