Some folks, you just can't reach

Ideological bubbles are as difficult to penetrate with new ideas as neutron stars are with ping pong balls.

Some men, you just can't reach – Cool Hand Luke

We are just a few days away from what I think will be a red wave midterm election. Polling across the board shows Republicans doing what they should be doing in most places and surprisingly over-performing in others. New York and Oregon, both deep-blue states, could see their first Republican governors in decades. Although the U.S. House has been long expected to pass to Republican control, the margin of seats may be far bigger than expected. I would not be at all surprised if the Republicans also regain control of the Senate, with room to spare.

All of this, of course, depends on the mood of swing voters. Although swing voters are not a majority in this country, they are an important bloc. Swing voters, i.e., those persuadable by arguments as opposed to ideology (and who pay attention to track records on issues important to them) decide many elections.

The problem with political ideologues is that they will insist, sans any regard to reality, that they and they alone possess all of the wisdom in the world concerning how to run it. This despite the fact that history is full of examples which demonstrate that ideological thinking is less successful than practical, dispassionate thinking in solving the problems of large and diverse societies. Civilization succeeds in spite of, rather than because of, ideologues.

The reason that ideologues don't own any of this is that no one self-identifies as an ideologue. An ideologue might self-identify as a member the elite, the bourgeoisie, the proletariat, the opposite sex, a different race or even as a Golden Retriever - but not as an ideologue. That's not happening. Ideologue is a slanderous term to most ideologues.

That's why we have two large and impenetrable political bubbles in our country, both living in adamantine certainty of their own righteousness; their imperviousness to change rivaling that of a neutron star.

It would be great, I suppose, to be able to go through life with a such absolute confidence. But for me it's just not possible. How the hell am I supposed to know with absolute certainty the best solution to problems affecting millions of people? I'm just a guy with a megaphone and some ideas, not a freaking guru.

Be that as it may, it's those of us on the outside of the bubbles who are going to decide this particular election. I think that things are going red this time. It's not that most swing voters love the Republican Party (especially the base). It's because we have just two choices and it's come down to who do I despise the least? Right now, given the state of the economy, crime and other items important to most voters, that's team red. Though the choice is far from easy.

Hardly anyone is enthusiastic about the choice, for instance, between candidates the caliber of Mehmet Oz (R) and John Fetterman (D) for the open Senate seat in Pennsylvania. But that's the choice that the citizens of PA have. David McCormick (R) and Conor Lamb (D) lost in their respective primaries because neither were pure enough for the ideologues in their respective parties. So Pennsylvanians, most of whom just want a decent economy and safe surroundings, are stuck with the unenviable choice between a couple of bad candidates.

So how to choose if you live in the Keystone State? Given that inflation, crime and illegal immigration are near the top of most voters concerns, the candidate least likely to make you hate yourself down the road is probably Oz. I suspect that a lot of Pennsylvanians will probably hold their nose and vote for the carpetbagging Doctor, with an interesting history of retracted medical publications, who's most famous for hawking pseudoscience on daytime TV.

Whether it'll be enough to put Oz over the top, who knows? But it's going to be close. If either Fetterman or Oz were running against either McCormick or Lamb it would be a blowout for the moderates.

This pattern is widely repeated across the country. It's a sad state of affairs when choosing for something as important as a Senate seat comes down to who makes you hate yourself the least. But that's where we find ourselves.

As I see it, ideologues on both sides of our great political divide are full of brown stuff with a foul smell - unless one self-identifies as a Golden Retriever. And I see dim prospects for improvement along this line in the immediate future.

Just the recent evidence that we are knackered due to political tribalism is pretty overwhelming. Hillary Clinton, Stacy Abrams and other leading Democrats dabble in election denialism as much as Donald Trump and his crew of legal nitwits. Though both sides were given ample opportunity to responsibly steward us through the Covid pandemic, neither proved up to the task. Neither side has a realistic view of climate change, immigration or the economy. Both sides suck at upholding free speech.

I have the same concerns as most voters in this country. That means that I'm agonizing over which candidates to support in this election. It's a lot to unwrap.

I'm not down with the woke social policies, the catastrophic energy policies and the farcical economic policies of the left, but I'm also not down with the Trumpism that still dominates Republican politics. Biden won the 2020 presidential election fair and square. Sometimes I wish that he had not, but he did. What happened on January 6, 2021 was terrible and I am loathe to support anyone who thinks that it was not.

But I just might have to.

If I don't like what the Democrats have done to domestic energy production, or their stewardship of the economy, or their ignorance of the insanity at the southern border, or their attitudes about crime, or their attempts to use the power of government to suppress speech they don't like (as reported this week by The Intercept), or their chummy relationship with the media, I may be forced to vote for knuckleheads that I despise just to steer the ship along a different course.

I still don't know what I'm going to do when I enter the voting booth in a few days. All I know is that I'm not going to feel good about it.

Associated Press and Idaho Club-winning columnist Martin Hackworth of Pocatello is a physicist, writer and retired Idaho State University faculty member who now spends his time with family, riding mountain bikes and motorcycles and playing guitars. His writing on Substack, “Howlin' at the Moon in ii-V-I” may be found at martinhackworth.substack.com