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Will Biden supporters be willing to sacrifice economic survival for emotional gratification and a symbolic tribute to fringe causes? - SCW Thought-starters

Are Obama Voters Still Willing To Be Self-Destructive, and Will Biden Supporters Be Willing to Sacrifice Economic Survival and Vote Against Their Own Interests?

One of the more curious phenomena during the Barry Obama elections, especially the reelection in 2012, was the willingness of a sufficient block of voters to cast ballots against their own interests. A similar self-destructive impetus, in 2016, to put reckless emotion ahead of rational analysis or ethical virtue, saw the popular vote go to Hillary Rodham Clinton.

With the country facing even greater economic challenges amidst the covid-19 coronavirus pandemic, could similar self-destructive impulses still prevail among knee-jerk left-wing voters?

The Obama-Biden tandem had, falsely it turned out, pretended to have the know-how to lead the country out of a smaller recession, one that predictably had been sparked by an oil price shock that burst a financial bubble. That recession also had coincided with Nancy Pelosi as Speaker and Barney Frank as a banking committee chair. It turned out the Obama-Biden tandem was a national disaster, bringing on a Second Great Depression.

With essentially no achievements other than getting elected, Obama was soon given a Nobel Peace Prize, for no discernible reason other than being elected while also being half-Black. One gathers that similar pro-Black racism motivated a number of Obama voters, who apparently congratulated themselves for being racist, as long as their racism was in favor of someone half-Black. As with other so-called "affirmative action," that was neither "affirmative" nor "action," the concept seemed to be that the remedy for (long-ago) racism was more racism.

It might have been partially understandable for some subsets of voters, despondent over any prospect of personal economic success, to grasp at whatever minimal support they thought a government-handout-oriented regime might offer. Yet even for them, an Obama vote was strangely self-destructive. Obama in power meant less overall wealth to distribute, and the near eradication of any chance to improve their lot, such as by jumping into a better job, or perhaps, in a number of cases, any job at all.

Yet what was most bizarre was the willingness to reelect Obama in 2012.

Not only had Obama been almost unbelievably unqualified and inexperienced to begin his presidency, his first four years saw massive economic decline and mismangement of American interests generally.

The overriding question -- why would people on a sinking ship vote essentially to not save the ship. On a sinking ship, with a captain who seemed bent on saluting himself for the ship sinking, why would passengers or crew -- with a choice in the matter, in that case -- applaud keeping that captain in place.

One possibility might have been purely superficial emotionalism, to have had emotional compulsions or gratifications that overwhelmed rational thought. There were almost quasi-relious, almost totemistic, hashtag-like concepts to invoke, even if the choise was against their well-being or the well-being of people they cared about.

A question not discussed much publicly was that of simple cognitive impairment, perhaps by chemical means. The number of persons on mind-altering psychiatric medications seemed higher than ever, accompanied by rising numbers of illegal drug use, such as opoid addiction.

Obama himself arguably seemed to encourage impairment, openly joking about his past illegal drug use, such as with a joke about so-called "buzzfeed." When a juvenile delinquent reputed to be a drug-user, according to the delinquent's own friend, made a derisive ethnic slur against a neighborhood watch adult before getting into a conflict and physical fight with the adult, Obama would later say "I am Trayvon Martin," as if to legitimize the delinquent.

There definitely was "number-crunching" after the Obama elections, that identified strong variations among some sub-groups. For example, those who were responsible for the well-being of another person, such as persons who were married or had children, voted in overwhelming numbers AGAINST Obama.

It would be interesting to number-crunching for persons whose brains have been chemically modified. There has been criticism of over-medicating persons with psychiatric drugs, for example, which can allow even the actual mentally ill to mimic most rational behavior, yet do not necessarily result in absolutely clear thinking in all cases. Then there has been the explosion of illegal drug use.

Just how have those people been voting?

In any event, the question now is, will the same people who voted in a self-destructive manner, against their own basic interests, and aganist their own economic and physical well-being, by supporting Obama, be as willing, today, to be as self-destructive in a choice between incumbent President Donald Trump and his main challenger, former Obama Vice President Joe Biden.

Before the pandemic, Trump had the economic rolling at a blistering pace.

Trump might be unsavory to some critics in some respects. And there could be criticisms about his previous economic advancements being fueled, at least in part, by deficits that continue to grow. Yet, after the Obama Second Great Depression, Trump unmistakably got the economy moving.

Biden already was shown to be an economic disaster.

On the one hand, there are the emotional factors, such as personal dislike over unsavory aspects of Trump's personality or life story; or irrational factors, such as knee-jerk leftists having an almost quasi-religious, totemistic fixation on being perversely gratified by reverse racism; illegal aliens; prenatal killing of developing human life; deviant or otherwise unstable or unrestrained sexual behavior; and other pet issues, such as obsession over the weather and how quickly or slowly industry and economic activity have improved their various environmental practices.

There also is the tradtional dumbed-down response to adversity, converting unhappiness over adversity to a blind anti-incumbent attitude, regardless of whether the incumbent is to blame or whether a decidely inferior challenger would make a difficult situation even worse.

Trump already demonstrated that he was able to reignite the economy after the Obama-Biden disaster.

Trump is a known commodity associated, under normal circumstances,

Biden is a known commodity associated with economic disaster.

Despite Trump sparking recovery, the economy now suddenly faces great challenges now because of the pandemic.

The Obama-Biden tandem faced a comparitively minor economic downturn associated with an oil price shock that had burst a financial bubble, already aggravated by Democrats controlling the House. With control of Congress and the White House, the Obama-Biden tandem took a challenging situation and spun it into the Second Great Depression.

A rational conclusion would be that putting today's reeling economy in the hands of Biden would be like trying to boost crop yield in a farm field by setting loose a bunch of hungry goats or unleashing a Biblical horde of locusts.

Biden also reputedly has been building some kind of crescendo of unfolding cognitive confusion dating back decades.

The issues date back even to when he was much younger and was humiliated into withdrawing in disgrace from a presidential race due to plagiarism. He did so under circumstances where, if memory serves (pardon the pun), even mainstream print media pointed out that, when plagiarizing, Biden actually seemed to lose himself a bit, that Biden arguably seemed a bit confused about whether he was talking about himself, and his own family, or the person he was plagiarizing from, and that person's family.

At a later point it came out that Biden had to undergo brain surgery. People tried to be nice at the time, yet, instead of gracefully retiring, Biden used his status as a small-state political warhorse to just keep hanging around, and hanging around, as others did retire, until Biden was the ultimate "hangaround" default, the political version of the cockroaches surviving a nuclear war.

And now Biden wants to be a remedial kind of President amidst a major crisis, when he himself seems to need remedying, if such a thing were even possible.

The situation would be akin to a college football coach who has struggled to have a winning record in normal circumstance but then offers to take over a program that actually needs rebuilding or has been racked with injuries and transfers.

Then there are the issues with Biden, in some respects, also being unsavory himself on a personal level. For example, there are the accusations about his behavior or comments towards females, including alleged odd, offensive remarks to a young teen. Then there is Biden being denied Communion as a would-be Catholic abandoning his Catholic Faith on key issues.

One overriding question about Biden was whether he was ever meant to be anything other than a token candidate, an old warhorse given the chance to stand in, as a kind of honorific gesture.

It was not until the primaries were actually underway that the coronavirus scenario started building, and filing deadlines were much earlier. Trump was so successful, both economically and politically, that more normal candidates might have elected to stay out, leaving a bizarre potpourri of fringe candidates and novices looking for "15 minutes of fame" or an introduction for future consideration. Biden might simply have been a kind of mediocre, confused default.

Yet the question remains, are there Obama-type voters who are still willing to be self-destructive and vote against their own well-being. Will there be those who are so bent on paying a kind of quasi-religious tribute to a particular leftist, fringe political hashtag, or quasi-personal grudge against Trump, that they are willing to choose possible homelessness and national disaster for the sake of irrational emotional gratification.

The "SCW Thought-Starters Series" is intended as a beginning of inquiry, and invitation for further research, analysis, context, reflection and creativity, and so forth, not necessarily a definitive conclusion, nor unwavering in all its elements.