Well it has happened again. I have woken up on November 3rd and had another birthday. That is 71 times now and I think I see a pattern developing where this occurs every year. This year is different than most of the previous years as it is election day, specifically Presidential election day. This is the eleventh time that election day has fallen on my birthday (of course meaning there were 60 that it didn’t or 84.5% of the years). Of those eleven 6 were just run of the mill local election years, 2 were mid-term years (1970,1998), and this year is the third time it has been a Presidential year. When you consider the previous times and the results (1964, 1992) it does not bode well for the Trump guy and his chances as my birthday seems to be a great predictor of presidential election results.
The election of 1964 had LBJ running against Barry Goldwater, the leading ultra conservative of the Republican party. He ran on small government, low taxes, strong defense, all the usual Republican talking points although he was a bit extreme. He also ran against the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Johnson won in a landslide with Goldwater winning only his home state of Arizona and the Southern tier of states. Notably this was the first time they had voted Republican since the Civil war and that has not changed since. That was all the Civil Rights Acts doing. The same act split union support in the 68 election. Now I won’t try to claim that any of this was impressing itself on my 15 year old brain more than being aware it was happening. I had more important things to be concerned with. There was a British music invasion that had to be kept up with. There was a space program that was always doing something new. I was 15, I didn’t have a drivers license yet so I had to walk everywhere including to school and then home and back for lunch every day. That was like a mile each way, and uphill both ways. I put forth that my birthday happening on that election day held off the conservative forces getting control of the country sooner than they did. It allowed LBJ and the more liberal congress that resulted from this election to pass the Civil rights act, the voting rights act and start a number of anti poverty programs during the next 4 years. The republicans have spent the last 40 years overturning them as Reagan was a disciple of Goldwater’s and from the ashes of this election the conservative movement managed to put a coalition together that brought Reagan to the Presidency 16 years later.
The 1992 election between Bush and Clinton was the second time the election and my birthday coincided at the presidential level. Bush was running for his second term and though popular because of the great Gulf War victory the economy was going to crap. He made a deal to raise taxes which upset his conservative base. Because of Bush’s high approval ratings none of the expected Democrats decided to run and in the end Clinton, a centrist Democrat (read that as Republican light) won out for the Democrats. The country had just been through 12 years of conservative rule with Republicans winning every popular vote total. A third party candidate entered the campaign, Ross Perot, and he ended up getting about 19% of the popular vote. He was anti deficit and against the NAFTA trade agreement. Those positions pulled votes about equally from both Bush (the conservative deficit people) and Clinton (unions and anti NAFTA people). Nonetheless Clinton’s more liberal social platform and the failing economy allowed him to win the popular vote and the electoral college as well as both houses of congress. That lasted for 2 years. In 1994 conservative Republicans won back the house, led by Newt Gingrich, and that started the decline into cynical divisive politics that have been in play for the last 25 years. But at least my birthday brought an end to the conservative choke hold on the government for a couple years. Unfortunately, Clinton moved more to the right, aligned himself more with Wall Street and generally screwed the Democratic party until today. During his eight years I moved from South Bend to Long Island and worked at a 750 person plant that was turned around from big losses to profit, sold to a US fortune 500 manufacturer that immediately built 2 plants in Mexico and moved it there. Then there was 8 years of the Bush-Cheney nonsense and 6 years of Republicans blocking Obama from getting anything accomplished and 4 years of Trump. What a 40-year run of disasters. Which brings us to today.
With today’s election being billed as the mother of all-important elections it would behoove my election birthday fuju to work its magic again. While Trump certainly deserves the blame for his actions being the incompetent psychopath that he is the real blame lies with the Republican Party as a whole. They allowed this guy to run and after he was nominated, they supported his candidacy. After he was elected, they turned a blind eye to all the unethical and probably illegal activities that have been exposed. All because they are just as corrupt but also because they are power hungry and wanted the courts stacked with conservative (and in many cases unqualified) judges. It has taken the Republican party 40 to 50 years to get this corrupt and anti-citizen. So, the birthday fuju not only has to work against Trump but it has to work against the entire Republican Party. It is time for these guys and their ideas to be put in the dust bin of history. (think of the Whig party). I intend to crank up the fuju to create enough juice to have Trump lose the popular vote by about 55% to 45%. Lose the electoral college by somewhere in the neighborhood of 493-143. Also flip the Senate to a 52-48 Democratic majority and pick up another 5 or 10 house seats. I may not have that much fuju. It’s untested at this level.
Hopefully I can pull this off so that when I vote in the next birthday-presidential election on my 99th birthday in 2048 and I tell all the young whippersnappers about the 2020 election and how it started the turning of the Republican party in to a force as about as potent as Dadaism. I would expect they will be going to the polls to decide how to continue to improve the world for each individual and not each company or billionaire. When I tell them about the Republican Party their response will be something like yours when I mentioned the Whig Party. When I write this birthday rant thing next year I can write about what song was playing 50 years ago or something if in fact I can make this happen.
In fact coming in at 35 on the chart the first week of November 1970:
Seems good enough for today.