Category Archives: South Carolina

Good for Shane Massey, and the others who voted ‘no’

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Here’s how the NYT recorded this momentous moment at our State House.

Well, the madness has passed us by, for now. Or at least that wave of it has.

I mentioned yesterday that Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey was expected to oppose Trump’s plan to usurp (for his own purposes, as is his wont) a key responsibility of our state Legislature — drawing election maps. And he stood up and did so in fine style:

“If we don’t consider the concerns of South Carolina, there is no one left,” Massey said. “We are the last lines. I have too much Southern blood in me to surrender.”

Amen to that, brother Shane. It’s time that someone in this state stood up for for a States’ right that matters, and is entirely justified. Something good, instead of, you know, what our ancestors stood up for that other time.

Enough Republicans stood up with him to defeat the effort to eliminate the sole Democratic member member of South Carolina’s congressional delegation, Jim Clyburn.

These are the other four:

  • Sean Bennett, R-Summerville
  • Chip Campsen, R-Isle of Palms
  • Tom Davis, R-Beaufort
  • Greg Hembree, R-Little River

Good for Tom Davis and the rest.

Those were the votes that took courage. Of course, they would have accomplished nothing if the Democrats hadn’t all been voting against it. The Dems celebrated appropriately after:

South Carolina Senate Democrats welcome today’s defeat of the sine die resolution that would have allowed the legislature to return for a politically motivated special session on congressional redistricting.

“Today’s vote sends a clear message that South Carolina should not be dragged into another unnecessary and divisive redistricting battle driven by Washington insiders,” said Senate Democratic Leader Brad Hutto. “South Carolinians rejected a politically motivated power grab orchestrated by a White House shaped by perpetually online New York City activists with little understanding of South Carolina. The people of this state expect us to focus on real issues affecting their daily lives, not carry out an outside political agenda.”

Senate Democrats will continue fighting for fair representation, transparency, and a government focused on the needs of South Carolina families rather than national political gamesmanship.

Brad Hutto was also quoted in The State as saying:

“We just don’t take documents from Washington and say ‘thank you, sir. Thank you, ma’am.’ We are the deliberative body,” Hutto said.

No, we don’t. I was afraid we might be, that we might do what just happened in Tennessee, but for now South Carolina did the right thing. It’s nice to be able to say that.

The utter madness going on now at a state capitol near you

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One of the maps being discussed.

Unbelievably, I just learned about this last night, because as y’all know I’m not paying NEARLY as much attention to news as I once did.

Perhaps you’ve been as inattentive as I have. I hope not. But in any case, none of us knows how it’s going to turn out.

I’m talking about this.

Here’s another version from The State.

What’s going on in this: Donald Trump is trying his best to redraw all the Southern states’ maps (and maybe others as well; I’m just looking at the South here) so that there is no hope of them ever electing another Democrat. No Jim Clyburn, and so forth. This is all sparked by the recent Supreme Court decision regarding the Louisiana map, which has thrown the doors open to this sort of thing. This is now apparently a big part of his vision of becoming permanent Fürher of America, along with such things as changing the rules so he can run for a 3rd time in what would likely prove to be our last presidential election (in his lifetime, anyway), and making sure he can win it in the House, no matter what the voters say.

I had sorta, kinda been following this — elsewhere. My wife, who’s from Memphis, had focused my attention on what Tennessee just did. They had torn apart the 9th Congressional District that since the early ’70s had been mostly electing black representatives. (I voted for the first of those, Harold Ford. Later regretted it. But I liked his son.) So now, black Memphians (who are the majority in the city) are raging about the “racist” map, and the current incumbent (who, incidentally, is white and the first Jewish congressman from Tennessee, and can’t really play the usual Memphis race card), is talking about the indiscriminate elimination of Democrats.

Which is somewhat more to the point in the Memphis case. If Trump thought black members would support him as slavishly (and that’s the word here) as white Republicans do, he’d be looking for a way to make ALL the districts majority-minority, if that were possible. For that matter, if only Democrats loved him as the terrified Republicans do, he’d go for more Dems. He’s not particular. But neither of those fantasies being the case, he’ll settle for a plan that elects only Republicans. He only cares about Number One — never forget that.

As for SC, I only heard about this last night from a Democratic friend whom I had called about something else entirely. I’ve talked to a couple of other people since then — well, one other person, a Republican. But I’m trying to reach a lobbyist by text who can tell me what the hell is going on right now. Other that, I’ve been reading but not learning much. Because going into today, nobody knew what was going to happen. This is moving very fast.

It seems it will depend on whether the Senate goes along with a last-second reapportionment. I hear Majority Leader Shane Massey is against it, but I can’t swear to that. We’ll see.

Meanwhile, over in the House, I hear about Republicans running around talking about the latest “White House map.”

Y’all do understand the extent to which this means we are living in a different country than the one in which I have spent most of life. Right? Sure, presidents have always been highly interested in the makeup of Congress, and therefore very interested in the maps, and quietly keeping track of what’s happening.

But that’s not THIS America, in which the president openly barges in and takes over this process, and his minions in Columbia are unembarrassed about making it clear what’s going on.

You see, folks, legally — constitutionally — remapping is entirely the responsibility and prerogative of state legislatures. In any previous decade, lawmakers of both parties would have been fiercely defending their turf, furious if any mere president tried to muscle in.

But not these guys. Not in Trump World.

We won’t even get into the completely uncaring betrayal of the Legislative Black Caucus, which in the early ’90s made the deal with the Republicans that let the GOP take over the S.C. House. But let’s not be too harsh in judging today’s Republican members. They, and their Master, are even more ignorant about history than most Americans. Thirty years ago, when that deal with the caucus was made, I doubt Trump knew where South Carolina was, much less which party was running it. (Here he is in those days.)

At the top of this post, I’ve including one of the maps that’s been floating around. If they go ahead with this, no telling what the final version will look like. This one is intriguing. It does away with the salamanderlike district the Republicans drew for Clyburn back then — not to elect a Democrat, but to get all those black voters out of their districts, to make them “safe.”

So the new 6th looks “normal.” it also looks like something they may regret if they go for it. That Democrat I spoke with about this last night is already thinking about running for it.

But what do the doofuses in the White House know about the political geography of South Carolina?

Teague: South Carolina’s Election Commission: Troubled Waters

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The Op-Ed Page

Lynn Teague
Guest Columnist

The South Carolina State Election Commission (SEC, not to be confused with anything athletic) has been in the news a lot in the past week, following the removal of Director Howard Knapp by a 3-2 vote of the commissioners last Wednesday. There had been reports of a SLED investigation involving Knapp, but no specific information.

Howard Knapp

This came during a period of uncertainty regarding the SEC’s response to the demands of the federal Department of Justice (DOJ) for our voter rolls, including sensitive personal information. The feds don’t have an impeccable record of data security of late, and this seems both not necessary (our rolls are already checked against federal databases to identify non-citizens and against multiple sources for other verifications) and a potential source of data exposure.

All of this has been further complicated by the firing of the Assistant Director of the SEC over a voice-activated recording device left, intentionally or not, in an SEC training and meeting room.

This turmoil has led to many questions. The first is whether voters should be panicked about what is happening, given elections that are coming soon. Should we panic about either the voting conditions or the integrity of the elections? This one is easy to answer.

Lynn Teague

We can expect the usual human glitches: the poll worker who forgets the key to the polling place and delays opening, the ballot marking device that won’t function, and similar technical problems. We should not expect anything else. At both the state and county levels, the people who make elections work on a day-to-day basis will continue to do the work that they know very well. They will conduct elections designed to count and report every vote, accurately. Furthermore, they will not be rudderless; they will be overseen by our bipartisan election commissioners.

However, this is followed by longer-term concerns. The privacy of our voter records is one of these. This issue is currently in court, in a case before Judge Daniel Coble in Columbia on 26 September. The data security issues around federal systems have already been mentioned.

In addition, it is here that the most important long-term issue arises: Is the South Carolina SEC the independent agency governed by appointed commissioners that we have believed that we have, or is it more vulnerable to political pressures? Commissioners are appointed by the governor, but during their terms cannot be removed except for cause. This is designed to insulate them from passing political storms.

We know that pressure from elected officlals is not unprecedented in the history of the SEC. The departure of the previous director, Marci Andino, followed some very angry comments from legislators who were disturbed by her letter suggesting an array of accommodations for voters during the pandemic. However, that what an exception to the history of the agency. On the whole, the South Carolina election management system contrasts markedly, and very favorably, with states where a partisan official oversees elections.

We should all hope that it stays that way, that South Carolina continues to preserve some measure of distance between partisan politics and the administration of what absolutely must be a non-partisan process, our elections. Politics today is highly adversarial and often becomes performance art, designed to get attention for the official or the official’s party rather than to achieve something substantive. Our elections should not be driven astray in those ugly winds.

Meanwhile, voters should check their registrations at scvotes.gov at least 30 days before elections. They should consult the League of Women Voters’ Vote411, where there is an abundance of election information, including candidate statements in their own words, not edited by anyone.

But after all that is done, we should hope that everyone will keep an eye on the General Assembly. The disturbances at the SEC are not a sound rationale for changing our election administration to one administered by partisan officials or in any way more vulnerable to manipulation. We should all be able to continue to vote with confidence that our votes are accurately tabulated and reported in a process that is not biased toward outcomes for one party or another (other than in redistricting, but that is another subject).

Lynn Teague is a retired archaeologist who works hard every day in public service. She is the legislative lobbyist for the South Carolina League of Women Voters.

We’ll be killing a guy by firing squad in two days

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A communist insurgent is blindfolded and executed by firing squad, Cuba 1956./Wikipedia

We’ve discussed this before, but now we have a fresh reason. From last week:

COLUMBIA — South Carolina’s death penalty history could be rewritten March 7 if condemned state inmate Brad Sigmon is executed by firing squad, as he has chosen.

Though the firing squad is authorized as an execution method in five states, it has been used only three times since the U.S. reinstated the death penalty in 1976. All three took place in Utah, with the last one in 2010.

Sigmon, 67, has picked a shooting death over electrocution or lethal injection, according to documents he filed Feb. 21.

He was given a death sentence for killing his ex-girlfriend’s parents, Gladys and David Larke, at their home in Taylors in April 2001. Gladys Larke was 59 and her husband 62…

When we’ve talked about firing squads in the past, I’ve brought it up in large part because of people saying how “barbaric” it is. Which, within the context of other such practices in which our state engages, is nonsense. I’ve gone into that before:

Between the lines of the reporting and comments I’m hearing what I perceive as a flavor of “Firing squad? How awful! How barbaric!”

To which I’m going, Yeah, so? My God, who wouldn’t choose that? I know I would. In fact, of all the forms of execution current in this country, the firing squad is by far the least objectionable from the point of view of the condemned. It’s quicker and more certain than hanging.

And to me, lethal injection is by far the worst, the most blood-chillingly terrifying, the most cruel and unusual way to take a man’s life.

It’s so cold, so sterile, so deliberate, so clinical, so pseudo-nonviolent and therefore most morally chilling. Like, we’re going to kill you, casually and dispassionately, in a staged setting that makes a mockery of the healing process.

This, of course, is related to my fear of giving blood, which I overcome every time I go to the Red Cross. It’s the cold, clinical, deliberateness of that that has always chilled me. What if the point of slipping that needle into my vein was to kill me, deliberately and legally, with all due ceremony?

Maybe it doesn’t strike you that way, but it seems the most evil, Room 101 thing you could do to another human being.

But a firing squad, the straightforward, quick, honestly retributive violence of it, is to me the most morally defensible form of capital punishment. I don’t believe in ANY form of execution, but if I were king and had to choose for someone else, or if I were given the devil’s own choice of deciding for myself, that’s definitely the way I’d go.

When I started my newspaper career, executions were banned in every state in the union. We had followed other civilized countries (and in the ’70s, this was a civilized country, disco aside) in putting that behind us. Then Gary Gilmore was executed in Utah in 1977 — by firing squad.

You young folks might find it hard to imagine, but it was a huge deal when the country took that big, atavistic step. Norman Mailer wrote a book about it, which was made into a movie starring Tommy Lee Jones as Gilmore. I never read the book or saw the movie. I felt I knew enough about it.

The most vivid memory for me comes from a time in, I believe, 1979, when I went to Death Row in Nashville (at the old state prison that looked like something out of an old movie, or perhaps a nightmare) to interview some of the condemned. After a long interview with one, I paused in front of the cell of another of the condemned and chatted for a moment. He had a picture of Gilmore attached to his cell wall. This prisoner agreed to my taking a picture of him. It’s pretty creepy, and if I run across that image, I’ll share it with you. The guy I was talking to was standing in exactly the same position in his cell as Gilmore was in the picture on the wall.

Oh, by the way, before you folks who think it’s A-OK for the state to kill people by the numbers cry that I’m “romanticizing” the condemned or ignoring what they did to their innocent victims, you’re wrong. Those two guys I just mentioned were as bad as anyone I’ve ever met. The guy posing like Gilmore wanted his wife dead, and had hired the guy I interviewed at length to kill her — which he and an accomplice did, in a particularly brutal and inept manner. She was still barely alive when, after raping and choking her, they stuffed her into the trunk of a car and left the car in the parking lot of the main Memphis public library, where she was found dead days later.

They both got the chair for it, and if ever anyone deserved it, they did. But whatever anyone deserves, the state has no business degrading itself to their level by killing them — not when they’re safely locked away, and present no danger to the public.

But if the state is going to do it, the firing squad is the way. At least that way, we all know what it is we’re doing, and no one can pretend it’s “humane.”

Something South Carolina can be proud of

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I was busy yesterday and while I noted the fact, didn’t have time to comment on Joe Biden spending his last full day as president in South Carolina.

He was in Charleston, and I was up in the northernmost reaches of our state. I took my mother up there for the graveside services for Micah Caskey’s grandmother. Mary Jo and my mother were close friends when they were schoolgirls in Bennettsville, growing up right across Jordan Street from each other. It was a beautiful service, and I was glad the weather gave us a break so we could get up there to our hometown.

So I didn’t focus on Joe’s time in the LowCountry until I read about it in The New York Times this morning:

President Biden spent his final full day in office in South Carolina, a state he credits for helping catapult him to the White House and where he returned in his final hours as president to urge his supporters to stay engaged in the fight for a more just nation.

During visits to a historically Black church and an African American museum, Mr. Biden reflected on his history with a place that he said had played a pivotal role in his life and career and that pushed him in his efforts to restore “the soul of the nation.”…

Yep, we are the state that reversed the crazy trend toward less-suitable candidates for the Democratic nomination, and launched the right choice to the White House. And I’ve never been prouder of South Carolina than I was on Feb. 29, 2020. Here I am celebrating with some friends that night…

And here’s Joe that same night, on the stage with Jim Clyburn, who had done more than anyone else to spur that victory (yeah, the picture quality is sorry, but it’s grabbed from video of a raucous moment)…

Screenshot

And here they are together yesterday in Charleston. (I’m just linking to it since I don’t own the copyright.)

Back to our subject. Did Joe restore “the soul of the nation?” Well that’s what he had decided to do, after the shame of Charlottesville. Joe had done more for his country, and was more deserving of a peaceful retirement, than anyone I knew. But he stepped forward, and gave his all. I don’t know if we can say he saved the nation’s soul, given the way the nation behaved over this past year. But he certainly resurrected it after its ignominious death in 2016. And for those four more years of life — from 2021 to this day — the United States was again a nation its Founders could take pride in having established.

And I will always be profoundly grateful to him for that. Joe Biden is my hero.

It’s interesting (to me) that he made his appearance yesterday in Charleston, since that’s the place I saw and spoke with him last. That was when he came to campaign with James and the rest of us in October 2018. So while I’m thanking him, I’ll thank him again for that. And close with this picture from that day. I’ve shown it to you before (and it’s always there at the top of my Twitter page), but I’ll always treasure it, so here we go again…

One area in which I am glad SC lags behind

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This is not about national politics. It’s about insanity right here at home. But in defense of South Carolina, it’s insanity that people are trying to stir up from the outside.

Of course, we all know that South Carolinians have always had their own mental problems in the realm of politics. Looking back, Tillmanism stands as a good example. An even better one is the matter of starting the Civil War. And no, we haven’t completely put such problems behind us. So we really, really don’t need loonies from outside trying to involve us in their nonsense.

This is occasioned by my receipt a couple of days back of this text:

Hi, this is Annie with American Action Fund.

Republicans hold a supermajority in both chambers, but State Rep. Micah Caskey voted with the Democrats to elect Murrell Smith as Speaker of the South Carolina State House instead of a conservative Speaker candidate.

2 more years of Murrell Smith as Speaker means that Democrats will continue to chair powerful subcommittees and that key conservative legislation like closing the primaries, income tax repeal, and medical freedom are dead on arrival.

Please call Rep. Micah Caskey at xxx-xxx-xxxx and let him know you’re disappointed in his vote and demand he votes for a conservative Speaker in the future.

You probably don’t really see just how crazy that is until you know a few more of those old-fashioned things called “facts” as they bear on this matter of the re-election of the speaker.

Yes, I know facts are out of fashion in the Trump era, but Micah’s kind of like me in that he has little means of fighting back beyond, you know, the truth. I guess he and I are kind of retro in that way.

Shortly after I received that attack, I received this from Micah:

This is your State Rep. Micah Caskey.

You may have received a text message earlier today from an out-of-state, dark-money group critical of me and my support for our conservative Republican Speaker of the House.

The facts are pretty simple: of 88 Republicans, 71 of us voted to re-elect Speaker Smith. Our Speaker is a lifelong conservative who has proposed a strong conservative agenda for our next session.

The text message you received was from the so-called “Freedom” Caucus who seem hellbent on lying and misleading voters.

If you ever have any questions about my votes, please call me directly at xxx-xxx-xxxx. I’m always happy to chat with you directly about my conservative voting record.

Merry Christmas to you and your family!

STOP to end.

(A quick note: You’ll notice that I Xed out the phone number from both texts. I had originally not planned to do that, since the outside nuts were just giving the same number Micah himself shared with his constituents. But he was sharing that because he is fully willing to talk to anyone to whom he has an obligation to answer. The group attacking him wants him to be overwhelmed by angry people who have zero legitimate claim on his time.  I’m not going to help them with that. Micah will get more than enough response from his constituents. If you’re a constituent and for some reason didn’t get his text, check with me.)

So as you see, the out-of-state group not for “conservative Republicans,” but for a small fringe group (by this measure, 17 out of 88, although some of those may have had other reasons for opposing Murrell Smith), generally called the “Freedom Caucus.”

Why would these people think the actual “conservative Republicans” (whose lives the “Freedom Caucus” does everything it can to make miserable) would cave in and go along with the crazies?

Well, did you see what happened last year? An even smaller percentage of nutballs in the U.S. House managed to intimidate the rest of the GOP caucus into dumping their speaker. These people have been feeling their oats, especially since Trumpism’s big win in November. So why, by their way of “thinking,” should South Carolina be any different?

And the Freedom Caucus has no reason to love Micah Caskey. He constantly criticises, goads, mocks, and otherwise harasses that bunch on his Twitter feed. His feed, for instance, was the first place I saw the news that the leader of the Freedom Caucus was, according to the feds, to face criminal charges.

But it goes beyond Micah. He is but one of 71 GOP House members to support Smith. Consequently, I later saw similar texts received by friends who are not residents of Micah’s district.

Anyway, the good news is that the GOP caucus — which has controlled the S.C. House since 1995, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future, no matter what you or I or anyone else says or does — is still able to resist the worst forces in our national politics, at least on the matter of whom they want as their leader.

We don’t get many reasons to cheer South Carolina for lagging behind the rest of the country. But this is one very good excuse to do so. I will enjoy it while I can…

There she is, enthusiastically saluting il Duce…

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Haven’t seen our lieutenant governor in a while? I certainly hadn’t.

But then I saw the above image in The Boston Globe over the weekend.

Which prompted two thoughts:

  1. Y’all may get tired of hearing me say this, but I haven’t said it in four years, so: Had we won in 2018, you wouldn’t have gone long periods without hearing or seeing Mandy Powers Norrell. And we’d all be better off for that. As the first lieutenant governor elected alongside the governor in our state’s history, she would have been front and center, playing a vital and energetic role in making South Carolina a better place. She offered talent, experience, and substance. As opposed to… well, what we got.
  2. So I haven’t seen her in a while, and when she shows up, what is she doing — standing on a stage enthusiastically aping the gestures of the Creature. Just to let us know she’s as far gone as her boss. Well, I guess in that respect, she is a real teammate of Henry…

Thoughts about the primary? No? Then we’ll move on…

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I actually meant to write a little bit more about it over the last couple of days, but was busy. I had to take my Mom to the emergency room Friday, and she (and I) spent the night there and she didn’t get discharged until late Saturday afternoon. She’s better now, I’m happy to say.

So I got home pretty wiped out from the hospital, and might have commented on the vote last night, but my wife and I went to a performance of the South Carolina Philharmonic, which we thoroughly enjoyed — especially the Gershwin at the end.

So, if you followed the primary last night, we had more fun than you did. But to go ahead and say a few things:

  • The result was about as I expected. It was somewhat better than the polls I had seen, but about what I expected in the real world — 20 points. Nikki managed to counter some of the crazy, but not that much of it. She was more successful back in South Carolina when she embraced the crazy, in 2010. Back then we called it the Tea Party instead of MAGA, but it was just a different stage in the GOP’s descent into madness. Here’s that picture again of her standing proudly with Sarah Palin, to illustrate the point.
  • Should she drop out now? Of course not. That shouldn’t happen before the money from the Koch organization and others who wish to rescue conservatism from Trumpism runs out. No one but the Trump people want her to drop out — no sane people do — and the fact that her continuing to run frustrates Trump is probably enough reason for a lot of people to holler, “Go, Nikki!”
  • It’s interesting to read the many points of view cheering Nikki on. If you can get past the paywalls, I wish you’d check some of them out: From The Washington Post alone, George Will, Jim Geraughty, and Kathleen Parker.
  • Of course, she won’t win the nomination and she shouldn’t win the general election — the first because the overwhelming majority of Republicans have lost their minds, and the second is that she lacks the qualifications to be president.

I need to stop now because I have another time crunch on my hands. When I come back, I’ll probably write about something else.

DeMarco: Democrats and Independents: The Time to Stop Trump is Feb. 24

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The Op-Ed Page

Photo by Gage Skidmore, via Wikipedia

By Paul V. DeMarco
Guest Columnist

Rarely does a state have an opportunity to make history the way we do on Feb. 24 in the Republican presidential primary election.

South Carolina may be Nikki Haley’s last chance to derail Donald Trump’s path to the nomination. It will be hard for Haley to justify remaining in the race until Super Tuesday without a strong showing here.

I won’t rehearse all the reasons Trump is bad for America, just two quick points. First, Republicans could get all they say they want – conservative policies, family values, and respect for the Constitution – from Mike Pence and several other prominent Republicans. Yet they are drawn to Trump’s scorched-earth approach, despite the Sisyphean rock of baggage he bears.

Second, Trump has proven he is dangerously unpredictable. Almost no one on Jan. 5, 2021 would have predicted what happened the next day: a sitting president encouraged his VP to overturn the will of the people, exhorted the gathered crowd to march on the Capitol, and then watched passively for three hours as they ransacked it. When he finally sent out a Twitter video asking the crowd to disperse, his message to the rioters included “We love you; you’re very special.”

S.C. Democrats and Independents propelled Biden to the nomination in 2020. Our task in 2024 will be less comfortable and potentially riskier. Like me, you may prefer Biden over Haley and have deep policy disagreements with her. But this election is less about the candidates than about America herself. Both Biden and Haley will try to leave America better than they found her. Trump has no such desire.

If you are like many in this state and nation, you have had Trump’s number since he first announced for president in 2015. You recognized what a small, soulless human being he was. You understood his drive to be revered and his dearth of compassion and loyalty. Over the past eight years, you have endured his fountain of lies, from the claim that Obama was not a citizen to his claim that he won in 2020. You’ve asked yourself again and again, is this is the best the Republicans can do?

This is your moment. The turnout in South Carolina’s Democratic primary on Feb. 3 was predictably low, since Biden had only token opposition. Only about 131,000 voters participated (about 4 percent of the state’s more than 3 million registered voters). In 2020, when the outcome was not a foregone conclusion, about 540,000 voters participated in the Democratic primary. That means more than 400,000 voters who turned out in 2020 stayed home this year.

So if you’re a Democrat or Independent who voted in 2020 but didn’t vote on Feb. 3, you can make history. If we leave the election to usual Republican primary voters, the latest polls predict Trump will win by 65 percent to 35 percent. If there is healthy turnout, say 700,000 votes, then the final tally will be roughly Trump 455,000, Haley 245,000, a difference of 210,000 votes.

The 400,000 of you who voted in the 2020 Democratic primary but not in the 2024 primary can swing this election. In addition, there are hundreds of thousands of others who didn’t vote in the 2020 primaries who could vote this time around. Everyone, yes everyone, except the 131,000 who voted on Feb. 3, is eligible to vote in the Republican primary (South Carolina has an open primary system, so you can vote in one primary or the other, but not both).

There are two ways to use this power. One is cynically, by trying to elect the weakest opponent for the other side so your candidate can beat them in the general. The better way is to help elect the strongest candidate for the other side, so that America will have the best choice possible. If Haley wins and then goes on to beat Biden in the general, I will disagree with some of her policies, but the country will be in sane, stable hands.

Imagine you have an infant child or grandchildren. How will you explain your vote for Trump to them in 15 years, when they are old enough to understand politics? I suspect many South Carolinians regret their vote for Strom Thurmond as candidate for the Dixiecrat Party in 1948 (more than 70% of SC voters chose him) or for George Wallace in 1968 (over 30% of SC voters). How an evangelical Christian will explain his or her vote for Trump in 15 years to intense questioning from a skeptical teenager, I have no idea (although I would pay to watch it).

I am hoping South Carolina plays the role Iowa did in January 2008 in its first-in-the-nation Democratic presidential caucus. In a state with challenging demographics, Barack Obama won and was propelled to a general election victory over John McCain. Whether or not you agree with Obama on policy, his respect for the office was clear. He adhered to essential presidential norms and left the fundamentals of American democracy as strong as he found them. Needless to say, if someone with McCain’s integrity was the Republican front-runner in 2024, this column would never have been written.

On Feb. 24, we can make a statement similar to the one our countrymen and -women in Iowa made 16 years ago. We can signal the beginning of the end of Donald Trump’s political career by voting for Nikki Haley.

A version of this column appeared in the Feb. 14 edition of the Post and Courier-Pee Dee.

South Carolina is everywhere!

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No, it’s not perfect. But let’s see you do better, driving over asphalt with rubber tires.

At least, it’s cropping up everywhere you look in national media right now. For fairly obvious reasons.

That will end soon enough. But I will continue to see it everywhere I look. I always have.

Do you? I’m curious whether this is a South Carolina native thing, or just a South Carolina resident thing. Or (and this seems less likely), do folks from other parts see the same shape?

This tendency is embedded pretty deep in me. My first memories of doing this are from my birthplace, Bennettsville. Behind my grandparents’ home, at the foot of the back steps, were some white flagstones. They gave an impression of being marble because of the color, but had a sort of hexagonal design. Not that they were shaped like hexagons like so many such stones you see. I mean there were these black lines etched across the surface in a honeycomb pattern, with each hexagon a little more than a square inch in size.

The overall shape of each stone was random, like the pieces of some larger slab that someone had broken up with a sledgehammer.

But one of them looked exactly like South Carolina. As a child, there was nothing random about that to me — of course it was shaped like that, I thought. I spent most of my school years elsewhere — in Virginia, New Jersey, Louisiana, Florida, Hawaii and South America. But that house was the one place I always returned to. It was home, or the closest thing I had to a home growing up. And the fact that one of the features of this house was this stone that was “randomly” shaped like South Carolina seemed to be something of cosmic significance.

I’d show you a picture of it, if I could go there and take one. But you can’t see it now. Decades ago, my uncle — who has lived in that house his entire life (he’s the opposite of me in that respect) — built a deck at the back door. I can’t remember whether the stone is just hidden away, or gone. Anyway, it’s no longer in evidence.

But still, since that one perception early in life, I’ve seen the shape everywhere else. In a stone, or a pancake that was carelessly (or extremely carefully) poured into the pan, or a torn piece of a roofing shingle. I’m not just talking about triangles. I’m talking about triangles that manage to imitate the less regular border with North Carolina. Triangles that look intentional.

And it always seems significant to me, in a fundamental, subrational way. Like someone has put it there as a message or something.

I don’t always take pictures when I see one. But the other day on one of my walks around the neighborhood, I saw the road cracks you see above. I don’t know why I’d never noticed the pattern before. Maybe the cracks were new. Anyway, this time, I shot a picture.

Do you see thing like that, too?

Christie pretty much nailed it on Nikki’s gaffe

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Last week while I was at the beach, I got a call from an old friend who is among the few who are still employed at one of South Carolina’s metropolitan newspapers. He was working on a piece about Nikki Haley’s Civil War gaffe, and had a technical question about how she and the Legislature brought down the Army of Northern Virginia flag in 2015.

He should have called someone with a way better memory for specifics regarding legislative procedure. I was unable to help. But we discussed the matter for a few minutes, and I intended at the time to write about Nikki’s self-inflicted problem, but I didn’t get to it until now.

There had so many things to say, that I had trouble finding the time. Just briefly:

  • First, it’s not a huge deal unless you’re among the many Americans who are not South Carolinians. Around here, we’re used to seeing Republicans dodge that simple question, “What was the cause of the United States Civil War?” Even my hero John McCain, having been burned by telling the truth initially regarding the flag, started reading something akin to what Nikki said in response to questions. But at least he had the character to be ashamed of himself. He made a big show of unfolding the paper and reading it each time he was asked, so everyone would know he had been bludgeoned into it by his advisers. Nikki had a lighter approach, in keeping with her superpower of making positive impressions (which usually involves not offending any potential GOP voter). But she ran into a buzz saw because the press was present. And millions of unprepared nonSouth Carolinians were shocked, shocked to hear someone who won’t even condemn Donald Trump answer in such a weaselly manner.
  • You want to be shocked? Go back and watch her meek answers to the questions of actual, real-life neoConfederates. Here’s the video. As I’ve said before, at least she has the character to look like she’s responding under duress. But she still goes along with the program.
  • It’s ironic — not that she doesn’t deserve it — that unlike most South Carolinians who identify themselves as white on their driver licenses, this is one Republican who has NO ancestors who owned slaves, or fought for the Confederacy, or any of that stuff. She just sounds like a Lost Cause defender because she’s so used to telling these South Carolina Republicans what they want to hear — or at least, not telling them things they don’t want to hear. She’s used to politely brushing such questions aside and moving on to something she’d much rather talk about. If you can call it up, you might enjoy reading Alexandra Petri’s column mocking her on that point.
  • At least Nikki managed to demonstrate in one respect that in this benighted MAGA age, at least she retains some values of the Reagan era, or at least one: Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican. Not that that’s necessarily a good thing, either. She blamed the asker of the fateful question thusly: “It was definitely a Democrat plant.” Well, I suppose it could have been. Certainly it was posed by someone who did not wish her well. When you’re running for the nomination of the White Man’s Party, and in the age of the MAGA White Man, there’s no way you answer that question — whatever you say — that doesn’t get you into trouble with somebody. Either you — the one who stuck her neck out to finally get that flag down — get yourself in hot water with those Trump voters you’re trying to lure away with the simple answer, “Slavery. Duh.” Or you draw the “shocked, shocked” opprobrium of the rest of the country, by doing a little dance around it. But here’s the thing, Nikki — lots of people would want to back you into a corner with such a question, and a lot of them are Republicans. But of course, you don’t blame them, do you? You want every one of them, including the creeps, to love you.

I could have taken any of those courses (and those aren’t all the potential courses), and rattled on all day along any of them. But I was at the beach, so I didn’t.

But a couple of days ago, I resolved to take the subject up anyway. That’s when I ran across this tweet:

Nice one there, Chris. You nailed it. “She did it because she’s unwilling to offend anyone by telling the truth.”

And, as he continued, that demonstrates her lack of fitness for the office she seeks.

No doubt about it. Looks like Chris is running hard to regain the dubious distinction of being my Least Awful Republican Candidate. Nikki had stolen it from him, and he’s anxious to grab it back.

In keeping with his goal of regaining my “favor,” such as it is, his campaign started sending me press releases yesterday, and one of them told me he’s continuing the charge against the South Carolina darling. The release begins, “Chris Christie calls Haley’s commitment to pardon Trump part of a pattern where she tries to be everything to everyone.”

This remark goes even more deeply to the truth of why Nikki is not fit for the highest office in the world.

As I said, the no-mention-of-slavery thing was no big deal, if you know what to expect from Republican candidates who came up in South Carolina.

But this was a deal-killer.

“I would pardon Trump if he is found guilty,” Nikki said last Thursday.

You know, I could have forgiven her if she had said, very carefully, that she might consider pardoning him — say, with regard to a poorly-handled conviction on one of the weaker of the many charge he faces. After all, I’ve never been mad at Gerald Ford for pardoning Nixon (not that it’s fair to compare Dick to Trump; by comparison, Nixon was a paragon).

But she didn’t hedge or qualify, from what I’ve read. She didn’t say she’d do it, under certain conditions. She just said she’d do it. And anyone who has that little respect for the Rule of Law has no business holding the lowest office in the land, much less the highest.

So thanks for reminding us of that one, Chris…

Good for the South Carolina DOT!

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Yeah, it’s kind of backlit, but I decided last night to stop waiting for perfect conditions to take the picture…

I am running behind on this. I should have shouted out the good news when I first saw this two or three weeks back — but I wanted a picture, and it was always raining or too dark or there was somebody behind me so I couldn’t just stop the car on the road (which lacks good places to pull over.)

Finally, I got a decent picture yesterday, and I want to praise the DOT for fixing the problem.

As for the problem, I told you about it back in March. It was a sign placed along the road where part of the massive project to fix Malfunction Junction has begun. (And before Bud jumps in to say that’s not the name of the project, here’s the name: Carolina Crossroads Project.)

The sign said… well, look back at the picture. It was along the access road on the east side of I-26, right across from the Lexington Medical Center campus.

And here was my concern, aside from being an obsessive word guy. As glad as I am that DOT decided not to destroy my neighborhood to build this thing, we will still be inconvenienced by the project for years, and we’re all aware that it costs an astronomical amount of money. So my point was, it kind of undermines our confidence in the project when day after day, we see a big dayglo-orange sign with huge black letters that tell us, over and over, that the road-construction experts managing this thing don’t know how to spell “CONSTRUCTION.”

Not a good look, you see. And it was a fairly easy thing to fix, within the context of such a huge project — DOT’s biggest ever, I believe.

And now, finally, they’ve fixed it. And I appreciate it. I don’t know who “they” are in this case (Bud, did you give them a heads-up?), but I wouldn’t flatter myself by assuming I had anything to do with it. Surely, plenty of other people saw this and said something. In any case, the folks in charge did the right thing.

No, it’s not a huge thing. But it got a little bigger, for me, every day that they didn’t fix it. So now that they have, I feel better about the whole thing, for now…

Graham, Scott, also vote in favor of default

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After I posted last night about the debt limit deal, the Senate did as I had hoped and passed it. So that’s done.

No thanks to Lindsey Graham or Tim Scott, who were among the 36 — all but five of them Republican — who voted instead for the United States to default on its debt, plunging the U.S. and world economies into turmoil.

Graham, for his part, offered an excuse that gave us a glimpse of his old self, the senator we knew before he lost his mind in 2016 — he said it was about national security. But that doesn’t wash. I’ve seen nothing on his vote since it happened, but hours before, he made a speech:

Graham made an impassioned speech Thursday on the Senate floor, saying small increases in fiscal year defense spending are not part of a “threat-based budget” but one that lacks safety and security for Americans. He later said that a supplemental defense budget for Ukraine and other spending must be agreed upon swiftly by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to make up for the House GOP’s below-inflation 3 percent military increase….

And as it happened, Schumer and Mitch McConnell joined together to offer as much assurance as anyone could reasonably expect under such rushed conditions, with default looming on Monday:

None of the amendments were adopted. But in an effort to alleviate concerns from defense hawks that the debt ceiling bill would restrict Pentagon spending too much, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) issued a joint statement saying the “debt ceiling deal does nothing to limit the Senate’s ability to appropriate emergency supplemental funds to ensure our military capabilities are sufficient to deter China, Russia, and our other adversaries.”…

As for Tim Scott — I’ve found nothing about why he voted the way he did. Maybe I’ve looked in the wrong places, but I found nothing on his website, on social media or in any news reports. Which reminds us of why it’s weird that he’s running for president. He’s not a guy who tends to be out front on anything, making his views known in developing situations. He’s not making an effort to tell us, and if he said something on the floor of the Senate, no one covered it.

He’s just this nice guy who’s happy to be a U.S. senator — his bio line on Twitter says “Just a South Carolinian living his mama’s American Dream” — and who doesn’t get swept up in what’s actually happening. Look at that Twitter feed, by the way. There’s nothing there — at least, anywhere near the top — posted in real time in response to anything that was happening, or anything he was doing. It’s just a bunch of prewritten campaign stuff, going on about how awful Joe Biden is.

You know, the Joe Biden who threw his all into working with McCarthy to keep the nation from defaulting for the first time in history.

And then, Graham and Scott basically said Nah, let’s go ahead and crash into the mountain…

This does not inspire confidence, people!

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As y’all may have noticed that I haven’t had any bad words to say lately about SC DOT’s ginormous, biggest-ever, construction project, which they call — hang on, I’ve got to go look that up, because nobody but DOT calls it that — the Carolina Crossroads Project.

It’s what everyone else calls “the project to fix Malfunction Junction.”

To resume, I haven’t had anything bad to say about it, even as it’s finally gotten visibly under way, because they decided back in 2017 not to run it through my house. I thought that was nice of them. But mainly, I’ve lost interest, so that’s why I seem to have held back.

But I’ve got to show you the sign that I pass pretty much every day on my way to visit my mother.

This does not inspire confidence.

And if you don’t see what’s wrong, look again. It’s been there, spelled like that, for at least a month or two. Does DOT have hundreds of other signs like that, or is this one unique? I hope it’s unique, although I’m not sure how that would happen, unless they make them by hand in a shack back behind DOT HQ.

And maybe it doesn’t bother normal people. Normal people’s brains probably automatically fix the spelling as they read it, and they don’t notice, and they go on with their lives. But it certainly bothers those of us who have been editors for so many decades…

See? It’s still like that.

 

I’d forgotten Adolf Hitler was ‘woke’

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McMaster et al applauding the Scout deal. Photo from Henry’s Twitter feed.

If I ever knew it, that is. Guess I need to go back and read my history some more, after reading this this morning:

Gov. Henry McMaster on Monday defended South Carolina’s $1.3 billion incentive deal with Volkswagen subsidiary Scout Motors after a group of conservative lawmakers this month criticized the company as “woke.”

Woke? Scout Motors? The subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group? Here’s how that company got started:

Volkswagen (meaning ‘People’s car’ in German) was founded in Berlin as the Gesellschaft zur Vorbereitung des Deutschen Volkswagens mbH (‘Limited Liability Company for the preparation of the German People’s Car’, abbreviated to Gezuvor) by the National Socialist Deutsche Arbeitsfront (German Labour Front) and incorporated on 28 May 1937.[14][15][16] The purpose of the company was to manufacture the Volkswagen car, originally referred to as the Porsche Type 60, then the Volkswagen Type 1, and commonly called the Volkswagen Beetle.[17] This vehicle was designed by Ferdinand Porsche‘s consulting firm, and the company was backed by the support of Adolf Hitler.[18]

Whatever der Führer‘s role (and see the photo below), if you say a company got started in Berlin in 1937, the last word I think of is “woke.” Although there was, to be sure, an element of populism in the production of an affordable “People’s Car.” But as we all know, populism is a persistent feature of both the left and the right.

Folks, I can think of reasons to oppose this Scout deal, if you press me. But I can also think of a number of reasons to support it, and I suppose those win out.

But this “woke” business?

You learn something new every day. Or at least  I do…

1938: Hitler lays the foundation stone of the first Volkswagen plant…

Leave the judges alone

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I saw a disturbing headline in The State the other day: “SC Supreme Court makeup may face GOP scrutiny after abortion ban struck down.”

I didn’t have time to read it at that time, so I emailed the story to myself, intending to write about it when I had time. Of course first, I had to read it.

Fortunately, the story wasn’t as disturbing as the headline. Still, I’m afraid Shane Massey is right in this prediction:

State Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey, echoing his statement last week that the court’s “decision will almost certainly result in the politicization of South Carolina’s judges to yet unseen levels,” said Monday he “will be amazed” if there isn’t political pushback over the way the Legislature vets and elects judges to the state’s high court…

Yes, I’m afraid so. Some will see themselves just as justified in making abortion a litmus test for court fitness as U.S. Senators on both sides of the issue have done ever since Roe removed the issue from the place where it should be — the political branches.

Because of what’s happened since 1973, public confidence in the very existence of an independent judiciary has been badly damaged across the political spectrum. And when that confidence is completely gone, we might as well close up this shop called the United States of America. The experiment in a liberal, representative democracy has had an impressively long run, but it would be over at that point.

When candidates’ positions on the most controversial political issue in the land becomes a condition for serving on the bench, it is over. I’ve been pointing this out for years on the federal level. The last 50 years have been pretty ugly.

We don’t need to be engaging in the same madness on the state level. South Carolina has enough problems without that.

I can understand that, after all these years of waiting, and finally seeing SCOTUS give legislatures the power to make the laws again, some lawmakers will be frustrated that another court is overruling them.

But the proper response to that is to work to shape legislation that the court will not dismiss as violating the state constitution. And yes, in this case, the law involved is the state constitution, not the federal.

Interestingly, unlike the federal version, the state constitution actually mentions privacy — it uses the actual word. (We can argue back and forth at another time whether “privacy” means “you can have an abortion if you want one.” But for quite some time, courts have assumed it does. This one certainly has.) Of course, you can try to amend that if you’d like. I expect that would be tougher than passing acceptable statutes, but that’s another legitimate path.

Just don’t pick judges based on whether they agree with you. Agreeing with you is not their job.

Oh, and one more thing: Not only would that approach undermine the rule of law, but it might not even work for you in the short run. I urge you to check out Cindi Scoppe’s latest column, which grows out of the court’s abortion ruling: “How the SC Legislature’s ‘conservative justice’ killed its fetal heartbeat law.”

Oh, and as long as I’m pointing to stuff in the P&C, they have a news story that does what I actually feared the story in The State would do: It quotes lawmakers saying the very things that I dreaded, and which made me cringe at that first headline. This one is headlined, “Abortion ruling brings new scrutiny on the 3 candidates.”

The State‘s story predicted it. The P&C‘s story shows it starting to happen…

What do we value? And why?

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Note the two headlines from The State‘s app yesterday.

Here’s the nut graf of the one that says “It’s official: Massive raise makes Shane Beamer highest-paid coach in USC history:”

The South Carolina board of trustees approved a new deal for the Gamecocks’ head football coach on Friday that will pay him $6.125 million in 2023 with escalators of $250,000 each year through the 2027 season — making him the highest-paid coach in school history. That’s up from his previous salary of $2.75 million annually….

And here’s the essence of the one that says “McMaster calls for $2,500 pay raise for SC teachers, plus a bonus:”

Gov. Henry McMaster wants to increase starting pay for South Carolina teachers by $2,500 to bring the base salary to $42,500….

This past year, the minimum teacher salary was set at $40,000….

Yes, I know there are ways to dismiss such comparison as silly. For instance, you can point out that the teacher pay raise will cost the state $254 million. On account of, you know, there being a bunch more teachers than head football coaches at USC. (Note that I limited that by saying “head” football coach. There are a lot of coaches. I tried to Google it and count them just now, but I got tired.)

I dismiss that by asking why you would value one football coach more than any one of those teachers. Of course, if you’re one of those public-school haters, you’ll single out the weakest teacher in the state and say, “I value him more than this teacher.” So let’s derail that argument by saying, why would you value the football coach over the single best teacher in the state (use your own standards, if you’d like)? For that matter, why would you value him as much as the very best 1,350 teachers in the state — since that’s how many times $2,500 goes into the raise Beamer received?

Of course, you could also say that you can’t compare the two, since one is purely state money, and the other is largely money voluntarily paid by people who are nuts about football. My response is that you’re missing the point. The point isn’t about public expenditures. The point is about what we humans in South Carolina value most — whether we pay for it through taxes or football tickets, or those premium parking spots around the stadium, or however we shell it out.

Of course, the “What do we value?” question is rhetorical. It’s obvious what we value.

Which takes me to my second question: Why?

Why didn’t you come see US this time, Joe?

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I had to say this on Twitter this morning:

I mean, you came here in August, as per usual. You had a good time, didn’t you, as always? So why didn’t you…

Oh. That was August. This is December.

OK, we’ll let it go this time, but we hope to see you again soon. I don’t want to engage in coercion or anything, but remember who put you into the White House…

President Joe, having an awesome time at Kiawah in August.

That’s nice for y’all, but it’s not like that here in SC

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The good news about the general rout of certifiable Trumpistas has floated in steadily from across the country. Shortly after the good news came in Saturday night that Republicans had definitely not captured the U.S. Senate, no matter what happens next in Georgia, I read a piece in The New York Times headlined “Voters Reject Election Deniers Running to Take Over Elections.”

The national repudiation of this coalition reached its apex on Saturday, when Cisco Aguilar, the Democratic candidate for secretary of state in Nevada, defeated Jim Marchant, according to The Associated Press. Mr. Marchant, the Republican nominee, had helped organize a national right-wing slate of candidates under the name “America First.”

With Mr. Marchant’s loss to Mr. Aguilar, all but one of those “America First” candidates were defeated. Only Diego Morales, a Republican in deep-red Indiana, was successful, while candidates in Michigan, Arizona and New Mexico were defeated.

Their losses halted a plan by some allies of former President Donald J. Trump and other influential donors to take over the election apparatus in critical states before the 2024 presidential election.

Which was truly good news, because that had been a serious danger. You here a lot about GOP efforts to limit voter access, but the greater threat was their effort to take over the election apparatus so that it really didn’t matter who voted, or how.

And while Republicans are still likely to take the U.S. House — barely — which would follow the usual trend the country has long seen in midterms, the fact that Democrats had more than held onto the Senate was very encouraging. And in places such as the state where Fetterman thumped Oz, the crushing of Trumpist hopes went deeper, the more you looked:

Of all the places where Mr. Trump proved toxic, Pennsylvania may be where he did the most impressive damage — a state that will be key to any winning Republican presidential contender in 2024. The Trumpian fiasco there shows what happens when candidates make the race all about themselves, embracing MAGA and being out of step with the electorate.

In the high-stakes fight for control of the Senate, Pennsylvania was a hot spot, widely considered the Democrats’ best opportunity to flip a Republican-held seat and, by extension, a must-hold for the G.O.P. Dr. Oz’s high-profile flop was a particularly painful one for Mr. Trump’s party. But there’s more: The Democrats scored a huge win in the governor’s race as well, where Josh Shapiro had the good fortune of running against Doug Mastriano, a Trump-endorsed MAGA extremist so unsettling you have to wonder if he is secretly related to Marjorie Taylor Greene. The Democrats also triumphed in House races, holding onto vulnerable seats, including the hotly contested 8th and 17th Districts. And while a couple of tight races have yet to be called, party leaders are thrilled about already netting 11 seats and being this close to possibly flipping the state House, putting Democrats in control of the chamber for the first time in more than a decade. All of this was a step up for them from 2020, when voters went for Joe Biden over Donald Trump but picked Republicans in some other statewide races.

So that’s good to hear. And the news from such places is indeed encouraging. We may not be anywhere near the Republican Party returning to actual sanity — it has a long way to go before again becoming the party of Ike, Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush, Howard Baker, Richard Lugar and John McCain — in the meantime we can be soothed knowing that things are in the hands of Democrats. I’m not a Democrat, of course, but you take what you can get when the house is on fire — but while some of them a sometimes a bit loony, none of them are Trumpistas.

That is, it’s soothing to look at certain other places. Not South Carolina.

We just elected a completely unqualified woman to run our public schools. She’s there because she won the Republican primary — that’s all it takes in S.C. — and she won the primary by convincing everyone that she was the scarier, far more extreme choice.

Henry McMaster — the man who has built the latter part of his career on having been the first statewide elected official in the country to endorse Donald J. — romped to victory on his way to setting the state record for longevity in the governor’s office. Mind you, this happened because he had an utterly unappealing Democratic opponent. But that’s because no serious Democrats ran. They didn’t run because this is South Carolina, and they assumed McMaster would win again. Which is pretty sad.

No other statewide officeholder — all Republicans of course — had serious opposition. At least, not according to the ballot I faced.

Of course, if you’re talking simple partisan politics, this had been the pattern before Trump. I mean, we knew young Judd Larkins didn’t have a chance against Joe Wilson, but that district has been drawn to reliably elect Republicans since well before the GOP became the state’s majority party. In my first election as governmental affairs editor at The State, Jim Leventis was winning in every county in the 2nd District but one on election night, but then Lexington County’s votes were fully counted, and Floyd Spence held on.

So yeah, it’s an old pattern. But now, Republicans in this state, starting with Henry, have tied Donald Trump, and therefore all the crazy that he represents, to their necks. And in other parts of the country, that’s a bad sign for people seeking office.

But not here.

The Night that Nothing Interesting Happened

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‘Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?’

‘To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.’

‘The dog did nothing in the night-time.’

‘That was the curious incident,’ remarked Sherlock Holmes.

I capitalized the words in my headline because it seemed like “The Night that Nothing Interesting Happened” could be the title of a Conan Doyle story.

But no one would have read it.

The large headlines this morning in South Carolina newspapers — and on their browser sites — were a bit weird. Because the “big news” they trumpeted wasn’t news to anyone — was it? McMaster wins? Ellen Weaver wins? Did some reader somewhere expect something else?

When I looked for election news this morning, I was trying to find out, for instance, whether the local-option sales tax thing here in Lexington County had passed. I didn’t think it would, and it didn’t, but I wanted to see for sure. (As I mentioned before, I had voted for it, but I didn’t think a majority would).

But as I said yesterday of this election, nothing interesting was happening. In fact, if I look back all the way to when I first voted in 1972, this may have been the least interesting general Election Day I’ve seen.

Oh, something interesting — horrifying, really — is happening to our republic on the grand scale. As one example, when our representative democracy was healthy (which it was for most of my life), we would never have been sitting around wondering whether such a phenomenal, spectacular idiot like Herschel Walker was about to become a U.S. senator. He’s probably not, by the way, although he’s in a runoff. Yet close to half of the voters in Georgia chose him, and all over the country, similar (but not as spectacular) idiots won. You know, election deniers and such. But since 2016, we’ve grown used to that, haven’t we?

Anyway, suspense was entirely missing, here in South Carolina. But here are a few things worth mentioning briefly, here and elsewhere:

Governor — What we knew would happen, happened. Henry will be governor for four more years, which I’m sure makes him happy. He had always wanted to be governor, and now (I think; I haven’t looked it up), he will be governor for longer than anyone in state history. Of course, I voted a write-in. I never wrote the post about the many reasons I wouldn’t vote for his opponent, although I may do so later, just as an illustration of how the Democrats (and the Republicans, although I’m definitely not holding my breath there) need to do better next time.

Superintendent of Education — Another thing we knew would happen in our degraded democracy. A completely unqualified woman who is hostile to public schools and other things that make sense will now be in charge of public schools in our state. So hang on.

Congress — Well, we still don’t know what happened here, do we? Maybe something “interesting,” to put it politely, will happen here, but it hasn’t happened yet. So we’ll see.

Spanberger — I was very pleased to see Abigail Spanberger, the moderate Democrat in Virginia’s 7th U.S. House district, win. I had been concerned for her, but she made it. I’ve never met her, but as I’ve said before, America needs a lot more like her…

Fetterman — It was good to see him win, although in a healthy country, there’d have been little suspense.

SC House District — I was sorry to see Heather Bauer beat Kirkman Finlay, but not because I have any personal animus toward Ms. Bauer — I’ve never met her — or am carrying any brief at all for Kirkman. I’m sorry because of the lesson far too many Democrats will take away from it, which will be bad for them and bad for the country, which is already divided enough. The thing is, Ms. Bauer ran on nothing — nothing — but abortion. Went on and on about it, as one voter in the district (who usually votes Democratic) was complaining to me the other day. Yay, abortion, all day and night. Many Dems will seize upon this as extremely significant, as their path back to dominance. They will ignore that this is a Democratic-leaning swing district in Shandon, of all places, and that it’s a bit remarkable that Kirkman had held onto it this long.

US 2nd Congressional District — As the gerrymanderers predetermined long ago, and have reaffirmed many times since, Joe Wilson easily beat young Judd Larkins. Which we all knew would happen. I need to give him a call and see how he’s doing and thank him for running anyway. Maybe he’ll run for something else. Something other than Congress, preferably.

Signs — That reminds me, I guess I need to take down my Judd Larkins sign. Which in turn reminds me of the signs I saw over in my mother’s neighborhood this morning (see below). I guess they were really disappointed this morning — or maybe not. Of course, Clyburn won, as he was destined to do. The weird thing is, this was in Wilson’s district, so they could have had a Larkins sign up, and didn’t — which is a shame. Anyway, the thing that struck me about these signs when I first saw them, before the vote, was that it was the first Cunningham sign I had seen in anybody’s yard around here. Of course, I haven’t been out walking much lately, and that’s when I usually notice signs…

That’s about all I can think of to mention. I may add some other things later, but right now I need to run to a doctor appointment. See you later….