Although the results of the 2020 election are not final, it is not too early to assess the Jo Jorgensen and Spike Cohen campaign representing the Libertarian Party (LP).

One person’s success is another person’s failure.  In the case of a long-shot presidential campaign, I don’t think not winning, by itself, can reasonably be called a failure.  Everyone, including Jo Jorgensen, knew she was not going to be elected president.

While the final numbers aren’t in yet, Jorgensen looks to have received a little over 1% of the total vote. In some states, her total did fall below 1%.  Since the turnout was high, her vote total will be around 1.8 million.  This is the second strongest finish for an LP candidate in terms of vote totals, second only to Gary Johnson in 2016.

This is well short of the nearly 4.5 million votes received by Johnson in 2016.  Unlike some other libertarians, I don’t consider the 2016 LP campaign to be a success.  It was a success if you are just trying to get a lot of votes.  But I consider success to be converting others towards libertarianism, or to be moving the needle towards liberty in some way.

I don’t think there were many libertarians created in 2016 because of the Johnson/ Weld ticket. I did hear one person once on a podcast say he found libertarianism because of Gary Johnson, so I can’t say he converted nobody.

Of course, people have different definitions of what it means to be a libertarian too.  I’m sure Johnson created a few “libertarians” who consider themselves fiscally conservative and socially liberal. I have come to despise that definition.

I don’t know that I have the most perfect and precise definition of what it means to be a libertarian, but I think the LP pledge does a pretty good job of it.  It says, “I hereby certify that I do not believe in or advocate the initiation of force as a means of achieving political or social goals.”

Unfortunately, after all is said and done, I doubt that Jorgensen and Cohen moved the needle much towards liberty.

I have been somewhat critical of both of them.  I think they are both decent people.  And to be sure, I believe this was the best LP ticket since at least 2004.  But after getting mildly excited after the nominating convention, it all went out the window quickly.

2020 – A Different Kind of Year

I think, in many ways, this was a tough year to run.  A large portion of the electorate loves Donald Trump.  A large portion of the electorate hates Donald Trump. And while Trump is far from libertarian on most issues, he is somewhat anti establishment in his rhetoric. Therefore, I think it would have been tough for Jorgensen to get over 2% no matter what she did.

I believe this also made it tough to get media appearances.  But she didn’t get zero coverage either.  She was on Kennedy’s show on Fox Business. She was on some podcasts that have relatively big audiences.  But the few times I saw her or listened to her, I just don’t think she had a big impact.  She was the opposite of Donald Trump, in a bad way.  She wasn’t bold.  She wasn’t confident.  She certainly didn’t come across as a fighter.  And if you are going to have a personality like this while running for president, then you sure better be principled and bold with your policy proposals.

While 2020 is a tough setup in many ways, it was easy in others.  There have been riots across the country in big cities at the same time that people and businesses have been locked down due to the hysteria over a virus.

There were tens of millions of people forced out of work.  A lot of those people are back to work, but some of them aren’t. And some of them are back to work at lower pay.  Meanwhile, there are tens of thousands of businesses that are closed down for good.  They couldn’t survive months of being forced to shut down.  Worse, they didn’t know if and when they would be allowed to continue with business as usual, meaning business as usual prior to March 2020.

You can’t get an easier libertarian and populist issue at the same time.  It is also current.  It has been the number one issue for most people since March.

Now, one could argue that it isn’t a federal government issue because it was governors and mayors who officially shut things down.  But, the recommendations were coming out of Washington DC.  And Biden is still talking about locking things down and having a national mask mandate.

Jorgensen and Cohen should have been hitting hard on this issue saying that we need to defend private property and voluntary association.  It should have been issue number one in every single interview.  If the subject wasn’t brought up by the interviewer, then change the subject in your answer. The unemployed and the small business owners need a voice.  Jorgensen could have been that voice.  She could have converted thousands of small business owners towards libertarianism for life.  These people must despise the government for ruining their livelihood and their dreams.  They need an advocate.

Instead, they had to settle on Trump.  Trump was wishy-washy on the whole thing.  He got duped into the whole coronavirus hysteria in March and was never able to fully recover.  By the end of the campaign, Trump was at least saying that we need to move on and not let the cure be worse than the disease.  It was better than Biden who was still threatening more lockdowns. I believe this was a giant mistake by the Jorgensen campaign and the LP for not hammering away at this important issue.

I went through Jorgensen’s Twitter feed a couple of times just to see what she was saying (or whoever was running her Twitter account).  I agreed with most of what was being said, although I didn’t always agree with the emphasis on certain things.

I believe the biggest blunder, which happened not that long after the nomination, was Jorgensen (and to a lesser extent, Spike Cohen) trying to appease the far left.  She was attending Black Lives Matter (BLM) rallies.  As I joked after the election results were coming in, I guess Jo didn’t reach out to BLM hard enough.

There was one particularly bad tweet where Jorgensen said, “It is not enough to be passively not racist, we must be actively anti racist.”

With that, she probably lost a few hundred thousand votes.  I doubt if this gained her one vote from the left, but it alienated a lot of libertarians who were tired of the rioting and the over exaggerations of systemic racism.

Jorgensen should have been reaching out to Ron Paul-type people.  I should have been an easy vote for her, but she lost my vote. I still considered it at the end, but I didn’t want to reward her terrible campaigning and her mostly terrible message.

If she is that weak in a campaign and feels the need to pander to the social justice warriors, then I can’t imagine how weak she would be as a president.  She would end up being less anti establishment than Trump.  She probably would have folded over to the military-industrial complex in a heartbeat.  I don’t know this for sure, but I get that sense.

I don’t think there was anything wrong with making some common ground with some of the protesters.  Sure, preach the LP message of ending the federal war on drugs.  But it was ridiculous to do what seemed like pandering with the expectation of winning any of these people over.

Spoiler

There have been articles since Election Day blaming the LP for giving us Biden or for giving us a toss-up in the Senate.  The Jorgensen vote total covered the spread in several states.  In other words, if all of the Jorgensen voters had voted for Trump instead, then Trump would have won certain states that he otherwise may not.

I don’t think the LP should be criticized for this, but I also don’t think the LP should brag about it.

If the LP brags about this, it just makes Trump Republicans madder.  They will be less likely to ever consider the LP in the future when someone other than Trump is running.

At the same time, it isn’t fair to blame the LP for what happened.  Most people who voted LP wouldn’t have voted for Trump or Biden (Republican or Democrat).  And for those who would have, it would have been split.  I can’t even tell you if Trump or Biden would have benefitted if there had been no LP candidates.

The biggest accusation is coming out of Georgia, where the LP candidate for Senate got about 2% of the vote.  One of the Republicans just missed the 50% threshold, which means there will be a run-off.  It may not matter in the end though. Anyway, if most of those LP voters were supposed to go Republican, then the Republican in the race shouldn’t have any problem winning in the run-off election.

Education

I think it is good to have an LP.  Not all libertarians feel this way.  There was progress made this year.  Again, I believe Jorgensen/ Cohen was the best ticket since at least 2004. Maybe we can get a more radical ticket with a better message in 2024.

I believe the main purpose of the LP should be education.  We have to change hearts and minds.  That is the only way to move towards liberty. Donald Trump has done some good in educating others, sometimes inadvertently.  He has helped expose the evil deep state.  He has also shifted the Republican Party on foreign policy to being less interventionist than before.

Assuming Trump has to step down in January, the LP should be reaching out to Trump supporters. It won’t be easy, but I think it would be easier than trying to recruit anti Trump Democrats.

I know many in the LP say that the LP needs to win political offices.  They say that you can only change things by electing liberty candidates to office.  But I believe they are putting the cart before the horse.

You have to convert people to libertarianism first.  Otherwise, it will do no good.  Ron Paul in 2007/ 2008, and again in 2011/2012, converted more people than anyone else, probably ever.  Harry Browne recruited many people in his LP campaigns in 1996 and 2000. I actually became a radical libertarian because of Harry Browne.  But I didn’t start following him closely until after his 2000 campaign.

We aren’t going to achieve greater liberty by putting the “right” people into office except to the extent that they will help spread the word.  You have to have a strong base of support from the people. Even a libertarian president would find it difficult to enact bold and lasting change without the consent of the people.

With this standard in mind, I give low ratings overall to the Jorgensen/ Cohen campaign of 2020. I don’t think they changed a lot of hearts and minds.  They were better than the last three LP tickets though, which probably just moved us backwards.

You can see that most of the people who voted for Johnson in 2016 did not go on to vote for Jorgensen. There was no move towards liberty by Johnson/ Weld.  They received a lot of votes by LP standards, but there wasn’t much else to show for it.

I hope that people in the LP learn this lesson.  Unfortunately, I fear the opposite will be learned.  Some will say that Jorgensen/ Cohen didn’t do as well because they weren’t high profile enough.  Therefore, they’ll conclude that we need to recruit former politicians, even if they don’t follow all of the libertarian principles.

I don’t care about electing the “right” people.  I don’t care about having a respectable showing.  I don’t care about candidates who garner media attention, unless they are going to preach a principled libertarian message.  We need to educate others on the benefits of liberty.  Only then can we make strides towards a more libertarian society.

There are no official results yet for the presidential election, but the corporate media has called it for Joe Biden.  Biden has addressed the American people as the president-elect (according to the corporate media).

There were a lot of people up on stage with Biden, and he wasn’t wearing his mask the whole time. It looked like a super-spreader event to me.  I think Kamala Harris coughed up some coronavirus on Biden just in case he somehow makes it longer than a few months.

Actually, I think Harris and company will allow Biden to take some pictures in the Oval Office and sniff the hair of some interns.  Biden will be allowed a few months to fly around on Air Force One.  Maybe he’ll be given a year if he can stay somewhat coherent.  Eventually though, Biden’s handlers will come to him and let him know that it’s his time to step down.

This is all assuming that Biden is inaugurated on January 20, 2021.  Trump has something else to say about that.  Trump is claiming that he won by a lot. There are many claims of fraud, which I have no doubt many are true.  The problem is that Trump is challenging these things in court. The courts, at least to some extent, are part of the establishment.

Trump has almost no power in the courts, in the media, with other politicians, and most others with any kind of voice.  Sure, there are the 70 million or so Americans who voted for Trump, but they voted for Trump because they felt they have no voice.  Trump is their voice.

So while I think Trump will fight hard and drag this thing out, I believe Biden will become president in 2021.

Trump is not going away.  His 70 million supporters are not going away.  And his hardcore supporters aren’t going back to the Bushes or Romneys of the world, at least with any enthusiasm.

The Trump haters see Trump as a bully.  Trump’s supporters see Trump as a fighter.  They see him as an advocate.  They see him as a voice that had previously been lacking. They see him as their middle finger to the system and ruling class that has screwed them.

I don’t know that anyone can replace Trump.  He is an alpha male.  The only one who comes anywhere close right now is Tucker Carlson.  For the next 4 years, Trump and Carlson will heavily influence the hardcore Republicans who are anti establishment.

I have been somewhat impressed lately by Donald Trump Jr.  I don’t know that he can be as commanding as his father.  But Donald Trump has opened up a can of worms that isn’t going away.  I don’t even think his supporters will accept Mike Pence in 2024.  They might vote for him over Kamala Harris, but you aren’t going to see 50,000 people show up for a Pence for president rally.

I’m mildly optimistic with regard to a Biden presidency.  He is not going to be seen as legitimate by almost half the country.

When Biden addressed the nation the night before the corporate media called it for him, he said he has a mandate for the economy, the coronavirus, climate change, and systemic racism.  I’m not really sure how Biden could say he has a mandate for anything.  Even with the vote totals as they stand, the race was extremely close in terms of electoral votes.  Meanwhile, tens of millions of people believe there was fraudulent counting in the swing states.  That doesn’t sound like much of a mandate to me.

My hope is that the coronavirus soon goes away.  Maybe Biden will put in a few token measures without fully locking down the country.  Anyway, I would like to see him try to lock down the whole country.  That would sure speed up the idea of state nullification.

My best guess is that Biden will do something minor and then they will declare that the coronavirus has been defeated.  Well, that’s my hope.  I know that politicians do no easily relinquish power, and governors and mayors have gained a lot of power.  This is the thing that most concerns me.

I am not too concerned about socialized healthcare.  I know Trump was saying that Biden is controlled by AOC and the far left. As podcaster Dave Smith pointed out, Biden will be controlled by Goldman Sachs and the Pentagon.

Trump, for all of his faults, is the first president since at least the 1980s to not start a new major war.  He still has a couple of months, so anything is possible.  But I am afraid Biden won’t continue this trend.  With the economic mess we are in, maybe it will actually put some restraints on the military budget.

It is hard to believe the voter turnout for this election.  Even if there was fraud, the voter turnout was incredibly high. Maybe some of this is due to the convenience of mail-in ballots.  Much of it is due to Trump, both for and against.  Almost nobody actually voted “for” Biden.  They were voting against Trump.

If the vote totals currently showing are anywhere near accurate, Biden has received by far the most votes in U.S. history in one election with over 75 million. Trump will hold second place for the most votes ever at about 71 million.  This exceeds Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.  Trump’s vote total exceeds his own total from 2016 by about 8 million.  This is a story in itself.

Anyway, it looks like this wasn’t much of a pandemic since voter turnout was so high.  The way the coronanvirus has been covered, you would think voter turnout would be way down due to so many dead Americans.

The next few months won’t be boring.  Aside from all of the legal fights and recounts that are likely to occur, there’s no telling what Donald Trump will do.  I really hope it isn’t just entertainment only.  I hope he does some good things for the cause of liberty.  He should withdraw more troops from Middle East wars.  He should pardon Julian Assange and Edward Snowden.  It would be nice if he would declassify more documents related to things like 9/11 and the Kennedy assassination.  There is much more that he could do, but he probably hasn’t been told a lot of top-secret information that could be damaging to the establishment.

Biden is about to turn 78.  Trump is 74. Trump will be 78 in 2024.  I can already hear the calls for Trump 2024.  Or maybe they can get Tucker Carlson to run.  Please don’t give me Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Mike Pence, or anyone like these people.

Trump is far from being a libertarian, and he has many bad qualities.  But it is important to recognize that he is different than previous politicians.  Trump has rattled the establishment like never before in modern history. That is why the establishment had to make sure that Trump was removed.  Let’s not forget though that Trump still has Twitter.  He is likely going to have a lot of free time beginning on January 21, 2021.  He isn’t going to go quietly into the night.

As I write this, the presidential results are in limbo.  With all of the stories coming out about ballot funny business, this could go on for a while.  Will it be Biden or Trump?

It is looking more likely that it will be Biden.  Either way though, there are some things that will go on, including the divisiveness.  What will also go on are the deep state and the administrative state.  This includes the Federal Reserve.

The Fed concluded its latest meeting with the latest statement on monetary policy and a press conference from Jerome Powell.  There is basically no change in the Fed’s policy except for a few changing words that don’t mean much.

The Fed is going to keep its target federal funds rate near zero for a long time to come.  If price inflation remains relatively tame, it could be for many years.  Meanwhile, the Fed’s balance sheet remains near its all-time high, which is nearly $3 trillion higher than it was at the beginning of the year.

The price of gold went up big today, while the 10-year yield has fallen back from its rise last week. The U.S. dollar has been down.

There are some things that will not change regardless of who is president on January 21, 2021. The federal government will continue to spend recklessly with trillion-dollar deficits.  The Fed will continue to help fund these deficits and do the bidding of the big bankers and the politicians.

The stock market has been up big during this election turmoil.  This is a bit curious given that stock investors tend to not like certainty.  However, there was a big sell-off the week before.

On Tuesday night, when things were looking half decent for Trump early on, stock futures were up. Trump’s performance was unexpected for anyone who actually believed the polls.  As things started to shift towards Biden on Wednesday, stocks continued to roar.  It has made little difference to the stock market.  Historically, it doesn’t seem to matter which party is in the White House.

Perhaps stock investors were happy that it was not a “blue wave” for the Democrats.  It was apparent early on that the Republicans have a good chance of retaining a slim majority in the Senate, while the Democrats lost some seats in the House but will still retain a majority.  So no matter who gets the presidency, there will be some gridlock.  There won’t be much gridlock in terms of federal spending, but there won’t be any wild tax hikes or nationalized healthcare.

As I’ve said in the lead-up to the election, I think there is major economic turmoil ahead.  I’m not sure if it will be a deep recession/ depression or if it will proliferate with significantly higher price inflation.  We could also get something resembling the 1970s with stagflation.  The good news, if Trump doesn’t get the presidency, is that Biden/ Harris will have to deal with these problems.  Blaming Trump will only work for a year or so.

I continue to be bullish on gold in the long run.  I am going to watch the inflation numbers closely.  I am a little less certain with gold mining stocks, as they do present significant risk if we go into deep recession.  However, I do think that gold stocks offer major potential if you are willing to accept the risk.

My next few posts will likely be political in nature.  If there are any major economic developments though, I will be sure to comment.

I write this on Election Eve, and I don’t know what name I’m marking on my ballot for president tomorrow.  This is a first for me.

It’s somewhat ironic because I follow politics very closely.  I read a lot about what is going on.  I write about it.  I have a love/ hate relationship with politics.  I hate it because I despise the use of violence for political or social goals, which is really what politics is all about. I love it because I find it entertaining, perhaps in a sick sort of way.

I consider myself very informed, but most people who don’t have a similar philosophical outlook would probably disagree.  They would call me ignorant or brainwashed.  They can’t grasp their own ignorance or brainwashing.

It’s not to say I am free from ignorance or brainwashing when it comes to politics.  It happens to some degree to everyone. But I understand what is happening.  I understand that there are evil people who want to use power over others, which especially includes those in politics.

I also understand the position of others.  Most non-libertarians cannot accurately describe my libertarian philosophy.

I don’t live in a libertarian bubble.  I read many articles and listen to podcasts and watch videos with libertarian themes.  But I am quite aware of the differing views on issues.  I occasionally watch the news because I can’t help myself.  It is somewhat of a curiosity sometimes just to see what brainwashing the masses are getting.

So I don’t know whom I’m voting for.  Or more accurately, I don’t know if I am voting against someone or something. I am not voting against Trump, as most people voting for Biden are really doing.  It could be Stalin with a D next to his name and the anti Trump people would vote for him.

Donald Trump

If I vote for Trump, I am not really voting for Trump.  I am voting against everything I despise in politics.  I am voting against the establishment.  I am voting against the establishment media and the lies.  I am voting against today’s culture.  I am voting against political correctness.  I am voting against all of the mouthy celebrities who don’t have a clue.  I am also, presumably, voting against a greater evil in Joe Biden and, even more so, Kamala Harris.

Trump has a lot of problems.  From a libertarian standpoint, he has even more.  His understanding (or lack of) economics is horrible.  His foreign policy is generally bad because he surrounds himself with establishment war hawks, and Trump sometimes feels the need to act tough.  So the wars and foreign interference continue on.

However, Trump is better on these issues than Biden and Harris.  Trump is the first president in many decades to not start a new major war.  It shouldn’t seem like that great of an achievement, but we really haven’t seen relative peace in a long time.  If Biden (or worse, Harris) gets in, we could see more war in the future. Of course, we could with Trump too, but the chances seem greater with Biden.  Biden and Harris are bragging about how they have the lying liars from the Bush administration supporting them.  In other words, they have the full backing of many of the people who lied us into war in Iraq.

I am tempted to vote for Trump because I think he has a shred of honesty and decency in him. I know he has a big ego, and I know he has a lot of flaws.  But to get someone with some honesty in the presidency is a big achievement. There is always a chance that he might do something good.

Trump has been bad on the coronavirus and lockdowns, but not nearly as bad as other politicians. He has an advisor (Scott Atlas) who has been quite critical of the lockdowns and overreactions.

There is always a chance that someone like Tucker Carlson does a story on the atrocities in Yemen and how the U.S. is helping to fund and support the atrocities.  There is a chance Trump will see the story and do something about it.  There is little chance of this happening with a Biden or Harris presidency.

There are many compelling reasons to mark my ballot for Trump.  However, I don’t generally keep my voting a secret, and I don’t want to defend every stupid thing Trump does for the next four years if he is reelected.  I also don’t like voting for the lesser of two evils unless there is a big difference between the evils.  In terms of rhetoric, Trump is much different.  But I’m not as sure about his policies.

There is also reason to hope that a Biden presidency could actually improve some things. Maybe the coronavirus will magically go away with a Biden election win.  Maybe we can see some civility again, only because the left will stop being quite so uncivil.  Maybe we will see a reduction in rioting and looting.  I know this angers some Trump supporters by saying it because it sounds like I am giving in to the mob.  It’s like they’re saying, “You better vote Biden in, or we are coming to a city near you to burn it down.”  But it’s not my fault the American people have allowed all of this nonsense to happen.  I just want some of the old normal back.

I also believe that we have really tough economic times ahead.  If the Republicans can maintain the Senate, we could be just as well off with a Biden presidency, especially if he takes a lot of the blame for the problems.  With Trump in there, we will hear a lot of blame put on capitalism, even though Trump’s policies are not generally pro free market.

Anyway, I’m not going to not vote for Trump just because of the way he might be portrayed or because the mob might settle down if Trump leaves office.  But I am also not as fearful that life will not go on as many Trump people are.  They are really scared of the prospects of a Biden victory.

Jo Jorgensen

I don’t have a lot to say about the Libertarian Party’s nominee.  I was mildly excited when Jo Jorgensen became the nominee.  I have not voted for a Libertarian Party presidential candidate since Michael Badnarik in 2004.

Jo has been disappointing to say the least.  She hopped on board the political correct movement and sent out praise to BLM.  She sent a message on Twitter saying that it is not enough to not be racist.  Instead, you should be actively anti-racist.

Aside from a few of her politically correct things, there isn’t a lot where I really disagree with her.  The problem is that she doesn’t show a lot of enthusiasm, and she doesn’t stress the important issues.

I understand that the lockdowns came from governors and mayors, but the federal government has had a lot of input on the coronavirus, which has mostly been bad.  Jo should have been speaking out hard against the lockdowns.  She should have been an advocate for the tens of millions of people whose lives have been turned upside down due to government lockdowns and restrictions in response to hysteria over a virus that is no more than the flu to most people.

I could vote for Jo as a protest vote, and I haven’t completely abandoned the idea.  But on the other hand, I feel like she has not earned my vote.  She has done almost nothing to promote the cause of liberty that I can see. She got very little attention in the media, which isn’t all her fault, but some of it is.  She should have reached out to all of the Ron Paul people from 2008 and 2012 instead of trying to suck up to the hard left.  I don’t understand what she was thinking. It is just another year of a disappointing LP candidate.

Write-In

My most likely vote will be a write-in candidate.  Maybe I’ll vote for Ron Paul again.  I sometimes leave my ballot blank for certain races, but I don’t want to do that this time for the presidency.  I don’t want to open up my ballot for possible fraud. It would be too easy for someone to fill in a bubble.  I mean, I hope it’s not easy, but you never know.  I would rather it be unmistaken that I am choosing not to vote for anyone on the ballot for the presidency.

This is the easiest way to vote because I never have to defend my vote except for people who are mad that I didn’t vote for one of the major party candidates.  But I don’t have to defend the bad things that someone is doing.

I live in Florida, which is an important swing state.  In that sense, my vote matters.  But I know the chances of the election coming down to one vote in my state are essentially zero.  Even if it did come down to one vote, then I’m sure there would be enough fraud somewhere to make it not come down to one vote.

It’s still amazing that the 2000 election came down to a few hundred votes in Florida.  Of course, 2020 has been one for the record books, so you never know.

The election results will be entertaining if nothing else.  If Trump wins, then I get the entertainment that I got this time four years ago.  I get to watch the entire establishment media sit there with a look of shock, and I get to hear them still not understand that they are part of the reason that Trump gets the support that he gets.  If you think 4 years ago was bad, wait until this time.  Anyone with Trump Derangement Syndrome is going to have their head explode.

If Trump loses, I don’t think we are going back to the pre Trump days.  As I wrote in my last post, Trump still may be the leader of the Republican Party, and the 60 million or more people who vote for Trump are still out there.

I heard Donald Trump Jr. in an interview the other day, and I was more impressed than I thought I would be.  He was saying that Trump’s supporters are sick and tired of Republicans getting into office and folding over like Paul Ryan.  He said that these Republican politicians are going to have to answer to the voters in future elections.

Anyway, I don’t know how this whole thing will turn out.  There are a lot of Trump haters out there.  There are also a lot of Trump lovers, as can be seen by the tens of thousands of people showing up to each rally he holds.  In the meantime, I’ll make my final decision on which candidate (or non-candidate) I’m voting for by the morning.

As I write this, there are only five days left until November 3, 2020, which is the final day of voting for the election.  It is hard to call it Election Day since likely more than half of the people who will vote have already voted.  It is more like Election Month now.

I still have no idea who will win the presidential election.  I am not even sure who I am voting for.  Actually, I probably won’t be voting “for” anybody unless I write in a name.  If I vote for Trump or Jo Jorgensen, it would be more of a vote against the establishment than a vote for either of the candidates.

The polling tells us that Biden should win.  But the polling was terribly wrong in 2016.  People who mildly favor Trump, or who really dislike Biden and will vote for Trump, are not people who generally want to announce to the world that they are marking their ballot for Trump.  They certainly don’t want to say it on Facebook and receive the wrath of the their “friends”.  They may not want to tell someone taking a poll either.

There will likely be record turnout in this election.  It’s hard to believe that Trump vs. Biden could bring out more passion than Trump vs. Clinton.  It isn’t really Trump vs. Biden though.  It is Trump vs. the establishment.

I say this knowing well that Trump has surrounded himself by a bunch of establishment people. And Trump himself has mostly supported establishment policies, except that he hasn’t started any new major wars in his four years.

But the establishment absolutely hates Trump because he is a threat to their power.  Trump occasionally tells the truth about important matters, which the establishment hates.  Trump does not fall in line and obey like any president is supposed to do with the major issues.  This is especially problematic for the establishment when it comes to foreign policy.

The tens of millions of Americans who hate Trump and will vote against him by voting for Biden do not hate Trump for the same reasons as the establishment.  Most Americans who hate him, hate him because he is brash.  He doesn’t always speak in niceties the way a typical politician does.  Trump is just supposed to say that he cares about the children and loves puppies.  These people also hate him because they have a caricature of him that has been created by the establishment media.  Sure, Trump creates some of this himself, but anyone who mostly just listens to and reads the establishment media will likely hate Trump because almost every story portrays Trump as a bad guy.

The average Trump hater thinks Trump is a bully.  They think he is some kind of racist.  They dislike him for saying mean things on Twitter. This is not why the establishment hates him.  The establishment figures will accuse him of being a bully and a racist and anything else that portrays Trump in a bad light.  But they hate Trump because he is a disruption to their power.  Trump helps to shine a light on the corrupt establishment and the depth of the power.  Sometimes he does so inadvertently, but he does so nonetheless.  Sometimes the establishment exposes itself by overplaying their hand.

The Republican Anti Establishment

There are people inside the Republican Party, and even some outside the party, who whole-heartedly support Trump.  This doesn’t mean that they think he is perfect.  It doesn’t mean that they think he doesn’t have numerous flaws.  But they see Trump as the right person at the right time to do what nobody else has been able to do.

To be sure, Trump is not a typical Republican.  His foreign policy views have somewhat changed many Republicans’ thoughts on the issue.  In my view, it is for the better.

Trump is not a fiscal conservative.  Of course, almost nobody is once they are in office.  But Trump is not generally good on economics.  He has been decent in terms of reducing some regulatory burdens and reducing corporate income taxes.  He is a disaster when it comes to tariffs and overall government spending.

When Trump ran for the Republican nomination in 2015 and 2016, he was far from the best candidate for fiscally conservative Republicans.  Ted Cruz was better.  Rand Paul was better.  You could make an argument that someone like Marco Rubio would have been better.

But that is not the primary issue.  Republican voters were tired of politicians.  They were tired of Republican politicians without a backbone. They were tired of being told one thing and then getting another once the person got in office.  In many ways, they were right.

The reason Trump got the nomination is because he is a fighter.  He is an alpha male.  He won’t back down from a fight.  This is what many Republican voters wanted.  They trust Trump to take on the establishment and its media. The Republican voters were fed up with the Bushes and Romneys of the world.

There is great enthusiasm for Trump from his supporters.  There may be even more now than in 2016, but there is also greater hatred from the other side than in 2016.

Trump has been holding multiple rallies every day.  When you look at the size of the crowds, it is amazing.  He is getting tens of thousands of people at these rallies.  He is basically speaking in front of the equivalent of a football stadium audience (when stadiums were full) every day, especially when he does two or three rallies in a single day.  This is the live audience.  It doesn’t count how many people see some of it on television.

If Trump loses, there are tens of millions of people in the United States who will have lost their voice.  But these people won’t change any of their views.  They will still exist, even though I’m sure the powers-that-be would love to send them all to a reeducation camp of some sort.

Where will these people go for an outlet?  Who will be their voice?

If Trump does lose the election (legitimately or not), I think Trump still stays as the effective leader of the Republican Party, or at least the leader of a major faction of the Republican Party that has come to despise the establishment.

I have no idea who will run in 2024.  But until then, and maybe beyond, I think Trump remains the leader in many ways.  He will keep on using Twitter as long as he is allowed.  If he is kicked off the platform, he will use an alternative.

Mike Pence will not take over as a leader.  He is a politician.  Most Trump supporters know this.  Pence does not rock the boat.  He’ll do his best to defend Trump to appear to be a team player.  But he is an establishment guy who happens to be a little better on economics.  He will not fight the establishment the way Trump has.

There are no other major politicians who will do this either.  Even someone like Rand Paul will not do it.  There is a reason that Trump easily beat out Rand Paul in 2016 in the Republican primaries.  Rand Paul is not an alpha male like Trump.  Rand Paul also shows signs of wavering in his principles, unlike his father.  Paul has been much better since the 2016 primaries, but he still plays ball with the establishment up to a certain point.  Again, so does Trump, but his rhetoric is abrasive and largely anti establishment.

The anti establishment faction wants a fighter.  That is what it takes to take on the powerful interests in the swamp.  I don’t think Trump has drained the swamp, but he is shined a bright light on it.  We can see better just how thick the swamp is.

There is only one other person right now who can be seen as a major voice for the anti establishment people.  That is Tucker Carlson of Fox News.  It is amazing that Carlson has been allowed to stay on the air, especially in the primetime spot.  His ratings are far superior to any other political show on cable television.

Carlson speaks against the establishment.  He is a fighter.  He is extremely effective with his rhetoric.  I don’t agree with everything he says, but he is persuasive with his monologues and his interviews.  He will cover stories that nobody else in television media dare to touch.

I doubt that Tucker Carlson will run for political office.  I don’t want him to run.  He is far more effective doing what he does every night Monday through Friday.  The anti establishment people need a voice.  If Trump loses the election, they will really need an outlet.  I believe that Trump remains the voice for these people, but Carlson is not far behind.  These are the only two people I can think of.

I don’t know what Republican voters will do in 2024, assuming that Trump or Carlson is not running for president.  The Republican voters will never have this kind of enthusiasm for anyone else. They can more easily spot a fake politician – which is most of them – now that they have seen Trump.

If the nominee in 2024 is Mike Pence or Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz or some governor we have barely heard of, then many will relent and support the person as the lesser of two evils, especially if Kamala Harris is the other evil.  But there won’t be rallies with tens of thousands of people. There won’t be enthusiasm. Of course, there won’t be the anti Trump enthusiasm either.

It is important to recognize that there will be 60 million or more people who vote for Trump. If he loses, these people still exist, and they will want a voice.  If Biden loses, all of the anti Trump people still have a voice.  They have many voices.  It is the entirety of the establishment media, of politicians, of celebrities, of corporate executives, and the entire culture on display.

This is why it is tempting for me to vote for Trump, even though I disagree with many of his policies.  I hate everything that the establishment represents.  I hate the lying, the corruption, and the criminality.  I hate the political control and the brainwashing.

Trump is so imperfect in so many ways, yet he has managed to do what nobody else could.  He has exposed the establishment for the world to see for anyone who cares to look just a little bit with a clear head.

If Trump loses, he is not going away.  What he has done is not going away.  He is not exactly Obi-Wan Kenobi, but if you strike him down, the force may get stronger.  The tens of thousands of people attending his rallies every day will see Trump get struck down.  They have been watching it for over four years.  They hate the establishment more today than the day Trump was elected in 2016.  If Trump loses, the anti establishment people may or may not go into hiding, but I think they will only get stronger.

Stocks fell hard on Monday, October 26, 2020, just a week before the election.  The Dow was down 650 points, while the S&P was down nearly 2%.

There were several things attributed to the decline.  There is a question of whether there will be a “stimulus” deal. Interest rates have ticked higher. And there are reports about a spike in coronavirus cases.

It is no surprise the media is playing up that last item.  With just a week until the election, the powers-that-be want to make our lives seem as miserable as possible.

The truth is that nobody really knows what drives stock prices down (or up) on any given day except that buyers and sellers are meeting at a price below what the price had been the day before.

There are a lot of theories out there about what will happen with the stock market based on the election results.  A lot of the pro Trump people think that stocks will tank if Trump loses.  The anti Trump people aren’t necessarily saying that stocks will tank if Trump wins because they would generally rather not talk about the stock market.

I do think Biden had the right response in the last debate when Trump was touting the stock market. Sure, 401k accounts have gone up, but that really doesn’t help most people.  It certainly doesn’t help most people in the short run.  The people on so-called Main Street are more worried about their jobs than their stock portfolio, especially since most of them don’t have a stock portfolio.

Of course, it is the policies that Biden advocates that have caused much of the wreckage, particularly in regard to the lockdowns.

Anyway, I am not sure that the election results are going to matter much one way or another with regard to the stock market.  It could easily crash after the election, but it could just as easily happen over the coming week.

There is more free market rhetoric that comes out the mouths of Republicans.  But when it comes to policy, it doesn’t seem to matter that much.  We still get massive spending, massive debt, and massive monetary inflation.

It might hurt stocks a bit if corporate taxes go back up under Biden.  But Biden hasn’t been talking much about corporate tax rates. He talks more about marginal tax rates on high-income earners.

And even here, little changes have not seemed to matter over the years.  Taxes went up under Bill Clinton, but stocks mostly boomed. Now, part of this was a bubble that eventually popped, but I think most libertarians would agree that we were much better off economically in the 1990s than we are today.  That was the last time there was some fiscal sanity. The Republican-controlled Congress and the Clinton White House seemed to keep each other in check, and we almost had an actual balanced budget.

There is one thing that the stock investors don’t like.  That is uncertainty.  And there is plenty of uncertainty in the year 2020, and there is a lot of uncertainty with regard to the election.

The best short-term result for stock bulls is that there is a landslide either way.

Still, there are problems even here.  If Biden wins easily, there will still be questions about how he will govern. If all of Congress goes to a Democratic majority, I think this could really be seen as a threat for investors.

If Trump wins easily, then you have the threat of rioting and continued attempts by the establishment to make our lives as miserable as possible.  They will want to make sure that those tens of millions of Trump supporters pay a dear price.

Then there is the possibility that the election draws out in a contested legal battle.  What happens if nobody is willing to concede? What happens if there is no end in sight and there is talk of Nancy Pelosi becoming president in January?

This would spook the market more than anything.  There would be great instability.

No matter what happens, I still believe that stocks are in a massive bubble.  I thought it was the end of the bubble in March, but I somehow underestimated the power of massive Fed inflation.  I also underestimated the power of major stimulus and unemployment checks coming from the federal government.

I expect it will be a roller coaster ride from here.  It could be a great benefit for day traders who go in and out of the market quickly.  There will be a lot of volatility.

If Biden wins and stocks go down, don’t count on that becoming a permanent trend.  It’s possible it will just because it would have happened anyway, but uncertainty doesn’t typically last long when it comes to new presidents.

If you remember back to 2016, stock futures tumbled hard when it became evident that Trump was going to win the presidency.  Stocks opened the following day down, but it didn’t last long.  By the end of the week, most people realized that Trump was not going to be bad for stocks, or at least not any worse than a Hillary Clinton presidency would have.

So while I expect extra volatility due to the elections, I don’t expect the presidential election to be a long-term factor.  There are so many variables right now, don’t even bother trying to guess what will happen.  Again, this will only be good for day traders.

The final presidential debate of 2020 is done.  Prior to the debate, probably something around one-third of voters already voted. And a large majority of people who haven’t voted who watched the debate, most likely won’t change their mind.

But there is always that small fraction of voters who have yet to make up their mind.  And the choice doesn’t have to be “vote for Trump” or “vote for Biden”.

In my case, I haven’t fully decided.  I won’t vote for Joe Biden.  If I heard all of the right things from today to Election Day, then I could still possibly vote for Trump or Jo Jorgensen.  My most likely vote will be for “Other”.

There are so many areas where I disagree with Trump, but it is hard not to cheer for the guy because of his enemies.  The worst elements of society are his enemies, and there is a reason for that. They hate it when Trump tells the truth about certain things, and they hate it when Trump delegitimizes the establishment.  Trump is a threat to their power.  This includes the establishment media.

Overall, I thought both candidates performed well.  Biden stumbled over his words on more than one occasion, but he wasn’t a total train wreck.  I believe he flat-out lied several times, but it might not hurt him much because anyone who is undecided probably doesn’t know they were being lied to.

Trump did much better than the first debate.  The bad thing for Trump is that he started out shaky.  He was making some weird movements with his body in the first few minutes.  I have no idea what that was about.  And his first question was on the coronavirus, which I believe he handled poorly, at least at the beginning.  It got a lot better after that.  However, if there was someone who isn’t a political junkie who just turned in for the first five or ten minutes, they probably wouldn’t have been impressed with Trump.

The moderator somewhat exceeded my expectations, which isn’t saying much.  It was definitely a much better run debate than the last disaster with Chris Wallace.  Perhaps part of that is because the microphones could have been cut off during each candidate’s two minutes after the initial question.  Part of it is also that Trump just didn’t interrupt as much, which actually served him well.

There was one part early in the debate when Trump was talking about the coronavirus and opening up schools.  After Trump had finished, the “moderator” said something to the effect that young people can catch it and spread it.  But she then proceeded to ask Biden a question.  In other words, she was just interjecting to oppose Trump. A moderator should never counter a candidate’s point unless it is part of a follow-up question for that candidate.

Anyway, the rest of the debate wasn’t too bad.  Of course, she could have asked some more direct and stinging questions, but that is the case with most establishment media figures.

As I said, Trump didn’t start out well.  He was bad on the coronavirus when talking about a vaccine and blaming China.  He quickly got a lot stronger, as he talked about the cure being worse than the disease.

Biden was all over the place.  He said he didn’t want shutdowns and then immediately talked about closing bars and gyms in concerning areas.  I would hope that there are no bar owners or gym owners across America who would vote for Biden.

Biden actually had two libertarian moments in the debate, but I’ll get to that in a bit.

The elephant in the room is Hunter Biden and the emails from his laptop.  From a libertarian standpoint, the information is no shock.  They basically show that Joe Biden was skimming money from foreign countries by using his position.  His son was getting big payouts from foreign countries while funneling some of that money to Biden.

Joe Biden is a corrupt good old boy.  He is a politician.  He has done what most politicians do.  He was able to do a lot of it because he held such a high position of power.

I think the bigger story here is the media cover-up.  Most of the establishment media will barely cover the story.  And when it is covered, they just pretend like there is nothing there.  Or worse, they say that it is a plot by Iran and Russia.  It isn’t clear why Iran wants to see Donald Trump reelected.

I thought Trump did an ok job of addressing the subject.  The moderator asked one somewhat direct question on the topic, but it was easy for Biden to avoid

When pressed by Trump, Biden said that he hasn’t directly received any money from any foreign power ever.  This may have been a technical truth, but it is a lie.  In other words, Hunter Biden would receive money from foreign countries for favors done by his father.  Hunter would keep a bunch of the money, but also send some of it on to his father.  So Joe Biden didn’t technically receive money directly from a foreign power.  But he did receive money.

The problem with this topic in the debate is that most people who don’t support Trump have no idea what is going on.  I think Trump made a mistake in not getting to the very basics of the story. Trump should have directly asked Biden if it was Hunter’s laptop and if those emails are real.  Pin him down on a yes or no question.

The problem is that Biden was able to sidestep several times and even change the subject.  At one point, Biden somehow managed to turn the subject on to Trump’s taxes, and Trump actually bit on it.  Trump started defending his tax returns instead of sticking with the topic and going after the Biden corruption.

Biden said that Russia and Iran will pay a price for interfering with the election.  Biden actually mentioned Rudy Giuliani first, probably to preempt Trump attacking his dealings with Hunter Biden.  Trump was weak in his response and should have challenged the premise.

Trump talked about how he has been tough on Russia instead of initially calling the whole thing a hoax.  I don’t know if Trump understood the first time that Joe Biden was saying the Hunter email scandal was Russian interference.  It would have been a great time to ask for specifics.  “Are you saying that the computer repairman in Delaware where Hunter dropped off his laptop is a Russian spy?”  “How exactly did Russia get Hunter’s emails?”

It was later in the debate that Trump realized that Biden was accusing Russia of being involved in the laptop scandal.  He rhetorically asked if the laptop is a Russian hoax now, basically making fun of the notion.

Again though, I doubt that many anti Trump people even know what is being talked about.  If someone just watches the establishment media outlets, they probably barely knew anything about Hunter Biden’s laptop and the emails.  And for the few who were aware of the story at all, they were probably believing that somehow it was Russian and Iranian interference.

It’s just ridiculous. Whenever Biden talked about the subject, he was either trying to change the subject, or he was lying about it, or he was avoiding the question.  This is no surprise because how could he answer it truthfully and not look bad? Even though we all know it goes on in Washington DC, what Joe Biden and his son were doing were criminal acts.

Anyway, there were two somewhat libertarian moments that Biden had.  They showed Biden’s hypocrisy, but I see it as positive that he said these things.

First, there was a moment when Trump was talking about China and this was in reference to the impacts of his tariffs.  He said something to the effect of “I just gave 28 billion dollars to our farmers.”  Joe Biden said, “taxpayers” or “taxpayer”.  In other words, what Biden was saying is that Trump didn’t give anything to farmers.  It came from the taxpayers.  This is an elementary libertarian point that can be used on every subject dealing with government spending.  It was a good Biden moment from my perspective, but of course, Biden doesn’t say the same thing when it comes to almost anything else.

The second libertarian moment for Biden was when he said that nobody should go to jail for a drug problem.  Now I don’t believe Biden when he says this, and it is counter to nearly everything he has stood for in the past.  I mean, maybe he has changed his mind because of his son’s drug problem, but I highly doubt that’s it.  Most politicians would be happy to throw away people in jail for an offense in which their own family is exempt.

I believe Biden said this because it is a more popular position than it was in the past. Even in 2008 when Ron Paul was running for president on the Republican ticket, he would say that he opposed the federal war on drugs when asked.  He was mostly ridiculed.  In 2020, it is considered to be a quite reasonable position to say that nobody with a drug problem should go to jail just for the issue of drugs.

Libertarians see negatives everywhere, and to be sure, there are a lot of negatives to be seen. But let’s acknowledge that in the year 2020, Biden said that nobody should go to jail for a drug problem and this is considered acceptable.  In fact, the candidates were trying to outdo each other with regard to criminal justice reform.  This is one area where libertarians should truly try to form alliances with others in destroying the political war on drugs.

My overall assessment from the debate is that Trump won.  I have no idea if it will be enough.  The polls say that Biden is way ahead in the race, and many people have already voted.  But we know how the polls went in 2016.

The rallies for Trump have been enormous.  He has a huge base of enthusiastic fans.  There are a lot of people voting “for” Trump.  There is barely anyone voting “for” Biden.  But half the country hates Trump, so they will vote against him in the form of marking the ballot in favor of Biden.

We are not going to know the results on Election Day. There is a decent chance we still won’t know the outcome the day after.  2020 has already been a wild ride.  I don’t expect the election to be any different.

Yes, you read that right.  In 2016, I actually made a libertarian case for Hillary Clinton.

To be clear, I am not voting for Joe Biden or supporting Joe Biden in any way.  I am not even hoping he wins because I have no idea what it will bring.

There are obviously numerous reasons to be against Joe Biden from a libertarian perspective, or even just a human being perspective.  He is corrupt.  He is embedded in the establishment.  He is creepy.  He is pro war.  He is a proponent of big government.

The number one reason to be against Joe Biden is Kamala Harris.  In terms of policy, she is everything he is and worse.  She is more pro war, and she is an even bigger proponent of big government.  And given Biden’s age and mental capabilities, a Biden presidency has a high degree of probability of turning into a Harris presidency.

But that’s enough about how bad Biden is.  The point of this piece is to make a possible libertarian case for Biden. How could that be, given what I just said?

First, I believe that the establishment has put the American people through the wringer on purpose for the last 4 years.  The year 2020 is the culmination of this with riots and coronavirus lockdowns and mask mandates.

Before 2020, the establishment and its media tried its hardest to get rid of Trump or delegitimize him as much as possible.  They also sought to divide the country and make people angry at each other. It was continual lies and falsehoods.  The biggest one was the Russia hoax pushed by the most vile people in existence.  When that wasn’t successful, they turned to Ukraine.  They impeached Trump over a phone call by accusing him of withholding foreign aid for political purposes.  In other words, the House Democrats impeached Trump over the very thing that Joe Biden admitted to doing on video.

So again, you are probably wondering how this is a case for Biden.  Well, my only hope is that removing Donald Trump would bring back some civility.  To be sure, it is more the anti Trump people who are not civil, but a Biden presidency could perhaps bring down the tensions.  It doesn’t make the 60 million or so people who vote for Trump go away, but there is at least a possibility of some civility.

I have had some Trump supporters get mad at me for saying this.  I said that if getting rid of Trump means that life can go back to somewhat normal (pre-March 2020), then I may favor Biden.  I believe that the hysteria over coronavirus and the subsequent lockdowns and mask mandates were push hard by the establishment to try to make our lives as miserable as possible until the election in November. It worked.

I have no idea what will happen if Biden wins.  He has said at times that he may favor a national mask mandate or national lockdown.  I doubt this would happen.  And good luck trying to enforce it even if the orders came.  I was in North Carolina in July when there was a statewide mask mandate and most people weren’t wearing a mask where I was in the mountains.  If the local sheriff wasn’t going to enforce it, the governor wasn’t going to go there to enforce it himself.  Biden certainly won’t be coming to my city to enforce a mask mandate.

In fact, if Biden did try such a thing, it would probably advance the cause of liberty greatly. We would see the ideas of decentralization and state nullification take hold.  As libertarians, this is really what we want.  We want it done peacefully, but ignoring federal orders sure does set a precedent for other things.

At the same time, I’ll say that if Trump wins the presidency again, I hope that states like California will consider secession or some form of decentralization.  We should all cheer this on.

Anyway, let’s get back to Biden.  If the coronavirus magically dies down after the November election after a Biden win, then I will celebrate to a certain degree.  I want to go to concerts again.  I want to go to sporting events.  I want to walk into the grocery store without feeling like I’m in a hospital.

Again, some Trump supporters hate me for saying this because it seems like I am giving in to the mob. But I’m not actually endorsing or voting for Biden.  I’m just saying that my life will be happier if Biden wins and, as a result, life somewhat goes back to the way it was.  It’s not my fault that the majority of people are so incredibly gullible that they listened to the words of the lying establishment media. Many of them are still being extremely gullible, and I can’t help that.  These people are making our lives miserable, and we should certainly fight it.  But again, if a Biden presidency makes it all go away, I think I favor that from a selfish point of view.

The other libertarian case for a Biden presidency is that the economy is in complete shambles. I know Trump won’t admit this, and he’ll blame what problems are evident on the coronavirus and the lockdowns. But the economy was a ticking time bomb anyway before the lockdowns.  It is just so much worse now with the lockdowns and the incredible levels of government spending and monetary inflation that have taken place just in 2020.

Trump has been mostly horrible in terms of economic policies.  He has been decent (comparatively speaking) with regard to some regulations and corporate taxes.  But he is a big spender, and the debt is completely out of control at this point.  There are going to be major problems over the next 4 years.

If Trump is president, we get to hear about how Trump’s capitalist policies are destroying the economy.  It will be false of course, but the same gullible people wearing masks everywhere they go will believe it.

If Biden is president, they will try to blame Trump for the recession, inflation, or whatever the problems are.  But after a year or so, that won’t stick.  Biden and the left will get more of the blame.  So if we’re going to have an economic mess on our hands, it seems better if the more socialist side gets the blame.

I know there is great fear over what Biden might do in reaction to a major economic depression, but we should have that fear no matter who is president.  Can it get much worse than trillions and trillions of dollars in new debt in a 6-month period?  Can it get much worse than $3 trillion added to the Fed’s balance sheet?  Maybe it can get worse, but it could get worse with a Trump presidency too.

Maybe the best situation is for Biden to lose the election but then be coronated as the winner through fraud.  I would rather that than the other way around.  I want a Biden presidency that is not seen as legitimate.

I actually don’t mind that people try to delegitimize the Trump presidency, except I don’t agree with lying about it, and I don’t agree with trying to do it by favoring the establishment.  I care more about delegitimizing the establishment.  That usually includes the presidency, but Trump is a different story. While Trump does many things that favor the establishment, he has a very adversarial relationship with the establishment, if in rhetoric only.

In conclusion, I am not cheering for Biden or supporting him in any way.  In fact, I will take some pleasure in watching the faces of the establishment hacks if Trump wins, just as I did in 2016.  However, no matter who wins or who takes office in January 2021, it isn’t going to be pretty.  The economy will still be bad no matter what.

There is a case that a Biden presidency could be more beneficial to the cause of liberty in the long run.  It isn’t a strong case, but it is hard to see how four more years of Trump is going to bring us closer to liberty unless we see California secede.

Trump has served his purpose in exposing the establishment – sometimes on purpose and sometimes inadvertently – for anyone who cares to see it.  I’m not sure what more he can do at this point, but I’m open to suggestions.

Back in early March of 2020, I was already questioning the narrative on the coronavirus.  I have 100% opposed all government measures pertaining to the virus or fear of the virus in terms of lockdowns, regulations, and mandates.  The only government actions I haven’t opposed are the reversing of original orders, such as removing government restrictions and lockdowns.

I was surprised how many Americans fell for the media-induced hysteria.  I was surprised how easily Americans gave up their liberty.  Property rights are a major part of liberty, and business owners in particular were deprived of their liberty if they were deemed “non-essential”.

I was even more surprised how many libertarians I know or know of who fell for the hysteria. I know of a few libertarians who bought into all of the hysteria and were (or still are) really fearful of the virus but didn’t favor government lockdowns.  But most self-identified libertarians who bought into the hysteria were willing to compromise their principles or showed they didn’t have a strong set of principles to begin with.

I have heard libertarian justifications for lockdowns, mask mandates, and other restrictions put on by government.  They say that someone with a virus is violating the non-aggression principle by infecting others.  There are many issues with this line of argument, especially when asymptomatic people are put in the category of potential aggressors.  It is also problematic that it is very hard to prove how someone became infected.

I believe the answer lies in liberty and property rights.  If you have strong property rights while government does not control most property, then it will be up to the property owner on how to handle the situation.

Here is the biggest problem with the “libertarian” argument that someone could potentially have a virus and as a spreader would be an aggressor.  The problem as with so many things is: Who gets to decide?

Why is the coronavirus considered so dangerous while the flu – at least in the past – was not considered to be really dangerous, at least relatively speaking?  What about the common cold?  Would someone with a cold be considered a violator of the non-aggression principle if the person left their house?  Who gets to determine what constitutes a major health danger and the threshold for becoming an aggressor?

This is really what separated most libertarians from the beginning.  Many have realized that the coronavirus is massive hysteria and that they were sold a bill of goods.  At the very least, some will admit that it was probably overblown and the reactions were overblown.

What has separated libertarians on this topic is in trusting “the science”.  The problem is that “the science”, as defined by the hysterics, is really the establishment-approved science.  They will quote Dr. Fauci and the so-called expert epidemiologists all day long.  But these are the “experts” paraded on television by the establishment media. There are a lot of scientists, including epidemiologists, who don’t agree with Fauci, and some of them think the coronavirus is no worse than a flu.  There are even a few who think it is less than the flu. Better yet, there are some who question everything we’ve been told about the virus.

I am not a scientist, but I question just about everything we’ve been told about it by the “experts”.  I really have no idea. I have read some people questioning whether there really is a new virus, saying that the virus everyone is talking about was never properly isolated.  This calls into question all of the testing, which even the so-called experts will admit can put out false positives.

What if the tests are just picking up any coronavirus and not COVID-19?  A certain percentage of people who are feeling sick will have a coronavirus, as has been the case in the past.

I showed an example of how, by today’s standards, we could have a pandemic for the sniffles.  If everyone who had a runny nose within 7 days of dying were deemed to have died of the sniffles, then we would get hundreds of thousands of deaths each year recorded as the sniffles.

There was obviously a spike in deaths in New York and New Jersey in April 2020.  Some of these could have been due to another virus spreading.  Some of them could have been due to people going to the hospital with anxiety or other problems and then drugged up and thrown on a ventilator to die.  Some of them could have died due to COVID-19. It’s possible it could be a combination of all three and more.

I really don’t know. What I do know is that we have been continually lied to by the “experts”.  Again, these so-called experts are the handpicked people by the establishment telling us what the establishment wants us to be told. It reminds me of what I have heard about climate change for the last decade or more.  I will hear that 97% of scientists agree that global warming or climate change is real.  This is based on the establishment’s own version of the question, and it involves mostly government-funded scientists.

Incidentally, this is one of the major problems when government is involved in anything. Many doctors are afraid to speak out because the government essentially owns them.  If the government pulls their license away, a doctor loses his or her livelihood.

I don’t trust the politicians, the government bureaucrats, the government-funded scientists, and the corporate media.  They are all part of the establishment.  These are some of the same people who told us there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.  They told us Assad gassed his own people in Syria.  They told us that Putin and Russia hacked the election and colluded with Trump.  The list goes on and on.  If they will lie about things to get us into war, they will certainly lie about a virus.  Many of the exact same people who have lied us into war are now lying about the coronavirus.

I knew from the beginning that we were being lied to about the virus because I don’t trust anything of importance coming out these people’s mouths.  I saw from the very beginning that we were being misled with the statistics out of China.  The establishment media was quoting a death rate of 3 to 4 percent from those contracting the virus.  Some said it might be 2%.  It doesn’t take an expert statistician to realize that the 3 to 4 percent mortality rate was garbage because they were basing it on the sickest people who were being admitted to the hospital.  

On March 20, 2020, I wrote: “With the coronavirus, they are taking the number of people who tested positive for the virus against the number of people who have died from it.  Therefore, the mortality rate seems higher, but it isn’t a valid comparison.  They are largely testing people who are the worst off.  There will be many people who had the coronavirus who never got tested.”

Couldn’t this have been easily pointed out by Fauci and his minions and the establishment media?

(By the way, if there is one thing I got really wrong at the beginning of March, it is that I thought stocks were going to get hammered and not recover any time soon.  I underestimated the Fed’s massive monetary inflation and its impact, but that has nothing to do with believing the establishment or libertarian principles.)

Here is another thing to pay attention to, even now.  How many times have you been told that it is important to wash your hands, social distance, wear a mask, etc.?  How many times have you been told you should get a flu shot?  How many times have you been told that we need a coronavirus vaccine?  How many times have you heard that contact tracing is a key to stopping the spread?

On the first question in particular, if you have a television, you have probably heard some variation of “wash your hands, social distance, wear a mask” hundreds of times.

Now let me ask you this question.  Not including alternative websites, how often have you heard from the media on what to do if you do contract the coronavirus?

I have rarely heard anything from the establishment media on steps to take if one becomes ill and tests positive for the coronavirus.  I hear that you should stay quarantined or go to the hospital, but how should you actually treat yourself?

Even with the preventative measures “wash your hands, social distance, wear a mask”, there is rarely mention of vitamins, supplements, and just living healthy.  I have only occasionally heard about vitamin C, vitamin D, zinc, and other things to take for preventative measures or for actually treating the coronavirus.

I think this in itself says a lot about what’s going on.  Why do we hear constantly about wearing a mask and getting a vaccine, yet we rarely, if ever, hear about how to treat the virus at home?  If many millions of Americans have already gotten the virus, and supposedly hundreds of thousands have died, don’t you think there would be a little advice on how to handle it if you do get sick?

I can only speculate that this is why a few hospitals become crowded when the number of cases spike in a particular area.  Someone who got flu symptoms in the past would have likely just stayed in bed, drank chicken soup, and recovered.  Now, if someone gets the flu and watches and believes the news, they are far more likely to go to the hospital.  They don’t know what else to do.

The world has been duped.  The same liars who lie to us about war and anything else of importance have also been lying about the coronavirus since at least March.  Libertarians, of all people, should know this.

I don’t have to know everything about the coronavirus.  Nobody else does either.  What I do know is that there are people in this world who are evil and will exploit human ignorance for their own gain in power.

You should never trust “the experts”, especially when it involves power.  Any time a crisis gives the possibility of more power (i.e., legalized violence) to politicians and bureaucrats, then the crisis itself should be questioned.  In a real crisis, the answer is peace and liberty, not handing over more power to others to rule over us.

There has been nothing mundane about the year 2020.  Maybe not everyone sees it this way.  I have heard of people just sitting inside their apartment for many months because there’s not much open or because they are terrified of a virus.

My life has carried on somewhat normally, but I am past the stage of my life where I go out to bars or bowling or any number of things.  I didn’t even go to movies much.  The things that changed for me in 2020 were working from home regularly, not eating a dinner out on the weekends, and my kids not having as much in the way of activities.  I am still working at home, but we do go out to dinner about once every other week, and my kids’ activities have somewhat picked up.

It hasn’t been a boring year though.  It has been devastating for many.  It has been sad and depressing for people who are lonely and in need of interaction.  It has been a lot of things, but boring doesn’t describe it for me.  I never would have thought back in February that I would feel like I’m walking in a hospital when I go to the grocery store.  I never would have thought that the American people would so easily roll over to the dictates of governors and mayors shutting down businesses.

Anyway, here we are. I don’t think there is much controversy in saying that we are in a recession or we had a recession in 2020. But it really is a recession like no other.

First, the recession itself isn’t really the story, or at least it isn’t the one getting the headlines.  We’ll see headlines all over the place about COVID deaths or hospitalizations, yet we don’t see tickers of the number of businesses closed down that are never coming back.

Second, this recession is marked by a boom in the stock market.  There was a scary drop in March and April for stock investors, but stocks have mostly boomed since then.  The Nasdaq in particular blew past its all-time highs in the face of a major recession.

Who would have guessed that the Fed would expand its balance sheet by nearly $3 trillion over the course of just a few months?  I knew the Fed would be aggressive in the next recession, but it really is amazing the unprecedented actions taken.

While I am happy there is still some federalism left, it isn’t enough.  The governors and mayors locked things down, but the financial burdens didn’t fall on them.  The local and state governments haven’t officially been bailed out, but they really have.  The federal government passed a $2 trillion bill for business bailouts, unemployment checks, and stimulus checks.

If we had a strong federalist system, none of that would have happened.  Why should the taxpayers of South Dakota (where there was no state lockdown) have to pay for failed businesses in New York where the lockdowns and restrictions have been steep?  The governors and mayors should be held responsible by their own constituents for these decisions.

A Recession Anyway

One of the really frustrating things for me – and there are many – is that the Fed and the federal government aren’t taking the blame for this recession.  Instead, we hear it was the fault of the coronavirus. The more astute may say that it was the fault of the lockdowns in response to the coronavirus.

While the lockdowns certainly brought on the recession quickly, I believe that one was going to happen anyway in 2020, but I guess we’ll never know.

If you remember all the way back to boring 2019, the Fed was having to step in to save the repo market from spiking interest rates.  We also saw an inverted yield curve as measured by the 10-year yield vs. the 3-month yield.  This has been an accurate predictor of recessions, and I guess we could say it was again. But we’ll never know for sure if we would be in a recession right now if there had been no coronavirus fear and lockdowns.

This is what is particularly alarming about our economic state now.  We were already set up for a recession, and lockdowns across the country were added to that equation.  Now we have trillions of more in debt and a further ballooning of the Fed’s balance sheet.

I believe there is still major trouble ahead.  But it is impossible to predict how this will all unfold.  There are even more variables now than before with so much power given to politicians at all levels.  Will the ultra easy money delay more economic recession in the year to come?

There are tens of millions of Americans struggling financially.  This includes hundreds of thousands of business owners and millions of people who have lost their job.  There are also a lot of people with reduced hours and reduced pay.  Meanwhile, prices are going higher with all of the Fed’s inflation.

If Trump loses the election or is forced out in January 2021, then Biden (or maybe Harris) becomes president.  While that isn’t comforting, there could be a benefit to a Biden presidency when the economic manure hits the fan.  I’m sure the establishment media will still be blaming Trump, but it will fall on Biden.  It makes it harder to blame capitalism, even though we don’t have anything close to free markets now.

We’ll never know if a recession would have happened anyway in 2020.  But what we do know is that we are in much worse shape now than we were a year ago.  Americans should prepare for a reduced standard of living.  There will be exceptions.  There always are.  But the vast majority of people are going to see major economic turmoil still to come.