https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-endorsed-senate-candidate-claims-110250489.html

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/gop-senate-hopeful-suggests-nursing-home-residents-are-too-close-to-death-to-vote/ar-BB1lhWmp

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/senate-candidate-eric-hovde-questions-whether-nursing-home-residents-should-vote/ar-BB1llwF8

Running for office has long been big business in the United States. Consultants, election observers, campaign managers and many others have careers in the election cycle.

In this kind of business there are things commonly done and commonly not done. One of the things commonly done is to create strategies for appealing to what are called interest groups. These can range from relatively tight categories like doctors to larger more diverse categories like “white females, aged 18-24” or even huge categories like in this case the elderly.

One of things you try not to do as a rule is to alienate any large group of voters by insult. In the situation noted in the links above we have a serious divergence from that rule.

Let me quote:

(Eric) Hovde continued, “We had nursing homes, where the sheriff of Racine investigated, where you had 100 percent voting in nursing homes. Well, if you’re in a nursing home, you only have a five, six-month life expectancy. Almost nobody in a nursing home is in a point to vote.”

I suspect that if I lived in a nursing home I might resent the impression that I am in immediate danger of death and incompetent to vote. And I further suspect that other elderly citizens in his state might resent the implications of his remarks.

Do you wonder just what has happened to our politics when this kind of nonsense is bandied about as if it was similar to a coherent thought? It was not too long ago that political eloquence was valued in our American society. Today, capturing the new cycle with a quote so bizarre, it begs normal human belief, appears to be the principle goal of political rhetoric.

Now you can argue that “James, shouldn’t you discuss the merits of denying or preserving the elderly’s right to vote?”

No. Absolutely no. This claims is just nuts. The idea of taking away basic rights based on advanced age with no other factors in consideration is just crazy. I’m not going to honor these weird babblings from a fool by pretending to detect a thread of an actual argument in it.

I think I am like you in that I am tired of crazed conspiracy nuts. They seem to be everywhere and they never seem to be ignored.

A lot of it has to do with the long term horror of our online world. Where we have each and every individual one of us become accessible moment to moment to every loon, crook, foreign power, and political manipulator. Our government and ruling class have failed all of us by not insisting on enshrining our right to our identities and private information in the letter of the law.

What about Eric Hovde? This is not the only strange controversial remark on his part. There are other conspiracies and strangeness. See below:

Hovde, a banking and real estate development executive, has already faced a number of controversies in his bid to unseat Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin. He came under scrutiny over a multi-decade-long fight to tear down a beloved family bar in Madison, and has said that in his ideal world, alcohol wouldn’t be legal for commercial sale.