Even David Catron admits it
David Catron wrote recently in The Spectator, "Biden didn’t win a popular vote landslide as the Democrats still claim. According to Federal Election Commission (FEC) totals, he won 81,268,924 of 158,383,403 ballots cast. In other words, 77,114,479 people voted for Trump or one of the third-party candidates." Trump received 74,216,154 votes.
Two can play at Catron's game. In other words, 84,167,249 people voted for Biden or one of the third-party candidates. That's 84,167,249 American voters who considered and evaluated Trump's four years in office and said in effect "You're fired!"
Let's give Catron credit where credit where credit is due. He admits that Biden won by a 4.45% popular vote margin. Other than George W. Bush, Benjamin Harrison, Trump, Rutherford B. Hayes and John Quincy Adams, in 59 presidential elections every presidential candidate who won the popular also won the election. Apparently Mr. Catron likes to pick and choose his bellwethers. 92% of the time the popular vote is an accurate indicator of who won the presidency.
You cannot trust Punxsutawney Phil or that Super Bowls are harbingers for presidential elections
Catron places a lot of stock in certain bellwethers. He asked in his opinion piece, What We Must Believe to Believe Biden Won, this among other questions: "What of the fabled bellwether Ohio?"
What about it? Since the Civil War, Ohio has had five misses (all Democratic winners nationally) in the presidential election (Grover Cleveland in 1884 and 1892, Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944, John F. Kennedy in 1960, and Joe Biden in 2020).
Backwards bellwethers
Catron got his bellwether backwards. No Republican has ever won the presidency without winning Ohio. The opposite is not true, as five Democratic presidents have proven, that if a Republican wins Ohio that it guarantees a national victory. If that were true, Republican presidential candidates could simply ignore all the other states and focus all their time and money on Ohio.
A bellwether is a bellwether until it isn't
Catron has similar gripes about supposed bellwether counties which Trump won. Here's the deal, as Joe Biden might say, a bellwether is a bellwether until it isn't. People move, people die, demographics change. Until Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy, the states of the Old South were reliably Democratic states. California wasn't always a reliably blue state. George H. W. Bush, Reagan, Nixon, Eisenhower, Hoover, Coolidge, Harding, Taft and Theodore Roosevelt, McKinley, Benjamin Harrison, Hayes, Grant and Lincoln all won the Golden State.
Landslides, massive and otherwise
Catron didn't mention which if any Democrats claimed that Biden won a popular vote landslide, although I am sure some have. It's understandable why some Democrats might call it a landslide. The former guy called his election win in 2016 a "massive landslide". "We had a massive landslide victory, as you know, in the Electoral College. I guess the final numbers are now at 306," Trump said in an interview on Fox News Sunday.
When Trump made his "massive landslide" claim, there had been 45 elections with greater electoral vote margins. In 2020 Joe Biden won 306 electoral votes. In 2016 Donald Trump Trump won 304 electoral votes.
Catron accepts the vote count
Catron also complained in his November 17, 2020 editorial about Smartmatic/Dominion software. Since he just last week referred to the official FEC vote tallies without caveat or comment, he's apparently accepted that Smartmatic/Dominion software accurately counted votes.
If you ignore history and refuse to acknowledge that anomalies and irregularities can happen, then you can believe that David Catron in 2020 wasn't a numbskull or pranking you. But if you still believe and cite what he wrote last year, you may be a numbskull.
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