By Chad Nance

“I trust no one, not even myself.”

– Joseph Stalin

Things remain far too shaky to do any serious gambling on the 2014 mid-terms. Most of the races are sewn up with no real game left on the ground. There are twenty out of fifty state Senate districts where there is only one candidate. That doesn’t even count the districts that are so heavily gerrymandered around partisan and racial lines that there is little to no point in mounting a challenge beyond a harassment campaign like the Motsinger v. Krawiec match-up in Senate 31. In fifty-nine out of the one hundred-twenty state House districts there is a single candidate on the ballot. That includes several here in Winston-Salem/Forsyth County. In those races the political parties have chosen who your representation will be from their HQs on Peter’s Creek Parkway and Burke Street.

That pretty much leaves the local school board and County Commission races down at the single A level and the Hagan/Tillis match up in the big show. Right now there is barely enough data (and little of that clean) on the US Senate face-off to even begin to place early long shot bets. Those are the kind of bets that only attract the real gamblers. The kind of guys who will wager on chess, geo-politics, and professional bowling.

For those kind of big money, long-game speculators the numbers are beginning to break Senator Hagan’s way. She is an incumbent, which is already a big hill to climb. They have been raining money on her like ‘Lil Wayne with progressive PACs going blow for blow with the Koch Brother’s political machine and more than holding their own. Even Tillis’ recent fundraising team up with Mitch McConnell went over like a burlap sack full of pig shit… no one seems to want it close to their $5,000 suit. From high rollers to bingo parlor queens, everyone knows that if you haven’t managed to open up a real lead on an incumbent by October tidings are ominous.

American Insights, a GOP polling firm out of Raleigh, have Hagan opening up a lead on Tillis 43% to 34% among registered voters. That split is with Libertarian Sean Haugh pulling 5%, which even thrown all in for Tillis would still leave him with a 4 point deficit heading into the bottom half of the third quarter.

“After being deadlocked for most of the year, the race has unmistakably shifted towards Senator Hagan in recent days. This poll is a continuation and affirmation of the very recent trend in Sen. Hagan’s direction. But there is still a lot of time left on the clock, and we would not be surprised if this volatile race shifts back to a jump ball between now and November,” said American Insights Director Pearce Godwin. “Our AI Trend Chart has shown Hagan and Tillis trading leads within the margin of error since January with the exception of July when Senator Hagan opened up a six-point lead. But by August, the race had reset at a dead heat and was exactly tied through last month. But the last four polls released in the past 10 days, including today’s AI survey, show a lead for Hagan ranging from 3 to 9 points. Because the AI sample nearly perfectly reflects the North Carolina voter population, it appears that the shift over the last two weeks is real.”

That awful news for Tillis follows a Rasmussen poll of likely voters that showed Hagan leading Tillis 45% to 39% with 6% going to Haugh and 9% still floating. Another right wing polling outfit, Survey USA/Civitas poll has Hagan out front 46% to 43%, with Haugh holding 5%. Nothing in those numbers is a either a nail or a coffin lid, but Tillis is clearly floundering. A Republican friend of mine recently told me that Republicans just aren’t excited about Tillis and he worries they won’t vote. A progressive activist friend of mine told me that Democrats and progressives are only excited about Kay Hagan in so much as she isn’t Thom Tillis.

Either way, the game is firmly on again after the summer hiatus. Time to plug back in following that brutal North Carolina legislative session. Most of us won’t be jacking in and spreading precinct maps out on the kitchen floor, though. Most people in North Carolina don’t bother to vote. There had been an uptick in the numbers of people voting in recent years, but that was before the Republican supermajority went on their voter suppression campaign and delivered unto us HB589. It won’t be until November until we see what kind of damage at the polls their efforts can do.

For the time being, those are my words for my fellow gamblers. There will be more as the data becomes available. Junkies have no patience, though, and neither do political journalists for that matter. We’re all desperate, a little crazy, and may never run out of axes to grind.

Then there are the people who actually vote. The folks who do much of the heavy lifting in any form of democracy… at least in theory. These are the people who not only dutifully show up at the polls, they tend to get directly involved in party politics on a local level. Have you met any of these people? Dipping into this particular American subculture one will find emotional cripples and chronic masturbators. Most of them suffer from severe ADHD and many fall somewhere on the autism spectrum.

For good or ill these are my people… the voters. They aren’t as pretty, disciplined, or venal as the political class that feeds off of their energy like thirsty vampires. Voters are the heart and soul, the salt of the earth, and the only real human beings to be found in American politics.

I know, admire, and get a kick out of two very different “Voters” here in Forsyth County. One- Pam Lofland is so far right that I’m pretty sure she considers the general policies of Genghis Khan to be built on a shaky, bleeding-heart foundation. Pam puts the “F” in fundamentalist and has zero fear when it comes to expressing her opinion in a manner that tends to come off like a combination of John Brown and a rabid pit-bull. She is also a very sweet woman, quick with a hug, and possesses the most important thing a person can have if they are going to interact regularly with politics- a genuine sense of humor.

Anne Wilson could not be farther away from Pam politically, socially, and culturally. Mrs. Wilson showed poise and grace when she submitted to arrest at a Moral Monday demonstration in Raleigh becoming the focus of one of the first iconic photographs to come out of the movement. She has consistently battled on the side of public education, advocating strongly for labor rights for teachers and fully funded, equitable public schools. When I go to events in Camel City that are sure to have a progressive political or human rights focused Anne Wilson will always be there. She is smart, consistent, and honest in her beliefs and works hard to make this community a better and more equitable place to live.

Mrs. Wilson is tireless in her activism and like Pam Lofland invest heavily of her time in local party politics. Both ladies care deeply for this nation and for our town. Pam Lofland finds nobility in struggle, importance in the individual, and is deeply passionate about values and doctrines that she sees as traditionally American. She is a patriot and so is Anne Wilson. Mrs. Wilson reaches for the higher aspirations of the American experiment and a return to the traditional Enlightenment philosophies of our Founding Fathers. She sees the American promise in egalitarian terms- an America ruled by empathy rather than antipathy, heart rather than crude self-interest, and a continuing march to real equality. Both women are good people. Both women care about their community and they stand on opposite sides of a divide that is just being made wider by the vast sums of money and energy being expended in 21st Century America to make us all hate one another.

Right now only a small percentage of the over-all, on the ground population is voting. With voter suppression once more a reality in North Carolina and with groups like the NCNAACP pushing back by registering voters there has never been a time when this kind of effort and cash have been used to register new voters. The thing is these Latinos, African Americans, students, and others who have not been participating in real numbers, are being that it is their duty to vote. We are trying to message to them a lesson of civic responsibility and then on the other side of the chute we give them a choice between Pepsi and Coke. “Here kid, take the Pepsi Challenge and F**k you very much.”

All of the grim reality created by voter suppression, gerrymandering and the fact that the candidates simply suck can be a heavy load to tote. Somehow, some way we’ll eventually have to figure some way out of this mess and once more figure out how to handle our business. th eonly thing I am sure of is that it won’t happen this year. To paraphrase two of my heroes – HL Mencken and Mick Jagger:

We can’t always get what we want, but you know sometimes you can get what you deserve.

You can read a summary and purchase Chad Nance’s latest book “The Shape I’m In: The Camel City Dispatches” at a pre-sale discount after the link below: