Month: November 2018

Jim Acosta straight-up lied about touching WH staffer — and CNN helped.

Dov S. Zakheim:

“…A look at the electoral map shows that much of America, from the Appalachians to the Sierra Nevada and the Cascades, returned Republicans to both the Senate and the House. Not all of these people are undereducated. Not all of them are working class. Many live in suburbs, many are independent, many are even women! There is no doubt that these people have been turned off by Trump’s rhetoric and personal behavior. But it should be equally clear that they were also put off by the growing impression that the likes of O’Rourke, Gillum and Ocasio-Cortez, not to mention Nancy Pelosi, are the long-term face of the Democratic Party. And that face was simply one that many people could not accept. They were prepared to trim Trump’s sails, but they were not prepared to throw his policies overboard.

There is no real evidence that the majority of Americans who have voted Republican are bigots any more than there is evidence that the majority of Democrats are socialists. But clearly, a majority of voters, including the fabled suburban moms, believe that people whose first interface with America is to break its laws—by entering the country illegally—should not be allowed to enter at all. That is not a racist view any more than Canada is considered to be racist because it does not allow for unrestricted immigration.

Similarly, many voters who are strong supporters of Medicare and Medicaid are not comfortable with the notion of a free country-wide medical system that would have to be financed from the taxes paid by middle class citizens who, unlike their wealthier counterparts, cannot afford high-priced accountants who can enable them to game IRS rules.

Finally, it is clear that the majority of Americans have no issue with what their fellow citizens do privately; but many voters have not reacted well to government enactments such as those regarding who may enter which public toilet…”

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/what-happened-blue-wave-35442

Conrad Black:

“…The American political system ineluctably addresses great problems when they have to be addressed and elevates leaders from improbable provenances when it needs them. It is not impossible that the next two years will be a productive time. Continuation of the attempt to destroy Trump by Clintonian dirty tricks and tuning up the Orwellian media hate campaign would lead the Democrats to complete disaster in two years. However appalled Canadians may be by the vulgarity, corruption, hucksterism, maudlin posturing and outright demagogy of the American political system, the national American genius of the spectacle, and of attracting the rapt attention of the world to their astonishing orgies of political theatre, has been demonstrated once again…”

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/conrad-black-an-electoral-draw-but-as-always-astonishing-theatre

105 Articles Cover Ilhan Omar’s Win. Zero Cover Her Anti-Semitism, Finance Investigations, or Perjury Evidence.

Monica Showalter:

“…Then there were the midterm campaigns that weren’t gimmes, some very high profile, and high media-exposure ones: Joe Donnelly of Indiana for Senate. Bill Nelson of Florida for Senate. Andrew Gillum of Florida for governor. Stacey Abrams of Georgia for governor.

Those were the ones Obama went hoarse campaigning for, yelling and waving his arms, voice cracking, speeches described as fiery, telling voters to vote for these guys or die. With Gillum in particular, racial appeals were a factor and Obama’s presence was supposed to help. Gillum had a big media buildup about being a first black governor of Florida as an argument to draw votes, and he later cried racism to fend off corruption allegations. Adding Obama to campaign was obviously part of the appeal. This time, the race-politics identity card simply failed.

And Obama? What did he get? Zilch. Zip. Zero. Nada. The voters rather noticeably rejected the ex-president’s appeal for votes. Been there, done that…”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/11/biggest_loser_at_midterms_barack_obama.html

Michael Goodwin:

“…The conduct of a handful of so-called reporters during President Trump’s news conference was disgraceful beyond measure. This is not journalism, this is narcissism.

Naturally, the boorish Jim Acosta of CNN was the instigator. As is his habit, Acosta doesn’t ask questions — he makes accusations and argues. Almost daily, he does it with the press secretary; Wednesday, he did it with the president.

“I want to challenge you,” Acosta began after Trump called on him. Trump realized he’d made a mistake, murmuring, “Here we go,” and Acosta didn’t disappoint.

He insisted that despite the president’s use of the word “invasion,” the caravan of Central American migrants “is not an invasion.”

He adopted a lecturing, I-know-best tone to declare that “they’re hundreds and hundreds of miles away; that’s not an invasion.”

Trump’s response should not have been necessary: “Honestly, I think you should let me run the country, you run CNN.”…”

https://nypost.com/2018/11/07/jim-acosta-violated-one-of-the-oldest-rules-of-journalism/

HERE COME THE CRAZIES! – Nancy Pelosi As Speaker, Maxine Waters, Adam Schiff, Elijah Cummings In Leadership Roles

Gail Heriot:

“…The Initiative was a clone of California’s Proposition 209. Like Proposition 209, it banned discrimination and preferential treatment based on race, color, sex, ethnicity or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education and public contracting.

Here’s the one of the most interesting aspects of it: In a party-line vote, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, sitting en banc, held that such an initiative was unconstitutional. Michigan voters were not even allowed to require their state universities and agencies to refrain from discrimination intended to help minorities.

For an explanation of the arguments read The Parade of Horribles Lives: Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration, and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality by Any Means Necessary.

Yes, the Supreme Court eventually reversed (over the dissent of two Justices).

Those who wonder why voters who don’t like Trump voted for him anyway should cogitate for while on the Sixth Circuit’s party-line vote in this case. (Note that one judge who was technically appointed by Bush was really a Clinton holdover appointee and voted with the other Democratic appointees.)…”

“…Democrats won the U.S. House last night. They also fell devastatingly short of their own expectations, and the resounding rebuke they hoped to deliver to President Trump has landed as a modest disagreement.

Their House victory will make Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., the new speaker, and that will matter in how this country is governed over the next two years. But the base and most of the media had wanted so much more.

Instead, we got a normal midterm election in a year, and with a president, we were told was anything but normal.

Should Trump feel repudiated by his party’s loss of the House? The strongest argument for this points to Republicans’ poorer-than-usual performance among suburban women in key House races. This, CNN’s Mark Preston suggested, is supposed to illustrate a GOP coalition falling apart under the strain of Trump’s peculiar brand of Republicanism.

But does it really? Or does it exemplify the same problems Republicans have long had with “soccer moms” (as they were once called) at times when the political center and the mood of the country turned against them? The difference between 2006 and 2018 might just be that the losses of 2018 are far less severe, limited mostly to House races, and don’t result in Democrats having any real power over anything — not even the power to block Trump’s nominations…”

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/blue-wave-turns-out-to-be-ordinary-election-rather-than-an-extraordinary-rebuke-to-trump

This is a great piece by Mark Penn. Penn’s non-partisan, rational analysis of the current political landscape is the best I’ve read.

Mark Penn:

“…The Harvard Caps/Harris Poll this month show two rather remarkable figures on President Trump. On the one hand, 57 percent approve of the job that he is doing on the economy, even before the upbeat jobs numbers on Friday, yet when asked if they personally like Trump, only 27 percent said “yes” in a remarkable divergence between policy and personality that will play itself out in the final midterm vote tallies.

When working for President Clinton, we developed the theory of a Saturday night Clinton and an Oval Office Clinton. It was the Saturday night side of him that caused all the trouble. Today there is obviously an economic Trump, more knowledgeable than any recent president about what makes the market tick, and a Twitter Trump, who throws verbal bombs that explode daily in the public square, dragging down his image.

Of course, there is an entire complex of billionaires, partisans, and some in the media devoted to bringing down Trump. So, in fairness, it is not all him, though he seems to revel in the combat that holds him back. It is important to remember that George Bush, the guy everyone wanted to have a beer with, sank down to the 20s in his job approval and was labeled a war criminal and an idiot, shunned even at the Republican Party convention. Almost no one in politics today has a net positive image, and both Trump and Hillary Clinton are viewed rather harshly, almost unchanged, and possibly even worse than during the campaign.

Objectively, the economic Trump has racked up surprising results in a short time, adding more than 5 million jobs after a long expansion that started under President Obama but had stalled. Wages are rising and millions have gone back to the labor force, and an expanded base of workers has a multiplier effect of expanding the consumer and tax base of the country. Trump promised to bring back the coal industry and he did.

Trump even renegotiated NAFTA, and most observers laughed at the idea that he could use threats of tariffs as negotiating chits to get results for American workers who had been abandoned by previous presidents. Obama scoffed at bringing back manufacturing jobs to America as a fantasy, yet hundreds of thousands of such jobs have returned.

Trump also deployed a new kind of economic warfare. When the Turkish government refused to hand over a political prisoner, he imposed sanctions that wrecked the Turkish currency. It took only a few months for the Turkish prime minister to rethink his relationship with the United States and send back Pastor Andrew Brunson. The Chinese first laughed at the demands by Trump to stop stealing our intellectual property. Several hundred billions of tariffs later, and a nearly 30 percent decline in the value of Chinese assets, and Beijing is ready to come to the table…”

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/414880-the-paradox-of-trump-and-midterms

Sarah Hoyt:

“…Please? Because I want to write without worrying about what insanity they’re going to impose on all of us next.  And oooh, boy, every time I think they’ve reached peak insane they go “Hold my beer and watch me falsely accuse someone of rape while wearing a vagina costume.”  So…. please?  I write SF/F and even my mind can’t imagine the new depths of crazy they’ll plumb next…”

From the Victory Girls:

“…A vote for a Democrat, any Democrat, is to reward some of the most divisive, hysterical, irrational behavior in modern politics.

Roll up your voter’s guide, point to the corner and send every Democrat you can into a long time-out. This cannot continue. Do not let it continue.

Just do it, while we still can…”

http://victorygirlsblog.com/vote-no-on-democrats/

Neo-neocon:

“…Nobody knows anything, but dear LORD.  Even if you hate your local GOP knucklehead, even if he is a RINO loser…. do you want Nancy “Grey Goose” Pelosi in charge of the House again?  Do you want those idiots on the left to think — as they have since they successfully demonized the squishy GWB — that they need to keep turning up the insanity and drama and lies? They’re already too crazy. Worse, do you want them to enact their contract on America, from higher taxes to throttling our energy production? Are you NOSTALGIC for the Obama years? I for one would like a chance to dig myself out of the financial hole those years left me in. Vote for your local Republican knucklehead. Even if you’d like someone better.  You go to war with the underwear you got on.  Vote against the democrat lunatics. It’s important…”

https://www.thenewneo.com/2018/11/05/tomorrow-is-election-day/

Ann Althouse:

“…You might think Trump has set the midterms up as a referendum on himself, and I think that’s true. But if the GOP wins, Trump antagonists are not going to give it to Trump and say his referendum passed and bow to democratic choice. They’re going to say that racism won, and resisting and fighting is even more important now that we know so many Americans have been caught up in Trump’s horrible scheme…”

https://althouse.blogspot.com/2018/11/you-know-what-democrats-are-going-to.html

Here is another image that brings back great memories and foretells good times this year. 

I am absolutely jam-packed at work and trying to get all my stuff done before the upcoming holiday. I am really looking forward to Thanksgiving in Yosemite. I love the memories and I love the place. Here is a photo from Thanksgiving 2014.

A long comprehensive look at polling, some recent mistakes, where the industry is going. 

Karlyn Bowman:

“…As political pundits and the general public prepare for the 2018 midterm elections this fall, it’s a safe bet that pollsters will undergo fresh scrutiny. Questions are still being raised about their performance in the 2016 presidential election, and the results from some major 2017 contests did little to allay those concerns. Few polls, for example, predicted the size of Virginia governor Ralph Northam’s nine-point victory last November. And in the special election last December for a U.S. Senate seat in Alabama, the final polls ranged from a nine-point victory for Republican Roy Moore to a 10-point victory for Democrat Doug Jones. Jones won by one and a half percentage points…”

https://nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-trouble-with-polling

Democrats should watch a Trump MAGA rally. I saw portions of one yesterday at a hangar at some airport. There were 20,000 people there according to official estimates. The crowd was raucous, fired-up, clapping and screaming for each of Trump’s stump statements. I haven’t seen this kind of thing for a politician in midterms. This is one of many such rallys the president has attended in the last few months.

Frank Bruni:

“…Too many Democrats spend too much time trumpeting Clinton’s popular-vote victory, blaming the Russians or combing the shadows for anything that absolves them of error. They dismiss Trump as an accident, a freak or a fad. It’s consoling, sure. It’s also an invitation to his next inauguration…”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/02/opinion/midterms-democrats-trump-2020.html