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“…During review of provisional ballots to determine whether a recount is justified in the tight Florida governor, senate, and agriculture commission races, Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher identified a voter as a non-citizen and declared that the ballot would not be counted.
Attorneys representing the Democratic candidate for senate Bill Nelson and the Democratic candidate for governor Andrew Gillum objected. A copy of the uncertified transcript shows the interaction.
Chairman of the Palm Beach County Republican Party Michael Barnett attests to the validity of the transcript. He told The Federalist that several Republican lawyers and party officials heard the back and forth between the canvassing board and attorney’s from the Gillum and Nelson campaigns.
“I would think this is something we could all agree on—that non-citizens shouldn’t vote, but evidently that’s not the case with Democrats,” Barnett said…”
http://thefederalist.com/2018/11/10/palm-beach-county-democrats-argue-count-votes-cast-non-citizens/
Rick Moran:
“…Are Florida Democratic election officials the dumbest Democrats in the country? They apparently can’t even steal an election properly.
Governor Rick Scott, the GOP candidate challenging Senator Bill Nelson, has won two separate lawsuits against Democratic officials who violated the Florida constitution and election law. At issue are ballot counting procedures that are clearly spelled out in the law that two Democratic party functionaries blatantly violated.
One suit targeted Broward County Election Supervisor Brenda Snipes who, incredibly, was refusing to turn over voting records on the counting and collection of ballots to Scott and the NRSC, despite the law saying she must. The judge ordered her to immediately do so.
The other suit by Scott was against Palm Beach Election Supervisor Susan Bucher. According to AP, Bucher was sued for “refusing to allow official party and campaign representatives into the ballot counting area, and having staff members determine a voter’s intent without review by the county canvassing board.”
I guess she didn’t want anyone to know what she was up to…”
From Glenn Reynolds:
It’s like all this defense of “norms” and “rule of law” in response to Trump is really just the same kind of hackish self-serving bullshit that got him elected in the first place.
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
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/
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…”
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