RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/why-is-desantis-tanking

WHY IS DESANTIS TANKING? A new poll Wednesday from the University of New Hampshire shook up the world of political obsessives who watch each twist and turn in the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. No, there was no change at the top — former President Donald Trump is still in the lead in New Hampshire, 26 points ahead of the nearest competitor. The news was that Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), for a long time Trump’s chief rival, has slipped to fifth place in New Hampshire, the second state to vote in the GOP primary contest.

Fifth place! How did that happen? How did DeSantis come to trail not only Trump, with 39% of the vote, but, in order, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, with 13%; former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, with 12%; and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, with 11%? DeSantis’s 10% of the vote in New Hampshire puts him at what might be called the bottom of the second tier. The first tier, of course, is Trump all by himself. The second tier is the group from Ramaswamy to DeSantis. After that, the third tier is Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), with 6%, former Vice President Mike Pence, with 2%, and Gov. Doug Burgum (R-ND) and former Texas Rep. Will Hurd, with 1% each.

The first thing to consider is whether the new Granite State poll is an outlier. The answer is, it appears not. There haven’t been many polls in New Hampshire — just one so far this month, two in August, and three in July — but DeSantis has been bobbing around between 8% and 11% since the summer. Before that, in polls going back to January, he was significantly higher. What appears to be happening in the new poll is that DeSantis is stuck in the 10% range, while others, especially Ramaswamy and Haley, and even Christie a little bit, have risen and narrowly overtaken him.

So what is going on? “The biggest problem I see for DeSantis is that the cultural campaign he has been waging simply doesn’t resonate with New Hampshire Republicans,” said Andrew Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, which conducts the Granite State Poll. “I am still surprised he’s pushing anti-woke rhetoric in New Hampshire. He also peaked too early and became a target of Trump, which prevented him from peeling off some Trump supporters.”

A veteran New Hampshire Republican political operative offers more. “DeSantis has zero on-the-ground presence,” he said. “His national flailings, drama, and message windmilling have scared off folks with little hope of attracting new folks. The Reagan Library debate has to be his breakout moment or…” He let the sentence trail off after that.

One of the good things about starting the Republican primaries with Iowa, then New Hampshire, and then South Carolina is that the three states are very different. There are different kinds of GOP voters in each, which means a candidate must know how to appeal to different kinds of GOP voters, which is, of course, a prerequisite for winning the nomination and being elected president.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-democrats-deal-with-the-devil-clyburn-biden-harris-trump-election-age-a27453b8?mod=opinion_featst_pos1

Readers of this column know that I give historic significance to February 2020, when Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn endorsed Joe Biden in the South Carolina presidential primary. It’s worth a review because that decision now haunts a Democratic Party said to be haunted by Mr. Biden’s “age.”

The existential threat to the Democratic establishment as the 2020 presidential primaries unfolded was Vermont’s socialist senator, Bernie Sanders. Coming off a big win in the Nevada caucuses, Sen. Sanders headed to South Carolina with a leading delegate count of 45—and momentum. The Democrats’ No. 2 vote-getter then wasn’t Joe Biden. It was, incredible to recall, Pete Buttigieg, holding 26 delegates after the voting in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada. Mr. Biden was third, with 15 delegates after a poor showing in Nevada. Trailing was Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a progressive who lacked Bernie’s mysterious charisma.

The Clyburn endorsement, which sent a signal to the state’s black voters, boosted Mr. Biden to a 48.6% win in South Carolina. Bernie was second with 19.8%. Abetted by the moderate voters who were Rep. Clyburn’s target audience, Mr. Biden eked out a win in November. Nearly four years later, the party establishment that sent Mr. Biden toward the presidency is talking about sending him packing. A CNN poll says Nikki Haley would beat Mr. Biden today by 6 points, and the incumbent president is tied statistically with all the other non-Trump GOP candidates.

Let’s understand what happened back in South Carolina. One of literature’s great allegories is the story of Dr. Faustus, who in return for receiving great powers from the devil, agreed to let Mephistopheles come for his soul sometime in the future. By throwing the party behind Mr. Biden, Rep. Clyburn and the Democrats made a conscious Faustian bargain.

The conceit now, or euphemism, in every conversation or poll is that Mr. Biden is “too old.” As in the 25th Amendment’s capacity concerns. But the Biden inner circle knew in February 2020 that the former vice president was already on the brink of being “too old.” Thus the Delaware-basement campaign. But by committing to Mr. Biden, the Democrats got possession of the powers of the presidency for four years. They also got a passive president who held open the door for the largest outpouring of spending and regulation in generations.

Now that fellow on the other side of Faustian bargains has shown up to tell the Democrats their payment is due. After giving them four years of extraordinary power, he’s taking back Joe Biden. What lies ahead for the Biden-less party could be a hard slog.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/09/19/voter-registration-charities-a-massive-overlooked-scandal/

“Nonprofit voter registration” doesn’t sound interesting. Yet nonprofit voter registration, or the use of tax-exempt charitable organizations to conduct and fund voter registration drives, is one of the most important and underreported political scandals of our time.

Nonprofit voter registration, and the get-out-the-vote (GOTV) activities that usually accompany it, have become the heart of a billion-dollar industry in America. According to Candid’s Foundation Funding for U.S. Democracy database, since 2011 nearly 60,000 grants have been made for “Voter Education, Registration, and Turnout” and “Civic Participation,” benefitting 15,000 different organizations to the tune of $5.9 billion dollars.

Most of the largest grantors and grantees in this industry are left-leaning. Despite IRS rules prohibiting 501(c)(3) charitable nonprofit groups from engaging in partisan electioneering, it has long been an open secret that the purpose of their work is to register voters from favorable demographics in order to help get Democrats elected. The voter registration industry has always retreated behind the fig-leaf of “nonpartisanship” when necessary, which has protected it from serious scrutiny..

Until now, that is. My recent special report, How Charities Secretly Help Win Elections, ripped away that fig-leaf. The report reveals the untold story of a nondescript charity named the “Voter Registration Project” that was used to funnel over $100 million into a five-year voter registration scheme hatched by Clinton campaign operatives to help Democrats win elections in 2020. Using tax forms, leaked documents, and leaked emails, the report shows how the scheme aimed to register over 5 million “non-white” voters in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia, and Nevada; how it was developed through multiple drafts and edits into a highly sophisticated plan dubbed the Everybody Votes Campaign; and how that plan was eventually adopted by a super PAC tied to Sam Bankman-Fried that instructed billionaire donors to keep it completely secret since it was the most “cost-effective” method for “netting additional Democratic votes.”

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/white-house/democrats-not-eager-to-defend-harris

Questions are once again swirling around Vice President Kamala Harris.

This time, the story is about whether or not Harris is an asset to President Joe Biden and whether she’s the best choice to join his 2024 ticket.

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) spoke well of Harris during a recent CNN appearance but stopped short of endorsing her for ’24.

“[Biden] thinks so, and that’s what matters,” Pelosi said when asked by Anderson Cooper if Harris should be on the ticket.

Pelosi pointed to Harris’s campaign record as California’s attorney general in 2011, calling the vice president “very politically astute” for winning the election while only having 6% in the polls at one point.

But when asked again if she believed Harris was the best running mate for the president, Pelosi dodged giving an endorsement for the second time, saying the vice president generally doesn’t “do that much” but is “a source of strength, inspiration, intellectual resource, and the rest.”

While 54% of Democratic voters are satisfied with Harris as Biden’s running mate in 2024, fewer are enthusiastic, 30%, according to the latest CBS News-YouGov poll. Her approval ratings have consistently lagged Biden’s.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) followed up the next morning by discussing “the MAGA Right” when asked about Harris.

Jake Tapper then pressed again on Raskin’s opinion of Harris as Biden’s 2024 running mate.

“That’s President Biden’s choice. And I think she’s an excellent running mate for President Biden,” Raskin responded. “I don’t know what more needs to be said about that.”

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4206299-democrats-may-dump-joe-biden-but-they-still-own-his-extreme-policies/

Democrats are about to fire President Biden. Are Republicans ready?

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius ignited a political firestorm recently by veering off script and writing that Joe Biden should retire — a rare chink in the media bulwark protecting the president. In a follow-up interview, the “Morning Joe” crew echoed concerns about Biden’s age. Others will surely follow; polls showing that Biden might lose to Donald Trump and other GOP 2024 candidates have finally brought Democrats to their senses.   

Republicans need to prepare for the very real possibility that Joe Biden is forced out of the 2024 race. What does that mean? It means that it’s time the GOP stop obsessing about Joe Biden’s age, and focus on his disastrous policies instead.

If Biden bows out, all the scrutiny of the president’s incoherence, his stiff gait, his moments of confusion and all the other signs of decline will no longer matter. None of that will be helpful in fending off a run by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, for instance, or Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

The president’s problem isn’t that he’s 80 years old, though that’s what liberals like Ignatius would like us to think. Even as he called for the president to step aside, Ignatius took pains to laud Joe Biden as a “successful and effective president.” 

Most of the country disagrees with Ignatius’s assessment — for good reason. Biden’s policies have hurt average Americans; under this president, the country has become poorer and less safe, while children have lost ground academically. He has richly earned the lowest approval ratings since Jimmy Carter. How does that constitute a successful presidency?

Gearing up for next year’s elections, Republicans should call out Biden’s inability to secure our borders, and his party’s complicity. They must focus on his mulish war on our oil industry, the explosion in the federal deficit and out-of-control spending, his administration’s damaging allegiance to teachers’ unions, the corruption that has rippled through our law enforcement agencies and the perversion of our justice system.  

Republicans must expose the damage done by these policies and remind voters that Democrats across the land have been in lockstep with Biden, endorsing his failed approaches.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/09/13/biden-trump-hold-onto-big-leads-despite-troubles-ii-tipp-poll/

Both President Biden and former President Trump have taken their lumps recently. In Biden’s case, it’s his failing mental acuity, age and allegations of corruption in office. For Trump, it’s an unprecedented slew of criminal indictments. Disaster? Hardly. Both candidates still hold big leads over likely challengers, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows.

In Trump’s case, he has widened his lead. In the latest online national poll, taken from among 509 Republican voters from Aug. 30-Sept. 1, we again asked: “If the Republican presidential primary were held today, whom would you support for the nomination?” The GOP poll has a margin of error of +/-4.4 percentage points.

Among Republican respondents, 60% answered former President Donald Trump, while support for No. 2, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was 11%, and for No. 3, entrepreneur and author Vivek Ramaswamy, came in at 9%.

They were followed by Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence (6%), former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (3%), and a long list of other challengers at 1% or less including South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, conservative commentator and talk-show host Larry Elder, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchison, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, and former Texas Congressman William Hurd.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/09/are_you_better_off_today_than_you_were_four_years_ago.html

What a great question going into the 2024 presidential election!

It was asked over 40 years ago and led to one of the biggest landslide elections in U.S. history.

As the Harvard Kennedy School summarized:

In the final week of the 1980 presidential campaign between Democratic President Jimmy Carter and Republican nominee Ronald Reagan, the two candidates held their only debate. Going into the Oct. 28 event, Carter had managed to turn a dismal summer into a close race for a second term. And then, during the debate, Reagan posed what has become one of the most important campaign questions of all time: “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” Carter’s answer was a resounding “NO,” and in the final, crucial days of the campaign, his numbers tanked. On Election Day, Reagan won a huge popular vote and electoral victory. The “better off” question has been with us ever since. It’s simple common sense makes it a great way to think about elections. And yet the answers are rarely simple.

This is the question that Donald Trump, or whoever is the ultimate GOP nominee, should be constantly asking. At the next GOP debate, rather than debating Trump’s temperament and fitness to serve, while he is leading the GOP pack by 50 points, they should be hammering the question of whether average Americans are better or worse off than they were four years ago.

Let’s look at some specific metrics.

Start with microeconomic issues hitting Americans in the wallet, beginning with retail gasoline prices. Despite the push for EVs, most Americans drive gasoline fueled vehicles and visit the gas station every week. Are they better off compared to four years ago?

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, gas is currently per gallon $3.84 compared to $2.62 four years ago, about a 27 percent increase.

Add the fact that in 2019, four years ago, the U.S. was energy independent for the first time since 1957. In 2022, the U.S. imported 8.32 million barrels per day of petroleum, hardly energy independent. The strategic petroleum reserve is depleted, and the Biden administration is doing nothing to rein in rising gas prices.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/sep/9/biden-fails-crisis-management-in-hawaii-desantis-s/

One legitimate measurement of the readiness and capability of a candidate to be president is how he or she responds to a crisis.

In a moment of crisis, the core of human beings is on display. Some people wither; others shine. Either way, it is always a peek into the foundation of the person — his or her value system.

We had two examples of this recently, as both President Biden and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had the opportunity to respond to crises, in the wake of the devastating fire on Maui and Hurricane Idalia, respectively.

How did they do?

Unfortunately, the president embarrassed himself. While the fires were burning, Mr. Biden remained on the beach and in the beach house of a wealthy donor; he could not even manage an encouraging or sympathetic comment or two to the Maui survivors. When he finally did get around to visiting Hawaii, he compared the fires — which destroyed an entire community and may have killed more than 100 people — to a small kitchen fire he once experienced.

It will not surprise you to learn that the president has managed, in the retelling, to turn that kitchen fire into an inferno that almost killed his wife and his cat, and destroyed his 1967 Corvette. The president wasn’t clear about which loss would have been the greater personal tragedy.

He did this while talking to survivors who, in many instances, were and are certain that their loved ones are dead among the ashes.

https://themessenger.com/opinion/the-presidential-election-narrative-is-changing-with-likely-consequences-for-fundraising

There has been a huge change in the race for president, and it has more to do with elite opinions about the outcome of the race than it does with the actual numbers.

While there has been a marginal improvement in Donald Trump’s position vis-à-vis Joe Biden, largely due to Biden’s low ratings both for job performance and for his handling of the economy, Biden is also plagued by an increasing number of Democrats who are lukewarm to his position atop the party’s ticket.

Indeed, due to Biden’s age and an increasing perception of corruption involving his son Hunter Biden — who we learned this week is likely to be indicted on gun charges before the end of the month — Biden’s vulnerabilities as a candidate are rapidly piling up.

The reason this is important, is that with a spate of polls, including recent national polling by my firm, Schoen Cooperman Research, showing that Trump’s ratings as president (52% approve, 44% disapprove) are close to 10-points higher than Biden’s contemporaneous ratings (44% approve, 54% disapprove), political analysts are starting to realize that what happened in 2016 could well repeat itself in 2020: That is, an upset victory for Donald Trump.

To be sure, for the last six to nine months — both before and after the former president’s four indictments — the narrative among elites had been pretty much as follows: Trump is damaged goods due to his indictments; he can’t focus on a campaign; swing voters, suburbanites, and women will not vote for Trump; his focus on 2020 will just detract from hopes for a better future, and the GOP must do everything they can to find a stronger nominee.

Meanwhile, the data continues to show Trump with roughly a 40-point lead over his closest primary opponent, a 1-point lead over Biden in SCR’s recent polling, as well as a considerable advantage over Biden in the aforementioned retrospective versus current approval rating of the two administrations.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/is-joe-biden-really-running-again/

Will President Joe Biden be on the ballot in the presidential election of 2024? It’s a question that Biden seemed to answer four months ago when he announced, in an online video, that he would be running for re-election next year. ‘Let’s finish this job,’ he said. ‘Because I know we can.’ 

Three-quarters of Americans say they’re ‘seriously concerned’ about Biden’s mental and physical competence to do the job

Team Biden must have hoped that, after making that announcement, the doubts surrounding his bid for re-election would go away. As the polls increasingly show Donald Trump cruising towards a re-nomination for the Republican ticket, America appears then to be heading – grimly, inevitably – towards a repeat of 2020. Trump vs Biden 2024: this time it’s more depressing. 

But the concerns about Joe Biden’s fitness for office now, let alone another four years, have never gone away. In fact, they’re intensifying again. 

He’s an unpopular president: his approval ratings have remained stuck around 40 per cent, though it’s worth noting Obama’s were not much better. The Biden administration like nothing more than to talk up his economic accomplishments – record jobs! Manufacturing boom! – yet the public doesn’t agree. Some 60 per cent of Americans now say that Biden’s policies have made the country worse off. The number of people who think America is on the ‘right track’ under his leadership is currently less than 25 per cent. 

Democrats can and will find comfort in telling themselves that Biden beat Trump in 2020 and, with the added advantages of incumbency, he can do it in 2024. America isn’t really going to vote for Donald Trump again, is it?