RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/01/are_democrats_ready_for_a_presidential_candidate_with_a_guru.html

Fifty-nine percent of Democrats polled say they are “excited” about “someone entirely new” as their presidential candidate. Tulsi Gabbard certainly is that.

Representative Gabbard, who just announced her candidacy for president, first grabbed my attention and admiration when she denounced the anti-Catholic religious bigotry demonstrated by Dianne Feinstein, and by implication her Hawaii Democrat colleague, Senator Mazie Hirono and California Senator Kamala Harris.

This position makes her stand out in a crowded and growing field of over 30 potential or declared candidates for the Democrats’ nomination.

As Ruth King noted on these pages last week, the 2020 nomination contest could well recapitulate the rise “out of nowhere” of Barack Obama from obscurity to an eagerly embraced nominee, as someone new and different. Four days later, The Hill has published an opinion piece making the same point, that

…there’s every reason to believe an unknown will emerge and win the Democratic presidential nod. Barack Obama did it in 2008. Bill Clinton in 1992 and Jimmy Carter in 1976 also came from nowhere to win the Democratic presidential nomination. Bernie Sanders didn’t even think he had a chance to win when he entered the 2016 race, but he came within a whisker of taking the Democratic nod away from the prohibitive favorite, Hillary Clinton.

This view is supported by an interesting USA Today/Suffolk University poll revealing that:

Landing at the top of the list of 11 options was “someone entirely new” – perhaps a prospect not on the political radar screen yet. Nearly six in 10 of those surveyed – 59 percent – said they would be “excited” about a candidate like that; only 11 percent said they’d prefer that a new face not run.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/kamala-harris-knights-of-columbus-religious-test/

No longer is the debate over Christianity in the public square. It is over Christians in the public square.

Kamala Harris is set to announce her candidacy for president sometime around Martin Luther King Jr. Day. What sort of chief executive would she be? Well, here’s your first clue: On December 5, Harris posed a series of written questions to Brian Buescher, President Trump’s nominee for district court in Nebraska. The third question reads as follows:

Since 1993, you have been a member of the Knights of Columbus, an all-male society comprised primarily of Catholic men. In 2016, Carl Anderson, leader of the Knights of Columbus, described abortion as “a legal regime that has resulted in more than 40 million deaths.” Mr. Anderson went on to say that “abortion is the killing of the innocent on a massive scale.” Were you aware that the Knights of Columbus opposed a woman’s right to choose when you joined the organization?

Harris wasn’t finished. Follow-ups included “Were you aware that the Knights of Columbus opposed marriage equality when you joined the organization?” and “Have you ever, in any way, assisted with or contributed to advocacy against women’s reproductive rights?”

Buescher, a Nebraska native and graduate of the Georgetown Law Center, replied that he joined the Knights when he was 18 years old; that his involvement includes charitable work; and that his job as a judge is to apply the law regardless of his personal convictions. Strong answers. That he had to offer them is a disgrace.

https://www.city-journal.org/role-of-non-citizen-immigrants-on-congressional-districts

There is little doubt that Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, representing parts of Queens and the Bronx, is being treated as a leader of a new Democratic swing to the left. Nor is there much doubt that the media-savvy upset winner in New York’s 14th congressional district combines personal charisma with a knack for policy packaging, as with her “Green New Deal.” But before she’s anointed as representative of a political trend, it’s worth looking closely at how many—or how few—votes she received compared with other members of Congress, including moderate Democrats, and what that says about a little-discussed aspect of how congressional districts are drawn: the role of non-citizen immigrants.

All congressional districts must have roughly equal population counts (about 711,000 people). But that count includes all residents—including those ineligible to vote, not because they haven’t registered but because they aren’t citizens. Since some districts have more such residents than others, it takes far fewer votes to get elected in some places than in others. In general, districts with low populations of potential voters tend to be Democratic; Democrats represent states, such as New York and California, with high immigrant populations. In practice, this means that many Democratic legislators represent fewer eligible voters than Republican legislators. According to an Axios analysis, the foreign-born population exceeds 20 percent in more than 50 Democratic districts, compared with just 11 such Republican districts.

In Ocasio-Cortez’s district, Census data show that 47 percent of residents are foreign-born—compared with 13 percent for the nation overall. That helps explain how the self-styled democratic socialist won her key primary election with so few votes: just 16,898, out of a total of just 29,000 cast. Immigrants are less likely to be citizens—just 44 percent have been naturalized, according to most recent Census data—and Hispanic immigrants are the least likely of all: 75 percent of immigrants from Vietnam have become citizens, for example, compared with just 23 percent of immigrants from Mexico. In New York’s 14th congressional district, 56 percent of residents are Latino.

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2019/01/28/the-house-of-memes/
Nobody knows what AOC will be or what she will do with a House seat that could very well stay hermetically sealed from competition for the next 50 years.

She’s a maniac, maniac, on the floor!
And she’s dancing like she’s never danced before!

I’m breaking my own rule in writing this column. Because as soon as everyone started referring to freshman New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez by her initials “AOC,” I swore to myself I wouldn’t write about her.

Initials have become a thing with progressive lady icons. There’s the “Notorious R.B.G.,” a play on ’90s gangster-rap martyr Notorious B.I.G., whose persona (and person) stand at some mathematical maximum distance from Justice Ginsburg’s; and, more recently, House Democratic-caucus chairman Hakeem Jeffries’s announcement as he rose to nominate “Nancy D’Alesandro Pelosi” for speaker that “House Democrats are down with NDP.”

Itself a hip-hop homage to the Naughty by Nature song “Down with OPP,” this too is a headscratcher of an association. Be­cause the song isn’t, as you are surely thinking, a call to overthrow the Ontario Provincial Police, but a carnal appreciation of “Other People’s P***ies” (think the pink hats or the Access Hollywood tape).

But I digress. The point is, once the chattering class crowned Ocasio-Cortez as “AOC” before she was even sworn in — hell, before she even won — I knew that the mainstream coverage would only get more fawning, and the backlash from the Right even more virulent. And I knew the world didn’t need one more shmuck with a laptop weighing in.

So here’s 600 more words!

There’s a kind of uniquely digital-age vicious cycle at work. Ocasio-Cortez is young and attractive and charismatic, and of course “intersectional,” and her election flatters the self-conception of all the right people. So it’s natural that she’d get outsized attention, including for her dorm-room ideas on sundry policy topics. I joined many in finding this attention annoying, which in turn led, with some justice, to meta-coverage about how she drives the Right crazy! Which in turn I found more annoying still. Run this dynamic through umpteen iterations and you get way less justice and way more meta.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-chastized-not-understanding-how-congress-works/

Veterans of the Democratic establishment, unsettled by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s lack of deference to seniority and party unity, have cautioned the freshman lawmaker to direct her potent social-media attacks toward Republicans rather than centrist Democrats.

“I’m sure Ms. Cortez means well, but there’s almost an outstanding rule: Don’t attack your own people,” Representative Emmanuel Cleaver (D., Mo.) told Politico. “We just don’t need sniping in our Democratic Caucus.”

Since upsetting six-term incumbent Joe Crowley in a primary last summer and winning election to Crowley’s old seat in November, Ocasio-Cortez has used her immense social-media following to chastise fellow Democrats she believes are insufficiently progressive and too beholden to the antiquated establishment. The 29-year-old’s zealous confrontations with more senior lawmakers, which she appears to have dialed back in recent weeks, have drawn the consternation of those concerned about the potential for her to splinter the party.

“I think she needs to give herself an opportunity to know her colleagues and to give herself a sense of the chemistry of the body before passing judgment on anyone or anything,” said Representative Yvette Clarke (D., N.Y.).

“She’s new here, feeling her way around,” said Representative Kurt Schrader (D., Ore.). “She doesn’t understand how the place works yet.”

In responding to the Politico article Friday morning, Ocasio-Cortez quoted a character from the comic book Watchmen to signal her intention to resist the influence of more experienced lawmakers.Ocasio-Cortez was denied a seat on the influential Ways and Means committee this week despite a public pressure campaign launched by progressive advocacy groups. The former bartender, who joined a climate-change protest in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office during her freshman congressional orientation, also demanded the creation of a specific committee to further the implementation of a so-called “green new deal,” but was refused that as well.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272496/tlaib-democratic-party-and-jew-hate-ari-lieberman

It’s fair to say that ex-congressman John Conyers (D, Mi.), who represented Michigan’s 13th district, was not a good guy. The octogenarian congressman willingly attended Farrakhan gatherings, signed on to anti-Israel legislation and was eventually forced to resign amid a string sexual harassment allegations. It’s also fair to say that his replacement, Rashida Tlaib, who identifies as “Palestinian,” is a walking train wreck by comparison.

In the hours following her inauguration, Tlaib demanded Trump’s impeachment, called him a “mother f*cker,” admitted that she used this language in front of her child, displayed a map in which the State of Israel was replaced with “Palestine,” insinuated that U.S. Jews maintain dual loyalties (this coming from a woman who draped herself in a “Palestinian” flag and garb during her inauguration) and implied that U.S. politicians are controlled by Israel.

This behavior is to be expected from someone like Tlaib, whose unhinged anti-Israel and anti-Semitic vitriol is well known. In fact, Tlaib is so anti-Israel that even the anti-Israel J Street withdrew support for her. What is surprising is the Democratic Party’s near-complete silence on the matter. The calumny of dual loyalty is nearly as old as antisemitism itself and is regurgitated with banal regularity by conspiracy theorists on the hard-right and left. Former KKK leader David Duke and Tlaib find common ground on this matter. Tlaib’s ally, the Farrakhan-supporting Linda Sarsour recently invoked the same anti-Semitic trope.

So why have Democrats remained silent? Why have they not issued a full-throated condemnation of Tlaib’s vile comments? There are three likely explanations, which are not mutually exclusive and often overlap.

First, many Democrats suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome, which prevents them from assessing serious matters, such as antisemitism, in rational terms. Tlaib is anti-Semitic to her core but because she is a Trump hater, she’s given a free pass. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) falls into this category. She showered Linda Sarsour with praise despite Sarsour’s odious past and ties to Farrakhan. Gillibrand’s hatred of Trump is so deep-seated that she will choose to pair up and find common cause with sordid characters who share her pedantic views on Trump.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-rashida-tlaib-ilhan-omar-radicals-drive-democrat-agenda/

Democratic radicals are more important than Chuck and Nancy imagined.

For one evening at least, the national focus on Democrats was on the people whom party leaders want out front orchestrating the opposition to President Donald Trump. All eyes were on the titular heads of the Democratic party: House speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, who provided the response to Trump’s speech insisting on funding for border-security measures, including the wall.

Pelosi and Schumer’s stiff rejoinders, broadcast on national television, had the air of a hostage video, which set off an orgy of Internet mockery that more than matched the anger of the Left against Trump’s speech. It was an apt reminder of the opposition’s problems in spite of Trump’s unpopularity.

But it’s farcical to think that these two aging congressional warhorses were the face of the Democrats, let alone the “resistance” to Trump. Pelosi and Schumer are the ones in charge in terms of determining what Democrats will do about the shutdown and other congressional priorities. But a trio of newcomers is monopolizing the public’s attention in ways that undermine their leaders’ ability to determine the party’s agenda. Most notably, they are driving the Democrats to the left on a number of key issues.

Since their victories last year, Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.), Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.), and Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) have been acclaimed as the future of the Democratic party. Each brings her own assets and liabilities, but collectively they have become symbols of the incoming House Democratic class that is, as the party boasts, younger, more female, and more diverse. They are also much further to the left than the liberal leadership of the Democratic caucus. But is their prominence a true indicator that their party is moving further away from the political center? Or is the attention they’ve gained merely a function of their talent in getting publicity and of the media’s hunger for new faces.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/01/10/dems_diversity_push_may_block_white_males_in_2020_139140.html

n the age of identity politics and increasing demands for diversity, especially on the left side of the political spectrum, can the Democrats nominate a male Caucasian for president in 2020? In a recent CNN poll of registered Democrats, the top three choices were all white men: Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Beto O’Rourke. If the 2018 midterms are a guide to Democratic voter sentiment, however, this may not cut it. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez put it bluntly in her primary campaign slogan against former Rep. Joe Crowley. “It’s time,” she said, “for one of us.”

“It’s hard to imagine the Democrats would end up with a straight white male,” said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball Report. “Expect some type of diversity on the ticket,” he added. “Democrats will want a contrast to the Republicans.”

Downplaying the importance of identity is Bill Galston, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “A candidate won’t be nominated just because they are a minority or a woman,” he said. “It might be a plus factor. But Democrats are united in loathing Donald Trump and will be pragmatic.”

House Democrats just installed the most diverse group of members in history, a milestone driven by candidate selection by the liberal grassroots. In 2018, a record number of women beat men in Democratic primaries. For the first time ever in the general election, white men were a minority in the Democratic candidate pool running for office. “The midterms did seem to indicate that Democrats like voting for women and people of color,” said Kondik.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/01/tulsi_gabbard_calls_out_the_anticatholic_religious_bigotry_of_senator_feinstein.html

Hawaii Democrat Representative Tulsi Gabbard has what looks like a monopoly on common sense among the national Democrats. Writing an op-ed in The Hill yesterday, she offered a warning about the emergence of religious bigotry in her party (although she left aside any specifics about the Jew-hatred currently metastasizing there).

The Democrats are too crazed with hatred to realize that their strongest potential nominee for 2020 would be Tulsi Gabbard. As Ruth King presciently points out today, Gabbard is well positioned for the Democrats to turn to if the circular firing squad of their huge presidential field should leave nobody standing undamaged. Not only is she more sensible than the party’s mainstream (a left-handed compliment if ever there were one), she is a combat zone veteran (as a medic), a racial minority (virtually a requirement today among the Democrats), and a female. She is also good-looking, which matters a lot in politics.
Waiting on Stage Left Again By Ruth King
Read more: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/01/waiting_on_stage_left_again.html#ixzz5cCNpI5gz