RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2018/11/14/nevertrumps

“At what point do others stand up and not just deny Kristol his “conservative” cred, but acknowledge that he is now on the other side? When you join the battlefield alongside partisan hacks like Adam Schiff and take payoffs from leftist billionaires to do their political dirty work, there is nothing Republican or conservative, or frankly, decent, about you.”

Just hours after Jeff Sessions resigned as attorney general last Wednesday at the president’s behest, #TheResistance found its newest target for destruction: Sessions’ interim replacement, Matthew Whitaker.

Negative coverage about the acting attorney general has dominated national publications and cable news outlets. Reporters have portrayed Whitaker as a Trump lackey, a crackpot, and an “attack dog”; Democratic leaders are demanding that he recuse himself from overseeing Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation; on Tuesday, incoming House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) warned that if Whitaker fails to step aside from the probe, “his actions will be exposed.” (Of course, this is pure propaganda. As Andrew McCarthy explains, Whitaker is well-qualified and meets the legal requirements for an interim presidential cabinet appointment.)

NeverTrump “conservatives” are aiding Schiff and the media in their campaign to paralyze if not remove Whitaker. Commercials attacking the acting attorney general were aired on several Sunday morning political shows. The ads were sponsored by “Republicans for the Rule of Law,” a group founded earlier this year by Bill Kristol, the editor-at-large of The Weekly Standard. The group’s primary role so far appears to be pimping for the Mueller probe, a political witch-hunt that Kristol and his fellow NeverTrumpers pray will lead to the impeachment and removal of the president. The Left and their NeverTrump footsoldiers fear Whitaker will thwart the special counsel’s investigation instead of rubber stamping Mueller’s ever-expanding investigation as Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has done over the past 18 months.

Buying primo air time on network television doesn’t come cheap. So who is funding “Republicans for the Rule of Law” and their attacks on the Republican president and his acting attorney general? Is it big Republican donors?

We haven’t found any, but we have learned learned that one of Kristol’s benefactors is progressive billionaire Pierre Omidyar, the co-founder of eBay.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/chuck-schumer-urges-florida-to-ignore-ballot-deadlines/

Senator Chuck Schumer on Tuesday encouraged Florida to blow off fast-approaching deadlines to submit vote totals for the Senate race where Republican Rick Scott leads incumbent Democratic senator Bill Nelson by a tiny margin.

“The more time that passes since election day, the better things keep looking for Democrats,” Schumer said at a joint press conference with Nelson in Washington, D.C.

“Supervisors of the elections should have all the time they need to count every Floridan’s ballot,” the Senate minority leader said. “Even if the vote count has to go beyond Sunday.”

Schumer said the deadlines should be ignored since the Senate race does not have an electoral vote in Congress scheduled for December as the 2000 presidential race did when it underwent a recount in Florida.

“We will not have a rerun of 2000, when bullying and intimidation ruled and created a rush to judgement that, to this day, many Americans believe that election was unfairly decided,” Schumer said. “That cannot happen again.”

The Florida governor has a mere 12,562 more votes than Nelson according to the current count.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/11/georgia-election-critics-question-legitimacy-stacey-abrams-lost/

Stacey Abrams’ refusal to concede is not bolstered by any real indication of election malfeasance.

In the overtime of the 2018 elections, the Left can’t decide whether it opposes casting doubt on election results or insists on it.

In the case of the Georgia gubernatorial election, narrowly lost by African-American activist Stacey Abrams, it’s unquestionably the latter. A cottage industry has grown up around declaring the outcome a stain on our nation.

Carol Anderson of Emory University deemed the state’s election system “neo-Jim Crow.” Dan Rather found the gubernatorial vote in Georgia “a deeply troubling challenge to American democracy,” and said if it were “a foreign country there would be a call for international inspectors.” Georgia has become a byword for “voter suppression,” which is presumed to be why Secretary of State Brian Kemp, a Republican, will soon occupy the governor’s mansion.

The critics advance myriad reasons why the result in Georgia isn’t legitimate:

They complain that Kemp ran for governor while he was still secretary of state. Yes, but Georgia’s constitution allows for that, and it’s been done before. In the 2000s, Democrat Cathy Cox ran for her party’s gubernatorial nomination while serving as secretary of state. Kemp ran for re-election twice while simultaneously occupying the office, with no one seriously alleging malfeasance. In any case, localities count the votes, not the secretary of state’s office.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-joins-climate-change-protest-outside-pelosis-office/

Newly elected New York Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez paid her first visit to the office of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) Tuesday morning — as part of a protest demanding legislative action on climate change.

Ocasio-Cortez, who easily won the election in New York’s deep blue 14th district, praised the protesters for putting everything on the line to save the planet.

“I just want to let you all know how proud I am of each and every single one of you. For putting yourselves and your bodies and everything on the line to make sure we save our planet, our generation, and our future,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “We do not have a choice. We have to get to 100 percent renewable energy in 10 years. There is no other option. The IPCC let us know that.”

“Should Leader Pelosi become the next speaker of the House, we need to tell her that we’ve got her back on showing and pursuing the most progressive energy agenda that this country has ever seen,” Ocasio-Cortez also told the protesters.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/11/13/the-2020-

As much as we’d all like to take a moment and enjoy the end of the 2018 midterms, the reality is that November 7 was not the last day of election season; it was the first day of the 2020 presidential campaign. Politics is an never-ending game.

And you’d better believe the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries are going to be a circus. The field of candidates who will run is shaping up to be nearly as large as that of the Republicans in 2016, which was the largest number of candidates in a presidential primary in American history. It’s not too early to begin thinking about who those candidates will be.

Indeed one candidate, who may be considered “serious,” already has officially declared his intention to run: U.S. Representative John Delaney of Maryland. Delaney is likely to go the way of Martin O’Malley in 2020 (notwithstanding the fact that Martin O’Malley himself may reappear in 2020 to run), and inevitably he will be joined by other “also-rans” with no viable shot.

Still, expect no shortage of major candidates fighting for the lead in each of the major ideological lanes of the Democratic field.

In the post-2016 world, it makes the most sense to view any future presidential primary through a lens of “insiders” versus “outsiders,” with perhaps a few other candidates somewhere in the middle of this spectrum between the establishment and the populists. First, there is the high-profile battle for the blessing of the party elites.

A Veep Sweep?
As numerous nationwide and statewide polls have already shown, the apparent frontrunner is former Vice President Joe Biden. Having previously run in 1988 and 2008, a third run in 2020 would be the latest in a long American tradition of vice presidents taking up the mantle of their party after the president they served under has been termed out of office.

Biden is hardly a sure-thing, however. His age (he’s three years older than President Trump) and his reputation for remarkably stupid gaffes may prove to be serious barriers. And, in the era of #MeToo, don’t be surprised if his creepy, touchy-feely approach with women becomes a campaign issue.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/hanging-chads-the-sequel-1542068804

Florida’s Secretary of State on Saturday announced statewide recounts in the elections for Senate and Governor, but don’t think this ends the counting if Republicans Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis continue to lead. Democrats have dispatched their prize election litigator Marc Elias to the state, so look for this to go as far as his lawsuits will take them.

After Florida’s 67 counties submitted unofficial results Saturday, Mr. Scott led Democratic Senator Bill Nelson by about 12,600 votes and Mr. DeSantis led Andrew Gillum by some 33,600. Those margins are under 0.5% of total votes cast, triggering an automatic machine recount under Florida law.

This isn’t likely to change the outcome. The nonprofit FairVote—which supports structural voting changes—analyzed 4,687 statewide elections between 2000 and 2015. There were 27 statewide recounts and only three resulted in an election reversal—Democrat Al Franken’s 2008 Senate race in Minnesota, a 2006 auditor race in Vermont, and Washington’s gubernatorial contest in 2004. The recounts resulted in an average change in the margin between the two lead candidates of 282 votes.

Florida’s infamous presidential recount in 2000 backs up these findings. George W. Bush ended election night 1,784 votes ahead of Al Gore. An automatic recount dropped that lead to 327 votes. Even after Democratic shenanigans involving selective hand recounts, Mr. Bush ended with a 537 vote lead. Florida still used punchcard ballots in 2000 while today it mostly uses electronic voting systems.

This explains why Mr. Elias is talking up what he calls an “undervote” in Broward County, a Democratic stronghold where some 25,000 more votes were cast for Governor than for Senate. Mr. Elias claims that a “tabulation” error is denying Mr. Nelson thousands of votes.

The undervote is more likely the result of poor ballot design. The box for the Senate race was on the bottom left corner of Broward ballots, underneath the voting instructions—which may have confused some voters. The Tampa Bay Times reports that MIT political scientist Charles Stewart III found that “the Broward undervoting rate was about the same for early voting, vote by mail and Election Day voting—which would seem to suggest that undervoting should be attributed to humans, not machines.”

Mr. Elias is hoping to turn up enough ballots during the machine recount to hold Mr. Scott within the 0.25% margin necessary to trigger a recount by hand. That would give him the ability to contest the “undervote” ballot by ballot in Democratic strongholds. Mr. Elias said Saturday that a hand recount will cause Mr. Scott’s lead to “evaporate entirely.” This could be hanging chads, the sequel. Mr. Gillum can’t claim a tabulation error to account for his deficit, but he has also withdrawn his election-night concession in hope of his own deus ex Marc Elias.

Mr. Scott has already won two legal judgments requiring election supervisors in Broward and Palm Beach counties to open their vote-counting process to campaign lawyers. This may reduce the chance that they suddenly discover boxes of supposedly uncounted votes, in the Lyndon Johnson tradition. On Monday the Nelson team nonetheless filed a lawsuit demanding that even mail-in ballots that had arrived 10 days after election night be counted.

Florida has given counties until 3 p.m. Thursday to finish the machine recount, and the state needs to insist on that deadline. The longer this stretches on, the more opportunity for mischief, and the less confidence voters will have in the integrity of Florida’s election.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/browards-ballots-1542062920

Continuing irregularities related to voting in Florida’s Broward County have inspired a local judge to require more oversight of the recount of ballots from last Tuesday’s election. But the overseers are unlikely to inspire confidence among voters in south Florida or anywhere else in the United States.

The Miami Herald reports:

A Broward judge on Monday turned down Gov. Rick Scott’s request to “impound and secure” all voting machines in Broward’s elections headquarters when they’re not being used to recount ballots.

But Circuit Judge Jack Tuter offered a compromise: Add three Broward Sheriff’s deputies to the current lineup of [Broward Sheriff’s Office] officers and private security guards overseeing the recount under way at the county’s election’s center in Lauderhill.

Tuter stopped short of granting the Scott campaign’s request for an injunction to impound the machines, but agreed with his lawyers that “there needs to be an additional layer of confidence” in the vote-recount system in Broward. The votes in the U.S. Senate race between Scott and incumbent Bill Nelson are part of the recount.

The judge is correct about a lack of confidence that Broward officials will conduct a fair and competent count. A Journal editorial on Saturday summarized the jurisdiction’s disturbing recent history of legal violations. This morning Politico’s Marc Caputo wrote that a change in leadership is imminent:

Counting unlawful votes. Destroying ballots. Sunshine Law violations. Busted deadlines.

So many controversies have bedeviled Broward County Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes — culminating in her office’s troubles in the aftermath of Florida’s chaotic 2018 elections — that her days in office are now numbered, insiders and lawmakers say.

She’s losing support from fellow Democrats and faces the increasing likelihood of an embarrassing suspension from office at the hands of either Gov. Rick Scott or his likely successor, Ron DeSantis.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/11/dan-crenshaw-forgives-pete-davidson-saturday-night-live/There’s a market for grace in American politics.

Given the spirit of our times, things could have gone so differently. On November 3, when Saturday Night Live comic Pete Davidson mocked Texas Republican Dan Crenshaw’s eye patch, saying he looked like a “hit man in a porno movie” — then adding, “I know he lost his eye in war or whatever” — it was a gift from the partisan gods.

A liberal comic had gone too far. He had mocked a man who was maimed in a horrific IED attack, an attack that had taken the life of his interpreter and nearly blinded him for life. He mocked a courageous man’s pain. And thus Crenshaw had attained the rarest position for a Republican politician: aggrieved-victim status. He was free to swing away.

Instead, he refused to be offended. He noted that the joke was bad, but his handling of the whole affair was — as the Washington Post described him — “cool as a cucumber.” Then Saturday Night Live called. The show wanted to apologize, and they wanted Crenshaw on-air. He said yes, and this happened:

It was the act of grace heard ’round the nation. Davidson came on the “Weekend Update” set and offered his apology, and then Crenshaw joined. He took some good-natured shots at Davidson — Crenshaw’s phone had an Ariana Grande ringtone (Grande recently broke her engagement with Davidson), and he mocked Davidson’s appearance — but then things took a more serious turn.

https://www.axios.com/house-democrats-subpoenas-trump-administration-cf3ed351-ff11-4498-89f4-cee588145198.html

House Democrats plan to probe every aspect of President Trump’s life and work, from family business dealings, the Space Force and his tax returns to possible “leverage” by Russia, top Democrats tell us.

What they’re saying: One senior Democratic source said the new majority, which takes power in January, is preparing a “subpoena cannon,” like an arena T-shirt cannon.

Based on our reporting and other public sources, Axios’ Zach Basu has assembled a list of at least 85 potential Trump-related investigation and subpoena targets for the new majority. (See the list.)

Incoming House Intelligence chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) told “Axios on HBO” that he expects Trump to resist the committees’ requests, demands and subpoenas — likely pushing fights over documents and testimony as far as the Supreme Court.

Why it matters: The fight will test the power of the presidency, Congress and the Supreme Court.

Top Democrats, who had largely avoided the subject during the campaign, now tell us they plan to almost immediately begin exploring possible grounds for impeachment. A public report by Robert Mueller would ignite the kindling.

Tom Steyer, the liberal activist who spent more than $100 million during the campaign to build support for impeachment, said establishment leaders who are trying to postpone talk of impeachment are “the outliers”: “80% of registered Democrats think … we’re right.”

Two of the most powerful incoming chairs tell “Axios on HBO” that they are plotting action far beyond Russian interference in the 2016 elections.

1) Schiff, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, told us he wants to help special counsel Robert Mueller and plans to release — with some redactions of classified material — transcripts of dozens of interviews the committee conducted during its own Russia probe.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/11/12/more_women_in_congress_but_was_it_a_pink_wave_138629.html

The 2018 election season was billed as the Year of the Woman, but was there a “pink wave” to match the hype? With results from the midterms (mostly) tabulated, the election indeed resulted in a new high-water mark for women in the House — an increase of 15 seats from 85 in 2016 to at least 100 in 2018 — though some observers are hesitant to use the term “wave.”

“All along, we’ve been pushing back on the expectation that any single election would be a ‘wave’ or a ‘tsunami’ for women,” said Kelly Dittmar, a scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. She added, “It’s taken us a long time to get even here.”

In the Senate, the change will be more modest (or possibly remain flat). Claire McCaskill and Heidi Heitkamp lost; Jacky Rosen and Marsha Blackburn won, and either Martha McSally or Kyrsten Sinema will represent Arizona. If Cindy Hyde-Smith — who was appointed to the seat of Thad Cochran this spring — wins her Mississippi run-off election on Nov. 27, the number in the chamber will rise by one to 24.

Overall, of the women elected to both houses, 34 were new faces, which tops the record set in 1992, when 28 non-incumbent women were victorious. In the end, the Year of the Woman will result in a female representation on Capitol Hill of 23 percent, up from 20 percent.

As the midterms approached, the message from women’s advocates morphed “The Year of the Woman” to “The Year of Firsts.” For the first time, Native American and Muslim women were elected. Also for the first time, Alaska, Mississippi, North Dakota, Iowa and Vermont will be sending women to the House.

By other measures, it also was a milestone election season. A record number of women filed to run for office, and the amount of money raised by women for women was also an all-time high. From a political standpoint, these numbers were lopsided, since most of “the firsts” were achieved by Democrats. “Democrats have a more robust recruitment process and a network of organization to support their candidates,” said Dittmar.