RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/trending/at-state-level-democrats-are-still-lagging/
“Despite their House takeover, Democrats only picked up a paltry 6 state legislative chambers, leaving Republicans in control of 21 states. ”

Democrats may have taken over the House, but the party didn’t progress much in reversing the decade-long trend of Republican dominance at the state level.

Democrats gained complete control of only four state legislatures, while flipping six chambers. That leaves 61 chambers in Republican control while Democrats are in charge in only 37. (Note: Nebraska’s unicameral legislature is non-partisan.)

National Conference of State Legislatures:

In terms of overall legislative control (both House and Senate), Dems gained control of four on Tuesday. Republicans will control 30 versus the Democrats’ 18 when sessions convene in January. Minnesota is now the only state where legislative control is divided. It’s the lowest number of divided legislatures in more than 100 years, matching 1914 when Montana was the only state with a split legislature.

As for state control, which includes the governor along with the legislature, Democrats went from controlling eight to 14.

The GOP still completely controls 21 state governments with 13 now having divided government and Georgia still undecided.

More facts from NCSL:

No surprise. The party of the president lost seats (and chambers) in this midterm as usual. That’s par for the course—in 28 of the midterm elections held since 1900, that’s been true.
More than 330 seats nationwide shifted from Republican to Democrat. That is short of the typical losses suffered by the party in the White House. The average loss to the president’s party in midterms since 1902 is 424 legislative seats.
Among the six chambers won by Ds were the New Hampshire House, the Maine Senate and the Minnesota House. Those three chambers have been very volatile in recent years. They have all switched party control in four of the last five elections.
The Connecticut Senate went from tied to Democratic control. Since 1900, the Connecticut Senate has changed hands 23 times—more than any other state legislative body in the United States.
No chambers will be tied going into next year’s sessions. At least one legislative chamber was tied from 1966 until 2011, and then Connecticut wound up tied in 2016.
Two top legislative leaders lost their elections, North Dakota House Majority Leader Al Carlson and New Hampshire House Speaker Gene Chandler.
The Republican caucus in the Hawaii Senate took a huge leap forward, from zero members to one.
It is very likely that more women will serve in state legislatures come January than at any point in American history. The numbers are still being crunched.
In the Nevada Assembly, women will hold a majority of all seats—22 out of 42.
As occasionally happens, a legislative candidate passed away shortly before Election Day, but the name remained on the ballot. Nevada brothel owner Dennis Hof, who died Oct. 15, won his race on Tuesday, getting more than 17,000 votes. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/11/07/exit_polls_show_suburbs_as_likely_2020_battlefield_138582.html

The battleground for the 2020 presidential election may have been mapped out by Tuesday’s midterms and exit polling shows it lies smack dab in the middle of America’s suburbs.

Nearly 50 percent of the electorate is suburban, which this year was evenly split between Republicans and Democrats — at 49 percent each — according to the National Election Poll, the exit poll of almost 19,000 respondents often cited by the national media. For the last two decades, suburban voters have leaned slightly Republican, as was the case in 2016 when Donald Trump outpolled Hillary Clinton by four percentage points. In contrast, urban voters supported Democrats by a 33-point margin in this year’s midterms, while Republicans carried rural areas by 14 points.

“There’s an old adage in demographics that density equals Democrats, but the Democrats are starting to show significant strength in the less dense suburbs,” said Karlyn Bowman, a demographics expert at the American Enterprise Institute. She predicted that “the suburbs will continue to be a competitive area of focus” in 2020.

Sarah Chamberlain, president of Main Street Republican Partnership, noted that “Republicans won or lost by a little bit — it wasn’t a blow-out in the suburbs.”

One of the biggest shifts in suburban voting patterns involves married women. In 2016, for the first time since exit polling began in 1980, married women slightly supported the Democratic presidential candidate, 49 to 47 percent. That shift became more pronounced this year with married women supporting Democrats by 54 percent to 44 percent. “Trump’s temperament and demeanor has exacerbated the movement of married women towards the Democrats,” said Bowman.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-nancy-pelosi-method-1541635347

Equity markets rallied Wednesday on the expectation, or maybe the hope, that divided power in Washington will mean two years of policy gridlock. That is probably the best possible outcome of a Democratic House, though on Wednesday President Trump opened the door to anti-growth policies.

With a handful of House races undecided, Democrats appear to have won a 12 or so seat majority. While that’s narrow, Democrats under Speaker Nancy Pelosi have shown they march in unison. She doesn’t have a Freedom Caucus.

Democrats will start by unleashing multiple investigations into all things Trump to tarnish the President and his family as corrupt and impeach him if they come up with enough material. Expect two years of leaks about Mr. Trump’s tax returns, business dealings, and his Administration’s contacts with business. The GOP’s Senate gains after the political assault on Brett Kavanaugh would counsel restraint on impeachment. But the left and Democratic presidential candidates may insist on it.

As for policy, Mr. Trump will need Mrs. Pelosi to pass Nafta 2.0, raise the debt ceiling and negotiate a budget. She will try to extract policy concessions, such as a tax increase to pay for public works. At his Wednesday media circus, er, press conference, Mr. Trump opened the door to trading an “adjustment” on tax rates for Democratic support for a middle-class tax cut. Don’t be surprised if Mrs. Pelosi jumps on the offer, which would tar Mr. Trump as a tax raiser and hurt the economy.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/navy-seal-dan-crenshaw-mocked-on-snl-as-porno-hitman-wins-house-seat/

Dan Crenshaw, the former Navy SEAL who lost his eye on his third tour to Afghanistan and whom Saturday Night Live actor Pete Davidson disgustingly mocked as a “porno hitman,” had the last laugh on Tuesday night.

According to Politico, Crenshaw won a smashing victory over Democrat Todd Littleton, 53 percent to 44 percent, in Texas’s 2nd Congressional District.

“Texans are hard working, love their country and believe in the American ideal; the greatest set of ideas for a free people that the world has ever known. As a team that was the message we spread for the last year.
Thank you for your dedication and trust. See you in Washington!”

During a segment of “Weekend Update” this past Saturday, Davidson mocked Crenshaw for his black eyepatch. “You may be surprised to hear he’s a congressional candidate from Texas and not a hitman in a porno movie,” the actor quipped. “I’m sorry. I know he lost his eye in war or whatever.”

The remark drew widespread and bipartisan criticism, as Davidson had mocked a true American hero. Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), who herself lost her logs in Iraq, demanded an apology from the SNL actor.

“No one should ever mock a Veteran for the wounds they received while defending our great nation, regardless of political party or what you think of their politics. Pete Davidson owes Dan Crenshaw an apology,” Duckworth declared.

On Monday, Crenshaw demanded a different kind of apology. He asked SNL to donate $1 million to veterans groups. “There’s a lot of veterans that really need help, and frankly, this kind of thing is offensive to them,” he told CNN’s Dan Camerota. “They feel laughed at.” CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271872/our-new-muslim-representatives-robert-spencer

As expected, two Muslim women, Rashida Tlaib in Michigan and Ilhan Omar in Minnesota, have been overwhelmingly elected to Congress. The establishment media will celebrate these victories as triumphs of America’s “diversity”; unfortunately, in reality neither one is worth celebrating.

Tlaib is a vociferous foe of Israel. With the Democrats now regaining control of the House, Tlaib is likely to be an energetic proponent of the new majority’s vendetta against the Middle East’s only democracy. The House is likely to do all it can to roll back President Trump’s pro-Israel polices, with Tlaib as well as Omar as becoming the public faces of the effort.

According to the JTA, when Tlaib was asked if she would vote against military aid to Israel, Tlaib responded: “Absolutely, if it has something to do with inequality and not access to people having justice. For me, U.S. aid should be leverage. I will be using my position in Congress so that no country, not one, should be able to get aid from the U.S. when they still promote that kind of injustice.”

What kind of injustice? Tlaib, of course, had nothing to say about the genocidal incitement against Jews and Israel that regularly features on Palestinian television. She did say, however, that she favors a one-state, not two-state, “solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: “One state. It has to be one state. Separate but equal does not work. I’m only 42 years old but my teachers were of that generation that marched with Martin Luther King. This whole idea of a two-state solution, it doesn’t work.”

Indeed it doesn’t. A Palestinian state would be a new base for renewed jihad attacks against Israel. But a “one-state solution” would be even worse, unless that state is the current State of Israel, but that is not the one state Tlaib has in mind. She is calling for an Israeli/Palestinian state that would not be a Jewish State or a homeland for the Jewish people, but a federation in which Palestinians would soon overwhelm Jews demographically. Progressive denial of their rights would soon follow: as I show in my book The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS, there has never been a majority Muslim nation in which Jews enjoyed equality of rights with Muslims. Tlaib’s unitary state would be no different.

http://thefederalist.com/2018/11/05/dan-crenshaw-sexy-congressman-america-needs/
Dan Crenshaw Is The Sexy Congressman America Needs By Ellie Bufkin
Dan Crenshaw is a former Navy SEAL and Republican candidate for U.S. Congress for Texas’s 2nd

Dan Crenshaw is not just a congressional candidate for Texas. He’s an American hero, a patriot, and a man compelled to serve his nation beyond the sacrifice he’s already given in military service.

He’s also quite handsome. “Saturday Night Live’s” Pete Davidson attempted to make fun of him on the show’s broadcast over the weekend, comparing a photo of an eyepatch-donning Crenshaw to a “hit man from a porno movie.” He admitted that he knew Crenshaw’s eye injury was the result of being wounded “in war or whatever,” but that didn’t stop the joke from amusing Davidson.

Jokes about wounded veterans have not been historically well-received, and this SNL snafu was no different. Backlash was immediate, with many on social media calling for the comedian to be fired, or for NBC to cancel the show.

It wasn’t until the following morning that Crenshaw learned he had been the butt of a tasteless attempt at political humor. The congressional hopeful took to the high road, telling T.M.Z. he would not be demanding any apologies or resignations over the gaffe. He said, “I want to get away from this culture where we demand an apology every time someone misspeaks.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/11/democrats-havent-earned-your-vote-midterms-2018/

If you like your Republican, you should keep your Republican.

Tens of millions of Americans have mailed in their ballots already. Tomorrow, tens of millions more will go to the polls. I’m not confident how they’ll vote, but I am absolutely certain of one thing: Not one of them will see the name “Donald Trump” on the ballot.

Instead, they will see different individuals with characters very different from Trump’s. They will see Republicans and Democrats with their own policy positions and their own rhetorical styles.

Yet now voices from the left, the center, and what can only be called the “former right” are calling on Republicans and conservatives to abandon any kind of individualized determination for the sake of opposing a man who isn’t on the ballot. They’re making that demand even as leading Democrats prove time and again that they will not moderate for the benefit of Republicans who change parties, will not compromise, and — crucially — will not even behave better than Trump himself.

In other words, they are asking for your political capitulation without earning your support.

Democrats claim that now is a critical time for public hygiene. It’s time to hold corrupt, self-aggrandizing politicians accountable. I agree.

Ask your Democratic candidate if he or she is willing to publicly condemn New Jersey senator Robert Menendez — tried for public corruption and admonished by the Senate Ethics Committee for doing favors for a wealthy contributor in exchange for lavish gifts — the way that so many conservatives condemned (and ultimately rejected) Roy Moore.

Democrats claim that now is the time to reject the politics of personal destruction. They look at a president who calls people names, who spins out wild conspiracy theories (Ted Cruz’s father participated in the Kennedy assassination? Really?), and they demand better. I agree.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/11/05/will-trump-convince

President Trump travels to Indiana again today—his second visit to the Hoosier State in three days. The president is pushing hard to make sure Mike Braun, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, wins on Tuesday. If Braun snatches away this critical seat from the Democrats, he could help widen the GOP’s majority in the Senate (if Democrats don’t add any seats) and turn this already-red state even redder.

But there could be a bigger reason why Trump wants Braun in the Senate: the desire to have a fellow political novice and successful business owner on his side.

“I believe Trump showed you can come from outside the political farm system and gain the most powerful spot in the world,” Braun told me Thursday morning on his way to a campaign stop in South Bend. “More and more people will enter politics from the business world, bringing a new dynamic. We can get rid of career politicians, at least I hope that’s the case.”

Braun, 64, is taking on Democratic incumbent Senator Joe Donnelly, who is finishing his first term. The race is considered a toss-up; recent polls suggest it’s a dead heat—and an expensive one. Outside groups have spent nearly $65 million in Indiana since May, compared to $45 million on the state’s 2016 Senate race between Evan Bayh and incumbent Republican Todd Young.

A two-term state legislator, Braun is the founder and chief executive officer of Meyer Distributing, an automotive parts distributor with locations across the country. “There are some feisty entrepreneurs in Congress,” Braun said. “We need some in the Senate, too. I turned a little company into a national one, and if I win and Rick Scott wins and Mitt Romney wins, we will double the number of businessmen in the Senate.”

Trump lauded Braun’s business background during a campaign event in Indianapolis on Friday night, where the president was joined by legendary former Indiana University basketball coach Bobby Knight.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/11/the_breaking_factors_that_will_determine_the_election.html

As I have done every two years for quite some time, here are my predictions for the midterms.

House of Representatives

There are several dozen House races and five Senate races where one candidate or the other has a lead of 2 points or less in the most recent survey. Picking individual winners in these House races is hazardous since there are few public polls of these districts . Another few dozen House seats show a candidate leading by five points or less. The great majority of the close House races are Republican-held seats, hence their vulnerability to Democrats taking over the House, where a net pickup of 23 seats is required.

Most every analyst — Larry Sabato, Stuart Rothenberg, the Cook Political Report, the Real Clear Politics average, Nate Silver’s fivethirtyeight.com, Nate Cohn in the upshot in the New York Times — is predicting a pickup for the Democrats of more than the 23 seats needed. Several have increased their range of the likely pickup in the last week to the 30 to 40 seat range.

Polling is becoming more difficult with ever lower response rates to telephone surveys with live callers. . There are sometimes higher response rates to automated surveys, whether by phone or online (though not much higher), and there are issues related to whether such surveys reach a representative sample of likely voters.

Rasmussen, an automated survey, shows Trump with a positive approval score, and most other surveys show him 8-12 or more points net negative. The generic ballot for which party voters prefer control Congress has consistently shown large margins for the Democrats, currently over 7 points on average, though a few surveys have shown smaller margins this week.

The Democrats seem poised for significant gains in the House delegation in Pennsylvania , due to court-ordered redistricting. Democrats should also net big gains in California, New Jersey, and possibly Florida and Virginia, where a weak (or in California, nonexistent) GOP Senate candidate could drag down GOP House candidates. There are many other states where there are 1 or 2 endangered GOP held seats.

RCP has placed 15 GOP-held House seats in the lean or likely Democratic column, and two Democratic held seats in the lean or likely Republican column. That accounts for a net 13 of the 23 needed. Add to that 31 GOP-held seats regarded as tossups, and 26 more as Lean GOP. That makes 57 GOP held seats that are tossups or only slight margins for Republicans in which Democrats need to pick up a net 10. There are another 18 Likely GOP seats, which are not really safe this year. Only 6 Democrat-held seats are regarded as tossups. Given these daunting numbers, it is very difficult to see how Republicans hold the House and easier to see a possibility of a significant Democratic gain or 30 or more.

https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/robertrobb/2018/11/04/2018-arizona-election-turnout-blue-wave-red-backlash/1836438002/

Democrats haven’t won a statewide race in Arizona since 2008.

When the Democratic state corporation commissioners who won that year, Paul Newman and Sandra Kennedy, lost their re-election bids in 2012, it was the first time in Arizona history that there was not a single Democrat holding statewide office.

The Democratic nadir was 2014. The Democrats ran what I thought was the finest and best-qualified slate of candidates for statewide office – from governor to state superintendent – in my lifetime, and perhaps in state history.

They all got swamped – except for David Garcia in the superintendent race, who was narrowly edged out by Diane Douglas.
What explains the drought for Democrats?

This Democratic electoral desert is a recent phenomenon. For the state’s first century, there was always at least one statewide elected Democrat in office. For most of the state’s history, Democrats actually dominated. Republican voter registration in the state didn’t surpass that of Democrats until 1986.

As late as 2006, Democrat Janet Napolitano smashed her Republican opponent for governor and Democrat Terry Goddard comfortably won re-election as attorney general.

So, what explains the Democratic drought since 2008, since it hasn’t primarily been from a lack of well-qualified candidates?

With the rise of independent registration, those remaining registered Republican or Democratic tend to be pretty brand loyal. There is not nearly as much crossover voting – a Republican voting for a Democrat or vice versa – as there used to be in the state.

And brand-loyal Republicans dominated the turnout. Since 2008, Republicans have been more than 40 percent of the general election turnout every year except 2016, when it dipped to 39 percent.