RUTHFULLY YOURS

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.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/screeching-harpies-vow-no-sex-unless-men-vote-for-democrats/

Since scratching and beating on the doors of the Supreme Court had zero effect on keeping Justice Brett Kavanaugh off the court, the ladies of the left have decided to go with a new tactic: a sex strike! That’s right, fellas, you’re all out of luck with the #Resist girls. Author Wednesday Martin has penned an essay at CNN called “What if Women Went On a Sex Strike Before the Midterms?”

It’s time for a revolution. At the polls, and in the bedroom. And in our understanding of who women are, sexually and otherwise. Given the tight interweaving of economic and political power with sexual entitlement, female sexual autonomy has never been more urgent, and women’s sexual pleasure has never been more political. Let’s consider what it might mean to go on a sex strike of sorts — to get what we want, rather than give what we think we owe others.

It seems the Democrats have finally got their bumper sticker for 2018: “Zero F*cks for Anyone. #Resist”

What’s revolutionary about women using sex to get what they want? And worse, aren’t feminists supposed to reject femininity and female wiles in favor of more equal ways of advancing? I’m confused. Didn’t we just have a whole #MeToo campaign against the casting couch? Females willing to trade sexual favors in exchange for stuff is exactly the kind of girl Harvey Weinstein was looking for.

A women’s sex strike against service sex, a refusal to do it out of a sense of obligation, would force us to confront these basic inequalities. Our current administration has amped up the notion that women are mere extensions of male will and pleasure, there to serve at every turn…What are the President’s insults to Stormy Daniels other than assertions that the woman who enjoys sex or profits from it in any way — emotionally, financially, or physically — is unnatural, immoral, and unattractive? In this world order, female sexual autonomy is not only dangerous and destabilizing; it is increasingly hard to imagine. And female pleasure is irrelevant, even pathological, if it exists at all.

I’m pretty sure the president’s insult of Stormy Daniels had less to do with how much she likes sex (yeah, we know) and more to do with her hideous character and willingness to attack his family for money. She’s also not attractive, and most people don’t believe he’d cheat on Melania (the most beautiful woman on earth) with a horse-faced tramp who hired one of the most crooked lawyers on earth.*

In the ancient Greek comedy by Aristophanes, the character Lysistrata urges women to go on a sex strike to get men on both sides to end the Peloponnesian War. In our case, a sex strike against service sex can be a powerful statement — that female desire, a metric of agency like women’s votes, will be heard.

Am I the only one who knows that Lysistrata was a comedy performed by all men? They were mocking women, not making some big statement about women’s power and rights. Why is everyone so dumb? I didn’t even graduate college and this woman has a doctorate from Yale? (Note to parents: do NOT waste your money on the Ivy League!)

Fellas, if you’re feeling nervous that this idea might catch on, the #Resist ladies were good enough to put together one last sexy campaign to show you what you’re missing. Take a good look, because that’s all you’re going to get!

I know it’s going to be rough. I mean, these ladies are something else!

I’m sure by now you guys are worked up into a lather that cannot be quenched without some of this #Resist lovin’! Am I right? CONTINUE AT SITE

http://standpointmag.co.uk/node/7306/full

There are journalistic assignments that should be refused, not as a matter of principle but out of basic common sense. Making predictions about American politics in the age of Trump is one of them. That Donald Trump won the Republican nomination was surprising. That he ended up in the White House was — well, a strong enough what-the-hell adjective does not exist (I did not expect Trump to prevail and nor, quite possibly, did he). However, the chequered nature of that win, a two per cent loss in the popular vote (the widest margin of “defeat” for a victorious candidate since 1876) but a passable, if far from overwhelming, majority in the only vote that counts — the Electoral College — was a necessary reminder that federalism matters more and elite opinion less than is sometimes assumed.

Remembering that is a good beginning to understanding why, despite Trump ratcheting up a record of gaffes, blunders and peculiarity unthinkable in any other president, earlier talk of a Democratic “wave” in the midterm elections on November 6 has evaporated.

While that might merit a celebratory presidential Diet Coke, the Republicans still face a tricky day on the sixth. Despite a healthy economy (GDP grew at an annualised 4.2 per cent in the second quarter, the unemployment rate dropped to 3.7 per cent in September and in the same month consumer confidence reached an 18-year high), almost all the “generic” polling has the generic Democrat comfortably ahead of the generic Republican. Even without Trump in the Oval Office this was coming. An incumbent president’s party almost always struggles in the midterms. Like a British by-election, except for far higher stakes (all the seats in the House of Representatives will be up for grabs, as will 35 Senate seats and numerous state-level offices), midterms are often used by the voters who show up (turnout is typically around 40 per cent, compared with 60 per cent in a presidential election year) to shake a fist at those in charge.

There are incumbent presidents, and then there is Donald J. Trump, whose approval rating has been dismal for most of his time in office. As I write (late October) it is ticking up and now stands somewhere in the mid-40s, weak for a strong economy and at a roughly similar level to Barack Obama’s polling eight years ago. But that was in the aftermath of the financial crisis and shortly before game-changing midterms in which the Democrats suffered a loss of more than 60 seats and control of the House, as well as a brutal reduction in their Senate majority. The Republicans’ chances will be hurt by too much Trump in some areas — upscale suburbs and their remaining redoubts on the east and west coasts in particular — but they could, in a paradox that may mean trouble for them beyond 2018, be hurt by not enough Trump elsewhere, specifically in the rust belt, where voters who moved from Obama (or no vote) to Trump made enough of a difference in their states to tip the 2016 election the GOP’s way.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271820/election-day-clear-cut-choice-americans-face-bruce-thornton

This year’s midterm election offers the starkest contrast between the two parties in recent memory, making the choice of which to vote for obvious. We have reached a critical point in the long-developing transformation of our country from a democratic republic to the concentrated power and “soft despotism” of a technocratic elite. This year’s vote will determine whether Donald Trump’s pushback against that transformation will continue, or whether it will stall.

Democrats, of course, have been the main engine of that transformation. For over a century their politics and policies have relentlessly shifted further and further toward the progressive left. They have embraced and institutionalized the doctrines of technocracy based on a rejection of the Constitutional order and its philosophical assumptions that common sense, practical experience, virtue, and traditional wisdom are sufficient to make people capable of self-rule.

Democrats also rejected the Founders’ deep-seated fear of concentrated and centralized power, a lesson taught on every page of political history for 2500 years: No amount of technical training or knowledge can change a flawed human nature and its permanent vulnerability to the lust for power that always ends in tyranny. Hence the Founders’ separation and dispersal of power among the sovereign states and the three branches of the federal government. Protected by divided powers, the liberty of self-reliant and self-governing citizens became the bulwark against the self-aggrandizement of power by elites, and the tyranny that follows.

The more the Democrat Party moved toward progressive technocracy, the more it abandoned ordered liberty as the most important reason for government to exist in the first place. Instead it endorsed the grand narrative of modernity: The inevitable progress and improvement of people and society, based on “human sciences” presumably as successful as physics and mathematics at effecting improving changes, would create the brave new world that avoided the miseries and sufferings of the benighted past. Technological progress became the model for this dream, its success in the material world now to be achieved in the human, social, and political realm. Of course, such a regime required “experts” to be installed in the centralized bureaus and agencies of the federal government, and to be given the power over policy once the purview of the representatives elected by the sovereign people and accountable to them at the ballot box. Now divided and balanced power was scorned as an 18th century anachronism and systematically degraded.

Trump: a coattail – or an anchor chained – President?

The November 2018 mid-term election will determine the future maneuverability of President Trump, and will shape the dominant worldview of the strongest legislature in the world, which is co-determining and co-equal to the executive branch, and Israel’s systematic and most effective ally in face of pressure by all US Presidents from Truman through Obama.

The coming mid-term election will be – once again – a referendum on the popularity of a sitting President: 49% approval rating (50% disapproval) of President Trump, according to a November 1 Rasmussen Reports; 40% (54% disapproval) according to an October 28 Gallup poll; 43.9% (53% disapproval) according to an October 31 RealClear Politics.

Will Trump be a coattail-President elevating the Republican party to mid-term election gains in the House and Senate, as has happened on rare occasions, such as the 1934 election (President Roosevelt), 1998 (President Clinton) and 2002 (President G.W. Bush)?

Or, will Trump be an anchor-chained President pulling the Republican party down to significant losses – and even to minority status in one/both Chambers – as has usually been the case: President Obama (2014 and 2010), President G.W. Bush (2006), President Clinton (1994), President G.H. Bush (1990), President Reagan (1986 and 1982), President Carter (1978), President Ford/Nixon (1974), etc.?

Since 1950, a sitting President’s party has lost an average of 24 House seats in the mid-term election, which is the minimum required for a Democratic House majority in 2019. The current balance is: 241 Republicans and 194 Democrats.

The Senate hurdle – facing the Democrats – is much higher, since the 35 Senate seats up for the coming November election consist of 9 Republicans and 26 Democrats, 10 of whom are in states won by President Trump in 2016 (only 1 Republican incumbent from a state won by Hilary Clinton in 2016), and 13 Democratic incumbents from states with a republican governor (no Republican incumbent from a state governed by a Democrat).

While sustaining the Republican majority in the House and Senate would maintain President Trump’s relative-freedom of operation, a loss of one/two Chambers would tie his hands internally and globally, commercially and militarily, due to the power of the US Legislature, which was deemed by the Founding Fathers as the “secret weapon” against a potential tyranny of the Executive.

The centrality of the US constituent and Congress

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-consequential-congress-1541114048

Americans love to hate Congress, and no wonder given the careerists and poseurs in both parties. But some Congresses matter more than others, and the 115th has accomplished more useful conservative reform than any since the first Newt Gingrich years of 1995-1996.

Democrats won’t admit it for partisan reasons, and neither will some of the perpetually angry on the right. But the GOP’s narrow Senate majority of 52 seats and then 51 has turned out to be more consequential and conservative than the 55-seat GOP majority of 2005-2006, the last time Republicans controlled both Houses and the Presidency.

The looming election is a useful moment to review the tape on the successes and disappointments, and consider the stakes of a Democratic House, Senate or both.

• Tax Reform. Republicans broke the economic logjam of the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world, and the new 21% rate with 100% business expensing has helped to lift the U.S. economy to a higher growth plane and again made it the most competitive.

The individual reforms were more about passing out tax cuts or credits to everyone, though millions pay no income taxes. Plenty of voters still aren’t convinced they received a cut even if they did, thanks to a mediocre sales effort from the GOP and a press corps hoping Republicans fail. But consider the 2019 options: The GOP wants to make the cuts permanent; Democrats want to repeal most of the reform to finance more spending.

• Deregulation. Congress through the Congressional Review Act scuttled 16 rules that the Obama Administration tried to impose in its final days. That included everything from regulations about online privacy that somehow didn’t apply to Facebook or Google to environmental overreaches like the stream protection rule. Before 2017 Congress had invoked the CRA only once—for a Clinton ergonomics rule.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling also succeeded in reforming the 2010 Dodd-Frank law’s assault on community banks. The Senate filibuster prevented him from doing more, but the lame duck session could push through other useful reforms, including work requirements in the farm bill. The free-market Mr. Hensarling is retiring and his successor in a Democratic House would be Rep. Maxine Waters. That is the election policy stakes in profile.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/11/01/what-do-the-polls

Since it’s now clear that Democrats may not only fail to take control of the U.S. Senate, they actually could lose seats, all eyes are focused on the battle for the House of Representatives.

The political fortunes for congressional Republican candidates are the reverse of those with which their Senate counterparts are blessed. In the Senate, Democrats are defending nearly two-dozen incumbent senators, many in states that Donald Trump won in 2016; if Republicans run the table, the GOP could get very close to a filibuster-proof Senate.

Conversely, 37 Republican congressmen are retiring this year, including Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. Two popular Republican lawmakers face federal indictments, and another is under an ethics investigation. For Democrats, the court-ordered redistricting of Pennsylvania’s congressional map was manna from heaven, gifting them with at least five favorable new districts. Some pundits just one year ago were predicting the Democrats could pick off 50 seats from reeling Republicans.

But as polls trickle in just days before next week’s election, there’s no indication Democrats will come close to winning those 50 seats, let alone is there any certainty they will flip the 23 seats needed to reclaim the speaker’s gavel in January.

At this point—if a “blue wave” was indeed in the offing for November 6—at least a few polls in key swing districts would show big advantages for the Democrats; that’s not the case. The RealClearPolitics average of polls tracking the generic congressional vote gives Democrats a 7.5 point edge, but many of those polls are more than a week old. A recent YouGov/Economist poll shows just a five-point preference for Democrats, and the latest Rasmussen poll has Democrats ahead only three points, a statistical tie. This must be causing some unease among party leaders and candidates.

So let’s look at the breakdown of the seats in play, and what the recent polls suggest might happen next week.

The top sites that analyze each congressional contest list between 14 and 20 Republican-held seats as “likely” or “lean” Democratic, while only a few Democrat districts could flip to the GOP. A handful of those seats—such as Illinois’ 6th Congressional District and Iowa’s 1st Congressional District—are tied; very few candidates in the “lean Democratic” category have double-digit leads.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271804/gillum-accuses-ron-desantis-anti-semitism-over-daniel-greenfield

Andrew Gillum, the Bernie candidate aspiring to run Florida, has a compelling platform. Racism.

Gillum isn’t saying he’s a racist. Everyone else is a racist. And I do mean everyone.

If you call Andrew Gillum “Andrew” instead of Mayor Gillum (Andy currently runs Tallahassee, a city with the highest crime rate in Florida), you’re a racist.

“I’m a sitting mayor and he had the nerve to address me only as Andrew,” Gillum had whined about former Rep. Ron DeSantis, his Republican opponent, at a black college.

It was a debate and Gillum had actually been standing at the time. Also Andrew had compared Ron to a dog and found two hundred different ways to accuse Ron of racism.

“I wanted to correct him, y’all, but I didn’t want to be petty,” he told students.

Good thing, Andrew chose not to be petty about it. When you’re a standing mayor of a city with a higher murder rate than Miami, you’ve gotta think big, y’all.

Just wait until you see what happens to those Floridians sent to the swamp gulags for failing to genuflect before Governor Gillum when the gubernatorial limo swings by.

Also if you pay attention to Gillum’s lies about corruption in an FBI investigation, you’re a racist.

“They’ve wanted the people of this state to believe somehow,” Gillum ranted. “I’m unethical, participated in illegal and illicit activity. I mean, you name it. The goal is obviously to use my candidacy as a way to reinforce, frankly, stereotypes about black men.”

Obviously.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/democrats-struggle-to-confront-trump-era-reality-1540937012

Come Tuesday, we’ll find out whether Democrats have learned anything from Hillary Clinton’s shocking defeat two Novembers ago. No, Donald Trump isn’t on the ballot this time, but that’s a technicality. There’s no doubt these midterm elections are about our current president.

Two years ago Mrs. Clinton focused to the max on her opponent’s character flaws and then famously extended those criticisms to his supporters, the “deplorables.” What the Clinton campaign missed is that voters in battleground states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were well aware of Mr. Trump’s shortcomings but had different priorities. While she was harping on his behavior, he was harping on the issues they cared about most. Mrs. Clinton lost because millions of people who had supported Barack Obama refused to back her and swung to Mr. Trump.

There’s no shortage of liberals who remain in denial about why Mrs. Clinton lost and who refuse to accept the outcome. Instead, they credit Mr. Trump’s triumph to James Comey or Russian interference or white nationalists. The question is whether Democratic candidates in the current cycle have accepted political reality, and the answer is that it depends. Last Friday found Mr. Obama campaigning for Democrats in Detroit and Milwaukee, two places Mrs. Clinton gave short shrift in 2016. He seems to understand that it was the Democratic nominee’s flawed campaign strategy, not the alt-right, that cost her the election.

Similarly, Democrats running for Senate seats in states Mr. Trump carried have used the final weeks of the campaign to focus on issues rather than the president’s Twitter feed. In Arizona, Florida and Missouri Democratic candidates have been talking nonstop about health care, a top concern for voters in both parties. Four years ago, ObamaCare’s unpopularity helped to defeat incumbent Democrats in red states like Arkansas and Louisiana and deliver control of the Senate to Republicans. But support for the law has risen steadily since Mr. Obama left office, and Democrats now see an opening. The upshot is that voters in some parts of the country are being treated to a substantive debate about the costs and merits of single-payer health care and how best to insure people with pre-existing conditions. This is progress.