RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-five-big-things-you-need-to-understand-about-the-democratic-primary-right-now/

Des Moines — Democratic presidential candidates are trading in kumbaya for combat. 

With three months to go before the Iowa caucuses, the 2020 campaigns are moving out of the introductory phase of the primary season and into the knife-sharpening phase, seeking to snuff out the competition as voters get closer to making up their minds. 

Candidates debuted new attack lines during major party cattle calls and campaign events across Iowa over the weekend and have continued to hone them throughout the week. In this phase of the campaign, it’s Vice President Joe Biden and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren at center stage, with the surging South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg looking to portray himself as a “unity” candidate.

The new urgency of the campaign has forced several campaigns to reshuffle or reassess their respective standings in the race. The impeachment inquiry hanging over Washington and driving the daily news cycle has made it more difficult for lower-tier campaigns to break through. At the same time, few voters on the ground are asking about the latest moves in Washington, and are instead focused more on health care, the economy, and climate change.  

After spending the past several days on the ground in Iowa, attending presidential town halls and talking to lots of voters, here are five things we are learning about the state of the race. 

The passive-aggressive primary is over

Biden is attacking Warren. Buttigieg is attacking Warren. Warren is attacking Biden and Buttigieg. Julián Castro is attacking Buttigieg. 

In other words, this is the part of the campaign season when candidates stop being polite and start getting real. 

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/11/socialists-vs-billionaires-democrat-primary-daniel-greenfield/

Joe Biden is running out of money.

He blew too much cash on private jets while blowing away debating opponents with his confused mumbling and bleeding eye. Now Joe’s down to the single digit millions, while Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are in the double millions. Unless Joe can wangle a job on the board of a corrupt Ukrainian gas company, he’s not going to be able to afford private jets or a political campaign.

Kamala Harris is cutting staff and scaling back her campaign. Julian Castro is supporting his staff as they look for new jobs in a successful campaign. Too bad there aren’t many of those left. The only candidates still polling as if they’re in the running are Biden, Warren, Sanders, and Buttigieg, in a distant fourth place, buoyed by donations from vegan restaurateurs who don’t care if he actually wins or not.

Between them, Sanders and Warren command about 40% of the Democrat vote. Biden’s dying campaign has been shrinking from a third to around a quarter. And it’s largely dependent on black voters associating him with Obama. A project that’s gotten zero help from the actual Obama.

It’s time for the one thing the Dem dogfight desperately needs. More terrible candidates.

As money becomes the central factor, it’s the candidates with a fanatical following, the two radical socialists, Warren and Sanders, and the candidates with money to burn, who can stay in the race.

Tom Steyer, an eco-billionaire, bought his way into the primary, onto the debate stage, and was even accused of trying to buy endorsements. He’s blown through $47 million without batting an eye. With $1.6 billion to play with, Tom can keep this up a whole lot longer than Joe Biden can stay awake.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/11/07/why-does-the-media-prop-up-failed-democratic-candidates-like-stacey-abrams/

Stacey Abrams, the failed Democratic gubernatorial candidate from Georgia, told a University of Iowa audience she would be happy to run as a vice presidential candidate.

Abrams ended the rumors she was asked to run with Joe Biden if he was the nominee, but, according to the Daily Iowan, Abrams said she would be happy to be the running mate of DNC’s nominee, whoever the candidate is.

“When I got the question [from reporters] I was, myself, contemplating my next steps… I’m not in the primary, but you can run as second in the general election, and I am happy to do so with the nominee. That is my answer,” Abrams said

The New York Times, Washington Post, POLITICO, and The Hill have all reported on Abrams desire to be Vice President. The Washington Post gave Abrams a glowing review, saying, despite her failed candidacy she is a rising star in the Democratic party.

Why do mainstream media outlets continually prop up failed candidates? They used similar tactics when “rising star” Beto O’Rourke announced his presidential bid this year.

In January, media outlets raved about O’Rourke’s candidacy and gawked over his Vanity Fair cover. He was being propped up by the media and polled at 8.5 percent nationally. Now, the mainstream media and voters realize the only place ‘Born to Run’ Beto is going, is home.

O’Rourke has dropped out of the presidential race and was polling at a measly 2 percent by the end. The strategy of propping up an entire campaign around media attention leads candidates to flopping hard. Could an Abrams run follow this same pattern? After all, the two “rising stars” have a lot in common.

Kentucky’s new star By Frank Friday

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/11/kentuckys_new_star.html

President Trump said it best Monday night about Kentucky’s new Republican Attorney General, Daniel Cameron, the brilliant young black lawyer: “a star is born.”  Republicans wound up winning every Kentucky election except governor, with Cameron on the road to being a national figure as a fresh young advocate for traditional conservative values and commonsense law enforcement.

While Gov. Bevin was not re-elected, it certainly was not in any way the fault of President Trump, who brought out a record Kentucky turnout for Republicans in odd-number-year elections.  I thought this May, Gov. Bevin, despite all his amateur mistakes (he had moved here only in the late 1990s and entered politics just in 2014), could win if he focused the election on his Biden-like, corrupt opponent.  Instead, he continued to needlessly offend people, engaging all summer in an idiotic feud with the lieutenant governor he dumped from the ticket, costing him many deep red counties, where she was a Tea Party favorite.

Anyway, it is interesting that despite his youth, Daniel Cameron was picked out as a star in the making in college, where he played football for the Cards, by Sen. McConnell, and then by President Trump, who met him a year ago.  He has the natural talent for the consensus-building you need in politics to succeed — something the outgoing Matt Bevin never mastered.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/11/the_democrats_and_cair.html

In 2018, Democratic lawmakers and a few Republicans openly supported the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), congratulating the organization on its 24th year of operation.  Furthermore, sixteen likely Democrat presidential candidates are endorsing CAIR.  For instance, “Elizabeth Warren sent in a video message threatening to cut off aid to Israel unless it surrenders to Islamic terrorists. Then she promised to divide Jerusalem, turning half the ancient holy city into a killing ground for the murderous terrorists already occupying Gaza and portions of the West Bank.”

Thus, the majority of the 2020 Democrat presidential field have aligned with CAIR, an anti-American and anti-Israel organization.  Moreover, it is now patently clear that the “Democratic party’s celebration of Linda Sarsour… exposes the poison” that has enveloped the party.

Consequently, there are representatives of the United States Congress who are openly applauding an “entity of the Muslim Brotherhood linked to pro-Hamas operations in the U.S.” 

From its inception, CAIR has sought to “portray itself as a moderate, mainstream organization,” but nothing could be farther from the truth.  Instead it “promotes a radical Islamic vision demonstrated by its co-founder Omar Ahmad” who has said

Islam ‘isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran… should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth.’ In a similar spirit, co-founder Ibrahim Hooper told a reporter in 1993: ‘I wouldn’t want to create the impression that I wouldn’t like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future.’ In 2003 Hooper stated that if Muslims ever become a majority in the United States, they will likely seek to replace the U.S. Constitution with Islamic law, which they deem superior to man-made law.

Ihsan Bagby, a former board member of CAIR, believes that Muslims “can never be full citizens of [America]… because there  is no way we can be fully committed to the institutions and ideologies of this country.” Islamic supremacism as espoused by this group is taught in many American mosques which teach hatred of Jews and Christians. In fact, “Tashbih Sayyed of the Council for Democracy and Tolerance (CDT) called CAIR ‘the most accomplished fifth column’ in the United States since its desire is to  ‘…spread Islamic hegemony the world over by hook or by crook.'”

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/iowa-poll-elizabeth-warren-pete-buttigieg-in-dead-heat/

The latest Quinnipiac poll of Iowa:

Warren 20

Buttigieg 19

Sanders 17

Biden 15 

Klobuchar 5

Harris 4

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/11/reminder-national-presidential-polls-are-useless/

They are useless in gauging congressional popularity. They are useless in determining presidential races.

Earlier this week, tremors of panic spread across left-wing Twitter after the New York Times dropped a Siena College poll showing that Donald Trump remains highly competitive among registered voters in battleground states such as Michigan, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. After gorging on the empty calories of national polls for months, it must have been somewhat shocking for Trump’s opponents to see so many competitive races.

Among “likely voters” the races are even tighter. On the Democratic side, Joe Biden, unsurprisingly, does better than either Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren against Trump. Not everyone, apparently, is enamored with the idea of their health insurance being seized by a massive state bureaucracy.

Former candidate Hillary Clinton — always a keen political strategist — reacted to the news by calling on Democrats to nominate a person “who can win the Electoral College” rather than merely run up the totals in California. “I think several of our candidates could win the popular vote but as I know,” she added, “. . . that’s not enough.”

She’s right. It’s not enough. It’s not anything, actually, save a moral victory or a cudgel with which to try to delegitimize the president. And yet, political observers seem to lament that Democrats are weighed down by the process. Take, for instance, this extraordinarily weird framing of recent polls by the Washington Post: “One year out, Democrats’ margins over Trump point to a substantial popular-vote advantage, but the party still faces obstacles when it comes to the electoral college.”

https://pjmedia.com/trending/2019-election-results-governors-races-sanctuary-cities-mayor-petes-successor-and-more/

Voters across the country went to the polls on Tuesday, handing Democrats some key victories but also electing the first black Republican attorney general in Kentucky. Voters also addressed a broad swath of issues from Airbnb to sanctuary cities.

In Virginia, Democrats took both the House of Delegates and the state Senate. Democrats nationwide interpreted the win as a sign of strength for their party, but the Commonwealth has increasingly favored Democrats in presidential elections and had been moving left in recent years.

“Woo-hoo! Congratulations to the people of Virginia for flipping both the state House and state Senate,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a leading 2020 Democrat, tweeted. “Voting is what our democracy is all about, and Virginia proved that today as they elected [Democrats] up and down the ballot.”

While Democrats will rightly celebrate these victories, it is important to keep in mind that in 25 percent of the state senate races, the Democrat did not face a Republican challenger. I wrote in seven names on my ballot yesterday, voting for the two Independents on the ballot. I had no Republican option.

Karl Frisch, a far-left activist who once worked for Media Matters, became the first openly gay man elected to the Fairfax County School Board.

The two high-profile governor’s races seemed to go in opposite directions. In Kentucky, Attorney General Andy Beshear, a Democrat, enjoyed a close lead in early results and declared his victory while Republican Gov. Matt Bevin refused to concede. In Mississippi, Republican Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves defeated Democrat Attorney General Jim Hood. Trump campaigned for both Republicans.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/11/kamala-harris-blames-american-racism-failed-daniel-greenfield/

Senator Kamala Harris polled at 3% in last month’s Quinnipiac poll. That must make the San Fran and Hollywood donors who stuffed $11.6 million in her pantsuit pockets this quarter feel good about giving to charity.

A quarter of Iowa Democrat caucusgoers have a negative opinion of Harris. That’s up minus eleven points since June. So, Harris is making weekly trips to Iowa while claiming that she’s going to move there. Not even Democrats are stupid enough to believe that she’s going to leave her Brentwood mansion to move to a place where the temperatures are currently hovering around the low thirties.

And her Iowa stump speech is now all about accusing anyone who doesn’t vote for her of racism.

In her speeches, Harris claims that “electability”, the question of whether a candidate polling 3% nationwide can beat President Trump, is the “elephant in the room—but actually more accurately, the donkey in the room.”

There’s a donkey in the room all-right. Or maybe it’s a jackass.

“It’s been coming up in connection to my campaign: is America ready for that? Are they ready for a woman of color to be President of the United States?” Harris insists.

When Harris tried this line in an Axios on HBO interview, a baffled Margaret Talev asked, “America was ready for a black man to be President of the United States.”