RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/kamala-harris-presidential-campaign-struggling-california-polls/

Since the early days of this presidential primary cycle, there’s been a quiet but intriguing narrative that Kamala Harris was a much stronger candidate than her national polling might suggest. The gist is that while most years, California is just an ATM for Democratic presidential candidates, this cycle the Golden State will vote on Super Tuesday, March 3. The whole process is so much earlier than usual that absentee and early primary ballots will be mailed out the day of the Iowa caucuses.

California has 495 delegates to the Democratic convention, and they are awarded proportionally — almost a tenth of the total 4535 hard delegates. The pro-Harris theory is that while everybody else is scrambling over a share of Iowa’s 49 delegates or New Hampshire’s 33 delegates, Harris can set herself up to win big in her home state and walk away with, say, 250 or so delegates just out of California, setting herself up to be the frontrunner after Super Tuesday.

It’s an intriguing theory, but history is full of candidates who thought they could make their big move after Iowa and New Hampshire and found themselves sputtering on fumes by the time their preferred primary rolled around. In Rudy Giuliani’s 2008 campaign, Florida was supposed to be the firewall, but winning tends to beget more winning, and losing tends to beget more losing. It’s really difficult to become the nominee if you don’t win Iowa or New Hampshire. The only Democrat who’s done it is Bill Clinton in 1992, and that was an oddity because Senator Tom Harkin was a home-state candidate in Iowa (so most observers discounted it), and Clinton was the “comeback kid” who finished second in New Hampshire that year. (Some might also argue that Hillary Clinton’s win in Iowa last cycle was so close it shouldn’t even count.)

https://pjmedia.com/trending/hillary-clinton-stacey-abrams-should-be-governor-of-georgia/

Back in October 2016, when everybody was telling us that Hillary Clinton couldn’t lose, Donald Trump said: “I will totally accept the results of this great and historic presidential election… if I win.” And the Democrats all lost their minds. How un-American! What an outrage!

In response to Trump’s quip, Clinton gravely intoned: “Donald Trump refused to say that he’d respect the results of this election.That’s a direct threat to our democracy.”

But a funny thing happens when a politician experiences the most crushing electoral loss in living memory: All that $#!+ goes right out the window. Respecting the results of an election is no longer required, and rejecting the results is no longer a threat to our democracy. Forget all about that crap, because there’s a new party line.

Here’s Hilldog today, giving the keynote address at something called In Defense of American Democracy. Apparently, defending democracy now involves directly threatening it:

“We saw what happened in Georgia where Stacey Abrams should be governor of that state”

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/09/17/when_politics_smothers_everyd

Partisan politics has crept into every corner of American life. Every topic, from jokes to films, is now refracted through that lens. It’s a revoltin’ development, as one sitcom character used to say, and it’s time to call it out.

Most issues do have a political dimension, of course. But seeing everything that way leaves no space for other topics, no room for play or humor or friends with different views. It intrudes on the private world of family, friends, and voluntary associations. People need that space to flourish. A tolerant, liberal democracy should provide it.

I saw this suffocating environment up-close and personal this week when I posted a funny comment by Louisiana’s Sen. John Kennedy. His earthy metaphors and odd juxtapositions make him one of Washington’s most quotable figures. In today’s hyper-divisive politics, however, even the most innocuous quote can land you in the briar patch. I felt a few of those thorns when I posted his comment.

What did Sen. Kennedy say? “Trusting Russia, North Korea, and Iran is like trusting a Jussie Smollett police report.” What’s wrong with that? Not a thing. It’s funny, fair, and memorable. But when everything is partisan, you can always find something wrong. If nothing comes readily to mind, blame the speaker for something else. He’s from the wrong political party. He supports the wrong policies. He’s the wrong race. He’s the wrong gender. This sour perspective, says Sen. Kennedy, is “why aliens won’t talk to us.”

In case that line had you furiously logging onto Twitter, he meant extraterrestrials, not migrants. I’m with the ETs and spaceships on this one. So are most Americans. I’m not trying to click my heels three times and make partisan differences magically disappear. Our country faces big, difficult issues. The partisan divide often has roots in real policy differences.

https://quillette.com/2019/09/16/understanding-americas-cultural-and-political-realignment/

EXCERPT

What to Expect in 2020

Trump will again seek to unite his coalition by goading the Postmodern Left. Though incumbents are usually judged by how they performed in office, Trump will try to make these opponents the focus of his 2020 campaign, just as he did in 2016. The more he’s scolded by the media, the better his chances will be of reuniting his coalition. However, this strategy risks losing New Era Entrepreneurs, and losing any voting group on the Right makes Trump’s re-election difficult.

Democratic primary voters, meanwhile, are becoming more postmodern. The pressure to move from the modern liberal to progressive postmodern worldview in the crowded primary field risks alienating modern Democrats. Worse, whoever wins the progressive primary will need to work hard to attract any modern voters in the center and on the Right. Though two aging straight white men lead the polls in the primary as of this writing, the reality of a postmodern base in the Democratic coalition doesn’t bode well for straight white male candidates, and offers new opportunities to candidates who are female, black, Latino, or gay.

The challenge for Republicans is that the Traditional Right voting block is aging out. The divisions around business and the role of government between Market Skeptic Republicans and Core Conservatives are as profound as—if not greater than—the divisions on the Left. Worse, their larger voting coalitions are demographically much older. Trump risks pushing the remaining younger entrepreneurial, ethnically diverse voters into the Democrat coalition.

There is, however, one bright spot in this chaos. According to Wilbur’s theory, a new “integral” value system is emerging that “transcends and includes” the best aspects of earlier value systems. Jordan Peterson’s popularity may be an early sign of this—while embracing aspects of tradition, science, and therapeutic culture, his message and best-selling book appear to be resonating.

If this marks an early shift towards integral values, such a move could put an end to our vicious culture wars as new leaders emerge with the ability to see multiple viewpoints and accommodate their contradictions. Understanding American politics will continue to be hard work. But only when we understand culture will we understand politics so that we can transform it for the better.

https://us7.campaign-archive.com/?e=a9fdc67db9&u=9d011a88d8fe324cae8c084c5&id=8d26a74d9d

In the polls for the past several months, the top three among the contenders for the Democratic nomination for President have been Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders. I doubt that Biden will make it all the way to the end of this marathon; and I sense that Sanders’s shtick has started to wear thin and that he is fading. That would leave Elizabeth Warren as the most likely to get the nomination.

Heaven help us.

Warren has her own shtick. The basic idea is to claim that the U.S. economy is fundamentally not working for most people, and then to stir up resentment against anybody who has achieved any success, aka “the wealthy” or “the well-connected” or “the corporations.” These people are oppressing you, and you need Elizabeth to fight back. In her February 2019 speech announcing her candidacy, it was that “millions of American families are . . . struggling to survive in a system that has been rigged by the wealthy and well-connected.” Then there are the evil banks, who “steer [you] into overpriced credit products, risky sub-prime mortgages, and misleading insurance plans.”

But don’t worry — Warren has all the answers, in the form of some dozens of “plans,” each one a top-down directive from the federal government to get those evil exploiters to behave. Universal child care! 100% clean energy! Expanding social security! Hundreds of billions for housing! Trillions for free college and debt forgiveness! Wealth taxes on the rich! Tens of trillions for tackling the “climate crisis”! More tens of trillions for free health care for all! And those are just a small sample. It’s a good thing that the government’s resources are infinite. You name it, and there’s a “plan” and a new collection of regulations and orders and a few hundred billion or a few trillions or tens of trillions from the infinite free loot from above that will solve the problem instantly, at least once Elizabeth is in charge.

In the aggregate she is proposing a total transformation of the U.S. economy, from one fundamentally run by the people and their privately-owned organizations, to one fundamentally controlled and directed by the government. She doesn’t claim the mantle of “socialism” the way Bernie does, but it’s hard to see how there would be much left of the private economy if all — or even half — of Warren’s “plans” got implemented. Does she not perceive any down side here?

https://thefederalist.com/2019/09/16/rep-ilhan-omar-doubles-down-

Rep. Omar attempted to address her history of controversial comments, but the congresswoman’s responses did little to mitigate concerns her critics have raised.

In an interview on Sunday with CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) attempted to address her history of controversial comments, but the congresswoman’s responses did little to mitigate the concerns critics have raised so far, which range from treating the terror attacks of 9/11 with irreverence to espousing antisemitic rhetoric.

Anger towards Omar’s previous comments on 9/11 stem from a speech she delivered earlier this year to the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), where she stated an iinaccurate reasoning for CAIR’s founding. According to Omar, those at CAIR founded the organization when “they recognized that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties.”

What incensed audiences in particular was Omar’s blasé treatment of the deadliest terror attack on American soil. Indeed, whether you impart ill intent upon her words or not, both the content and the tone were unsettlingly dismissive and failed to capture the gravity of the fatal event. She received much grief for her words, most justified, some less so. However, Democrats closed ranks around her and claimed Islamophobia motivated any criticism. This did little to actually address her comments, which were objectively inappropriate.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/aoc-calls-for-kavanaughs-impeachment-following-botched-nyt-article/

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) called for the impeachment of Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh in a tweet on Monday, amid controversy over a discredited New York Times story detailing further allegations of sexual-misconduct against Kavanaugh that was published Saturday.

Along with her tweet, which was posted, then deleted, and then posted again without explanation, Ocasio-Cortez shared a video of a speech she gave at what appears to be a rally against Kavanaugh’s then-impending confirmation.

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/09/13/democrats-call-trump-a-murdering-racist-debate-moderators-yawn/

From the first minute of last night’s truly intolerable Democratic debate, a candidate for the world’s most powerful office started things rolling downhill with a startling assertion about last month’s horrific shootings in El Paso:

“Twenty-two people were killed, dozens more grievously injured by a man … inspired to kill by our president.” (Emphasis added)

Later in the same debate, a sitting U.S. senator from the nation’s largest state added the following over-the-top observation about these vile murders:

“People asked me … ‘do you think Trump is responsible for what happened?’ And I said, ‘Well, look, I mean, obviously, he didn’t pull the trigger. But he’s certainly been tweeting out the ammunition.’”

Let that sink in for a moment. On a debate stage on a major broadcast network, the sitting president of the United States was point-blank accused of responsibility for the vicious slaughter of 22 innocents.

Yet that wasn’t even the most slanderous charge leveled against the chief executive, not by a long shot. The “winner” in that category also emanated from the addled brain of the White House wannabe initially referenced above:

“But we will also call out the fact that we have a white supremacist in the White House, and he poses a mortal threat to people of color all across this country.”

In other words, our president, per Robert Francis O’Rourke and Webster’s dictionary, is “a person who believes that the white race is inherently superior to other races and that white people should have control over people of other races.” And endangers their existence.

Loser: Kamala Harris.

Kamala’s bad debate night started when she addressed President Trump right off the cuff. She spoke to Trump “who we all know is watching.” At that very moment, Trump was on stage at the GOP retreat, as Townhall’s Storm Paglia noted. Then Harris tried to say “Yes, we can,” to Biden, who shut her down by referencing the Constitution.

In one of the most memorable moments of the night, moderator Linsey Davis slammed Harris for her flip-flops on criminal justice issues. “When you had the power, why didn’t you try to effect change then?” Davis asked — to loud applause from the audience.

Loser: Pete Buttigieg.

The mayor of South Bend did not stand out at the third Democratic debate. He got in a plug for his Douglas Plan — a kind of nationwide affirmative action scheme — but he did not have a strong moment. Toward the end, he told a sob story about living under Mike Pence when Pence was governor of Indiana. He did emerge as more hopeful on the race issue, stressing the importance of black entrepreneurship.

Loser: Julian Castro.

Castro attempted to reframe the debate around the issue of Joe Biden’s senility, but his attack on Biden did not work. Rather than hitting Biden on the former vice president’s many embarrassing gaffes, Castro attempted to get Biden to admit to a gaffe in the middle of the debate, and it backfired.

Loser: The Protesters.

Right after ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos asked Biden a question about resilience, protesters loudly interrupted. Their uncoordinated shouts became indecipherable. No one could tell why they were interrupting, and Bernie told the vice president to keep speaking and ignore the protesters.

While there were six winners and only four losers, Biden won big. For the first time, I saw a Joe Biden who could actually be president. Naturally, he will likely devolve into his usual gaffetastic self, but for at least this one night he inspired confidence, not mockery. If this debate matters, it largely helps him.

As for the other winners, they had standout moments but were unlikely to join the top three (with the exception of Warren). O’Rourke, Yang, Booker, and Klobuchar may have an outside chance to emerge as a dark horse, but that remains unlikely.

Bernie Sanders really tanked tonight, and Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg also did not have the performances they need to break into the top three.

If this debate were to really make an impact in the race, the 2020 Democratic primary would be shaping up to be a challenge between Biden and Warren

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/winners-and-losers-of-the-third-democratic-debate/

The top ten Democrats faced off for the first time Thursday in the third Democratic debate. Frontrunner and former Vice President Joe Biden faced off with his two closest challengers, Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg fought to hold on to their second-tier status, as five other candidates attempted to edge in.

Winner: Joe Biden.

The former vice president decided to go on offense Thursday night, and it worked well. He attacked Sanders and Warren on health care, pointing out the extremely high cost of Medicare for All and the fact that a fully single-payer overhaul would cause Americans to lose their health insurance.

Winner: Elizabeth Warren.

Liz Warren played it safe in this debate. She didn’t go after Biden and she mostly played to her strengths: mentioning her complicated policy plans, pushing for environmentalists and human rights activists to be at the table in trade talks with China, and reminding Americans that she was a schoolteacher.Warren has become a driving force of energy in the Democratic field in recent weeks, but that energy seemed muted this evening. Even so, her policy-heavy campaign seems well-tailored for success, especially if Biden and Bernie falter. She did not advance much tonight, but she didn’t falter, either.

Winner: Beto O’Rourke.

The third Democratic debate took place in Houston, Texas, Beto O’Rourke’s home turf. Debate moderators and candidates mentioned the shooting in El Paso, turning to pay homage to him as the local.

O’Rourke received loud applause for his line about gun confiscation: “Hell yes, we’re gonna take your AR-15, your AK-47!” he declared. Many liberals and journalists suggested this line defeated the argument for the Second Amendment and gun ownership.

Winner: Andrew Yang.

Yang received the lowest amount of time during the debate, but he used his time very well. He made news by announcing that he would give $1,000 per month away to ten families for one year to illustrate his central promise, the “Freedom Dividend,” a Universal Basic Income (UBI) strategy to replace many forms of welfare.

Winner: Cory Booker.

Booker proved well-spoken and surprisingly balanced on a few issues.

At one point, Castro attacked charter schools, declaring, “It is a myth that charter schools are better than public schools. They’re not.” Booker responded by insisting that in Newark he closed poor-performing charter schools but he supported charter schools that did well. (By the way, an exhaustive review of the data on charter schools found that charter elementary schools outperform traditional public schools in reading and math, while the superiority of charter high schools is less certain.)

Winner: Amy Klobuchar.

Klobuchar mostly had a forgettable debate performance, but she enjoyed a standout moment when discussing Bernie’s Medicare for All bill. “While Bernie wrote the bill, I read the bill, and on page 8, on page 8 of the bill, it says that we will no longer have private insurance as we know it. … I don’t think that’s a bold idea. I think it it’s a bad idea,” she declared.