RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/kirsten-gillibrand-ends-her-empty-suit-fake-feminist-presidential-campaign

To no one’s surprise, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, ended her presidential campaign on Wednesday. Her short tenure on the national campaign stage was notable for abysmal poll numbers and mediocre debate performances. Though Gillibrand was one of only a handful of female candidates in a crowded field of men, she lacked star power and any real voter base.

Her failure might come as a surprise: Democrats have long pushed for more women to hold elected office. Yet Gillibrand’s campaign reminds us that a woman’s physical characteristics don’t automatically make her any more — or less — suitable for office, and that any other conclusion is just woke sexism masquerading as progress.

Before her departure, Gillibrand’s RealClearPolitics polling average stood at only 0.1%, hardly a blip on the screen. But it’s all she deserved, as her campaign consisted of little more than identity politics largely focused on feminism. Most especially, she voiced loud and consistent support for abortion rights.

In short, the Gillibrand 2020 campaign was an empty pantsuit. On paper, a leftist, female senator should have done better, right? But even Washington Post writer Monica Hesse noted Gillibrand’s almost singular focus on women’s issues:

https://thefederalist.com/2019/08/29/september-debate-set-discussion-can-hand-free-stuff/

Wednesday was the deadline to qualify for the third Democratic presidential debate in Houston next month, and only 10 candidates will participate making it the one-night event on Sept. 12.

In a race where progressives have dominated the top-tier field of candidates, few moderates qualified for the September debate, setting the stage for a debate of more versus more, who can offer the American public the largest welfare state.

Below are the candidates who met the DNC’s threshold to participate in the event hosted and moderated by ABC News:

Joe Biden, former vice president
Elizabeth Warren, U.S. senator from Massachusetts
Bernie Sanders, U.S. senator from Vermont
Kamala Harris, U.S. senator from California
Cory Booker, U.S. senator from New Jersey
Amy Klobuchar, U.S. senator from Minnesota
Beto O’Rourke, former U.S. representative from Texas
Julian Castro, former U.S. secretary of Housing and Urban Development
Andrew Yang, tech entrepreneur

The most moderate candidate on stage will be Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, outnumbered by progressive candidates promising “Medicare for all” and the radical expansion of the U.S. welfare state. While former Vice President Joe Biden has tried to brand himself as a moderate opposing Democrats new signature healthcare proposal and criticizing the idea of decriminalizing border crossings, a closer examination of Biden’s record reveals no moderate.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/why-doesnt-stacey-abrams-want-to-run-for-senate/

Something ‘s afoot here….Stacey Abrams a sore loser without any national prominence was chosen to give the opposing  party’s rebuttal to the president’s State of the Union speech in 2019. Until 2019, all previous responses were delivered by contemporary senators, representatives, or governors. She is being groomed and aiming for a place on the National ticket…..rsk

Life just got a little more complicated for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. The 2020 elections looked challenging but manageable, needing to defend Colorado’s Cory Gardner, Maine’s Susan Collins, North Carolina’s Thom Tillis, and Arizona’s appointed senator Martha McSally. The risk of losses were somewhat offset by some low-hanging fruit in Alabama Democrat Doug Jones, an open seat in New Mexico, and maybe some chances for an upset in New Hampshire or Michigan.

But now Republicans have to worry about an open seat Senate race in Georgia, as Senator Johnny Isakson said today that he will step down from office at the end of this year due to complications with Parkinson’s disease.

Yes, Georgia is a Republican-leaning state. When Stacey Abrams calls herself the legitimately elected governor of her state and refuses to concede the race, Republicans can point out that the official final vote count in 2018 put her down by 54,723 votes, not exactly a small margin. But Abrams did do better than almost any Georgia Democrat running statewide in a generation, with 48.8 percent, and came within 1.4 percentage points of winning.

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/08/28/bernie-sanders-has-earned-his-sandersista-label/

Sen. Bernie Sanders has said publicly that he doesn’t believe government should own the means of production. Yet he appears on national television last week and agrees there should be a “federal takeover” of the energy sector. His Marxist slip is showing.

“When I use the world socialist — and I know some people aren’t comfortable about it — I’m saying that it is imperative” to “create a government that works for all and not just the few,” the Vermont Democratic lawmaker said in 2015.

“I don’t believe,” he continued, “government should own the means of production,” which of course is a hallmark of socialism.

That version is quite different from the 1976 Sanders, who said “I favor the public ownership of utilities, banks and major industries.”

2015 Sanders is also inconsistent with the Sanders of spring 2019, who, according to People’s World, which claims to be the “voice for progressive change and socialism” in America, “will propose workers take ownership of individual plants and businesses, removing them from the hands of the bosses and financiers who back them.”

Ownership won’t change hands unless a coercive government becomes involved and socializes business. The workers can’t simply vote companies over to themselves.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/08/27/trump_pushes_transformation_bhttps://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/08/27/trump_pushes_transformation_b

Normally, it’s a sitting president who urges the nation to “stay the course.” Voters prefer stability, so incumbents normally use it as a selling point while seeking reelection. But these are not normal times. In this campaign, the man in the Oval Office is selling transformation while his leading Democratic opponent is promising a return to the calmer days of “no-drama Obama.”

It’s a political oddity.

Although Trump’s slogan, “Promises Made, Promises Kept,” seems to stress continuity, he is really promising something quite different: to keep rolling back the Administrative State, recalibrating American foreign policy, and shaking up Washington. He is telling supporters that he has stuck with his major 2016 themes, especially fighting illegal immigration, lowering taxes, appointing conservative judges, cutting burdensome regulations, and reviving American manufacturing. Internationally, he is determined to wind down America’s long wars, avoid new ones, make America’s allies pay more for global security, and rework multilateral trade deals. Oh, and maybe purchase Greenland for the American people.

That’s an ambitious, transformative agenda, and Trump is running on it. Those policies, plus steady economic growth and an enthusiastic base, give him a decent chance of winning in November 2020, unless the economy falls into recession. His biggest liabilities are obvious: his grandiose personality and his erratic, thin-skinned behavior, which are on display daily.

Trump’s base loves his outsized persona, but it grates on prosperous, educated voters, many of them swing voters in the suburbs. Their switch to the Democrats in 2018 put Nancy Pelosi back in the speaker’s chair. To dislodge her, Trump is making no effort to tone down his personality or slow his tweets. Instead, he is painting the opposition as a Children’s Crusade of Crazed Socialists, led by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib.

amgreatness.com/2019/08/25/the-ideological-aimlessness-of-the-nevertrump-primary/

The already-hopeless prospects of the NeverTrump crowd’s attempts to primary President Trump have gotten even worse. And that’s quite an accomplishment, even for them.

It’s not like expectations were high for the ringleader of the NeverTrump circus, Bill Kristol. His much-touted “political war machine” that he has been building to take on Trump seems to be out of gas already. He is now so desperate that he is resorting to an alliance with embarrassing former White House communications chief Anthony Scaramucci. The fact that even that revelation is not considered rock-bottom tells you all you need to know about Kristol, the professional sinker of magazines and flip-flopper extraordinaire.

The Rats Fleeing the Ship

When we last profiled Kristol’s “NeverTrump primary,” a handful of the most prominent names were still actively considering a run against the incumbent president, because of “principles” or something. Since then, even the biggest darlings of Conservatism, Inc. have ruled out any possible challenge.

Former Senator Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and former Governor John Kasich (R-Ohio) have both signed on as contributors with CBS and CNN, respectively. As if entering such lucrative media deals wasn’t enough to dissuade the diehard anti-Trumpers, both men have since openly declared they have no intentions of challenging President Trump, with Kasich recently admitting, “there is no path for me” to run in the primaries.

If that sting isn’t painful enough, even the significantly less famous NeverTrump figureheads have ruled out a possible bid. These include the Diet Jeff Flake, former Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), and the two incumbent Northeastern governors with the most NeverTrump buzz: Charlie Baker (R-Mass.) and Larry Hogan (R-Md.).

Of course, it’s a no-brainer to want to serve out your second term as governor over a suicidal bid for the nomination against a party’s sitting president ; but remember, this is the “principled conservatism” crowd we’re talking about. So having brains capable of making the correct decision is an impressive feat for the likes of these people.

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/458562-stacey-abrams-benefits-from-a-voter-suppression-tale

Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams lost her 2018 gubernatorial bid to Republican Brian Kemp by nearly 55,000 votes, but she still refuses to concede. Instead, she claims the election was stolen from her. She has uncritically peddled that falsehood in countless interviews on national television and has capitalized off of it, by starting the group Fair Fight.

Fair Fight just launched a multimillion-dollar “voter protection” initiative for the 2020 election in 20 competitive states. As the face of the group, Abrams stands to benefit politically from the increased national presence. This begs the question: Is Fair Fight about fighting voter suppression or raising Abrams’ profile?

The Associated Press recently raised this conundrum by pointing out that the “organization has paid for advertisements featuring Abrams and some of her travel and organized national watch parties when she delivered the Democratic rebuttal to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union.” And while there is no evidence of illegality, Abrams’ actions “could prompt questions about whether the nonprofit is inappropriately supporting her political ambitions,” the AP’s report stated.