RUTHFULLY YOURS

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.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/08/23/climate_change_divides_dems_as_dnc_plots_2020_strategy_141086.html

SAN FRANCISCO­ — With their presidential standard-bearer far from certain and the country’s Rust Belt once again pivotal to winning the White House, Democrats are already wrestling with how hard to push their green agenda.

The Democratic National Committee, at its summer meeting here this week, rejected a resolution by activists to back a climate-specific television debate, sparking angry protests from environmentalists who interrupted the meeting. Besides displaying the party’s seams on the issue, the move also risks alienating young voters whose energy and turnout are essential for victory in November 2020.

Symone Sanders, a top strategist for former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign, was the leading voice against the resolution during Thursday’s DNC summer meeting. Sanders argued that having single-issue debates would be disruptive to an already lengthy debate process that forces candidates to spend more time prepping for the face-offs instead of talking to voters.

“This would throw the whole process into a free for all,” she said, also referring to the issue as “dangerous territory in the middle of the primary process.”

Tad Devine, a leading Democratic media strategist, backed her up on Twitter.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/heres-why-2020-dems-are-dropping-like-flies/

On Friday, Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) — Seth who? — will become the fourth candidate to drop out of the race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. In fact, three candidates dropped out in the past two weeks: former Gov. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), current Gov. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.), and now Moulton. Americans can expect to see more Democrats throw in the towel as August 28 approaches.

While a whopping 21 candidates received the privilege of debating on stage in June and July, the threshold to qualify for the September and October debates is much higher, and only 10 have qualified so far. August 28 is the cut-off for the September 12 and 13 debates. Democrats need to have at least four polls showing them at two percent or higher and at least 130,000 unique donors.

The top three candidates: former Vice President Joe Biden and Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) have qualified for the September debates, along with seven others. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) has taken a tumble in the polls and now ranks with Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Ind., in a middle tier above the lower tier of candidates.

Far-Left Radicalism May Cost Dems 2020, Presidential Drop-Out Warns

Five candidates in that lower tier have also qualified for the September debates: Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.); former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas); former HUD Secretary Julián Castro; and entrepreneur Andrew Yang.

Tom Steyer, the environmentalist activist who made his billions by investing in coal, has reached the donor threshold and just needs one more qualifying poll. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) needs two more polls. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) has only broken two percent in one poll and her campaign says she’s close to the donor threshold. Author Marianne Williamson stays she has enough donors but she hasn’t broken two percent in any qualifying poll.