RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/02/there_were_important_themes_in_new_hampshires_democrat_debate_echo_chamber.html

After the 2016 presidential race, Scott Adams said that reality isn’t fixed but is, instead, situational. Democrats and Republicans, he argued, were watching two different movies. One movie had Trump as an eccentric, America-loving man who would fix systemic problems; the other movie had Trump as Hitler and his concentration camps. Time would tell which movie was fiction and which was a documentary. (Hint: There are no concentration camps.)

At the Democrat debate in New Hampshire, it was clear that the Democrat candidates are watching a very different movie from the rest of America – and, more significantly, a movie different from the data. Andrew Yang, Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Amy Klobuchar, and Tom Steyer are not enjoying “morning in America.” Instead, they’re trapped in a nightmarish American landscape filled with poverty, hate, and despair.

The candidates live in an America with both endemic and epidemic poverty, all made worse under Trump. Except that employers created 225,000 new jobs in January alone — and real wages keep rising.

For Democrats, systemic racism is omnipresent. Reality, though, has Americans saying that race relations and minority status are better under Trump than under Obama.

Laughably, Elizabeth Warren, whose campaign witnessed a mass minority walkout in Nevada owing to racist working conditions, earnestly lectured the audience in New Hampshire about the problem of systemic racism. And Bernie, the old Marxist, insisted, “We have a racist society from top to bottom.”

The candidates were united in stating that Trump is an utterly evil, bizarre, dishonest, corrupt, racist blight on America, as proven in part by his saying mean things about Democrats. None were troubled by the irony of their making over-the-top attacks on Trump, while simultaneously claiming that Trump is mean and divisive.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/james-carville-warns-dems-against-ignoring-voters-with-distracting-rhetoric-on-open-borders-they-dont-care/

Longtime political strategist James Carville slammed the 2020 Democrats for tacking “off the damn radar screen” on issues, including “talking about open borders and decriminalizing illegal immigration,” and warned those still in the primary that such progressive advocacy “is not how you win a national election.”

Carville appeared on MSNBC in the wake of the Iowa caucuses debacle, saying Tuesday that “there’s only one moral imperative in this country right now, and that is to beat Donald Trump.”

“We don’t win elections because we talk about stuff that is not relevant,” he argued, and challenged Democrats to rise to the occasion.In an interview with Vox published Friday, Carville elaborated, and highlighted Democrats’ willingness to “get distracted” over far-left issues.

“We have candidates on the debate stage talking about open borders and decriminalizing illegal immigration. They’re talking about doing away with nuclear energy and fracking,” Carville stated. “You’ve got Bernie Sanders talking about letting criminals and terrorists vote from jail cells. It doesn’t matter what you think about any of that, or if there are good arguments — talking about that is not how you win a national election. It’s not how you become a majoritarian party.”

Carville then explained his alternative as a “coherent, meaningful message that is relevant to people’s lives.” He implied that many of the talking points being peddled in the primary were largely promoted by Republicans to make the candidates “be sucked into every rabbit hole.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/02/pete-buttigieg-uncanny-candidate/

He may not be a robot, but there’s something uncanny about this candidate.

It has to be said: There is something plain amazing about Pete Buttigieg’s run for the presidency. His last election was for mayor of a very small city. No offense to South Bend, Ind., but being the nation’s 308th largest city is not something to brag about. In his last election before the Iowa caucus Buttigieg  won the support of less than 9,000 people. Pete Buttigieg did this by outlasting, out-fundraising, and out-debating former governors and a California senator, and lapping billionaire entrepreneurs. He beat a national front-runner and essentially tied the runner-up to the 2016 Democratic nomination. From unknown to serious contender for the presidency in less than a year: This is real Mr. Smith stuff, a tribute to the everyman nature of democracy.

To repeat myself, this is amazing, amazing stuff.

But also, it’s really creepy.

Right?

A few nights ago, the Iowa meltdown was just starting to dawn on us. Officially the Iowa Democrats were telling us that they had verified precisely zero percent of the votes.

And while we pondered that fact, this man, “Mayor Pete” emerged on cable news to dispel the utter confusion and uncertainty and declare himself the victor, based on his own tabulation. Think about that for a minute.

This is a man from nowhere who seems to have spent a great deal of time in the last few years managing his own Wikipedia page. His popularity is widely attributed to the work of a single media genius, Lis Smith. And as he was declaring himself the winner, a flurry of reports were being filed that there were some questionable financial connections between the developer of the Iowa vote-counting app and the Pete Buttigieg campaign.