RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-scent-of-a-harris-panic-in-the-air/

The 2024 race is still close.

But then so was the 1980 Carter-Reagan race at this same juncture.

Indeed, incumbent president Carter was then comfortably up in the last two October Gallup polls—before utterly and suddenly evaporating on Election Day.

But in the last seven days, there seems a sense of panic in the Harris campaign.

How do we know that?

Why are Democratic pundits—from Axelrod to Carville—blasting the Harris campaign and otherwise warning of bad things to come?

Why are some of the once Democrat sure-thing senate races—e.g., in Ohio, Wisconsin, and even Michigan—tightening up?

Pundit poll-watchers are suggesting that Trump is close, even, or slightly ahead in the swing-state polls, suggesting that he is nearing a margin that could cancel out anticipated “ballot irregularities”.

The expected October Harris-Biden surprises—the opportune Fed interest rate cut, the transparently desperate Jack Smith beefed-up re-indictment, the current new Hollywood Trump-hit movie, the desperate Zelensky fly-in to Pennsylvania, the election-cycle customary Bob Woodward unsourced gossip book—seemed so far to have had no effect.

Why would any campaign send out the bumbling Tim Walz to a Fox Sunday interview after his disastrous debate?

Why is a suddenly smiling Biden so eager to claim candidate and VP Harris as a co-conspirator to his disastrous four years?

Why would Harris pivot and now agree to (admittedly mostly softball) interviews, thus confirming to the voting public why she wisely had previously avoided all press conferences, interviews, and town halls?

https://tomklingenstein.com/

In the days following last week’s vice-presidential debate, there has been a barrage of polling and commentary focused on how the debate does not matter. While it is true that, historically and statistically, vice-presidential debates do little to shift public opinion, this particular debate between Vance and Walz is different in three important ways.

First, the debate showed that Vance complements Trump in a way that expands the ticket’s vision for America. This is important because Americans ultimately vote for a vision. Second, the debate is taking place in the context of unprecedented political times, which puts more emphasis on every public forum the candidates engage in, including last week’s debate. Third, both Harris and Walz, since becoming a ticket, have given the fewest number of interviews and press conferences out of any presidential duo in history. This fact increases the significance of the debate as one of the few significant ways Americans can learn about the little-known Walz.

On the first point, Trump and Vance are complementary in a way that is unusual for a Republican ticket. Since 1984, which is when the first vice-presidential debate took place, there have been few tickets in which the vice-presidential pick has contributed positively to the presidential candidate’s vision. For example, in 2008, John McCain’s pick, Sarah Palin, ended up hurting McCain in the polls due to uncertainty about her qualifications and competence. McCain even acknowledged later on that he regretted picking Palin. In 2016, Mike Pence, Trump’s pick, was a standard, run-of-the-mill conservative who neither brought a fresh perspective on Trump’s vision nor was particularly engaging or charismatic to voters.

The debate last week showed that Vance is a unique pick in that he supplements Trump’s America-First vision. Trump’s vision, fundamentally, is about common sense, strength, and competence. Vance not only possesses common sense, strength, and competence, but also complements this vision with the additions of humaneness, empathy, relatability, and intellect. Unlike Pence, Vance is a force to be reckoned with. Taken as a collective, the comprehensive vision that the Trump-Vance ticket is putting forth is not just about Making America Great Again, which is the root of the vision; it is also a people-first, rather than party-first or elite-first. It is vision that focuses on fixing a country that has never been so broken in our lifetime. Even before Vance became the vice-presidential nominee, his relatability was evident through the popular appeal of his book, Hillbilly Elegy. The debate last week allowed the American people to see that crucial aspect come through in a direct way as Vance answered each question with strength, intellect, and poise, and also treated Walz with respect. On the immigration issue, Trump brought an unmistakable urgency and call to action to the issue during his debate with Kamala Harris. During the vice-presidential debate, Vance supplemented that urgency with specific facts and stories.

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/10/15/non-citizens-will-vote-in-november-the-only-question-is-how-many/

Eight years ago, the mainstream media told us in no uncertain terms that noncitizens don’t vote in American elections. “There is no evidence,” they said. The likely number “is zero.”

They were provably wrong then – there’d been multiple accounts of noncitizens who’d registered and voted in elections. In the years since, the evidence of this problem has piled up higher. But the media are still at it. It’s “extremely rare,” they say. It never “affects the outcome of a race.” Republicans are looking to “blame illegals” if Donald Trump loses, etc.

Here’s one example of the disconnect.

An audit of Texas voter rolls in 2019 found 95,000 noncitizens who’d registered, 58,000 of whom voted in an election. This year, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced that he’d removed 6,500 noncitizens from the state’s voter rolls, nearly 2,000 of whom voted.

Yet just this weekend, ABC News ran a piece titled: “In South Texas, the myth of noncitizen voting takes center stage.”

But it’s the media that’s peddling the myth. Voter rolls are criminally outdated and error prone. Some states are so eager to register voters that they don’t put up needed safeguards. When election officials do bother to audit their registration rolls, they keep turning up thousands of noncitizens.