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ELECTIONS

Shy Trump Voters Are Real, And They Could Decide The Election

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/09/08/shy-trump-voters-are-real-and-they-could-decide-the-election/

A recent IBD/TIPP poll found something that appears to confirm the idea that there are lots of Trump supporters out there who won’t admit it to pollsters.

“Overall, 20% of registered voters say they’re uncomfortable revealing their preferred candidate, but that rises to 28% among independents,” it found.

That’s a shockingly high number and one that should worry anybody who expects Trump to get trounced in November.

Think about it: Which candidate are people likely to be uncomfortable revealing their preference for? The candidate who is being heralded as Mr. Empathy and the savior of the nation? Or the candidate who is universally described – in the press anyway – as a racist, xenophobic, dictatorial, dangerous lunatic?

Biden’s supporters have no reason to fear revealing their preference because they don’t have to fear being shamed or hounded or booed or yelled at.

It also found that among registered independents, “24% say they agree with Trump on some issues but are reluctant to admit that in public.”

So, it stands to reason that a large portion of that 28% of independents are secret Trump supporters.

DESPERATELY DERAILING TRUMP: VICTOR DAVIS HANSON

https://amgreatness.com/2020/09/06/desperately-derailing-donald/

The effort to stop President Trump is growing comical.

One always expects the media surprise leak of a purported hidden scandal as a presidential campaign winds down. Remember the last-minute “discovery” of George W. Bush’s undisclosed 24-year-old DUI arrest in 2000? Or the October 7, 2016 effort of the Washington Post to publish the hoarded 11-year-old “Access Hollywood” tape, just two days before Donald Trump’s second debate with Hillary Clinton?

We should expect lots of these “bombshells” and “walls are closing in” pseudo derailments. Except Trump has been the most widely investigated, probed, attacked, and smeared president in history. And so the scandal-field has pretty well been picked over, as those fired like Omarosa Manigault Newman, Anthony Scaramucci, John Bolton, and others have long ago more or less lectured us that Trump is nuts, crazy, dangerous, stupid, ignorant, and so forth. 

In terms of bombshells, what does the Left do after the 2016 suit to decertify voting machines, the FISA court abuse, the effort to sabotage electors’ votes, the first impeachment drive, the Logan Act gambits, the Emoluments Clause joke, the 25th Amendment ruse, the Russian collusion hoax, the 22-month-asleep-at-the-wheel Mueller and his “all-stars,” Ukraine! Ukraine!, the second impeachment drive, and the 2020 trifecta of Trump as Typhoid Mary, Bull Connor, and Herbert Hoover?

The point is, in Jussie Smollett fashion, the demand for scandals is outrunning the supply and time grows short. 

It’s a Straight Line from Biden to BLM By Andrew C. McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/09/its-a-straight-line-from-biden-to-blm/

Black Lives Matter is not a reaction to Donald Trump.

‘T he devil made me do it!” That was how funnyman Flip Wilson explained away his rogue moves in 1970s comedy bits. In 2020, it is Joe Biden’s rationalization of the Black Lives Matter revolution, with Baal taking on a decidedly orange cast.

An unmistakable correlation between the radical Left’s extortionate violence and the sudden tightening of polls has stirred the Democrats’ senescent standard-bearer to bolt the basement. He’d hoped to wait another week or so before emerging to read short speeches about President Trump’s erratic handling of COVID-19 (the government’s missteps during the Obama-era swine flu pandemic having apparently slipped Biden’s mind). But he’s got a tiger by the tail in the radical Left, which is turning electoral battlegrounds into smoldering battlefields. So now he’s hustling into the hustings with a narrative about what’s motivating his fellow travelers — who have just added murder to the mayhem they’ve wrought on America’s streets for the past three months.

Here’s the punchline: Trump made them do it!

That was the upshot of the former vice president’s speech in Pittsburgh on Monday. “Are you safe in Trump’s America?” His argument lays at the incumbent president’s feet the upheaval instigated by Democratic supporters in Democrat-run cities. In a weekend warm-up as the flames continued to rise in Portland, Minneapolis, and Kenosha, Biden claimed it is Trump who is “fanning the flames of hate.” By Monday, Biden was roaring about how, on Trump’s watch, the murder rate is up 26 percent in the nation’s cities this year (a shift from Democratic messaging of five minutes ago, which said surging crime was nothing to be concerned about because crime is still historically low — thanks to policing policies Democrats oppose, because, you know, racism).

The Case for Trump There’s little wrong with President Trump that more Trump couldn’t solve. by Michael Anton

https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/the-case-for-trump/

This essay is adapted from Michael Anton’s forthcoming book, The Stakes: America at the Point of No Return (Regnery Publishing).

Americans who want to remain citizens of a united country that at least makes some desultory attempt to protect them and further their interests have no choice but to stay the course. As the saying goes, the only way out is through.

I know that some readers will lament that the Trump Administration has been a disappointment. “Where’s our wall?” I’d like to have seen more progress by now, too. “Why wasn’t he tougher during the riots and their aftermath?” I don’t know.

But it does seem clear that a few of the things we thought all along are actually true. The presidency is hard enough to manage with decades of experience in politics and a series of elective offices under your belt. It’s that much harder when a president assumes the office not merely from the outside, but politically speaking, from out of nowhere.

It’s harder still without a party. Yes, President Trump enjoys the overwhelming loyalty of Republican voters—but his hold on Republican donors, and especially officials, is much more tenuous. He ran against them and won—and most of them will never forgive him. They play nice to his face and undermine him behind his back. That’s before we even get to the ones in open rebellion. No president—Democrat or Republican—has ever come to power facing organized efforts by his own party’s middle management to tally lists of people declaring on the record that under no circumstances will they work for the incoming administration. It’s been hard, to say the least, to staff up when a good chunk of the party is dead-set against their leader, and nearly all the rest spent their careers furthering policies diametrically opposed to those he ran—and won—on.

And that’s just President Trump’s ostensible own side. Then factor in all his open enemies from the other party, and virtually every other power center in our society, plus the steadfast opposition of the so-called “deep state”—i.e., the very federal bureaucrats whom he was elected to oversee and direct. Viewed from this angle, one may fairly wonder how it’s been possible for him to accomplish anything at all.

More fundamentally: where do you think the country would be without him? Even if you’re disappointed with less than 200 miles of wall, remember that leading Democrats not only insist that every single new inch is a moral atrocity, they want to tear down sections that already exist.

Wrong-Way Biden by Kyle Smith “The policy choice in the presidential election is clear” *****

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2020/09/21/wrong-way-biden/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=first

“Alas, Abraham Lincoln is not on the ballot this year. Two flawed men present themselves for our inspection. Biden may promise “hope and light and love,” but that is merely the accepted euphemism for greatly expanded federal powers to reshape everything from the energy sector to girls’ locker rooms. The distractions of personality foibles, Twitter wars, and misadventures in assertions of truth aside, the crux of this election is that we are confronted as usual with one party that says, “Let’s get to work reshaping everything in the United States” and another party that says, “Let’s not.””

Joe Biden is a proud retail politician, a man who believes the personal touch is how elected officials cement a connection with us. So I’ll share my personal story about how he cemented a connection with me, back when I and a few hundred thousand other troops were preparing for war, and Joe wafted in to warn us we were all to get our collective ass kicked.

In January of 1991, I was a second lieutenant in the 178th Personnel Service Company, an administrative appendix to the buffed body of the Second Armored Cavalry Regiment. My troops and I had landed in the Gulf town of Dhahran a week before Christmas and gradually made our way inland by long, grim, nearly silent convoys — creeping, 20-mph slogs across the one two-lane highway, then off the road and across the sands to set up camp.

In mid January, after maybe twelve hours of deliberate, dusty driving, I climbed out of a deuce-and-a-half and stretched my limbs as the soldiers began unloading, somewhere beneath the triangle where Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia meet. A radio was playing in someone’s truck. Radio options were limited in this landscape; occasionally you could find the signal for the Armed Forces Network, if there was a large enough base nearby, but sometimes you couldn’t. AFN, Stars and Stripes, and occasional copies of a surprisingly good English-language broadsheet called “Arab News” were our sole media diet apart from whatever magazines we subscribed to, which would arrive weeks late in the mail. All three of our main sources were, of course, pro-U.S., which was fine by me. I had no idea what we were in for. I wanted only the most optimistic spin on things.

Dead heat: Trump erases Biden’s 8-point lead in Pennsylvania as black voters abandon Democrat by Paul Bedard

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/dead-heat-trump-erases-bidens-8-point-lead-in-pennsylvania-as-black-voters-abandon-democrat

Former Vice President Joe Biden, who calls himself “a kid from Scranton,” has lost his wide lead over President Trump in his native Pennsylvania, where the 2020 presidential race is a dead heat.

The latest Rasmussen Reports poll showed that both are tied at 46%.

And, significantly, said the poll analysis, among the 82% of voters who said that they are “certain” how they will vote, Trump holds a 51%-49% advantage.

Rasmussen is the second poll in two days to show the race in Pennsylvania, a key battleground state, has become a tie. The Monmouth University Poll said Wednesday that Biden had a lead of 1 to 3 points.

Long before Trump, bipartisan group of elder statesmen flagged mail ballot fraud risks Forgotten 2005 report warned a small amount of fraud could swing close elections, urged voter ID requirements. John Solomon

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/long-trump-bipartisan-group-elder-statesmen-flagged-mail-ballot-fraud

In recent months, the debate over mail-in balloting has evolved into a battle between Team Trump’s worries about fraud and the claims of Democrats and their news media allies that such concerns are an unwarranted effort at disenfranchising voters.

It wasn’t always this way.

Fifteen years ago this very month, a bipartisan panel of American statesmen and stateswomen — from ex-President Jimmy Carter and ex-Senate leader Tom Daschle on the left to former Secretary of State James Baker and former House Minority Leader Bob Michel on the right — studied the future of U.S. elections and issued strong words of caution that the expansion of mail-in voting that began a few years earlier in Oregon posed real fraud risks, especially in close elections.

“To improve ballot integrity, we propose that federal, state, and local prosecutors issue public reports on their investigations of election fraud, and we recommend federal legislation to deter or prosecute systemic efforts to deceive or intimidate voters,” the Commission on Federal Election Reform urged in 2005. “States should not discourage legal voter registration or get-out-the-vote activities, but they need to do more to prevent voter registration and absentee ballot fraud.”

Small Crowds, Little Enthusiasm for Joe Biden During ‘Desperation Trip’ to Kenosha By Debra Heine

https://amgreatness.com/2020/09/03/small-crowds-little-enthusiasm-for-joe-biden-during-desperation-trip-to-kenosha/

There was no crowd of supporters to greet Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden at the airport when he arrived in the battleground state of Wisconsin, Thursday, and as of 1:00 p.m., no crowd (other than his MSM supporters) had formed on the streets or in front of the Kenosha church where he was expected at 2:00 p.m. to hold a community event.

The former vice president and his wife Jill Biden arrived at a Milwaukee airport about 11:40 a.m. to little fanfare. The Bidens met privately with relatives of Jacob Blake, the accused rapist who was shot in the back by Kenosha police while he was resisting arrest. The shooting occurred on August 23, as police were attempting to arrest him for violating a restraining order stemming from the alleged sexual assault. 

Invitations to Voter Fraud in 2020 California is Exhibit A – while key battleground states are also at risk. Joseph Klein

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/09/invitations-voter-fraud-2020-joseph-klein/

When the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s voter identification law, the Court observed that “flagrant examples” of voter fraud “have been documented throughout this Nation’s history by respected historians and journalists.” As the National Commission on Federal Election Reform stated in its 2005 bipartisan report, the problem “is not the magnitude of voter fraud. In close or disputed elections, and there are many, a small amount of fraud could make the margin of difference.” The report noted that “[I]nvalid voter files, which contain ineligible, duplicate, fictional, or deceased voters, are an invitation to fraud.”

California, the nation’s leading sanctuary state for illegal aliens, has opened the door to unprecedented opportunities for such voter fraud – and that’s even before California’s use of universal mail-in voting that the state is putting into place this year for the general election. While California is virtually certain not to be a close contest between President Trump and Joe Biden, California’s broken voting system illustrates what can go wrong across the country where the margins of votes between the candidates may be very slim indeed.

A Facebook post in November 2018 stated that 449,000 Californians turned down jury duty claiming they were not citizens. The post went on to say that these non-citizens were on the voter registration list, reasoning that prospective jurors are often culled from voter registration lists.

Left leaning commentators have questioned the accuracy of this post, claiming that Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) records are the primary source for the state to identify prospective jurors. Registrars of voter data are used as a secondary source, they argue. Such criticisms miss the forest for the trees when it comes to California and other states where DMV and voter registration databases are electronically linked. Voter registration data are transferred from DMVs to state voter registration systems. Even if DMV records are the primary source for these states to identify prospective jurors, it doesn’t matter because there is a significant overlap with the voter registration data systems. The DMV driver licensing process is used to generate automatic registration data that feed the voter registration data systems.

The Democrats’ Dangerous Delegitimization of the Election By David Harsanyi

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/09/democrats-dangerous-delegitimization-election/

Too many voters don’t believe November’s election will be legitimate — before it has even been conducted.

A recent deep dive in the Washington Post’s Outlook section, “What’s the Worst That Could Happen?” exploring various potential outcomes of the 2020 presidential election, found that in “every scenario except a Biden landslide, our simulation ended catastrophically.” According to the Post, any other outcome is destined to spark “violence” and a “constitutional crisis.”

Or, in other words, nice country you got there . . .

Every assumption in the article, written by Rosa Brooks, a Georgetown University law professor and co-founder of the Transition Integrity Project, is awash in the conspiratorial paranoia that’s infected the modern Democratic Party. It’s a world where Trump officials — played, quite implausibly, by Joe Biden partisans Michael Steele and Bill Kristol — are “ruthless and unconstrained right out of the gate” but the genteel statesmen of Team Biden “struggled to get out of reaction mode.” It is a place where Republicans aren’t only reflexively seditious and autocratic, but a “highly politicized” Supreme Court tries to steal the election.

In their “war game” scenarios, however, it’s the Democrats who refuse to accept the will of courts to adhere to the constitutionally prescribed system rather than hysteria, and it’s the Democrats who wishcast the wholly imaginary “popular vote” into existence.