RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/joe-biden-campaign-basement-strategy-carries-risks/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=first

The risks of Joe Biden’s basement strategy.

At first glance, Joe Biden’s strategy of avoiding the spotlight is paying off. He maintains his consistent lead over Donald Trump in national polls. In June, in the aftermath of the Lafayette Park fiasco, his advantage in the RealClearPolitics average expanded to ten points. The critical swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Florida are trending his way. His lead gives him the freedom to mollify the progressive wing of his party by shifting leftward on policy. The Democrats smell victory and dream of unified control of government for the first time in a decade.

There is no question that President Trump is in trouble. But look again at the polls. The national race has tightened. Biden is still ahead, but by a six-point margin. Michael Goodwin of the New York Post observes that Hillary Clinton enjoyed a similar lead at this point in the 2016 campaign. The CNBC poll conducted in late July found a much closer race in the battlegrounds. Biden’s leads in Arizona and Pennsylvania were within the margin of error. His greatest advantage was a five-point spread in Wisconsin. Recent days have brought news of GOP gains in registration in Pennsylvania and of the Trump campaign’s huge lead in voter contacts. The 2016 election was decided by a relatively small number of voters across a tiny number of states. If a similar scenario plays out in 2020, then Donald Trump may well emerge the winner.

https://www.commdiginews.com/politics-2/what-will-happen-when-biden-withdraws-from-the-presidential-race-131409/

The Democrats’ plan is to shove Former V.P. Joe Biden over the finish line and then use the 447-member Democrat National Committee to pick a new candidate without any voter input at all. This leaves two questions.  Who will rise to the podium and will Democrats sigh with relief?  Or anger?

What will happen when Biden withdraws from the #2020 Election?This year’s Democrat primary can be summed up this way… “in a country made up of midgets, the tallest midget is king.”

This year’s crop of Democrat candidates was so devoid of talent, and the media coverage was so biased, that the few candidates with an ounce of sense were quickly dispatched. While the survivors stumbled onward to gain delegates.  At the end of the primary season, we were left with just two aging white guys in the “party of diversity.”

So why did the Democrat Party put the screws to their second-tier candidates to drop out and endorse Biden before “Super Thursday?”

Did they really think Biden could serve as President?

Democrats’ primary goal was simply to stop Bernie.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/08/mark_kelly_maybe_a_good_astronaut_but_would_be_a_terrible_senator.html

Elections have consequences.  Whether voting for president or senator, Americans should be wary of those who avoid discussing their stands on the issues.  When Joe Biden and Mark Kelly do talk about the issues, it is obvious that their views are in line with the leftists.  Just because Mark Kelly’s name has the astronaut title, that does not mean that it should change to the title of senator.  Those who might think of voting for him should look at his stance or non-stance on the issues.  American Thinker interviewed some Arizonans who spoke about how Kelly is not right for Arizona.

David Eppihimer, the Pima County Republican Party chairman, strongly believes that “Mark Kelly tries to portray himself as an Arizonan, but he is not.  I believe he is a Texan and maintains a home there.  He wants to make himself out as an independent from Arizona.  This is how Kyrsten Sinema got elected to the Senate, by portraying herself effectively as a centrist, not as a hardline Democrat, which she is.  Kelly will vote straight down the Democratic/Chuck Schumer party line.”

Mark Kelly has also aligned himself with Joe Biden.  Kelly made his support known in a tweet: “Joe Biden understands the challenges Arizonans face and knows what it’s like to be knocked down, get back up, and keep serving others.  We need a president who will unite us and find common ground to get things done.  That’s why I’ll be voting for Joe Biden.”

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/virginia-absentee-ballot-applications-sent-dead-people-and-wrong

A non-profit group says more than a half-million inaccurate applications for absentee ballots were mistakenly sent across Virginia this week — including to dead voters, errant relatives and even a pet — in an unprecedented mailing flub that has heightened concerns about the integrity of expanding mail-in voting efforts.  

The mistakes raised alarms with recipients as diverse as election monitors, members of the League of Women Voters and a retired FBI agent. The Center for Voter Information, the nonprofit group that sent the mailers with pre-filled absentee ballots, is now apologizing.  

The Center for Voter Information said the absentee application mailings were sent to “eligible voters” in the state and “some of the mailers may have directed the return envelopes” for the absentee applications to the wrong election offices.

The counties impacted by inaccurate mailings included Fairfax City, Fairfax County, Franklin City, Franklin County, Richmond City, Richmond County, Roanoke City and Roanoke County. 

“Approximately half a million applications sent to eligible voters in Virginia included incorrect information, and we are working diligently to address the issues. Mistakes in our programming are very rare, but we take them seriously, and our methods overall are extraordinarily effective,” the center said in a statement.

https://www.aei.org/op-eds/mail-in-voting-could-accidentally-disenfranchise-millions-of-voters/

President Trump is suing Nevada over its recent decision to send absentee ballots to all voters, and warning the country “There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent.” Trump’s critics argue that there is no evidence that voting by mail results in fraud. Trump is right that mail-in voting is a source of potential voter fraud, especially on the scale that is being proposed. But the bigger problem is not vote fraud — it’s vote failure.

There is plenty of evidence that mail-in voting has the unintended consequence of disenfranchising of millions of eligible voters. A Massachusetts Institute of Technology study of the 2008 presidential election found that about 3.9 million voters said they requested mail ballots but never received them; 2.9 million ballots that were sent out did not make it back to election officials; and about 800,000 were rejected for a variety of reasons — either because they were postmarked after the election, arrived without a signature, were improperly filled out or did not match voting records. “The pipeline that moves mail ballots between voters and election officials is very leaky,” the study concluded.

More recently, the 2020 Democratic primaries should serve as a cautionary tale. About six weeks after New York’s congressional primaries, winners were not declared in two closely watched House races until Tuesday. That’s thanks to complications in counting the surge of more than 400,000 mail-in ballots, of which state officials have already invalidated 84,000. In California, election officials rejected more than 100,000 mail-in ballots in the state’s March presidential primary. To put these numbers in perspective, Trump won the White House in 2016 thanks to roughly 80,000 votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin combined. In Pennsylvania alone, mail ballot problems kept about 92,000 people from voting in a primary in a state that Trump won by just 44,000 votes four years ago. In Florida, about 18,500 mail-in ballots were not counted, and in Nevada, about 6,700 were rejected. In a close race, such failures could easily call the results into question.

https://pjmedia.com/election/matt-margolis/2020/08/06/joe-bidens-gibberish-on-how-hell-approach-china-is-both-hilarious-and-scary-n759269

We love to laugh at Joe Biden’s gaffes, but now that he’s the presumptive Democratic nominee, and leading in several polls, are they really that funny anymore? I’ve previously compiled some concerning gaffes that raise questions about Biden’s cognitive decline, but a new video from Wednesday further raises questions about Biden’s mental state.

On Wednesday, while attempting to explain how he’d handle China, Biden just started rambling nonsensical gibberish. “The way Trump–the way China will respond is when we gather the rest of the world that in fact [unintelligible] in in fr- in in in in open trade and making sure that we’re in a position that the world uh that that we deal with WHO the right way that in fact that’s when things begin to change, that when China’s behavior is going to change.”

Wut?

You got to watch it to believe it.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/over-80000-mail-in-ballots-disqualified-in-nyc-primary-mess

The mail-in ballots of more than 84,000 New York City Democrats who sought to vote in the presidential primary were disqualified, according to new figures released by the Board of Elections.

The city BOE received 403,103 mail-in ballots for the June 23 Democratic presidential primary.

But the certified results released Wednesday revealed that only 318,995 mail-in ballots were counted.

That means 84,108 ballots were not counted or invalidated — 21 percent of the total.

One out of four mail-in ballots were disqualified for arriving late, lacking a postmark or failing to include a voter’s signature, or other defects. The New York Post reported Tuesday that roughly 30,000 mail-in ballots were invalidated in Brooklyn alone.

The high invalidation rate provides more proof that election officials and the Postal Service were woefully underprepared to handle and process the avalanche of mail-in ballots that voters were encouraged to fill out to avoid having to go to the polls during the coronavirus pandemic, critics said.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed an executive order to make it easier to vote by mail-in or absentee ballot. The state also footed the bill by providing pre-paid envelopes for voters to mail the ballots.

“A 26 percent invalidation rate is astounding. It’s very troubling,” said Arthur Schwartz, who represented several candidates in a federal lawsuit claiming voters were disenfranchised over the BOE and Postal Service’s handling of ballots.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/08/aoc_redux_st_louis_voters_defeat_10term_machine_incumbent_hand_dem_nomination_for_congress_to_radical_fergusson_riots_leader_cori_bush.html

Like her friend and ally Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Cori Bush defeated an incumbent machine Democrat for the Democrats’ nomination for Congress in a heavily blue district.  Come November, a new member of Congress will be elected to join AOC’s “Squad,” representing the black-majority Missouri First Congressional Distric

CBS News reports:

Cori Bush, a onetime homeless woman who led protests following a white police officer’s fatal shooting of a Black 18-year-old in Ferguson, ousted longtime Rep. William Lacy Clay Tuesday in Missouri’s Democratic primary, ending a political dynasty that has spanned more than a half-century. Bush’s victory came in a rematch of 2018, when she failed to capitalize on a national Democratic wave that favored political newcomers such as Bush’s friend, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

This time she was able to pull out the victory winning 49%-46%, CBS affiliate KMOV-TV reports. Bush’s supporters said protests over the death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis and outrage over racial injustice finally pushed her over the edge.

An emotional Bush, speaking to supporters while wearing a mask, said few people expected her to win.

The incumbent Bush defeated, William Lacy Clay, inherited his seat from his father.  Between the two of them, the family had represented St. Louis for 52 years.  Like the incumbent Joe Crowley defeated by AOC, Lacy Clay had been denounced for ignoring his district and spending most of his time in D.C.  But unlike Crowley, Clay is black, was endorsed by the Congressional Black Caucus, and in 2018 defeated Bush by 20 points in the primary.  So it is clear that Democrat  primary voters have moved left and that the insurgent radical left in the Democrat party has gained significant resources in the interim.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/08/a_good_primary_night_for_trump__not_so_good_for_biden.html

My guess is that President Trump was happy with the Kansas primary results.  He did not take sides but clearly wanted the more electable Republican to win, and indeed he did.   He got his man when Rep. Roger Marshall defeated Kris Kobach, the man that Democrats were rooting for.

So Kansas should vote GOP in the fall and that will help keep the U.S. Senate.

My other guess is that Biden was not so pleased.   The left is a bigger factor than ever, as Doug Schoen wrote:    

Moreover, it is clear that the multitude of victories by left-leaning Democrats will put more pressure on Joe Biden to adopt more progressive policies on reducing if not defunding the police, climate change and raising taxes.

Indeed, we can expect that this string of progressive victories will force Biden to move out of the center and make him more vulnerable to attacks by the Trump campaign. 

The Trump campaign has already been pushing the message that the Democrats are a far-left party, and Tuesday’s results in Missouri and Michigan, as well as the results of the June primaries in New York, bear that out and make Trump’s reelection case more credible.