RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/trump-vs-biden-in-one-simple-chart/

It’s just a small chart, running alongside an article on page A5 of the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal, but it says so much about why Donald Trump — after losing his reelection bid, after January 6, after four indictments — is running ahead of Biden in most of the swing states. One closing paragraph summarizes the numbers:

Though inflation is falling now, it has been higher on average under Biden than Trump. Adjusted for inflation, [household] net worth was up just 0.7 percent through Biden’s first three years, compared with 16 percent through Trump’s first three years.

The numbers are from the Saint Louis Federal Reserve Bank.

And there you go. Americans don’t blame Trump for Covid, so they give him a pass for the fourth year of his presidency and grade him on those first three years. A household net worth increasing 16 percent over three years is pretty good! And staying flat over three years is pretty bad. Sure, wages have increased over the past three years, but the corresponding increase in prices has eaten up almost all of those gains.

Will other issues matter in this election besides the economy? Sure. When Americans are asked open-ended questions about which issue is most important to their vote in the presidential election, immigration and the border consistently rank second. Abortion and the future of democracy get mentioned too, but they’re always a distant third, usually mentioned as most important by about 10 percent of the electorate.

This fall, if Americans feel like their household net worth is increasing, they’re likely to reelect Biden. If they feel like they’re treading water or that everything is harder to afford, they’re likely to reelect Trump. This isn’t the only factor, but it’s the biggest factor.

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4670330-biden-trump-debate-cnn-2024-desperate-risks

Kudos to Team Biden for successfully landing the first punch in the presidential free-for-all (aka, the campaign). By challenging Donald Trump to a debate and dictating the terms of play, President Biden left his opponent with two impossible choices: decline the opportunity to face off against Biden on national TV and be declared a coward, or agree to the meet, even knowing the playing field is tilted in favor of the incumbent.  

Will it matter that the Trump campaign got snookered? Almost certainly not. For the same reason that the absurd 14-second video in which the president dares Trump to “make my day” required five “cuts” to get it right, 81-year-old Biden is still likely to lose round 2.   

Not that it’s a slam-dunk for former President Trump. Biden is correct; Trump did lose the 2020 debates. He had apparently been coached to be combative, in hopes that Biden would overreact and reveal his “angry old man” persona. The tactic backfired spectacularly; Trump came across as unlikeable. If Biden or the moderators goad the former president on his January 6 behavior or reference his many legal troubles, Trump could again get angry. That disastrous encounter cost him the election; it could happen again. 

Expectations will be incredibly low for his opponent, as they were for this year’s State of the Union address. After that speech in February, critics described Biden as being hopped up on stimulants; the president spoke in an unnatural, rapid-fire manner that nonetheless got the job done. Worried that Biden will get a similar boost to endure a two-hour debate, some on the right — including Trump — have called for drug testing before the debates; that won’t happen.  

Biden’s handlers are doing everything possible to give the president an edge.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/05/18/election-2024-a-political-renaissance-for-america-or-the-path-to-totalitarianism/

It has been decades in the making, but the country is now on the precipice between its traditional ideology of political liberalism and a path that will lead, far sooner than Americans might think, to totalitarianism. The historical bulwarks of Americanism and the American political system—government of the people, freedom, and liberty—have been deliberately eroded. A citizenry steeped in republican virtue, cognizant of the political ideas and principles that made America a lasting and strong constitutional republic, and knowledgeable about the duties and obligations of American citizenship have been under daily assault for years from the foreign ideology of communism. That odious ideology has operated under synonyms such as “progressivism,” “multiculturalism,” or DEI to make its poison more palatable to American audiences.

The media—the so-called “Fourth Estate”—has been another layer of protection that has been peeled away. Today, they are activists advancing the left’s agenda in all but name. Great newspapers that were lively to read and informative are no longer. One reads them now the same way Soviet citizens used to read Pravda—only by knowing the lies that are printed and surmising what is left out of the story can one come close to knowing the truth. Compare the front page of the New York Times from fifty, forty, or thirty years ago to one today, and the change is telling and sad to see. Rather than a robust culture of free speech, censorship is pervasive by the legacy and social media, Big Tech, and by a ubiquitous and devilish culture of self-censorship.

American universities were once the envy of the world, as lively academies of intellectual debate and devoted to the pursuit of knowledge are now factories of indoctrination. Their law, medical, engineering, and business schools have also been transformed into political instruments that advance the “Party Line.” Unbelievably, thought control in K-12 is even worse. Popular culture fell a long time ago, and most of it is simply a contemporary version of Soviet entertainment where the heroic worker and peasant defeat the evil capitalist and priest. Worse still is the promotion of degeneracy and decadence with gender reassignment led by a teacher’s union that more resembles a Clockwork Orange ensemble than as the protectors of the most vulnerable in our society—our children.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/05/16/the-biden-reelection-strategy/

Joe Biden polls at or below 40 percent approval. Historically, such unpopularity has made it almost impossible for a president to be reelected.

His age advances by the hour. His voice falters, his memory fades, and his gait is reduced to short steps, with his arms, winglike and in tandem, offering balance.

Biden is not so much an octogenarian as an unhealthy and prematurely aging 80-year-old. It is America’s irony that he is fit for almost no other job in the country other than President, which apparently allows for a 3-day-a-week ceremonial role while others in the shadows run the country.

So how does Biden become renominated and reelected, as polls show he is behind in almost every critical swing state on nearly every issue?

Answer: not by campaigning, not by championing his record, and especially not by doubling down on his neo-socialist and now unpopular agendas.

Instead, his campaign is focused on four other strategies to beat Donald Trump.

First, left-wing local, state, and federal prosecutors are tying Trump up in court on crimes that have never been seen before and will never be again after the election. All the cases are politically motivated, with many coordinated with the White House.

Even if Trump is not convicted by blue-state prosecutors, in blue-state courtrooms, in front of blue-state juries, he will lose critical campaigning time.

Trump may end up paying out $1 billion in legal fees and fines. At 76, the monotonous days in court are designed to destroy him financially, physically, and mentally.

Biden and his operatives know that, in the long term, they may have fatally damaged the American legal system with such judicial sabotage. But short-term, they hope to destroy Trump before the ballots are cast.

Second, in his fourth year, Biden is suddenly selling government favors to special-interest voting blocs, or hoping to bring short-term relief to voters at the expense of long-term damage to the nation.

For elite college students and graduates, there are now billions of dollars in student-loan cancellations, despite a Supreme Court ruling declaring such targeted contractual amnesties illegal.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/congress-must-act-to-stop-noncitizens-from-voting/

With less than six months to go until Election Day, Americans have ample reason to be concerned that a wave of non-citizens casting ballots could undermine the integrity of our elections. Urgent federal action is needed to address this threat before it is too late.

Many in the corporate media and the political establishment have assured Americans that they need not worry because non-citizens voting, or even registering to vote in federal elections is already illegal – and indeed, this is the case. But this prohibition has been effectively neutralized by caveats and special carve-outs in dozens of states’ laws which create ample opportunity to violate federal election law.

One of the biggest glaring weak points in U.S. election law is the voter registration process itself. Under the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, every state must use a common voter registration form which only asks applicants to check a box stating that they are an American citizen.

In other words, states must take someone’s word for it that they are eligible to vote in federal elections – effectively eliminating all structural barriers to non-citizens registering to vote.

The recent uptick in US inflation appears to have reversed any progress President Joe Biden has made in convincing voters he can do a better job of managing the economy than Donald Trump. The poll, conducted between May 2 and May 6, finds that — after a slight uplift in April — Biden’s approval ratings on the economy fell back to levels that will make for depressing reading among the White House’s incumbents. That comes after price data showed US inflation might prove stickier than anticipated at the start of the year. The findings add to the sense that the Biden administration’s messaging on the economy — much of which has been focused on gains US workers have seen to their wages — is not convincing voters.

RCP Poll Average
46.1
44.9
Trump +1.2

5-Way RCP Average
41.5
38.8
Trump +2.7

Top Battlegrounds
47.7
44.6
Trump +3.1

Wisconsin
48.0
47.5
Trump +0.5

Arizona
48.3
43.3
Trump +5.0

Georgia
48.8
45.0
Trump +3.8

Michigan
46.0
44.8
Trump +1.2

Pennsylvania
47.5
45.7
Trump +1.8

North Carolina
48.2
42.8
Trump +5.4

Nevada
47.3
42.8
Trump +4.5

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/05/08/biden-and-trump-neck-and-neck-but-most-americans-think-trump-will-win-ii-tipp-poll/

President Joe Biden has a tenuous lead over lawfare-challenged former President Donald Trump, but continues to show weakness among key voting groups that he needs to win a second term in office, the latest numbers from the May I&I/TIPP Poll show.

The national online I&I/TIPP Poll, taken from May 1-3, included 1,264 responses to a number of questions about the upcoming 2024 presidential election. The poll’s margin of error is +/-2.8 percentage points.

Our main question was to ask registered voters about a straight, head-to-head matchup between Biden and Trump. More specifically, voters were asked to choose among Biden, Trump, “not sure” “other” and “prefer not to answer” as possible responses.

In this matchup, Biden comes out ahead 42% to Trump 40%, but remember the margin of error is greater than that, so statistically it remains a tossup. Among other answers, 10% chose “other” over either of the main candidates, while 7% said the weren’t sure.