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ELECTIONS

Joel Kotkin: Unhinged progressives are a gift to Trump The woke zealotry of the Biden administration is turning vast numbers of Americans into reluctant Trumpers.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/02/11/unhinged-progressives-are-a-gift-to-trump/

In 1931, the slogan of the German Communist Party became: ‘After Hitler, our turn.’ This kind of wishful thinking is making a comeback in contemporary America. Prominent Democrats and the ‘progressive’ apparat of the Biden administration see the nomination of Donald Trump – their version of Hitler – as the best way to mobilise their shaky coalition and to keep hold of power.

Biden’s supporters believe Trump is so odious that the American people will accept anyone – even someone as obviously mediocre as Joe Biden – to keep him out of power. This worked back in 2020, when Trump’s bungling of Covid-19, his chaotic management style and his consistently vile – though clearly not fascist – persona allowed Biden to gain the White House.

This assumption also proved correct in the 2022 Midterms. Democrats bankrolled numerous unelectable Trumpistas in congressional and state races, a cynical gambit they are repeating again this year. This helped them dodge a potential wipeout at the polls. The seemingly inevitable nomination of Trump by the Republicans looks perfectly suited to a repeat performance in the 2024 presidential election.

Yet as the German Communists learned in 1933, sometimes getting what you want does not always work out so well. Biden might be heralded as the second coming of FDR in the mainstream press, but most Americans have clearly had enough of him. A recent poll puts him at a dismal 37 per cent. As things stand, he is now slated to lose to Trump, particularly in key swing states. Some surveys suggest Trump is even gaining among independents and is pulling some suburban professionals back into his camp. As former presidential candidate Andrew Yang puts it, Biden’s shaky performance could be about to deliver ‘Trump, the sequel’.

So why is Biden so unpopular? This is partly down to inflation – undoubtedly made worse by Biden’s economic agenda. But it is also due to his pandering to the so-called progressives on just about everything – from the border and climate change to LGBT issues. According to longtime Democratic analyst Ruy Teixeira, Biden seems incapable of shifting to where the voters are. For Democratic senator Joe Manchin, much of the problem stems from the fact that the president has surrounded himself with ‘far, far-left liberals’.

Obama Poised to Pull the Plug on Biden?John Ullyot

https://townhall.com/columnists/johnullyot/2024/02/13/obama-poised-to-pull-the-plug-on-biden-n2635143

Special counsel Robert Hur did a great service to America last week in two ways that fundamentally and irreversibly transform the Presidential race. As a result, just like in Hillary Clinton’s ‘3 a.m. phone call’ television ad in the 2008 contest, the iPhone is buzzing in Barack Obama’s Martha’s Vineyard compound, and he had better answer it.

Number one, by declining to charge President Biden for “willfully retain[ing]” classified materials, Hur blew up any pretense of fairness when it comes to how Biden’s Department of Justice treats its own boss, while it throws the book at President Trump.

 Not only did Hur decline to prosecute Biden, he made clear that the facts surrounding Biden’s retention of documents were far worse – not even in the same solar system – compared with President Trump’s case.

To review the bidding:

– As a former President, Trump was covered by the Presidential Records Act that allows the chief executive to retain some personal records from his time in office, as it did with former President Bill Clinton in the infamous “socks case,” as well as “broad authority to formally declassify most documents that are not statutorily protected, while they are in office,” according to the American Bar Association. As a former senator and vice president, Biden was not covered by the Presidential Records Act, and has no case whatsoever for retaining classified personal materials from his time in either office.

– Biden had no protection whatsoever over his custody of the classified documents he possessed illegally, many of which he squirreled away in his unlocked garage next to a non-electric Corvette. President Trump’s documents were kept under lock and key at his Mar-a-Lago estate that even some in the media acknowledge is “built like a fortress,” and guarded around-the-clock by Secret Service officers.

– Hur’s report noted that Biden’s documents were recovered by FBI agents “from the garage, offices, and basement den in Mr. Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware home,” and at the Penn Biden Center, Biden’s lucrative Washington perch after leaving office in 2017. (This latter facility is otherwise known as the “Penn China Center,” because the University of Pennsylvania mysteriously received at least $30 million from anonymous Chinese donors within weeks of establishing the center for Biden and his former aides the year he left office, including future Secretary of State Antony Blinken.)

Something’s Fishy With These ‘Dems Are Stuck With Biden’ Articles

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/02/14/whats-with-these-dems-are-stuck-with-biden-stories-appearing-in-the-press/

In the span of two days, articles started appearing making the exact same argument: That Joe Biden will definitely, no questions asked, be the nominee come November.

So, naturally, we are left wondering what Democrats have up their sleeve to get the flailing president off the ballot.

On Monday, Vox.com published a lengthy article titled “Yes, Democrats, It’s Biden or Bust.”  The next day, Politico ran a lengthy piece titled “Get Used to It: Biden Isn’t Going Anywhere.” New York Magazine ran a piece with a slightly different take: “Yes, Democrats Can Still Replace Biden (But They Won’t).” The National Interest ran a piece yesterday titled “Democrats are Stuck with Joe Biden.”

We are not suggesting there was plagiarism here, but mainstream journalists aren’t the most independent thinkers on the planet, which suggests that they are getting their information from the same sources.

Let’s focus on the Vox and Politico articles.

Both point out that it’s too late for a challenger to get enough delegates to secure the nomination.

Liz Peek: Trump could ride Special Counsel’s report all the way to the White House but only if he avoids these potholes

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/trump-ride-special-counsels-report-way-white-house-avoids-potholes

Former President Donald Trump can ride Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report on Joe Biden’s “diminished faculties” all the way to the White House if he does these three things:

1. Leans into voters’ concerns about the disastrous border crisis – and tells them how he’ll fix it.

2. Talks up his plan to keep the economy humming through deregulation, keeping taxes low and also by pushing his “Drill Baby Drill” plan to expand America’s energy stockpile and independence, and…        

3. Shuts up about everything else. Don’t feed Democrat narratives with threats to abandon NATO or impose 60% tariffs on China. Stop whining about the 2020 election, stop denigrating rival and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s husband and wardrobe, and lay off President Joe Biden. The president is destroying his reelection hopes all by himself; he doesn’t need any help. 

Also, talk less about what a great job you did before and more about how you’ll do it again, even better. Voters want to know and they want optimism. 

There’s been a lot of chatter about what Joe Biden should do to confront the terrible blow delivered by Special Counsel Hur. There has been less commentary about how the presumed GOP nominee should navigate this gift from the blue. My view – don’t interrupt Biden’s decline and fall.  

Odds makers have Donald Trump in the lead, with one site giving him a 52% chance of winning in November, against 27% for Biden. Shockingly, Michelle Obama is next most likely to become president, with a 15% chance. That says everything. 

Contemplating the Unthinkable: Harris 2024 By Jim Geraghty

https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/contemplating-the-unthinkable-harris-2024/

EXCERPT:

Kamala Harris’s Chances

Late last week, after President Biden’s disastrous prime-time press conference, our Phil Klein delivered an assessment that sounded insane . . . and yet, in light of recent events, deserves serious consideration: “Democrats would be better off facing Donald Trump with [Kamala] Harris as their presidential nominee than taking their chances with a rapidly declining [Joe] Biden.”

I can hear readers now: Harris is a joke, a liability, a walking disaster who is so self-evidently a weak candidate and leader that not a single prominent Democrat has called upon Biden to announce he’s serving just one term.

But as these past few days have made abundantly clear, Biden’s age is the single biggest problem jeopardizing the Democrats’ chances of keeping the White House. Never mind that a super-majority of Americans thinks Biden is too old to serve another term; a super-majority of Democrats thinks Biden is too old to serve another term, according to the latest polling from ABC News:

According to the poll, conducted using Ipsos’ Knowledge Panel, 86 percent of Americans think Biden, 81, is too old to serve another term as president. That figure includes 59 percent of Americans who think both he and former President Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner, are too old and 27 percent who think only Biden is too old. . . .

73 percent of Democrats think Biden is too old to serve.

This is a problem that cannot be fixed. Biden cannot get younger. There’s something a little sad about Democrats who think that the problem can be solved if the White House and Biden campaign staff just put the president in front of the cameras more:

Top party operatives are warning Biden aides that the president cannot retreat in response to the special counsel report that fueled concerns over his age and mental faculties. They say President Joe Biden, having largely shied away from interviews and press conferences, needs to be out in public far more.

They want to see him engage with the press and voters in the off-script and punchy exchanges he’s been known for in the past, which they believe will help chip away at concerns about the president’s mental acuity. They say that it’s worth the risk of potential slip-ups that could reinforce the image that he’s declining.

Here is How the Dems Could Replace Biden Through an Internal Coup And who could replace him. by Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/here-is-how-the-dems-could-replace-biden-through-an-internal-coup/

I spent years telling skeptical conservatives that, yes Biden was going to run for reelection. Many didn’t believe it until he filed, became the automatic frontrunner, and had no opponents to speak of.

And while public perceptions of his state keep dropping, the Democrats have few options.

Sure, rank and file Dems could shift their support to Rep. Dean Philips, who is in possession of his full faculties and actually campaigning, but there’s zero sign of that happening. Instead, New Hampshire Dems wrote in Biden after he refused to even compete in their state in order to score a big hand-delivered win in South Carolina. (With 4% turnout.)

But here are the four scenarios ranked in order of probability.

1. Biden is the nominee – barring a serious medical breakdown, the frontrunner becomes the party nominee. – Most likely

2. Biden resigns – significant pressure is brought to bear on Biden, his aides and family members to get him to drop out – second most likely

3. Philips beats Biden – panicked by Biden’s poor polls and deteriorating condition, Democrats ignore the party and switch to Philips – least likely

4. DNC removes Biden  – that’s the interesting ‘X’ scenario.- third most likely

Even if Biden does drop out, the results will be messy. It’s too late for anyone else to file to run. The only other candidate on the ballot is Rep. Dean Philips who has few allies and the Dem establishment is not about to let a dark horse whom they piled on win. They’d rather have Trump than Philips. (If you’re skeptical, think of all the Republicans who would rather have had Hillary than Trump.)

But what if Biden doesn’t drop out?

Let’s go back for a moment to Hillary Clinton’s fainting incident which was publicly dismissed, but privately was taken very seriously.

Then-Democratic National Committee head Donna Brazile considered replacing Hillary Clinton at the top of the party’s ticket last year after the presidential nominee appeared unsteady and stumbled following a September 11 memorial service in New York, Brazile writes in her new book.

As rumors swirled about Clinton’s health and the future of her presidential campaign, representatives of Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley contacted Brazile, she writes, apparently to offer their services.

“Gee, I wonder what he wanted to talk to me about?” Brazile writes about Biden.

Brazile writes that she considered several potential replacements for Clinton and Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., the vice presidential nominee, and concluded Biden and Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., would be the strongest combination to beat Donald Trump in November.

Brazile, who was abruptly brought on to replace former DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz during the party’s convention last summer, did not have the power to unilaterally remove Clinton and Kaine.

But DNC rules give the party’s chairman the authority to set the ball in motion.

CNN rearranges the deck chairs… again The network is attempting to put itself at the center of the anti-Trump universe Stephen L. Miller

https://thespectator.com/newsletter/cnn-rearranges-the-deck-chairs-again-bad-press-02-06-2024/

After CNN ousted Chris Licht, who attempted, at least, to moderate CNN’s biased news coverage, the floundering network has found itself in limbo, unsure of how much more it wanted to lean into a professional, “definitely not biased” news infotainment network.

Now, new boss Mark Thompson has signaled a clear direction for the network in this election year: All Donald Trump, All the Time, with changes once again to its morning and midday line-up. All CNN is really doing, though, is shuffling deck chairs around the network as ratings continue to languish behind networks like the History and Hallmark channels.

What Thompson and other CNN executives don’t seem to get is that the brand is the problem, the brand that has found itself in peril over the course of the past six years. CNN can reshuffle the same dishonest media news personalities while attempting to juice the last remaining drops of credibility it’s attempted to fashion over the last thirty years, but all that has gone out the window for a network that still insists on existing as a kind of zombie form of liberalism, that unlike MSNBC, refuses to admit its editorial leanings.

CNN will move Kasie Hunt to mornings now. Hunt (like most current new personalities) made her name as a correspondent during the 2016 presidential campaign, hounding various GOP candidates while ignoring Democrats, which is pretty much a standard résumé requirement to end up in a CNN chair these days.

CNN has also moved former White House grandstander Jim Acosta from a little-watched Sunday daytime show to a little-watched, weekly daytime slot. Acosta will presumably also offer live, breaking-news situations. Acosta famously made his reputation by making Trump administration White House press briefings about him and his questions about immigration and the Statue of Liberty — a topic he has somehow all but forgotten as the country faces a border crisis not seen in thirty-five years, and New York City threatens to deport criminal migrants.

Since Jim Acosta’s attention-seeking antics were rewarded with his own CNN show, his line-up has included a who’s who of Donald Trump’s circus cadre. His regular guest rotations have included George Conway, Adam Kinzinger, Mary Trump and others whose sole existence is to somehow remind everyone how very bad Trump is, and also how much they used to suck up to him personally and professionally.

But Thompson and CNN see an election year coming and are once again attempting to put CNN at the center of the anti-Trump universe, positioning itself as both a Donald Trump elevator network, while trying to maintain Jeff Zucker’s hires of #Resistance. Back then, it sacrificed mainstream cachet for the viewership of fierce partisans — and it’s hoping to repeat the trick eight years later.

Why Is The Left Suddenly Talking About A ‘Coup’ At The Ballot Box?

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/02/08/why-is-the-left-suddenly-talking-about-a-coup-at-the-ballot-box/

For the past three years, the left has claimed Donald Trump lied about the 2020 election and then attempted an insurrection on Jan. 6 to overturn the results. But now that Trump is leading in polls, the left is talking ominously about a “coup.” Pay attention, because if Trump wins in 2024, this will be how the left tries to stop him from getting anything done.

At a protest in Washington, D.C., a week ago – organized by a group that calls itself “Stop the Coup 2025” – Markus Batchelor, the national political director of People for the American Way, told the crowd that “Jan. 6 was just a dress rehearsal.”

So is this group predicting Trump will try to take over in 2025 even if Biden wins reelection?

Not exactly. He went on to say that coups “don’t need weapons to succeed.” He said that “coups can be committed by pen and paper,” “coups can be committed at the ballot,” and “coups can be committed by seemingly democratic processes.”

Come again?

The definition of “coup d’etat” in Merriam-Webster’s dictionary is “the violent overthrow or alteration of an existing government by a small group.”

Frustrated Independents Give Trump An Edge Over Biden In 2024: I&I/TIPP Poll Terry Jones

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/02/07/frustrated-independents-hold-trumps-edge-over-biden-in-2024-ii-tipp-poll/

Former President Donald Trump continues to face legal charges on his return path to the presidency, while current President Joe Biden carries his age, fading mental acuity, and charges of corruption as he seeks a second term. So who has the edge now in the head-to-head electoral matchup for 2024? Thanks to solid independent voter backing, Trump still edges out Biden, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows.

Trump wins 43% of the overall vote, while Biden gets 41% in the national online I&I/TIPP Poll, taken from Jan. 31-Feb. 2, with 1,266 registered voters participating. The poll has an overall +/-2.8 percentage-point margin of error.

The results for the two major parties are predictably partisan, with Democrats favoring Biden over Trump 80% to 7%, while Republicans give Trump the nod 86% to 5% over Biden. However, once again, independent voters prefer Trump over Biden by 41% to 35%, while 13% wanted “other.”

Stunning NBC Poll: Biden Presidency ‘in Peril, Declined on Every Measure’

https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/joe-biden-nbc-2024/2024/02/04/id/1152209/

President Joe Biden hit yet another new low in his approval rating (37%) in the latest NBC News poll released Sunday, raising concern of the Democrat pollster, who said the “damning” results show “a presidency in peril.”

Former President Donald Trump not only leads Biden by 5 points (47%-42%) in the national poll, but also leads by big margins:

23 points on mental and physical health to be president (46%-23%)
22 points on handling the economy (55%-33%)
21 points on dealing with crime and violence (50%-29%)
16 points on being competent and effective (48%-32%)
11 points on improving America’s standing in the world (47%-36%)
35 points on securing the southern border (57%-22%)

Illegal immigration has been widely deemed the No. 1 voting issue, according to exit polls in the early GOP primary states.

“What is most concerning is the erosion of Biden’s standing against Trump compared to four years ago,” Democrat pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research Associates told NBC News.

“On every measure compared to 2020, Biden has declined. Most damning, the belief that Biden is more likely to be up to the job — the chief tenet of the Biden candidacy — has evaporated.”

The numbers look great now for Trump and “difficult” for the incumbent going into the heart of the 2024 primary cycle, according to Republican pollster Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies.