RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/white-house/democrats-not-eager-to-defend-harris

Questions are once again swirling around Vice President Kamala Harris.

This time, the story is about whether or not Harris is an asset to President Joe Biden and whether she’s the best choice to join his 2024 ticket.

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) spoke well of Harris during a recent CNN appearance but stopped short of endorsing her for ’24.

“[Biden] thinks so, and that’s what matters,” Pelosi said when asked by Anderson Cooper if Harris should be on the ticket.

Pelosi pointed to Harris’s campaign record as California’s attorney general in 2011, calling the vice president “very politically astute” for winning the election while only having 6% in the polls at one point.

But when asked again if she believed Harris was the best running mate for the president, Pelosi dodged giving an endorsement for the second time, saying the vice president generally doesn’t “do that much” but is “a source of strength, inspiration, intellectual resource, and the rest.”

While 54% of Democratic voters are satisfied with Harris as Biden’s running mate in 2024, fewer are enthusiastic, 30%, according to the latest CBS News-YouGov poll. Her approval ratings have consistently lagged Biden’s.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) followed up the next morning by discussing “the MAGA Right” when asked about Harris.

Jake Tapper then pressed again on Raskin’s opinion of Harris as Biden’s 2024 running mate.

“That’s President Biden’s choice. And I think she’s an excellent running mate for President Biden,” Raskin responded. “I don’t know what more needs to be said about that.”

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4206299-democrats-may-dump-joe-biden-but-they-still-own-his-extreme-policies/

Democrats are about to fire President Biden. Are Republicans ready?

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius ignited a political firestorm recently by veering off script and writing that Joe Biden should retire — a rare chink in the media bulwark protecting the president. In a follow-up interview, the “Morning Joe” crew echoed concerns about Biden’s age. Others will surely follow; polls showing that Biden might lose to Donald Trump and other GOP 2024 candidates have finally brought Democrats to their senses.   

Republicans need to prepare for the very real possibility that Joe Biden is forced out of the 2024 race. What does that mean? It means that it’s time the GOP stop obsessing about Joe Biden’s age, and focus on his disastrous policies instead.

If Biden bows out, all the scrutiny of the president’s incoherence, his stiff gait, his moments of confusion and all the other signs of decline will no longer matter. None of that will be helpful in fending off a run by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, for instance, or Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

The president’s problem isn’t that he’s 80 years old, though that’s what liberals like Ignatius would like us to think. Even as he called for the president to step aside, Ignatius took pains to laud Joe Biden as a “successful and effective president.” 

Most of the country disagrees with Ignatius’s assessment — for good reason. Biden’s policies have hurt average Americans; under this president, the country has become poorer and less safe, while children have lost ground academically. He has richly earned the lowest approval ratings since Jimmy Carter. How does that constitute a successful presidency?

Gearing up for next year’s elections, Republicans should call out Biden’s inability to secure our borders, and his party’s complicity. They must focus on his mulish war on our oil industry, the explosion in the federal deficit and out-of-control spending, his administration’s damaging allegiance to teachers’ unions, the corruption that has rippled through our law enforcement agencies and the perversion of our justice system.  

Republicans must expose the damage done by these policies and remind voters that Democrats across the land have been in lockstep with Biden, endorsing his failed approaches.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/09/13/biden-trump-hold-onto-big-leads-despite-troubles-ii-tipp-poll/

Both President Biden and former President Trump have taken their lumps recently. In Biden’s case, it’s his failing mental acuity, age and allegations of corruption in office. For Trump, it’s an unprecedented slew of criminal indictments. Disaster? Hardly. Both candidates still hold big leads over likely challengers, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows.

In Trump’s case, he has widened his lead. In the latest online national poll, taken from among 509 Republican voters from Aug. 30-Sept. 1, we again asked: “If the Republican presidential primary were held today, whom would you support for the nomination?” The GOP poll has a margin of error of +/-4.4 percentage points.

Among Republican respondents, 60% answered former President Donald Trump, while support for No. 2, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was 11%, and for No. 3, entrepreneur and author Vivek Ramaswamy, came in at 9%.

They were followed by Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence (6%), former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (3%), and a long list of other challengers at 1% or less including South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, conservative commentator and talk-show host Larry Elder, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchison, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, and former Texas Congressman William Hurd.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/09/are_you_better_off_today_than_you_were_four_years_ago.html

What a great question going into the 2024 presidential election!

It was asked over 40 years ago and led to one of the biggest landslide elections in U.S. history.

As the Harvard Kennedy School summarized:

In the final week of the 1980 presidential campaign between Democratic President Jimmy Carter and Republican nominee Ronald Reagan, the two candidates held their only debate. Going into the Oct. 28 event, Carter had managed to turn a dismal summer into a close race for a second term. And then, during the debate, Reagan posed what has become one of the most important campaign questions of all time: “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” Carter’s answer was a resounding “NO,” and in the final, crucial days of the campaign, his numbers tanked. On Election Day, Reagan won a huge popular vote and electoral victory. The “better off” question has been with us ever since. It’s simple common sense makes it a great way to think about elections. And yet the answers are rarely simple.

This is the question that Donald Trump, or whoever is the ultimate GOP nominee, should be constantly asking. At the next GOP debate, rather than debating Trump’s temperament and fitness to serve, while he is leading the GOP pack by 50 points, they should be hammering the question of whether average Americans are better or worse off than they were four years ago.

Let’s look at some specific metrics.

Start with microeconomic issues hitting Americans in the wallet, beginning with retail gasoline prices. Despite the push for EVs, most Americans drive gasoline fueled vehicles and visit the gas station every week. Are they better off compared to four years ago?

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, gas is currently per gallon $3.84 compared to $2.62 four years ago, about a 27 percent increase.

Add the fact that in 2019, four years ago, the U.S. was energy independent for the first time since 1957. In 2022, the U.S. imported 8.32 million barrels per day of petroleum, hardly energy independent. The strategic petroleum reserve is depleted, and the Biden administration is doing nothing to rein in rising gas prices.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/sep/9/biden-fails-crisis-management-in-hawaii-desantis-s/

One legitimate measurement of the readiness and capability of a candidate to be president is how he or she responds to a crisis.

In a moment of crisis, the core of human beings is on display. Some people wither; others shine. Either way, it is always a peek into the foundation of the person — his or her value system.

We had two examples of this recently, as both President Biden and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had the opportunity to respond to crises, in the wake of the devastating fire on Maui and Hurricane Idalia, respectively.

How did they do?

Unfortunately, the president embarrassed himself. While the fires were burning, Mr. Biden remained on the beach and in the beach house of a wealthy donor; he could not even manage an encouraging or sympathetic comment or two to the Maui survivors. When he finally did get around to visiting Hawaii, he compared the fires — which destroyed an entire community and may have killed more than 100 people — to a small kitchen fire he once experienced.

It will not surprise you to learn that the president has managed, in the retelling, to turn that kitchen fire into an inferno that almost killed his wife and his cat, and destroyed his 1967 Corvette. The president wasn’t clear about which loss would have been the greater personal tragedy.

He did this while talking to survivors who, in many instances, were and are certain that their loved ones are dead among the ashes.

https://themessenger.com/opinion/the-presidential-election-narrative-is-changing-with-likely-consequences-for-fundraising

There has been a huge change in the race for president, and it has more to do with elite opinions about the outcome of the race than it does with the actual numbers.

While there has been a marginal improvement in Donald Trump’s position vis-à-vis Joe Biden, largely due to Biden’s low ratings both for job performance and for his handling of the economy, Biden is also plagued by an increasing number of Democrats who are lukewarm to his position atop the party’s ticket.

Indeed, due to Biden’s age and an increasing perception of corruption involving his son Hunter Biden — who we learned this week is likely to be indicted on gun charges before the end of the month — Biden’s vulnerabilities as a candidate are rapidly piling up.

The reason this is important, is that with a spate of polls, including recent national polling by my firm, Schoen Cooperman Research, showing that Trump’s ratings as president (52% approve, 44% disapprove) are close to 10-points higher than Biden’s contemporaneous ratings (44% approve, 54% disapprove), political analysts are starting to realize that what happened in 2016 could well repeat itself in 2020: That is, an upset victory for Donald Trump.

To be sure, for the last six to nine months — both before and after the former president’s four indictments — the narrative among elites had been pretty much as follows: Trump is damaged goods due to his indictments; he can’t focus on a campaign; swing voters, suburbanites, and women will not vote for Trump; his focus on 2020 will just detract from hopes for a better future, and the GOP must do everything they can to find a stronger nominee.

Meanwhile, the data continues to show Trump with roughly a 40-point lead over his closest primary opponent, a 1-point lead over Biden in SCR’s recent polling, as well as a considerable advantage over Biden in the aforementioned retrospective versus current approval rating of the two administrations.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/is-joe-biden-really-running-again/

Will President Joe Biden be on the ballot in the presidential election of 2024? It’s a question that Biden seemed to answer four months ago when he announced, in an online video, that he would be running for re-election next year. ‘Let’s finish this job,’ he said. ‘Because I know we can.’ 

Three-quarters of Americans say they’re ‘seriously concerned’ about Biden’s mental and physical competence to do the job

Team Biden must have hoped that, after making that announcement, the doubts surrounding his bid for re-election would go away. As the polls increasingly show Donald Trump cruising towards a re-nomination for the Republican ticket, America appears then to be heading – grimly, inevitably – towards a repeat of 2020. Trump vs Biden 2024: this time it’s more depressing. 

But the concerns about Joe Biden’s fitness for office now, let alone another four years, have never gone away. In fact, they’re intensifying again. 

He’s an unpopular president: his approval ratings have remained stuck around 40 per cent, though it’s worth noting Obama’s were not much better. The Biden administration like nothing more than to talk up his economic accomplishments – record jobs! Manufacturing boom! – yet the public doesn’t agree. Some 60 per cent of Americans now say that Biden’s policies have made the country worse off. The number of people who think America is on the ‘right track’ under his leadership is currently less than 25 per cent. 

Democrats can and will find comfort in telling themselves that Biden beat Trump in 2020 and, with the added advantages of incumbency, he can do it in 2024. America isn’t really going to vote for Donald Trump again, is it? 

General Election Polls (CNN)
Trump (R) 47, Biden (D) 46

Biden (D) 47, DeSantis (R) 47

Biden (D) 46, Ramaswamy (R) 45

Haley (R) 49, Biden (D) 43

Biden vs. Pence, Scott, Christie

https://pjmedia.com/columns/john-stossel/2023/09/06/debating-a-democrat-n1724669

Colorado has a popular Democratic governor, Jared Polis.  

He’s a rare Democrat who says, “I’m for more freedom and lower taxes.”But is he really?

At least he’s willing to come to Stossel TV to debate.

Refreshingly, Polis supports charter schools. He even founded two. Unfortunately, his state’s school choice program only applies to government schools. Florida, Arizona, Utah, Indiana, West Virginia, Iowa and Arkansas now help parents send their kids to any school.

When I tell Polis that Colorado lags, he responds, “I’m not a fan of these voucher programs with no accountability where it can be Joe’s Taco Shop and K-8 academy and they’re getting taxpayer money.”

But it’s not true that independent schools have “no accountability.” They are accountable to parents, which is better than being “accountable” to sleepy government bureaucrats.

His state also launched universal preschool. But why? Even the much-praised Head Start program doesn’t help kids. A federal study found that by third grade, there was no difference between those who attend Head Start and those who don’t.

“Why fund something that makes no difference?” I ask.

Polis responds: “High-quality early childhood education leads to better outcomes.”

It probably would. But rarely does government offer “high quality.”  

https://pjmedia.com/columns/stephen-kruiser/2023/09/05/the-gop-is-in-danger-of-becoming-the-pac-12-of-political-parties-n1724628

How long will the Grand Old Party (GOP) be grand? Or even a party?

EXCERPT

As I monitor the GOP in-fighting now that primary debates have begun, my sense of foreboding is something new.

Republicans fight a lot. That’s usually a feature, not a bug. We aren’t a hive mind like the Democrats, although that does seem like it would be more functional on occasion. It’s just not in our electoral DNA.

The looming problem for the GOP heading into 2024 is that the dysfunctional, non-hive mind family has degenerated into bitterly partisan tribalism. I mean, it’s ugly out there. I’m the product of a lifetime of dysfunctional holiday dinner fights; if I say it’s ugly, it’s ugly.

The hardcore Trump supporters — I call them Escalator Magas — are very problematic. They’ve decided that Trump is a god, not a politician. I’ve been on record for ages saying that the hero worship of politicians is a lib thing, not a conservative thing. Politicians are our employees, not our gurus or heroes. America functions best when the electorate understands that.

I have praised Trump’s presidency for years, but that doesn’t matter to the Escalator crowd. One can’t offer even the mildest criticism of Trump without the Truth Social hordes launching into a collective diaper-soiling. It’s tedious.

It’s even worse if one dares say ANYTHING positive about Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Should you even accidentally do so, it’s like every banshee in the history of Celtic lore begins keening in unison. I wrote a Morning Briefing last week that praised DeSantis’s actions in Florida after Hurricane Idalia and now I’ve got an email stalker who wants to make sure I know every low-t bad nickname he’s come up with for the governor.

The Escalator approach is to convince everyone in the GOP to abandon primary support for any candidate who isn’t Trump. They’ve decided that the best way to do this is to be as unhinged as possible and alienate the people they want to win over. I’ve written many times that I don’t buy into the argument that Trump can’t win the general election. His hardcore fans have now convinced me that they will do everything in their power to drive away people who might consider voting for him, but aren’t interested in joining a cult.

It doesn’t matter how many disclaimers I write, I’ve learned that no Escalator MAGA can understand this sentence: I will enthusiastically vote for Trump if he is the nominee.

On the other side of the GOP divide are the people who are trying to make a rational case for DeSantis. At first glance, it would seem to be an easy case to make. The polling thus far would indicate that they aren’t making it well. That’s because it’s difficult to do when trying to woo voters who have actually convinced themselves that the most anti-federal establishment American politician in a generation is a Bush guy and a member of the Swamp. DeSantis was a conservative rock star during COVID and the Trump crowd has completely rewritten the story to concoct an alt-reality.

One they all now believe.