RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.thefp.com/p/the-rise-of-the-desantis-democrats?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

MIAMI—It’s almost 11 p.m. on a recent Friday night at ONE Gentlemens Club, and it’s dead except for the girls in their thongs, sitting on pleather couches, waiting for someone to give a lap dance to. No one can talk to anyone else. It’s too loud for that, what with the electronic drum, the incessant rapping. The rap is supposed to inspire twerking—and tens. Tonight, no one’s twerking. 

Tory Williams is alone at the bar in fishnets and boots. She should be mixing drinks. 

“Did you vote in the recent election?” I write in my notebook, then pass it to her.

She nods. When I ask who she voted for, a grin appears. “DUH-SAN-TIS,” she mouths. 

“Why DeSantis?” I shout. Williams is a black woman who looks to be pushing forty. She has a fiancé and, after two slow years, a job. It was her brother, she says, who made her rethink her politics. 

Finally, she shouts back, over the bar, through the din: “Money.”

Williams is one of the DeSantis Democrats: Florida voters who, until recently, identified as Democrats but in November opted to reelect Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis—he who resisted the Covid lockdowns, tangled with Disney, and governed with a record budget surplus—in a landslide. 

It’s unclear how many DeSantis Democrats there are: DeSantis’ vote count jumped from roughly 4 million in 2018 to 4.6 million in 2022. Lots of those voters are presumably independents or Republicans who didn’t vote last time. 

But some are disaffected Democrats alienated from the party they once belonged to. That’s evident from the longtime Democratic strongholds that DeSantis flipped, including Hillsborough, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade, where DeSantis skyrocketed from a 21-point loss in 2018 to an 11-point win in 2022—a net gain of more than 30 percentage points. 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/raphael-warnock-election-denier-georgia-senate-runoff-stolen-free-fair-abrams-integrity-jim-crow-turnout-11671353607?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

I have to spend a lot of time shooting down false claims about our elections in Georgia. Usually they come from losers. But sometimes even victorious candidates make false claims about our elections.

After the 2018 and 2020 elections, Georgia had its fill of false claims from losing candidates that our elections aren’t free and fair. For Donald Trump and his supporters, it was tens of thousands of fraudulent ballots that were supposedly cast but somehow never turned up. For Stacey Abrams and hers, it was tens of thousands of voters who were suppressed, not one of whom came forward during her three-year “landmark” lawsuit.

Georgia’s statewide officials—Gov. Brian Kemp, Attorney General Chris Carr and I—stood by Georgia’s elections in 2018 and 2020, defeating the false claims of failed candidates. Last month Georgia returned us to the Gold Dome with commanding margins, whereas statewide Democratic candidates who endorsed or supported Joe Biden’s “Jim Crow 2.0” conspiracy theories came up short in dramatic fashion. Sen. Raphael Warnock made it to a runoff, which he won by the smallest margin of any statewide race.

https://thespectator.com/topic/why-don-should-make-way-for-ron-desantis/?utm_source=Morning+Shot&utm_campaign=

When I arrived in Washington, DC in 2006 to learn about US politics, someone told me that in America, there are two main parties: the party of power and the party of stupid. The latter denoted, perhaps unsurprisingly, the Republican Party. And so it continues to prove. The failure of the much-hyped red wave to materialize in the 2022 midterms shows that the GOP has not lost its knack for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Consider: a day before the election, Biden’s approval rating was 39 percent. This was a reflection of his poor performance (inflation, gas prices and immigration are just a few of the issues on which his administration has shown stunning incompetence). Concerned that the electorate was comparing the moment to the period of prosperity under Donald Trump, Democrats were fearful of what Election Day would bring, while Republicans must have felt giddy in anticipation, like children on Christmas Eve.

Now, the roles are reversed. The Democrats have held the Senate and, while they’ve lost the House, Republican control is by a far narrower margin than they had anticipated. Biden is gloating, and Republicans are in shock.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/12/electionfraud_corruption_is_deeper_than_anyone_can_imagine.html

Multiple polls conclude that upwards of 70 percent of Americans think our elections are filled with fraud.  But we’re learning it’s deeper and more organized than just a few thousand mules dropping fake ballots into election boxes.

The corruption involves both political parties.  Big Tech manipulates search engine results, and takes down “dangerous” websites.  With Elon Musk’s revelations, we now see that our own FBI is working actively with Twitter to censor conservatives and silence dissenting speech.  It’s next to certain that Twitter wasn’t the only social media giant the FBI was giving orders to.  And the mainstream media are all in on ridiculing, dismissing, or attacking people willing to speak out.

Anyone who floats the idea that the Republican red wave disappeared because of poor GOP tactics, or inadequate candidates, is either stupid or part of this conspiracy.  In fact, it’s an excellent “RINO detector”!

Any “conservative” news organization that is not focusing 100 percent on the corruption that has been unearthed in Maricopa County is complicit.

The left and their RINO allies, along with who-knows-how-many other corporate and foreign actors, have set up the most complicated electoral fraud system in history.  Every step of the voting process — from who is allowed to vote, how they vote, how the votes are tallied, to how the results are reported — is compromised.  They are so far into their corruption that being exposed is not an option.  They will do literally anything to avoid being caught.

A good place to start is with the voter rolls.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/dec/11/jim-crow-20-democrats-redouble-voter-suppression-c/

Georgians broke voter turnout records this year in the primary and general elections, but Democrats have no intention of abandoning the “Jim Crow 2.0” narrative.

The state set records in midterm elections for early voting, absentee voting and total turnout. More Georgia votes were cast in the Senate runoff than in the general election, in the January 2021 Senate runoff or on Election Day 2020.

The state also set three single-day records for early voting.

Even the victory of Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock over Republican Herschel Walker in the runoff did not stop Democratic Party leaders from blasting Georgia’s Election Integrity Act of 2021 as a voter suppression tool.

The narrative prompted eye-rolls from conservatives.

“I take it to mean there is no set of facts that will ever, ever be able to dissuade progressive politicians like President Biden, like Rafael Warnock, like Stacey Abrams from their voter suppression argument,” said Jason Snead, executive director of the Honest Elections Project. “It’s a narrative that has absolutely no support in the facts.”

Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, insisted that Mr. Warnock won in spite of the state’s election law, which tightened pandemic-era voting procedures while expanding early voting.

“What happened in Georgia, despite the efforts of the Republican legislature to make it harder to vote, our people voted. People voted. Georgians voted,” Mr. Schumer said at a post-election press conference. “They said we’re not going to let these barriers stand in our way even if we have to wait in line in the rain.”

Mr. Warnock, who previously called the election law “Jim Crow in new clothes,” warned that some people “would look at the outcome of this race and say that there is no voter suppression in Georgia.”

“Let me be clear: Just because people endured long lines that wrapped around buildings, some blocks long, just because they endured the rain and the cold and all kinds of tricks in order to vote doesn’t mean that voter suppression does not exist,” Mr. Warnock said after his win. “It simply means that you the people have decided that your voices will not be silenced.”

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/herschel-walker-wrote-donald-trump-political-obituary

Herschel Walker, the Heisman Trophy winner who led the Georgia Bulldogs to a national championship in 1982, just wrote Donald Trump’s political obituary. 

Walker lost his bid to replace Georgia’s incumbent Senator Raphael Warnock, handing Democrats in that chamber a critical majority. A majority which will enable Joe Biden to appoint more judges, enact more legislation and put in place more appointees willing and able to carry out his far-left agenda. Walker was endorsed by former President Trump. 

Having suffered the rare humiliation of failing to win a second term in the Oval Office, and having cost his party a majority in the senate – three times – it is time for Donald Trump to step away from politics. It is the right thing to do for his party, for the country, and for himself. 

Mr. Trump will not win another election. His most glaring political strength today is his ability to energize Democrats, causing not only historic turnout but attracting gushers of campaign cash – for the opposition.

It is notable that Trump-backed candidates all came up short in fund-raising. The Georgia senate race cost more than $400 million. As of mid-November, Democrat Raphael Warnock had outspent Republican Herschel Walker $126 million to $48.5 million.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-bipartisan-schedule-for-presidential-primaries-south-carolina-nomination-process-election-race-voters-11670350936?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

Democrats have proposed to make the South Carolina primary the first contest in their presidential nomination process, supplanting Iowa and New Hampshire. The problem is that they plan to do so using racial criteria, to “ensure that voters of color have a voice in choosing our nominee much earlier in the process,” as President Biden put it in a letter to the Democratic National Committee last week: “You cannot be the Democratic nominee and win a general election unless you have overwhelming support from voters of color.”

Since that isn’t true of the Republicans, they’re unlikely to use the same criteria or the same schedule. This would be a logistical problem, especially in states that allow independent or crossover voting, where voters can choose on Election Day in which primary to cast a ballot.

Democrats have a point that the process could benefit from some updating, but how about using a rules-based approach? The first primary could go to the state with the closest race in the previous presidential election. In 2024 that would be Georgia, where Mr. Biden won by 0.2% in 2020. Next could be Arizona, where Mr. Biden won by 0.3%, or North Carolina, where Donald Trump won by 1.3%.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/unpopular-biden-desperately-wants-democrats-primary-season-south-carolina

President Joe Biden just pulled a fast one on Pete Buttigieg.

And… on Amy Klobuchar, Elizabeth Warren, Gavin Newsom and other Democrat hopefuls who might (despite vows to the contrary) be planning to challenge Joe Biden in 2024. 

The president’s political gurus are trying to upend the party’s primary schedule – knocking out Iowa and New Hampshire as leaders of the selection process and moving South Carolina, Nevada, Georgia and Michigan earlier in the calendar. Those changes would seriously disadvantage those potential 2024 candidates and several others. 

But, the revised plan would – surprise! — make Joe Biden a shoo-in by prioritizing states with large Black populations. Democrats should beware: the boost to Biden and emphasis on African-American voters could backfire.

Joe Biden has been taking a victory lap recently, taking credit for his party’s unexpectedly strong showing in the midterm elections. But it is notable that the president personally had little involvement in those races; numerous candidates eschewed his participation, concerned that his low approval ratings might prove contagious.

Even now, Biden is a no-show in Georgia, where incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock is battling Republican Hershel Walker to retain his seat. Barack Obama is campaigning in Georgia, but not Biden.

Ignored midst the giddiness over the GOP’s poor showing in the midterms is that Biden remains deeply unpopular. Real Clear Politics puts the president’s average approval rating at 41%; a recent Quinnipiac poll shows his favorability at 36%. 

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/spencerbrown/2022/12/06/georgia-senate-runoff-n2616800

After neither incumbent Democrat Senator Raphael Warnock nor Trump-endorsed GOP challenger Herschel Walker received more than 50 percent of the vote on Election Day in November, the two faced off on Tuesday in a runoff election that saw Sen. Warnock prevail in his reelection bid according in a call that came less than three hours after the polls closed.

Throughout the night as votes were tallied, the lead see-sawed between the two candidates, with Walker leading for a while as day-of votes began to be counted and Warnock taking the lead back as counties around Atlanta reported more votes. 

Despite Walker’s performance among day-of voters, Warnock’s advantage among early and absentee voters kept the incumbent Democrat ahead of his GOP challenger even as turnout in Georgia’s runoff beat records in previous cycles — another repudiation of claims that Georgia’s election integrity law would disenfranchise voters and reduce participation in Peach State elections. 

Still, the outcome looks to be closer than the three percent margin that many analysts and pundits predicted in the Georgia runoff, meaning that Warnock did not run away with his reelection bid and was held closer than expected by Walker’s campaign, due in no small part to runoff campaign assistance from Gov. Brian Kemp following his reelection in November.

At the time Decision Desk HQ called the race, Warnock had 50.46 percent of the votes to Walker’s 49.54 percent with 83 percent of the estimated votes counted. As expected, Warnock led in the early vote by a not-insignificant margin, underscoring calls by some Republicans, contrary to what former President Donald Trump has said, for the GOP to ramp up its early voting efforts to prevent Democrats from running up leads like the one seen in Georgia Tuesday night. 

But for now at least, the 2022 midterm election cycle is finally, officially over — ending again in Georgia with a Senate runoff — the result of which puts the balance of power in the U.S. Senate at 51 Democrats and 49 Republicans.