RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/11/election_forecast.html

We have reached the point where “too close to call” does not cut it. Unfortunately, there are probably more “too close to call” Senate races than in any other recent cycle. It is also the case that sometimes the House and Senate go in different directions even when there is a strong movement towards one party or the other In House races as there often is in a new President’s first midterm. In 2018, the Democrats picked up 40 House seats but lost Senate seats in Florida, Missouri, Indiana, and North Dakota, while picking up seats in Arizona, and Nevada. In 2020, Republicans gained more than a dozen House seats but lost a net 3 Senate seats (4 in total, losing 2 in Georgia, Colorado and Arizona, and regaining Alabama).

At the moment, the Senate is divided 50-50, and the House has 220 Democrats and 212 Republicans with 3 open seats — 2 formerly Democrat-held seats  in Florida, and one formerly Republican held seat in Indiana. The GOP needs a net pickup of 5 House seats to gain majority control assuming they win the open Indiana seat.

Pretty much every serious analyst of the   House races believes the GOP is favored to regain control.  Most of those who look at individual races — Cook Political Report, Larry Sabato, and 538 — are forecasting GOP gains of around 20 seats. About half of those gains are expected to come in seats now regarded as tossups (many more seats in the tossup category are now held by Democrats than Republicans).  

RealClearPolitics (RCP) believes the GOP will win about 30 net seats assuming the two parties split those in its tossup category. The fact that Democrats are playing defense and pouring in late money and surrogates in many places where they won comfortably in 2020 suggests GOP strength and the potential to have bigger gains if the Party wins a large share of close races as it did in 2020. 

The every-ten-year redistricting after the census resulted in a small net gain for the GOP. This gain was smaller than the net effect of court-ordered redistricting  in Pennsylvania and North Carolina before 2020, which moved about a half dozen seats towards Democrats in the two states. The most gerrymandered states at this point are Illinois by and for the Democrats (14-3), and Ohio by and for the Republicans (12-3). In New York State, an attempt to create a 22-4 map for the Democrats was so egregious that a state court  threw it out. With the strong challenge by Lee Zeldin in the governor’s race, Republicans could now win 8 or 9 House seats in the state.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/11/07/news-of-the-gops-demise-was-greatly-exaggerated/

Barring an 11th-hour catastrophe or widespread cheating, Republicans are expected to stomp Democrats across the board in Tuesday’s election.

Polls show Republicans with a big edge on issues that matter most: By double digits, voters trust Republicans to handle inflation, the economy in general, and crime. Democrats only hold a slight edge on education, a longtime Democratic advantage that’s been slipping away in the post-lockdown era.

GOP candidates are competitive in races previously considered safe for Democrats, including Senate seats in New Hampshire and Washington. Republicans are not just poised to take control of the House and the Senate but possibly a handful of governorships and state legislatures, which will have a huge impact on how the 2024 presidential election is handled.

Even more alarming news for Democrats is eroding support among reliable constituencies. Latinos, blacks, and suburban white women—voters who often represent the winning margin for Democratic candidates—are moving in the direction of the GOP this year while working class whites, once the crown jewel of the Democratic Party, continue their exodus from the party that now caters to the rich and overly credentialed.

Which raises an important question: What does Bill Kristol say now?

Kristol, a founding father of the modern-day neoconservative movement who sold his soul, reputation, and part of his sanity to left-wing billionaires in his insatiable lust to destroy Donald Trump, warned for years that Trump would destroy the Republican Party. Since 2016, the notoriously-wrong pundit has predicted any number of doomsday scenarios related to Trump, most notably the demise of the GOP.

During the 2016 GOP nominating convention, Kristol lamented that the Republican Party “had fallen into the grip of a vulgar demagogue with a thuggish retinue.” A year later, Kristol declared the GOP wasn’t salvageable, promising to start an independent party as an alternative to a Trump-hijacked Republican Party. Kristol and his NeverTrump cohorts transformed into full-blown Democrats by the 2018 midterm elections. Trump, Kristol claimed in 2018, was a “cancer metastasizing at a rapid rate” within the GOP.

 “I think the party brand is getting much more enmeshed in everything Donald Trump says and stands for; the whole future of the Republican Party is now an open question,” the former aide to Vice President Dan Quayle openly mused that year. (Shortly thereafter, the owner of the Weekly Standard, the influential magazine Kristol launched in 1995, shut down the publication.)

Kristol endorsed Joe Biden in 2020 and pushed for the full-scale annihilation of the Republican Party, including governors who were “killing Americans” by reopening their states’ businesses after the pandemic and “banning masks.”

https://amgreatness.com/2022/11/06/the-pathetic-democratic-pantheon/

Over the last few months the four icons of the Democratic Party—Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Nancy Pelosi—have hit the campaign trail. 

They’ve weighed in on everything from “right-wing violence” and “election denialists” to the now tired “un-American” semi-fascist MAGA voter—and had nothing much to say about inflation, the border, crime, energy, or the Afghanistan debacle. In this, they remind us just how impoverished and calcified is this left-wing pantheon. 

So why should we take anything they say seriously, given their own records—and especially given their mastery of projecting their own shortcomings upon others as some sort of private exculpation or preemptive political strategy?

Still Hopin’ and Changin’? 

Barack Obama this past week has assumed the role of surrogate president. He is storming the country, while Joe Biden mopes at home or visits shrinking blue enclaves so he can claim post facto, “At least I was out there stumping.” 

Over the last six years, we have become accustomed to Obama’s periodic getaways from one of his three estates. It is always the same. From time to time, he reenters politics to remind us that he did not just cash in on his presidency to become a multi-millionaire. Instead, he is still the Chicago “community activist” of his youth. And so, Obama will not be overshadowed by the Biden crew that is enacting all the crazy things he as president had warned were a bit much even for him. 

At the funeral of the late John Lewis, Obama turned his eulogy into a political rant. He weighed in on the “racist” filibuster, the “Jim Crow relic” that he desperately sought in vain to use to stop the appointment of Justice Samuel Alito. 

At campaign stops, he deplores “divisions” that he, more than any modern figure, helped create. The entire left-wing vocabulary of disparagement for the white lower-working classes (e.g., deplorables, dregs, chumps, irredeemables, etc.) got its start with Obama’s putdown of Pennsylvania voters who rejected him in the 2008 primaries as “clingers.” 

In interviews, Obama suddenly now blasts harsh rhetoric—this from the wannabe tough guy who stole the “The Untouchables” line about bringing a knife to a gun fight. Well before crazy Maxine Waters’ calls to arms, Obama advised his supporters “get in their faces.”

Still, on the campaign trail, Obama appears not so much animated as stale. It is as if he has been suddenly stirred from a long coma that commenced in 2008. It’s the same old, same old—sleeves rolled up. He still resorts to the scripted outbursts of mock anger. And the nerdy prep school graduate still amateurishly modulates his patois—now policy wonk, now breaking into the Southern African-American pastor accent when an audience needs more preachy authenticity. 

He still tries to rev up his crowds with the familiar attacks: Republican demons will cut Social Security, the MAGA semi-fascists are captives of Donald Trump (as if the Democrats have not ceded their souls to woke hysterics), the Republican fanatics will all but kill women by denying abortions, and extremists unlike himself are dividing the country. 

On and on, Obama shouts about social justice. And then he wraps up and must decide to which of his mansions he will fly home (via private jet)—Kalorama, Martha’s Vineyard, Hyde Park, or soon the Waimanalo estate.

Obama offers no solutions much less hints at his own culpability in his sermons. There is nothing about the open border he helped birth. Nothing about Biden’s failed energy policies now bankrupting the middle class that were simply a reification of his energy secretary Steven Chu’s perverse wishes for European-priced gas (“Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”). 

There is nothing about Obama’s old boasts about shutting down coal plants and skyrocketing electricity (“Under my plan . . . electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”). 

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/scottmorefield/2022/11/06/conservatives-hit-back-after-trump-takes-pre-election-shot-at-desantis-n2615540

Conservatives on Twitter hit back at Donald Trump after the former president took a shot at Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis during a Saturday night pre-election speech in Pennsylvania.

“”There it is, Trump at 71 percent, Ron DeSanctimonious at 10%,” Trump told the crowd while reading approval numbers of various Republicans.”

If he should choose to run – and that’s a big “if” – DeSantis is widely considered to be the best shot at upending another Trump run for the GOP nomination. Not only were his Covid policies spot on and ahead of the curve, but the Florida governor has also been by far the most effective Republican politician when it comes to getting out there and battling leftist positions and implementing conservative policies in his state. And he’s done so without taking any shots at Trump, the person he and everyone else understands played a key role in getting him where he is today.

For Trump, however, this unprovoked jab at conservatism’s most effective fighter is evidence for many that, despite the many good things he has done for the country, this has been all about him the whole time.

Especially when it did nothing but provide ammunition to the left, particularly in Florida.

Trump’s swipe brought plenty of criticism from conservatives on Twitter:

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/3721139-constitutional-defamation-democrats-not-democracy-are-in-danger-this-election/

Historian Michael Beschloss’s warning on MSNBC — speculating that “our children will be arrested and conceivably killed” if Republicans win control of Congress — summed up the final pitch by President Biden and fellow Democrats ahead of Tuesday’s midterm elections.

Apparently, it is not gas prices, the economy or crime that once again are the top polling issues for voters. Instead, it is democracy or death, gas or grandchildren — you choose.

Biden returned to this theme in what White House chief of staff Ron Klain called his “final warning” to voters. The president ominously cautioned voters who might be thinking of voting for Republicans that, “make no mistake, democracy is on the ballot for all of us.” In other words, be afraid, be very afraid.

Biden was widely criticized for an earlier Philadelphia speech that denounced political opponents as fascists plotting to overthrow democracy. Yet he and others have returned to that theme as Democrats appear to be losing ground even in traditional blue states. Among others, Hillary Clinton warned that the GOP is trying to “steal” the election and that “they’re going after democracy.“

The president’s attacks do not appear to be gaining much traction, with polls showing that most people view him as inciting political unrest. Nevertheless, on almost every network and cable news program, the mantra seems unrelenting: If the GOP prevails in the midterms, democracy could be lost.

Whereas the media once pushed a false Russia collusion claim in the 2016 election, this time it is pushing a claim that the GOP itself represents the threat to our liberties and very lives.

https://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2022/11/06/thank-god-for-these-horrible-democrats-n2615531

It’s times like these when you yearn for the perfect words to explain not only how important it is to vote Tuesday, but also to properly describe just how awful the people you’re running against are. In the case of Democrats, unfortunately, the words needed to describe them tend to contain four letters and generally are slang for body parts or directions for action involving them. That makes them unusable in a family-friendly column, but I’m going to try to get around that as best I can and paint as accurate of a picture as possible about why we should be grateful for these horrible Democrats.

A fish rots from the head down, but in the case of Democrats that head is empty, or at least has forgotten where it is. Naturally, that head is on the scrawny neck of Joe Biden, a man so untrustworthy that it says “hello” you have to suspect he’s leaving. What kind of person thinks claiming “Ultra MAGA is a threat to the country” is a good strategy? “MAGA” stands for “Make America Great Again,” which if you’re pretending to like the country is rather difficult to demonize. Then again, Biden leads the party that has “America was never great” as a guaranteed applause line on the campaign trail, so nothing should surprise us.

In a last-ditch effort to save his worthless presidency, Biden declared the act of engaging in democracy to be a threat to it should the public dare vote against the wishes of Democrats. I’d call that verbal yoga, but yoga has value whereas Democrats and what they say do not.

The idea of declaring one of the two possible election outcomes to be invalid before any votes are counted should bother the people who claim to wake up screaming about “threats to democracy.” But those claims are as sincere as the election results in the old Soviet Union or Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Yet, while calling anyone who opposes his failed policies “semi-fascist,” Biden is embracing the tactics of fascists throughout history. 

And so is every other Democrat out there, on the ballot or in the media. Any result not reflecting what Democrats want is a threat to democracy, according to these people. The only difference is they won’t have a firing squad outside your polling place ready to dispense their version of “democracy” should they discover you voted wrong, but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t like to. Enjoy voting against them…while they still allow it and so they can’t disallow it in the future.

Whatever joy you experience Tuesday night, save an extra cup of “in your face” for Stacey Abrams and Beto O’Rourke. While those two are horrible people – having spent the last four years lying about and smearing Republicans, unchallenged, on cable news – beating them again should bring special joy.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/11/05/midterm-reflections/

Was there really a time when an American election didn’t seem to be a matter of life and death—of choosing between a return to constitutional norms and continuing down a road of national suicide by ideology? Was there a time when a midterm election, for heaven’s sake, didn’t seem as vitally important as this one does—a time, moreover, when one was content to pay attention to the races in one’s own state and city and not bite one’s nails over any number of other races around the country?

One more question. Was there really a time when it wasn’t anywhere near as maddening as it is now that the voters in certain jurisdictions seem not to get it? How on earth, for example, can 54 percent of New Yorkers plan to vote for the ruinous Kathy Hochul? How can as many as 43 percent of Texans support Beto O’Rourke? In the race for governor of Arizona (and when on earth did any of us ever care about a gubernatorial election in Arizona?), how can the remarkable Kari Lake be neck and neck with the execrable Katie Hobbs? How can anybody in Florida be thinking of voting against Ron DeSantis? And however unpalatable Dr. Mehmet Oz may be, how could the Senate election in Pennsylvania actually be a toss-up between him and the psychologically debilitated basement radical John Fetterman? 

Yes, there are predictions of a nationwide red wave, even a red tsunami. Maybe those prognostications are correct. But even if they are, sheer abominations like Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y) will almost certainly remain in power. Why? Can anyone in Chicago be unaware of its current murder rate? How is it that the people living in the California cities most overrun with schizophrenic tent people and felonious illegals are the very voters most likely to pull the lever for Gavin Newsom, who’s largely responsible for it?  

On a podcast the other day, somebody recalled overhearing a comment at JFK Airport that went something like this: “Yes, Hochul is terrible, but I’ve never voted Republican in my life, and I won’t start now.” I spent most of my life in New York City, so I know plenty of people like that. But can even the most low-information, knee-jerk New York Democrat fail to understand that the two major political parties have undergone a drastic sea change? 

“That isn’t your grandfather’s Republican Party,” our beloved president keeps saying. He’s right! But not in the way he implies. The party of country-club elites and evangelical Christians has morphed into the party of middle-class families—including a growing number of blacks and Latinos. Bye bye, Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms; hello, Tim Scott and Mia Love. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party has been captured by radicals like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), has a paramilitary wing in the form of Antifa and Black Lives Matter, and serves the interests of Silicon Valley, Hollywood, big media, Wall Street, and globalist corporations. 

https://www.frontpagemag.com/ny-dems-to-double-down-on-denying-crime-exists/

Shoot the messenger. Literally.

How ideologically deranged are Democrats? So much so that they’re not going to do a U-turn on crime, instead they’re going to blame those Democrats who actually talked about the problem.

Democratic officials and strategists in New York tell CNN they are bracing for what could be stunning losses in the governor’s race and in contests for as many as four US House seats largely in the suburbs.

With crime dominating the headlines and the airwaves, multiple Democrats watching these races closely are pointing to New York City Mayor Eric Adams, accusing him of overhyping the issue and playing into right-wing narratives in ways that may have helped set the party up for disaster on Tuesday.

“He was an essential validator in the city to make their attacks seem more legit and less partisan,” said one Democratic operative working on campaigns in New York, who asked not to be named so as not to compromise current clients.

As circular firing squads go, this one is insane.

Dems whose strategy failed are going to blame a guy who actually got elected. After their messaging strategy abysmally failed, they’re going to claim that it would have succeeded if Mayor Adams weren’t out there mentioning the existence of crime.

The assumption here is that New York voters are mentally retarded and that they aren’t reacting to crime based on their everyday experiences, but Adams press conferences.

https://spectatorworld.com/newsletter/the-crime-election/

The crime elections

The District of Columbia’s City Council might seem a strange place to start a political newsletter a few days out from the midterms. As Democrats will never miss an opportunity to remind you, voters in Washington, DC will not get a say in a race that will help decide control of Congress. But a meeting of city leaders this week is an instructive part a national story that will be central to next week’s vote.

On Tuesday, the DC Council voted 12-0 to support a rewriting of the capital’s criminal code. Reforms include reduced mandatory minimum sentences, the expansion of the right to jury trials for most misdemeanors, a broadening of the opportunities for early release and the elimination of accomplice liability in felony murder cases. The reforms are opposed by the District’s US Attorney, Matthew M. Graves, and police chief Robert J. Contee. Graves said that some of the provisions “could undermine community safety and impede the administration of justice in our courts.” Also opposed to the proposals as they stand: the city’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, who has said she will not sign them into law, but thinks some kind of reform is needed.

Crime is set to be a decisive factor in next week’s elections. It is the biggest reason why governors’ contests are closer than expected in Oregon and New York. It is the main line of attack in crucial Senate races in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. It is why Los Angeles might be about to elect a former Republican property developer as its mayor. Nationwide, it’s a major issue for swing voters and traditionally Democrat-supporting working-class voters. For some Democrats, this seems to be a head-scratcher: We’ve cut it out with calls to Defund the Police. We get it.

And this is why the DC story is so instructive. It’s not that Democratic leaders are actively defunding the police, or fail to appreciate, at least theoretically, that the issue is a major concern for voters. It’s that they time and again fail to act as though public safety is their number one concern. Violent crime is spiking in Washington. It is the city’s most pressing problem and should be its elected officials’ number one concern. In place of any sense of urgency or decisive action is a blue-on-blue debate about which criminal justice reform measures are worth keeping and which are worth watering down. The message to voters is clear: your worries about safety are not our top priority.

Across the country, the Democratic Party’s messaging on crime has been all over the place. First, the crime problem was nothing more than a Republican scare campaign: a racist figment of the right-wing imagination. When more and more Democrats acknowledged the problem, they made the slightly trollish claim that crime is actually higher in red states. Absent from their pitch to voters on one of the most important issues: a straightforward pledge to actually deal with the problem.