RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/can-desantis-get-past-the-donald/

Last week, Florida governor Ron DeSantis took two big steps to solidify his popularity with the Republican base, not only in his home state but across the nation.

First, he won the hearts and minds of conservative voters and many independent parents by passing a law that prevents teachers from discussing sensitive topics of gender and sexual orientation with young students (grades three and under). Second, he confronted and defeated one of Florida’s largest and most influential employers, Disney World, on a vital issue. He stripped Disney of its special privilege to govern the vast territory it owns near Orlando.

Both moves are popular in their own right — the first with parents, the second with Republican voters and perhaps others. That popularity is important, but commentators have missed the subtext, why those battles matter so much for DeSantis’s political prospects. What his legislative victories demonstrate is that DeSantis is willing to fight hard against formidable opposition on high-profile issues, including cultural issues. That is exactly what Republican voters want today.

The key word here is fight. The go-along-to-get-along days of Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush are dead and buried. The undertaker was Donald Trump. His eagerness to take on those fights has been central to his success. DeSantis is showing he is just as willing. In fact, he’s trying to show that, like Trump, he is not just willing but eager. He relishes the battles with Hollywood leftists, teachers’ unions, woke corporations, and federal bureaucrats. And he wants to show he can win those fights.

DeSantis’s victories put him at the forefront of his party on a theme that really matters to Republican voters, and to many independents as well. They don’t think K Street lobbyists, unions, Hollywood celebrities, federal bureaucrats, and big corporations are on their side. And, except for the lobbyists (who go wherever the money is), they know these groups are all firmly attached to the Democratic Party. Republican voters want a leader who will confront these entrenched groups — not reluctantly but eagerly — and beat them. That’s exactly what DeSantis showed them last week.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/dem-pollster-issues-frantic-warning-on-midterms/

Perfect storm incoming! Not only are the American people angry with how the Democrats are running things, they’re angry in a whole lot of different ways at the same time. Democratic pundits are already whining that the media are to blame for not telling citizens about all the good news — everyone has a job and the economy is growing — but the media are unable to mollify people who have half a dozen reasons to want to thrash the Dems.

Mark Penn, a Bill Clinton pollster, in today’s New York Times:

These economic blows are just one element in a cascading set of problems all hitting at the same time. It combines the nuclear anxieties of the 1950s and ’60s with the inflation threat of the ’70s, the crime wave of the ’80s and ’90s and the tensions over illegal immigration in the 2000s and beyond. This electorate is not experiencing a malaise, as President Jimmy Carter was once apocryphally said to have proclaimed, but has instead formed into a deep national fissure ready to blow like a geyser in the next election if leadership does not move to relieve the pressure.

Americans think the economy is weak, inflation is effectively giving them a major pay cut, the border is being overrun, criminals are roaming unchecked, Covid policy is a mess, Vladimir Putin is more dangerous than ever before, and political correctness amounts to a national gag order. Any one of these things could be enough to cost Democrats the House; in the fall of 2014, you may recall, America was in a state of anxiety about mass illegal immigration and a threat from Ebola that turned out to recede quickly, and harshly punished the party in power. Republicans gained an astonishing nine Senate seats, and 13 in the House.

America today is facing real, undeniable problems, and most of them are strongly associated with the Democratic Party. The rout is coming, and Democrats are doing almost nothing to avoid absorbing painful punishment in November.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/04/25/who-do-dems-want-in-2024-right-now-anybody-but-biden-ii-tipp-poll/

Yes, it’s very early. But if given the choice right now, which Democrats do Americans want to see run for president in 2024? The perhaps not-so-surprising answer emerging from the latest I&I/TIPP Poll seems to be: “Anyone but Joe Biden.”

In our April opinion poll, we asked Americans of all political affiliations across the demographic spectrum “Who do you want to see run for president on the Democratic ticket in 2024?”

Just 19% of those responding answered “Joe Biden, 46th president of the United States.” The rest of the choices were spread among 18 candidates, along with “other” (6%) and “not sure” (28%). Put another way, 81% of Americans don’t want Biden to run again.

Specifically, other names on the list included (in declining order of preference) Vice President Kamala Harris (7%), Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (6%), former First Lady Michelle Obama (6%), former Secretary of State and First Lady Hillary Clinton (4%), former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (3%), and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg (3%).

Trailing in the preference race is a long list at 2%, including losing 2018 Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Massachusetts Rep. Joe Kennedy.

A third tier of candidates includes California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, and New Mexico Gov. Michelle Luhan Grisham, all at 1% preference.

The data come from the April I&I/TIPP Poll of 981 registered voters.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/04/21/senate-democrats-midterm-election-biden-00026781

Democrats’ path to saving their narrow Senate majority comes down to defending four states this fall. And in all of them, President Joe Biden is underwater in the polls.

Biden’s drag on swing-state incumbents is emerging as a pivotal factor in the midterm Senate elections, where the loss of just one Democratic-held seat in November could put Republicans in control.

Acutely aware of the need to get distance from the president, the four most endangered Democratic incumbents — Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and New Hampshire Sen. Maggie Hassan — are increasingly taking steps to highlight their independence from the president and underscore their differences.

Their public pushback against Biden’s plan to lift the Trump-era border restriction known as Title 42 is the most visible expression of the effort to get distance from the president. But the four Democrats are also finding other ways of signaling to voters. They’ve visited the border wall and blocked his nominees. A month before a Trump-appointed judge struck down Biden’s mask mandate on mass transit, three of the four voted in favor of a Republican bill to do just that

On social media, where they shy away from praise of the president and instead focus on their efforts to prod the White House to action, it’s hard to tell they’ve voted in line with Biden no less than 96 percent of the time.

“In these four states, these are senators just doing the work, keeping their head down, getting things done for their states while the Republicans are obviously tearing each other apart in these primaries,” said Martha McKenna, a Democratic ad maker who previously worked for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2022/04/20/two-respected-political-sites-make-massive-house-predictions-shift-toward-gop-n1591357

Two of the most respected political prognostication sites — Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball and The Cook Political Report — announced massive shifts in their partisan ratings for House races.

Sabato’s latest estimate shifted an astonishing 11 races toward the GOP. Five of those races shifted from “Safe Democratic” to “Likely Democratic.” It should be noted that in 2010 a dozen or more Democratic races that started in the “Safe” column ended up with a GOP victory. This is another clear indication of an increased chance for a “wave” election where 50 or more seats switch parties.

The Cook Political Report is behind a paywall, but the Hill has a summary of the eight changes made by that site.

The changes include moving three previously “likely” Democratic districts — Indiana’s 1st, New York’s 19th and North Carolina’s 1st — into “lean” Democratic territory. Meanwhile, three districts that previously leaned toward Democrats — Nevada’s 3rd and 4th, as well as Virginia’s 7th district — are now toss-ups, according to the election handicapper.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/04/19/multiple-democratic-candidates-for-senate-disagree-with-biden-ending-title-42/

At least six Democratic candidates for the U.S. Senate this November have publicly called on Joe Biden to delay ending the pandemic-era immigration policy known as Title 42, which is all but guaranteed to cause another massive surge of illegal aliens across the southern border.

As reported by Politico, among the candidates distancing themselves from Biden’s increasingly unpopular immigration agenda is John Fetterman (D-Penn.), the incumbent Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania and clear frontrunner for the Democratic nomination for the state’s U.S. Senate seat being vacated by retiring Senator Pat Toomey (R-Penn.).

“We should not end Title 42 until we have a detailed plan in place,” Fetterman said in an interview. “And look, we don’t only need a long-term and detailed plan here for ending Title 42, but we still need to fix our broken immigration system as a whole.”

In North Carolina, Democratic frontrunner Cheri Beasley (D-N.C.) “believes that it is not the right time to lift this policy, especially without a plan in place to deal with a potential influx in migrants,” according to campaign spokeswoman Dory McMillan.

In the more contentious Democratic primary for the Senate seat in Wisconsin, held by incumbent Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), at least three candidates – Mandela Barnes, Sarah Godlewski, Alex Lasry – have all voiced their opposition to Biden’s plans to end Title 42, specifically citing the fact that the administration does not seem to have a concrete plan in place to deal with the influx that is sure to follow.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/voter-drive-whats-biden-hiding-justice-department-freedom-of-information-foia-transparency-corruption-lawsuit-

President Biden is ordering all agencies in the federal bureaucracy to “expand citizens’ opportunities to register to vote and to obtain information about, and participate in, the electoral process.” That language, from a March 2021 executive order titled “Promoting Access to Voting,” may sound benign. It isn’t, and it may conceal an abuse of power. The administration is making it difficult for the public to find out.

Promoting voter registration and participation—i.e., mobilizing voters—is an inherently political act for a partisan president. The resulting efforts can be directed at groups expected to vote for the president’s party and may take the form of pressure to support the party or its policies. A president has every right to sway potential voters on the campaign trail. He has no right to influence them using the force of the federal government.

The Constitution doesn’t grant the president authority over federal elections. It reserves that power to the states and to a lesser extent Congress. Mr. Biden’s order ignores that prohibition by expanding the role of federal agencies in elections. Congress hasn’t approved such an expansion, and election legislation Mr. Biden backs is stuck in the Senate.

The White House refuses to release the plans that various agencies created under the executive order. Agencies submitted their plans by September, yet the administration has provided only overviews of slightly more than a dozen, with little detail. Their full plans should be available, and so should those of hundreds of other agencies. With the federal government throwing its weight behind voter registration and participation, Americans have a right to see what it’s doing and which voters it’s targeting, especially with crucial midterm elections in November.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/04/divorce-florida-style/

Trouble ahead for Trump and DeSantis

Tallahassee, Fla. — Eavesdrop on any pair of political obsessives here — media types, campaign consultants, lobbyists, the rent-seekers of all parties — and you will hear them veer quickly toward the most reliable conversation-starter in this politically obsessed town. The Split. The political marriage of Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, never passionate but for a time mutually convenient, is all but over. The only questions that remain are when it will end and how ugly it will get.

Trump likes to say, and he does so with Trumpian repetition, that in 2018 DeSantis was at 3 percent in the polls (not quite) and that without a Trump endorsement DeSantis would have lost the gubernatorial election (probably so). That spring, after trailing for months in statewide polls, DeSantis gave up running as DeSantis and began to run as Trump-Lite. His lead TV spot featured DeSantis sprawled on the living-room rug, teaching his toddling children how to build a wall with tiny blocks. That fall, DeSantis was elected by less than 1 percent of the vote over one of the worst Democratic candidates in state history: Andrew Gillum, a (formerly) closeted bisexual man, married to a woman, with a large drug problem and a wafer-thin resume.

In 2022, Trump says that DeSantis owes him, and invites DeSantis, with Trumpian repetition, to support Trump for 2024. DeSantis has declined the invitation and Trump, in turn, has declined to support DeSantis for election this year, after endorsing, among other notables, Dr. Oz, Mo Brooks, and Herschel Walker.

Can this marriage be saved? The consensus seems to be: no, and it is more likely to end with a bang than a whimper.

I count four scenarios advanced with more or less conviction by the obsessed.