RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/too-soon-for-democrats-to-dump-elizabeth-warren-1544231838

President Donald Trump has famously ridiculed Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s claims of Native American heritage. Perhaps more damaging to the Massachusetts leftist as she considers running for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, many natural allies aren’t buying her story either. But before Democrats reject her as a potential leader of their party, they ought to consider the alternatives. She is not the first and won’t be the last politician to make phony autobiographical claims.

In October the senator pretended to be vindicated by a DNA test which suggested a distant Native American ancestor but also left open the possibility that she has less Native American heritage than the average white person in the U.S. By the Warren standard, there are few people who couldn’t claim some connection to a historically oppressed group, which could render such questions meaningless. This column has therefore been doubtful that Ms. Warren can persuade Democratic primary voters to affirm the end of identity politics by selecting her as their presidential candidate.

For now, the political damage to a potential Warren candidacy appears to be significant. Astead Herndon writes in the New York Times:

… nearly two months after Ms. Warren released the test results and drew hostile reactions from prominent tribal leaders, the lingering cloud over her likely presidential campaign has only darkened. Conservatives have continued to ridicule her. More worrisome to supporters of Ms. Warren’s presidential ambitions, she has yet to allay criticism from grass-roots progressive groups, liberal political operatives and other potential 2020 allies who complain that she put too much emphasis on the controversial field of racial science — and, in doing so, played into Mr. Trump’s hands…

Three people close to senior members of Ms. Warren’s team, who were granted anonymity to speak freely on the issue, said they were “shocked” and “rattled” by the senator’s decision to take the DNA test, which they described as an unequivocal misstep that could have lasting consequences, even on 2020 staffing. One former adviser, who also asked not to be named, called it a “strategic failure” that was “depressing and unforgettable.”

Former Warren advisers aren’t the only ones who are not forgetting, according to the Times report:

Twila Barnes, a Cherokee genealogist who has thoroughly tracked Ms. Warren’s claims of native ancestry since it became national news in 2012, said her “jaw was on the floor” when she saw Ms. Warren’s decision to take the DNA test, and the slick video that accompanied the announcement of the results.

Ms. Barnes said Ms. Warren had an opportunity to teach the broader public about how genetic testing has historically been used as a weapon against Native communities, but instead she “helped perpetuate a very dangerous idea.”

https://spectator.org/democrats-are-just-too-darned-smart/
Their agenda is beyond the ken of mere voters.

At the dawn of the information age, when dumb terminals began appearing on desks and the din of dot matrix printers deafened all and sundry, every enterprise of consequence employed a misanthrope charged with the care and feeding of these machines. Occasionally, this reclusive individual reluctantly submitted to questions about the output of the equipment. His response to such impertinent queries usually consisted of word salads heavily seasoned with jargon and topped off with a surly suggestion that it was just too complicated to explain to mere users. This is eerily similar to the way Democrats relate to the voters.

The latest example can be found in a conversation between Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick and Democrat Senator Mazie Hirono. The latter, you will recall, is the Senator from Hawaii who commanded men in general to “shut up” when many of us had the temerity to question the outrageous smear tactics that she and the other Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee deployed in their disastrous attempt to derail the Senate’s confirmation of now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Lithwick asked the Senator, “What is the thing the Democrats need to be saying about why the courts matter? Hirono responded to this as follows:

I wish I had the answer to that because one of the things that we, Democrats, have a really hard time is connecting to people’s hearts.… But we have a really hard time doing that and one of the reasons it was told to me at one of our retreats was that we Democrats know so much, that is true. And we have kind of have to tell everyone how smart we are and so we have a tendency to be very left brain.… That is not how people make decisions.

Before we get to the stunning hubris of that answer, consider the patronizing premise of the question. Lithwick assumes the electorate’s failure to rise up and demand that the Senate stop carrying out its constitutional function with regard to presidential appointments to the Supreme Court is due to its inability to “understand” why the courts matter. It has obviously never occurred to her that the voters actually have quite a firm grasp on the importance of the judiciary and that this is exactly why they want President Trump and a GOP-controlled Senate to determine which jurists will plant their posteriors on the federal bench.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272124/talking-millennials-out-socialism-bruce-thornton

Writing last week about the new affection for socialism on the part of Millellenials, electoral maven Karl Rove warned us not to ignore or dismiss this enthusiasm. Socialism’s long record of failure “doesn’t mean new forms of socialism can’t gain a following.” Rove’s solution is for Republicans to “do the hard work of updating old arguments,” and “hone their arguments” against socialist policies in preparation for the 2020 presidential race.

Welcome to 2500 years of dubious thinking about the power of rational persuasion and coherent argument to talk people out of bad ideas. It didn’t save Socrates from the hemlock, and it’s unlikely to change the minds of the worst-educated, most self-centered, and most pampered cohort in American history.

This stubborn belief in the power of rational thought and knowledge to improve human life lies at the heart of modern political ideologies like Marxism and progressivism. Both assume that the knowledge useful for politically organizing a state or society is “scientific,” comprising principles and techniques that are beyond ideology and universally true. Hence the need for enlightened technocratic elites to control social institutions and use power in order to rationally arrange human existence more justly and efficiently.

The flaw in this thinking was first identified by contemporaries of Plato, whose Republic imagined a utopia of elite Guardians educated to exercise totalitarian control over society. And the earliest critics of Plato’s flawed assumptions about human nature were likewise Greek writers such as Thucydides and Sophocles. Both argued that a human nature universally subject to irrational passions, free will, and a tragic world would always to some degree triumph over the rational mind.

Yet despite the subsequent millennia in which history has demonstrated that the road to utopia is lined with mountains of corpses, the dream of creating heaven on earth by applying rational techniques of control and improvement over human beings has not lost its allure. In modern times, the decline of faith and the belief in a transcendent reality has made us even more vulnerable to political religions, those delusional visions of human power and will alone able to eliminate the tragic limits of earthly life, such as inequality, suffering, injustice, and violence.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/12/06/sen_hirono_democrats_have_a_hard_time_connecting_with_people_because_of_how_smart_we_are.html

Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) said Democrats have a difficult time “connecting” with voters because of “how smart we are” that “we know so much.” Hirono was interviewed by journalist Dahlia Lithwick at the ‘Bend Towards Justice’ conference in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday.

“We’re really good at shoving out all the information that touch people here (points to head) but not here (points to heart),” Hirono said of Democrats.

“I’ve been saying it at all of our Senate Democratic retreats that we need to speak to the heart not in a manipulative way, not in a way that brings forth everybody’s fears and resentments but truly to speak to the hearts so that people know that we’re actually on their side,” the Senator said.

“We have a really hard time doing that,” Hirono lamented, “and one of the reasons it was told to me at one of our retreats was that we Democrats know so much, that is true. And we have kind of have to tell everyone how smart we are and so we have a tendency to be very left brain.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/11/ats_richard_baehr_explains_what_happened_on_novemebr_6.html

I was not able to attend this year’s Restoration Weekend in Palm Beach, but I heard from a lot of people about the presentation that our chief political correspondent Richard Baehr was a real highlight. He had the unenviable task of following the speech kicking off the program given by Victor Davis Hanson, and did a smashing job of it. He was the lead speaker on what was called the “all-star panel” analyzing the election results.

The other participants, Pat Caddell, Chris Buskirk (editor of American Greatness) and Daniel Greenfield, are among the smartest political thinkers of our time.

Watch for yourself. Richard, as always, cites data in his analysis, and sees things escaping most people.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/early-christmas-for-trump-pelosi-nominated-as-speaker/

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) claimed victory on Wednesday, saying she had won the Democratic nomination for Speaker amid an entrenched rebellion from insurgent lawmakers who pose the starkest threat to her long reign atop the party.

The outcome was no surprise. Pelosi was running uncontested and enjoys widespread support within the liberal-heavy caucus she’s led since 2003.

The much higher bar will come in the first week of January, when the full House meets to choose the Speaker in a public vote requiring a majority of the entire voting chamber. It’s there that the insurgents feel they can block Pelosi’s ascension, even as Pelosi and her allies have projected nothing but confidence that she’ll retake the gavel she lost following the red wave elections of 2010.

Pelosi was a very powerful and effective Speaker the last time she had the gavel. She did more to sell Obamacare than Barack Obama did. In what was surely a bitterly ironic outcome for her, President Obama’s “signature” legislative achievement sent her into minority party exile for eight years.

She was never more vulnerable in her leadership role than after the Republican midterm victories of 2010 and 2014, and she survived both of those. There will probably be a push for new blood in January but Pelosi has already been working overtime to take care of that.

The Obama people haven’t forgotten their debt to her and have already been helping her cause.

Since election night I and many others have said that having Pelosi do a second turn as Speaker may be the best thing for President Trump’s 2020 run. The Democrats are signalling that they won’t be relentlessly focused on badgering the president via investigations and threats of impeachment but is there any reason to believe that after the last two years? CONTINUE AT SITE

https://pjmedia.com/trending/report-trump-considering-john-james-to-replace-nikki-haley-as-un-ambassador/

Republican Senate candidate John James may have lost his race against Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow, but he could land a high-profile job in the Trump administration as a consolation prize.

President Trump is considering James, a Michigan businessman and Iraq War veteran, for UN ambassador, Bloomberg reported on Monday.

Scoop: John James, the Michigan businessman who ran for U.S. Senate this year, is one of the people that Trump is considering as a replacement for UN Ambassador Nikki Haley. @JohnJamesMI lost his challenge against Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow.

Jennifer Jacobs

✔ @JenniferJJacobs

NEW: John James was at the White House last week talking about a possible administration post with top officials, including Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence, I’m told.https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-26/trump-is-said-to-consider-michigan-senate-candidate-for-un-post …

Current U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley announced in October that she would resign her post by the end of the year and James is one of the names under consideration to be her replacement. Other people Trump is considering for the plum UN job include the U.S. ambassadors to France, Germany, and Canada, as well as State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert.

Two White House sources told Bloomberg that James was at the White House last week in meetings with Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Vice President Mike Pence to talk about a possible administration post.

James is president of James Group International, a supply-chain management firm based in Detroit. The political novice fell short of unseating Democrat Senator Debbie Stabenow 46 to 52 percent in a swing state Trump won in 2016.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/11/27/speaking_of_hate_rep-elect_ilhan_omar_promotes_it_138764.html

In her Minneapolis Star Tribune op-ed on the FBI’s just released 2017 Hate Crimes Report, Minnesota Rep.-elect Ilhan Omar presents herself as a sort of apostle of love. Omar decries the increase in reported hate crimes. However, she immediately attributes this increase to President Trump. As Omar puts it in her first paragraph: “The culture of intolerance spread by President Donald Trump has clearly emboldened racist individuals to acts of violence.” Something tells me that Omar’s message of love is a thinly disguised invitation to hate — to hate President Trump and his supporters, anyway.

Omar notes the increase in anti-religious hate crimes committed against Jews (up 37 percent) as well as the fact that Jews have been the foremost target of hate crimes since the FBI started keeping these statistics. But Omar doesn’t ask who is committing those crimes.

However, it isn’t long before she steps forward as a victim herself: “Like members of the Jewish community, I know how it feels to be hated because of my religious beliefs. Almost one in five hate crimes committed last year was motivated by religious bias, with 18.1 percent committed against Muslims — well above the historical averages before President Trump’s election.”

Omar habitually portrays herself as a victim. It’s an irritating tic. But she has not been the victim of any reported hate crime. A young refugee to the United States from Somalia, Omar was elected to Congress at the age of 36. This achievement must make her one of the most fortunate citizens of the United States. Her claim to victimhood represents the new style of American assimilation.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/11/23/the-reboot

Hillary Clinton’s latest software update is a slight improvement on the previous version. Gone is the simpering sachet of Frank’s Red Hot. Remarkably, engineers have patched the many bugs plaguing the two-time presidential malfunction.

In an interview with The Guardian this week, Hillary sacrificed a sacred cow of the modern progressive Left, imploring beleaguered European leaders firmly to grip an issue verboten among the fashionable and open-minded.

“I think Europe needs to get a handle on migration because that is what lit the flame,” she said, before nodding toward Angela Merkel’s disastrous decision to open German borders to 1.5 million Syrian migrants.

“I admire the very generous and compassionate approaches that were taken particularly by leaders like Angela Merkel, but I think it is fair to say Europe has done its part, and must send a very clear message—‘we are not going to be able to continue provide refuge and support’—because if we don’t deal with the migration issue it will continue to roil the body politic.”

Her remarks are likely to rock a boat already lapped at by the forces of immigration woe. Europe is riven with political conflict. Most of the tumult, hitherto whispered among the Left, stems from voters’ anger toward lawless and seemingly naïve immigration policies.

After all, Merkel’s immigration whimsy killed her. And it serves as a case study for populist parties vying for the votes of concerned Europeans anxious at being branded “racist” for possessing opinions held by a majority of their peers.

Immigration: The Kingmaker
The interview, part of a series of cursory glances The Guardian is taking toward the hoi polloi, reveals Hillary’s understanding of why Donald Trump is president. Finally.

It is not misogyny. Not self-hating women. Not the electoral college. Not James Comey. Not Bernie Sanders. Not low-information voters. Not Russia. Not the DNC. Not Jill Stein.