RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/02/27/a-party-at-war-with-its-own-soul/

The Democratic Party is in a state of panic over an unelectable extremist emerging as the possibly unstoppable frontrunner for its presidential nomination. When an institution is in a crisis like this, its leaders get called on to step in and exercise some leadership.

The problem for Democrats is that their official leaders aren’t their real leaders.

“Bernie Sanders cannot beat Trump,” warns 94-year-old longtime party mega-donor and Joe Biden backer Bernard Schwartz, who is appealing to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to come forward and back one of Sanders’ rivals. Worse, Bernie at the top of the ticket could have a reverse coattail effect and hurt Democrat House and Senate candidates. “We are not going to win these critical House races if people in those races have to explain why the nominee of the Democratic Party is telling them to look at the bright side of the Castro regime,” warned former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg during Tuesday night’s CBS debate.

Few if any have financed the Democratic Party establishment as much as New York City investment firm CEO Schwartz, who has given millions to Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation, and well over a million dollars to congressional Democrats’ campaigns in the current election cycle. But Pelosi and Schumer can’t risk the embarrassment of backing the wrong horse on the eve of the South Carolina primary and less than a week before Super Tuesday. Biden seems poised for a comeback win in the Palmetto State but Bernie has an impressive lead in the polls in California, and a slim lead in Texas, the two biggest Super Tuesday states, as well as leading in North Carolina and Virginia, and even enjoying a slim lead in the home state of competitor Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts, all also holding their primaries this coming Tuesday.

https://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/trumps-chances-for-re-election-are-looking-better-and-better/

Donald Trump has at least five strong historical arguments for his re-election.

One, he is an incumbent. Incumbent presidents have won 14 of 19 re-election bids since 1900.

The few who lost did not enjoy positive approval ratings. In a Gallup poll from earlier this month, Trump enjoyed his highest approval rating since his inauguration, squeezing out a 49 percent favorable rating vs. 50 percent unfavorable.

Two, the public perception of the economy usually determines any presidential election — as incumbents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush and Herbert Hoover learned the hard way. Currently, the U.S. is enjoying low inflation, low interest rates, positive economic growth, near-record-low unemployment, rising workers’ wages, and record gas and oil production.

Three, unpopular optional wars derail incumbent presidencies.

The quagmire in Vietnam convinced Lyndon Johnson not to run for re-election in 1968. Jimmy Carter was tarnished by the seemingly never-ending Iranian hostage crisis of 1979-1981. The Iraq War drove down George W. Bush’s second-term approval ratings and helped derail his would-be Republican successor, John McCain.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bernies-foreign-sympathies-11582763907?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Bernie Sanders wants Americans to believe he’s a garden variety “democratic socialist,” with the emphasis on democratic. But as media scrutiny of the Democratic presidential front-runner increases, we’re learning more about where his political sympathies lie, and they’re revealing about what a Sanders foreign policy would look like.

The latest example came this week when Mr. Sanders rejected an invitation to speak at the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee summit in Washington next week. The conference is a campaign staple for candidates of both parties, though there is no obligation to attend.

But Mr. Sanders didn’t merely reply with a polite “sorry I’m busy.” The Senator took to Twitter on Sunday to say that “I remain concerned about the platform AIPAC provides for leaders who express bigotry and oppose basic Palestinian rights. For that reason I will not attend their conference.”

Bigotry? America’s pro-Israel lobby that includes more than 100,000 members nurtures racial hatred?

Apparently Mr. Sanders meant what he said because in the Charleston debate Tuesday night he was asked about the tweet and whether he would move the U.S. Embassy back to Tel Aviv from Jerusalem. President Trump moved the Embassy to Jerusalem in 2018 after many years of bipartisan Congressional support for doing so that included Joe Biden.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/02/26/what-i-saw-when-i-attended-a-donald-trump-rally-in-colorado-springs/

It was inspiring to spend the day with my fellow citizens from all walks of life, united behind one idea: We are Americans first, before anything else. And we want our country back.

Following GPS directions, our Lyft driver turned into the parking lot at the Broadmoor World Arena in Colorado Springs, where we ran smack into a Secret Service blockade. A friendly, heavily armed agent greeted us. It turns out the taxi stand was cordoned off because President Donald Trump would be entering the stadium at that location.

After shuffling through the bus staging area, we were dropped off at public parking. Police and Secret Service agents were everywhere. It was 8:45 a.m., 9 degrees, 84 percent humidity, and winds at 3 mph. “Feels like” 1 degree, according to the weather app.

The staging area was roped off to form a long, snaking chute for people lining up for the Trump rally. These 30 rows or so, each the length of a city block, were considerably longer than the TSA line at Denver International Airport. Temple Grandin was obviously not consulted.

Waiting in Line

We got in line and were immediately introduced to our queue companions, with whom we would be spending the next five and a half hours. There were whites, blacks, Asians, Latinos, young, old, straight, and gay people, decked out unapologetically in stars and stripes, celebrating freedom of expression they wouldn’t dare at the supermarket. There was no squabbling, line-cutting, or littering, just thousands of people happily standing in the cold, knowing they could be themselves without Antifa punching them in the face — also knowing they might not get in.

I made two key observations: 1) A Trump rally queue would be a good place to attempt a Guinness World Record for the most men with snow-white goatees ever assembled in one place, and 2) it would be an excellent place to compare clothing from Duluth Trading Company, especially if it’s 9 degrees outside.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/02/how-can-bernie-sanders-happen-in-america/

There are many good reasons not to normalize socialism here.

A number of pundits have recently argued that younger voters, especially those under 30, are less inclined to be bothered when they hear the word “socialism,” since they have no firsthand memory of the Cold War.

To some extent, this must be true. Those who weren’t alive during socialism’s cruelest catastrophes — or even its many banal failures — will be less put off by the idea. Then again, if a presidential candidate were praising the excellent public transportation system of the Third Reich or going on about the some alleged benefit to American slavery, they would rightly be chased from the public square forever even though the vast majority of voters have no firsthand knowledge of the Holocaust or slavery. Anti-Semitism and racism haven’t disappeared, and neither has Marx, sadly.

For that matter, many Americans — including Bernie — lived through Stalin and Pol Pot and Mao and they still champion the idea of socialism. It’s completely unsurprising that Bernie once defended the Viet Cong. Because many of us over 40 immediately recognize who Bernie is. I grew up with people like him. In those days, though, adults generally didn’t take their crazy disheveled Commie uncles who taught economics at the local commuter college very seriously. Maybe that’s the problem.

It’s true that Bernie’s fans aren’t acquainted with socialism (and, incidentally, this is true only if we ignore the existence of Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, China, etc.), but the fact is that most Bernie supporters don’t seem to have a rudimentary grasp of basic economics much less the “socialism” they think exists in Scandinavian nations. What they do have are lots of feelings. And, like millions of other saps over the past century-plus, they’ve been enticed by the collectivist “ethic” — its revolutionary appeal, its religiosity, and its quixotic promises.

“Fascism is remembered as a crime,” John Hayward correctly points out. “Communism is treated like a mistake.” I’d add that capitalism is judged by its few failures and socialism by its few successes. Sanders will never praise the “literary programs” of any non-tyranny. But if I’ve learned anything from Twitter — or perhaps, more accurately, if Twitter has solidified any of my existing suspicions — it’s that academia is teeming with hard-left apologists. There are plenty of fantastic historians out there, of course, but many of loudest academics, the ones media often relies on, are either apologists for socialism or socialists themselves.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/after-snubbing-aipac-conference-bolton-asks-sanders-if-hed-make-ilhan-omar-secretary-of-state/

Bernie Sanders refused an invitation to the pro-Israel American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference, accusing the group of giving a platform for “bigotry.” This set off John Bolton, who schooled the pro-Palestinian socialist.

Fox News:

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) late Sunday also called out  Sanders over his decision to skip its conference next month in Washington. Sanders cited his concern that the group provides a platform for leaders to “express bigotry” and oppose basic Palestinian rights.

Sanders, who is on the heels of a big win in the Nevada caucuses, took to Twitter on Sunday to voice his concern about the influential lobby. The Vermont senator vowed that if elected president he would work with both Israelis and Palestinians to bring peace and stability to the region.

AIPAC wasted little time to respond to the public rebuke and called his comments an ill-informed and “odious attack.” The pro-Israel lobby said Sanders never attended a conference, which is “evident in the outrageous comment.”

“Senator Sanders is insulting his very own colleagues and the millions of Americans who stand with Israel,” the statement read. “Truly shameful.” Somehow, I don’t think the Bern feels much shame at all.

Radical leftists have been after AIPAC for years.

Last year, liberal groups like MoveOn called on Democratic candidates to sidestep the annual conference.  The groups claimed that the lobby tried to thwart the Iran nuclear deal and backed Israel’s unfair settlement policies, according to reports.  A candidate’s decision to shun the conference could bolster his progressive support.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/02/the_democrat_debate_looked_like_a_mixed_martial_arts_cage_fight.html

Who could have imagined that the debate in Charleston on Tuesday would be worse than the previous one, the one during which Elizabeth Warren went after Bloomberg with a scythe, Bernie did his wild-eyed crazed thing, and Biden fell flat?  This time Bloomberg was better, but Warren is still a shrew.  And Steyer? Why is he even there?  He has nothing to say.  

Joe Biden has lost a bit more of his disappearing grey matter; he consistently mispronounces words, loses his train of thought, claims credit for things he did not do, and generally embarrasses himself.  He thinks he is Zelig, that he was arrested in South Africa, that he negotiated the Paris Climate Accord with Deng Xiaoping, who died in 1997.   Why on earth has his wife not put an end to his nightmare?  No matter who has urged Biden to run, his wife should have known he was not up to the challenge.  She must want this more than he does, which is contemptible.  She is allowing him to make a sad fool of himself over and over again. No need to repeat the long list of his many gaffes here. 

Klobuchar, Buttigieg and Bloomberg all seemed relatively rational compared to Sanders, Warren, Biden and Steyer, but they all essentially support Sanders’ policies.  They are just less honest about their socialism.  They all know that not one of them can beat Trump.  They all know that the policies they are promoting will undo the thriving Trump economy and they don’t care.  They are all leftists and leftists are all about imposing their stringent, authoritarian commands upon us all.  Not one of them ever mentions the words “freedom” or “liberty.” These basic rights guaranteed to us all by our Constitution are not remotely on their radar.  This is why none of them can win.  They all eschew the American Constitution but claim their allegiance to it for political purposes only.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/democratic-debate-highest-stakes-moment-brings-worst-debate/#slide-1

Tonight’s debate would have been only marginally less incoherent, noisy, and grating to the ears if CBS had broadcast two hours of static.

The last debate before the South Carolina primary featured so much shouting, you would think that the candidates had just been told their microphones weren’t working. This could well be the last debate for some of these candidates, and Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, and Elizabeth Warren have rapidly shrinking paths to the nomination. Every candidate was itching to interject, interrupt, shout over, and have a dramatic moment.

If the polls are accurate, South Carolina will end with a Joe Biden win or a Biden tie with Bernie Sanders, and Sanders set to do well in most or all of the Super Tuesday states. Last week’s debate was Get Shorty. The mission of everybody on that stage tonight who wasn’t named Bernie Sanders was to go on stage and beat the tar out of Bernie Sanders. Bloomberg is not on the ballot in South Carolina, and he’s won no delegates so far.

Most of them didn’t do that. Elizabeth Warren spent her first comments discussing her differences with Sanders, but then settled into a campaign to be Sanders’s running mate, using every opportunity she could find to steer the conversation back towards attacks on Bloomberg’s record. Tom Steyer just took up space and called up racial preferences again.

Amy Klobuchar has hit her ceiling. She’s personable enough, she likes to position herself as the sensible pragmatist . . . but it’s hard to see how much of her performance broke through in the chaotic shout-fest.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/bloomberg-the-nanny/

Good for Mike Bloomberg.

During his first debate, he slammed Bernie Sanders by saying: “We’re not going to throw out capitalism. We tried that. Other countries tried that. It was called communism, and it just didn’t work!” Exactly right. It’s safe to say Bloomberg is not a communist. I wonder if that means there’s still room for him in the Democratic Party.

Unfortunately, Bloomberg is no principled, limited-government capitalist, either.

Like his fellow New York billionaire Donald Trump, he’s used to getting his own way at his own company.

Unfortunately, he assumes government should function in a similar fashion.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/25/democratic-debate-recap-highlights-from-south-carolina.html

In the first Democratic presidential debate since Sen. Bernie Sanders earned a big target on his back, Democratic candidates jumped into an often chaotic and uncomfortable fray.
The candidates on stage included Sanders, Joe Biden, Amy Klobuchar, Elizabeth Warren, Mike Bloomberg, Tom Steyer and Pete Buttigieg.
None of the seven candidates emerged from the debate, at times a choppy affair as White House hopefuls interrupted each other and talked over the CBS News moderators, untouched by opponents’ venom.