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POLITICS

Buttigieg: ‘Eating a Burger, Am I Part of the Problem? In a Certain Way, Yes.’ By Jim Geraghty

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/pete-buttigieg-earting-hamburgers-climate-change/

Pete Buttigieg, this morning: “Right now, we’re in a mode I think we’re thinking about [climate change] mostly through the perspective of guilt. You know, from using a straw, to eating a burger, am I part of the problem? In a certain way, yes, but the most exciting thing is that we can all be part of the solution.”

Is Buttigieg pledging to not eat burgers anymore? No. Is he proposing banning burgers? No. But he’s declaring that people eating burgers is part of the climate change problem. Because every Democrat agrees that climate change is such a pressing problem that it has to be addressed through public policy, it’s fair to wonder if someday a Buttigieg administration might start looking at policies designed to reduce the public’s consumption of meat. In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio instituted “meatless Mondays” in all of the public schools — not that he bothered to ask the kids what they thought. A 2018 study proposed a new “meat tax” designed to reduce consumption. And another National Institutes of Health study concluded, “The public and environmental health benefits of reducing meat consumption create a need for campaigns to raise awareness and contribute to motivation for change.” Hearing a presidential candidate declare that eating burgers is “part of the problem,” it’s fair to ask whether he’ll ever be tempted to try to remedy this perceived problem through federal policy or law.

10 Craziest Things CNN Town Hall Revealed About Democrats’ Economy-Wrecking Climate Extremism By Chrissy Clark

https://thefederalist.com/2019/09/05/10-craziest-things-cnn-town-hall-revealed-democrats-economy-wrecking-climate-extremism/

Despite seven hours of conversations, there was no substantive talk. The majority of questions were asked by climate change activists tossing softball questions.

On Wednesday CNN hosted a town hall focused on environmentalism with the 10 Democratic presidential candidates qualified to stand on the September debate stage in Houston. These candidates are Joe Biden, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Julián Castro, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Beto O’Rourke, Bernie Sanders, Andrew Yang, and Elizabeth Warren.

Despite seven hours of conversations, there was no substantive talk. The majority of questions were asked by climate change activists tossing softball questions at the candidates, or Sanders supporters who wanted to attack other candidates — cough, cough Joe Biden — and their climate platforms.

Among the dull questions and lackluster answers, several moments highlighted Democrats’ full-fledged dive into extremist policies that will wreck the American economy and scientific advancement.

Cowardly Congress Won’t Condemn the Anti-Semitic BDS Movement Democrats at the national and state levels need to come to grips with their anti-Semitism problem and confront it forcefully. Ned Ryun

https://amgreatness.com/2019/09/04/cowardly-congress-wont-condemn-the-anti-semitic-bds-movement/

Why is it that almost every time the Left accuses the Right of some misbehavior or attitude, it’s actually something the Left is guilty of doing or being?

Take, for example, the regular accusations that Donald Trump is an anti-Semite. Forget the fact that his son-in-law is Jewish and his daughter has converted to Judaism. Those are minor inconveniences in the propaganda war against Trump. It truly does feel like the Left has a spaghetti approach at times: throw anything and everything up against the wall in hopes enough people are foolish and uncritical enough to accept whatever appears to stick.

Anti-Semitism is rampant on the Left. In all seriousness, people should be asking why Democratic leaders hate Israel and the Jewish people so much. They’ve embraced and nurtured anti-Semitism in the form of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement targeting Israel.

Democrats argue that the controversy surrounding the BDS movement is really more a debate over policy differences. Not so. The BDS movement is insidiously anti-Semitic, seeking to deny the right of self-determination and sovereignty to Israel. It is nothing short of economic war against the only Jewish nation-state in the world.

Founders and supporters of BDS claim they are all about freedom and equality. They are nothing of the sort: their ultimate goal is to annihilate and remove Israel from the map and they have been hoping that the world wouldn’t notice until it was too late.

Meet the ‘super pro-cop’ gorgeous young Latina running for Congress who calls herself ‘the anti-AOC’ By Thomas Lifson

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/09/meet_the_super_procop_gorgeous_young_latina_running_for_congress_who_calls_herself_the_antiaoc.html

Catalina Lauf is 26 years old and running for Congress in Illinois, hoping to unseat a Democrat incumbent and push aside Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as the youngest woman ever to be elected to Congress.  Kyle S. Reyes of Law Enforcement Today writes:

She’s a young Latina. She’s from Illinois.  She’s running for Congress.  And she’s the polar opposite of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

She’s conservative. She’s smart.  She’s gorgeous.  She supports law enforcement.  She actually loves America.  Her idol is Ronald Reagan.  And she’s not afraid to ruffle feathers.

Photo via Law Enforcement Today.

Her name is Catalina Lauf, and she’s 26-years-old.  Her goal is to steal a Democratic-held seat outside Chicago.

Ms. Lauf announced her bid for the GOP primary in the 14th Congressional District of Illinois, a GOP-leaning district covering a swath of western suburbs of Chicago.

THE POLL WEEVILS IN 2016

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/most-accurate-2016-poll-shows-biden-warren-sanders-beating-trump/

Most Accurate 2016 Poll Shows Biden, Warren, Sanders Beating TrumpBy Mairead McArdle

The poll that most closely predicted the outcome of the 2016 presidential election shows Joe Biden and several other Democratic candidates beating President Trump in a 2020 general-election matchup.

Biden would beat Trump by twelve points in a general election, garnering 54 percent support to Trump’s 42 percent, according to the September IBD/TIPP poll. Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and Kamala Harris of California also lead Trump by three to four points, close to within the margin of error.

Among voters who lean Democratic, Warren currently has 24 percent support, up from 17 percent last month, according to the poll. Biden meanwhile slipped two points from August to 28 percent among the same voters. Support for Sanders remained level at 12 percent, keeping him in third place. Harris saw her support drop this month from 11 percent to 6 percent. South Bend, Ind. mayor Pete Buttigieg and New Jersey senator Cory Booker trailed them, polling at 5 percent and 4 percent respectively.

ThinkProgress Smears Dan Crenshaw on ‘Universal Background Checks’ By Charles C. W. Cooke

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/thinkprogress-smears-dan-crenshaw-on-universal-background-checks/

Dan Crenshaw has every right to oppose a ‘universal background check’ bill.

At ThinkProgress, Josh Israel miscasts Dan Crenshaw’s argument against the “universal background check” bill that the House of Representatives passed earlier this year (and which Crenshaw opposed):

“With universal background checks, I wouldn’t be able to let my friends borrow my handgun when they travel alone like this. We would make felons out of people just for defending themselves,” he tweeted.

It is unclear why Crenshaw does not believe his friends could pass background checks to get their own weapons or to borrow his. If they are convicted felons who are not allowed to possess weapons, it would seem important for Crenshaw or other friends to know that before arming them.

Israel’s reading of Crenshaw’s tweet is based upon a misunderstanding of the bill (H.R. 8) that Crenshaw opposes. Under current federal law, Crenshaw is allowed to loan, gift, or sell a gun to any adult within his home state of Texas, provided he believes that that adult is permitted to own one. If H.R. 8 were signed into law, this would change. Specifically, H.R. 8 would prevent Crenshaw from selling a gun to anybody without the buyer undergoing a background check; it would limit his ability to gift or loan a gun to recipients within his own family; and it would narrow the circumstances in which he could effect a “temporary transfer” dramatically, to those in which the temporary transferee feared “imminent death or great bodily harm.” Because he has read H.R. 8, Crenshaw knows this, and he knows, therefore, that if H.R. 8 were to become law it would prevent him from loaning his friends guns per se — not because his friends are unable to pass a background check, but because there would be no such thing as loaning a friend a gun.

New Marquette Poll: Trump Trails Biden by Nine Points in Wisconsin, But Ties Warren and Harris By John McCormack

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/new-marquette-poll-trump-trails-biden-by-nine-points-in-wisconsin-but-ties-warren-and-harris/

According to the latest Marquette Law School poll of registered voters in Wisconsin, Joe Biden leads Donald Trump 51 percent to 42 percent, while Elizabeth Warren and Trump are tied at 45 percent. Trump is also tied with Kamala Harris at 44 percent, while Bernie Sanders narrowly leads Trump 48 percent to 44 percent.

The Marquette survey is another data point backing up the argument that Biden is actually more electable than his Democratic rivals. He leads Trump by 9.4 points in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls, while Warren leads Trump by 3.6 points in the RCP average and Harris leads by 3.0. 

In 2016, of course, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 2.1 points, but lost the Electoral College because 78,000 voters in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan gave Trump the edge.

Trump can afford to let Pennsylvania and Michigan flip in 2020, but he would still win the Electoral College 270 to 268 if he holds Wisconsin and the rest of the 2016 map stays the same. 

4

Wisconsin remains a strong contender to be the “tipping-point” state in the Electoral College in 2020, and Biden will likely be touting the fact that the “gold-standard” pollster in Wisconsin shows him with a big lead, while his rivals would make the race a toss-up. 

Biden’s rivals can counter by pointing out that at this point in the 2016 presidential race (when Trump had been running in the GOP primary for less than three months) Marquette showed Hillary Clinton leading Trump 51 percent to 35 percent.

Socialist Scenario May Pose Risk For Democrats By Ira Stoll see DPS note

DPS Note: 

Excellent analysis. But on a tactical level from where I sit. Whether it is Biden with a veneer of not-crazy-left, or flat out crazy left, the Democrat Party’s lurching leftward trajectory is as clear as clear can be. So whether a Democrat President’s agenda would be quickly or incrementally implemented shouldn’t provide high cover for you to vote that way if you kind of like and admire America the way it has evolved and has been since 1776. Scoop Jackson, Dan Inouye, Pat Moynihan, Joe Lieberman, where have you all gone? Heck. Jack Kennedy’d make a fine Republican candidate today. No matter how you slice the Democrat Party baloney, you’re gonna get a socialist sandwich. The only question is how much baloney (a/k/a socialism) will they pack into that first bite? Not saying there isn’t plenty to fix in our system. But the Democrat Party’s drivers don’t appear to think we are “fixable.” So I guess the question you gotta ask yourself (This is DPS3 plagerizing Dirty Harry) is, do you feel lucky? Because the “big structural change” promised by the Party’s animating forces are no different than Dirty Harry’s Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum. If you pull that trigger you may get a lot more than you bargained for.

PS: Here’s the real McCoy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0lvp7a7pmk

https://www.nysun.com/national/socialist-scenario-may-pose-risk-for-the-democrats/90817/

Call it the socialist scenario — the risk that Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren could combine forces to defeat Joseph Biden in the Democratic primary.

The RealClearPolitics polling averages have Biden leading Sanders and Warren nationally and in the early-voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire. These same polls, though, show the “not Biden” vote represented by Senators Sanders and Warren to be larger than the level of support for Vice President Biden.

If that vote were combined rather than split, the socialist scenario suggests, it could result in a Democratic presidential nominee who is either openly socialist, like Senator Sanders, or an ideological ally of Mr. Sanders, like Mrs. Warren, who says she is a capitalist but who is campaigning with a call for an annual wealth tax and for what she calls “big, structural change.”

The possibility is generating concern from Americans who are more cautious about “big, structural change.” The concern is heightened because Mr. Biden is old enough that he can seem vulnerable rather than inevitable.

As is often the case with socialism, however, the fantasy is some distance from reality. The primary campaigns of the previous presidential cycle are familiar precedents and somewhat reassuring ones, at least for those who aren’t enthusiasts of either Mr. Sanders or Mrs. Warren.

Gillibrand Has Launched Part 2 Of Her VP Bid John Merline

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/09/02/gillibrand-has-launched-part-2-of-her-vp-bid/

She Can Be ‘Any Woman You’ve Ever Imagined’

e have nothing to fear but fear itself,” was the rallying cry during the Depression for which history remembers FDR. “It’s morning again in America” was Ronald Reagan’s inimitable, softly spoken re-election slogan.

But the catchphrase that will go with the, as of last week, ex-presidential candidate Kirsten Gillibrand to her grave is: “I’m just trying to get some ranch.”

As the Democratic junior senator from New York babbled on in an Iowa City restaurant about “the bold ideas that the base and the grassroots care about,” those were the words of a female college student conducting a Bible study upstairs as she squeezed past Gillibrand looking for something more tethered to the real world: her preferred condiment.

It was an example of how the plenty of America leads to a great deal of disinterest in politics, with peoplemore focused on their own lives than keeping up with the various layers and happenings of government, as well they should be. (Although “ranch girl” Hanna Kinney reportedly leans left.)

But a less frivolous soundbite came from Gillibrand herself, in the last debate, conducted by CNN at the end of July. Gillibrand contended that “as a white woman of privilege … I can talk to those white women in the suburbs that voted for Trump and explain to them what white privilege actually is, that when their son is walking down a street with a bag of M&Ms in his pocket, wearing a hoodie, his whiteness is what protects him from not [sic] being shot.”

Kirsten Gillibrand ends her empty suit, fake feminist presidential campaign by Kimberly Ross

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/kirsten-gillibrand-ends-her-empty-suit-fake-feminist-presidential-campaign

To no one’s surprise, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, ended her presidential campaign on Wednesday. Her short tenure on the national campaign stage was notable for abysmal poll numbers and mediocre debate performances. Though Gillibrand was one of only a handful of female candidates in a crowded field of men, she lacked star power and any real voter base.

Her failure might come as a surprise: Democrats have long pushed for more women to hold elected office. Yet Gillibrand’s campaign reminds us that a woman’s physical characteristics don’t automatically make her any more — or less — suitable for office, and that any other conclusion is just woke sexism masquerading as progress.

Before her departure, Gillibrand’s RealClearPolitics polling average stood at only 0.1%, hardly a blip on the screen. But it’s all she deserved, as her campaign consisted of little more than identity politics largely focused on feminism. Most especially, she voiced loud and consistent support for abortion rights.

In short, the Gillibrand 2020 campaign was an empty pantsuit. On paper, a leftist, female senator should have done better, right? But even Washington Post writer Monica Hesse noted Gillibrand’s almost singular focus on women’s issues: