Category: Congress

Trump Derangement Syndrome Reaches Terminal Stage as Democrats Seethe

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Are you tired of all this winning yet? If you were on X (née Twitter) Friday, you could see Democrats raging vehemently (and ignorantly) against the Virginia Supreme Court decision, which held that last month’s referendum to redraw the Commonwealth’s congressional districts violated the Virginia constitution. When I traveled to Louisa County for a “Vote No” rally, several of the state GOP people in attendance mentioned the unconstitutional nature of the process by which the General Assembly put the referendum on the ballot. This was not a secret, but many Democrats seemed to have paid no attention to these objections, so that Friday’s ruling took them by surprise. This idiot, for example:

Former Vice President Kamala Harris claimed that the Virginia Supreme Court “ignored the will of the people” by killing the Democrats’ plan to redraw the state’s congressional maps in their favor ahead of the midterm elections.
In a post on X, Harris claimed that the ruling “gives a boost” to President Donald Trump’s efforts to try to “rig” the upcoming midterm elections. Harris also stated that while Democrats were “rightfully outraged,” they would continue their “fight to restore the power of the people.”
“Last month in Virginia, the people made their voices heard at the ballot box and voted for new Congressional maps” Harris wrote. “Today, the Virginia Supreme Court ignored the will of the people and overturned those democratically chosen maps.”

As has been explained, the Virginia state constitution spells out a very specific process by which the constitution can be amended. Just five years ago, the Commonwealth ratified an amendment that set up a non-partisan commission to draw the state’s districts. Last month’s referendum sought to amend that, providing a “temporary” exemption so that the legislature could redraw the map. But if you read the Virginia Supreme Court’s ruling, you see that Democrats rushed this measure through in a way that violated the process spelled out in the Virginia constitution. Most of the Democrats shrieking about the decision simply didn’t read the decision, which explains all this, which is why they are in seethe-and-cope mode, denouncing the Virginia Supreme Court as being part of some right-wing conspiracy on behalf of Trump.

Please note the source of the confusion: Democrats are laser-focused on winning the November midterms, taking control of the House and impeaching Trump. So they see everything as all connected — last year’s redistricting in Texas, last week’s Louisiana v. Callais decision, and now this Virginia Supreme Court ruling. The Louisiana ruling cleared the way for other states, including both Tennessee and Florida, to redraw their maps to add GOP-favored districts, and the net effect of all this is to make it more difficult for Democrats to win in November. If Republicans somehow maintain their House majority in the midterms, Democrats will miss out on their last chance to impeach Trump, and seeing their hope fade is triggering their Trump Derangement Syndrome.



 

Justice Thomas Concurs

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The reaction of Democrats to the Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais reminded me of General Sherman who, in proposing his 1864 “March to the Sea,” vowed the he would “make Georgia howl.”

On TV and social media Wednesday, the howling from Democrats was deranged and incessant. From a conservative perspective, these reactions were as delicious as the “Tears of Unfathomable Sadness.” If ever anyone deserved to be miserable, certainly the Democratic Party does.

Among those vindicated by Wednesday’s ruling was my friend Professor Carol Swain, who had famously warned in the early 1990s that racial Gerrymandering — seeking to maximize the number of majority-black districts, in order to send more black representatives to Congress — would undermine the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives because, in the process, it would create majority white districts that favored Republicans. Swain’s warning was not heeded by Democrats, and when she was proven correct by the 1994 midterm landslide for Republicans, liberals never forgave her for being right.

The unhinged rage of Democrats after the Callais decision could be (or at least should be) silenced simply by posting the map of Louisiana’s 2nd and 6th districts, which was what brought the case to the Supreme Court.

It is an insult to defend such a map by shouting “RAAAAACISM” at anyone who criticizes it, which is the essence of the Democrats’ reaction. One wonders whether they are (a) so ignorant they don’t understand the law and the Constitution, or (b) so dishonest they think they can frighten people with their feigned outrage and false claims. Surely someone will add, (c) embrace the healing power of “and,” e.g., Chuck Schumer.

If any living man can be considered an authority on racism and Jim Crow, permit me to suggest that it’s not the Jew from Brooklyn, but rather the black man from Chatham County, Georgia:

This Court should never have interpreted [Section 2] of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to effectively give racial groups “an entitlement to roughly proportional representation.” … By doing so, the Court led legislatures and courts to “systematically divid[e] the country into electoral districts along racial lines.” Holder v. Hall, 512 U. S. 874, 905 (1994) (THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment). “Blacks [we]re drawn into ‘black districts’ and given ‘black representatives’; Hispanics [were] drawn into Hispanic districts and given ‘Hispanic representatives’; and so on.” Ibid. That interpretation rendered [Section 2] “repugnant to any nation that strives for the ideal of a color-blind Constitution.” Id., at 905–906. Today’s decision should largely put an end to this “disastrous misadventure” in voting-rights jurisprudence. Id., at 893.
As I explained more than 30 years ago, I would go further and hold that [Section 2] of the Voting Rights Act does not regulate districting at all. See id., at 922–923. The relevant text prohibits States from imposing or applying a “voting qualification,” “prerequisite to voting,” or “standard, practice, or procedure,” in a manner that results in a denial or abridgement of the right to vote based on race. … How States draw district lines does not fall within any of those three categories. Holder, 512 U. S., at 922–923 (opinion of THOMAS, J.); Allen v. Milligan, 599 U. S. 1, 46 (2023) (THOMAS, J., dissenting). The words in [Section 2] instead “reach only ‘enactments that regulate citizens’ access to the ballot or the processes for counting a ballot’; they ‘do not include a State’s . . . choice of one districting scheme over another.’” Ibid. (quoting Holder, 512 U. S., at 945 (opinion of THOMAS, J.)). Therefore, no [Section 2] challenge to districting should ever succeed.

It’s not really complicated, you see. Why is it that what is so obvious to Justice Thomas should be incomprehensible to Senator Schumer?



 

Natives vs. Newcomers in Virginia: What ‘Spanberger’s Lobster’ Is Really About

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Current Virginia congressional districts (click image to enlarge)

When I was a young newspaper staffer in Rome, Georgia, my boss was Pierre-Rene Noth. He was half-Jewish and half-Catholic. His father had been a left-wing journalist in France before the family fled the Nazis. Pierre was very liberal, but when it came to journalism, his motto was “local, local, local.” Realizing that news consumers turned to TV and other media for national news, his obsession was about focusing on local issues, and one of Pierre’s pet peeves was how the congressional map in Georgia at the time had Rome being represented in Congress by a guy from the Atlanta suburbs in Cobb County. Pierre believed that, if the map were properly drawn, the northwest corner of the state would be its own congressional district, with Rome in the middle of it. Pierre died a few years ago and did not live to see the fruition of his vision, although I can’t imagine he would have been pleased when the Rome-based 14th District elected Marjorie Taylor Greene to Congress. Anyway . . .

Pierre’s idea about properly drawn congressional maps was on my mind Sunday as I drove — via Winchester, Warrenton and Culpeper — to Louisa, Virginia, to cover the “Vote No” rally. That route took me through some of the most scenic country I’d ever laid eyes on, and the beauty of the place just made me more angry that Abigail Spanberger wants to deprive the people who live there of their rightful representation.

As you can see from the map above, the current district map of Virginia is a masterpiece of simplicity. The two basic principles of a good map are that districts should be (a) coherent and (b) compact. By “coherent,” I mean that the geography of a district ought to make some kind of sense; counties shouldn’t be split up unnecessarily and districts ought not to cross mountain ranges or major rivers if such distortions can be avoided. By “compact,” I mean that a district ought not to go sprawling over the countryside for no reason. The shape of the district should not resemble a lizard or a crustacean. In both of these regards, it’s hard to find any fault with the current Virginia congressional maps. You’ll notice that two small districts — the 8th and the 11th — are crammed up next to the Potomac River across from D.C., representing the urbanized precincts of Alexandria, Arlington and Fairfax. The 10th District encompasses the rapidly growing area around Dulles International Airport, as well as Fauquier, Prince William and Rappahanock counties. Most admirable is how the northern end of the Shenandoah Valley, stretching from Roanoake up toward the West Virginia panhandle, is all encompassed in the Sixth District, while the southwest corner of the state — coal country down there — is represented as District 9. This is a near-perfect map, and you see that District 5 is both coherent and compact, covering central Virginia down to the North Carolina border. Now look at this:

That monstrosity is what the 5th District of Virginia would look like if this redistricting referendum passes next Tuesday. You could consult a thesaurus for the right words to describe it — abomination, etc. — but you certainly can’t call it compact or coherent. If you’re a Republican voter, it’s the Creature That Ate Your Representation.

Did I mention that Spanberger is from New Jersey? Her family moved to Virginia when she was 13, and she has hated it ever since. Being in Congress — she won her seat by a slender margin in 2018, a high-tide year for Democrats — was a way for Spanberger to inflict revenge on the Virginia natives she has always despised. And this is the factor you have to realize about Virginia politics: In the D.C. suburbs, almost none of the residents are actually from Virginia. They’re all from somewhere else originally, and often quite recent transplants. They are ambition-fueled careerists with no real roots in the community. Virginia has been positively overrun by these newcomers in recent decades. The population of the Commonwealth has increased by almost 2.5 million since 1990, and the bulk of those are crammed into Northern Virginia, living in townhouses, condominiums, apartments and cookie-cutter subdivisions of “McMansions” built on quarter-acre lots.

Get out into the countryside, however, and you meet the real Virginians. That’s who turned out at the Louisa County Courthouse on Sunday. Folks in that part of Virginia can not only tell you what regiment their Confederate great-grandfather fought with, they can tell you which regiment his great-grandfather served in under General Washington. These people have actual roots, some of them all the way back to Jamestown, and the Democrats absolutely hate these real Virginians.

Well, that’s why I drove all the way to Louisa:

Roadsides in this part of the Old Dominion are festooned with signs: “VOTE NO APRIL 21.” From here to Winchester, a distance of more than 100 miles, scarcely any signs could be seen expressing support for the Democrat-backed referendum that would redistrict Virginia’s congressional delegation and effectively silence the voices of those who dwell in the rural parts of the Commonwealth. But those voices were heard loudly Sunday afternoon on the lawn of the county courthouse here.
“What are you going to do?” Republican Rep. John McGuire asked the crowd.
“Vote no!” the hundred or so attendees shouted.
“I think you can do better than that,” the fifth district’s congressman said. “What are you going to do?”
“Vote no!” they yelled in reply.
Early voting has been going on for weeks, and when those at the courthouse rally were asked for a show of hands of who had already voted, nearly every hand was raised. With barely more than a week to go before April 21, however, the question is whether their votes — and those of Republican voters elsewhere in Virginia — will be enough to prevent passage of the partisan gerrymander that newly-installed Gov. Abigail Spanberger and the Democrat-controlled legislature would impose. . . .

You can read the rest of my latest American Spectator column.



 

Behind Enemy Lines In NOVA, The Fairfax County GOP Met Today

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by Smitty


The lower half of the Fairfax High School auditorium was full, as just over 400 delegates from the various districts met. The population of the county is over a million, and votes +20D, but that is no excuse for failure to participate, especially for State-wide contests.

Proceedings opened just ahead of 0930 with prayer and parliamentary flourishes. Springfield Supervisor Herrity gave a keynote; County Chairman candidates spoke, including incumbent Katie Gorka (husband Sebastian present also). Voting was orderly. Various other local and State candidates, including November hopefuls. We heard from Senatorial primary candidates:

I’ve seen road kill that is more useful than Senator Mark “Bucky” Warner. A dead deer is a non-negative thing. Bucky, on the other hand…

Also a couple of House of Representatives hopefuls for Virginia 8:

The reason for my presence (not having had bandwidth for the Fairfax GOP since the Tea Parties (or blogging, for that matter)) came in the form of the second keynote: Virginians for Fair Maps, whose server appears to have been slashdotted at the moment.
Not unlike what happened to Winsome Sears last November in the Gubernatorial race. The victor was someone who, at the risk of hyperbole, seems like she fell out of Revelation Chapter 17.

Finn Lee spoke in lieu of Mike Young against the 21Apr referendum.

  • Tazwel County submitted a lawsuit. VA Supreme Court allowed both the case and the referendum to continue. Nice double bind: if the measure fails on 21Apr, VA Supreme Court is all “Never mind.” If the measure succeeds, “The people have spoken.” We did speak, in 2020, in favor of a non-partisan commission to do this thing, but Grabby Abby is unconcerned with these pesky details.
  • RNC has submitted a suit, as well.

Here is their ad:
Here is there 30sec YouTube ad:

Estimated turnout for this referendum, according to Lee, is around 20%. Polls show over half of voters are opposed, but a phone sample does not qualify as a vote.
TPUSA, he continued, is planning on knocking doors. But it’s up to everyone to get the word and the vote out. Finally, Lee cautioned against relying upon USPS to deliver anything. Put your ballot into a box or, better still, feed it into the ballot scanner on 21APR.

I left the meeting intact, which is more than can be said of the IRGC. But the Democratic Party is very much a wounded, cornered animal right now, if not as bad off as their fellow anti-Trump buddies in Iran.

We can expect the Democrats to fight tooth and nail for every last scrap of political power they can retain. 2028 is a vastly important mid-term, conceivably the “most important mid-term of our lifetimes”. Why would I trot out this tired cliche? Because the 120th Congress that gets sworn in next January will be priming the Census Bureau for the decennial census. And if that census is conducted honestly, and illegal aliens (the modern 3/5 Compromise for the Democrats) are omitted, then they stand to lose double digit seats in Congress.

Forward this post and get every Virginian who can legally cast a ballot to participate.

P.S.: Yes, I haven’t been doing much beside gag jokes on X in years. Grabby Abby in general, and this referendum in particular, are some scary stuff. Ron Wilcox pinged me to attend the meeting today. Will have to see if he’s going to do a rally or something.

Senate Ends Filibuster; Democrats Immediately Form Circular Firing Squad

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After a week of conservatives tearing each other apart over Tucker Carlson, etc., it’s nice to see the Democrats take their turn:

A backlash has been brewing against Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) for possibly striking a deal to end the government shutdown.
As reports surfaced on Sunday of a pending deal between Republicans and Democrats, opponents of the deal immediately voiced their disdain for Chuck Schumer on social media, accusing him of acquiescing to Republican demands. . . .
According to NBC News, the U.S. senators reached a “tentative deal” to end the government shutdown.
“Senators struck an agreement Sunday, projecting confidence that it will be sufficient to end the lengthy U.S. government shutdown, three sources with direct knowledge of the details told NBC News,” it reported.
“The agreement, reached by a group of Democrats who teamed up with Republicans, cleared the first hurdle on a vote of 60-40 to advance in a late-night Senate vote. If it’s approved, it would then need to pass the House and gain President Donald Trump’s signature to become law and reopen the government,” it added.

Later Sunday, the Senate voted to end the filibuster:

A disastrous shutdown for Democrats got worse Sunday when Senate Democrats folded on government funding while receiving nothing of substance in return.
Eight Senate Democrats voted with 52 Republicans Sunday night on a procedural vote to allow a continuing resolution (CR) funding the government to advance.
The motion passed 60 to 40, without a single vote to spare, and will enable a future vote on a clean continuing resolution through January 30, 2026, packaged with three relatively non-controversial appropriations bills extending through the fiscal year: agriculture, military construction-Veterans Affairs, and legislative branch.
The agreement includes back pay for federal employees and guarantees that the 4,000-plus federal employees laid off during the shutdown will be rehired, as well as a blanket prohibition on future reductions in force through January 30. Those jobs are a drop in the bucket compared to the 250,000 or so the Trump administration eliminated before the shutdown.
Most significantly, the agreement does not guarantee an extension of Covid-era enhanced Obamacare premium subsidies, with Democrats only receiving assurances of a vote on a bill of their choice.


Chuck Schumer led Democrats in voting for the longest shutdown in history, and now they’re all denouncing him as a traitor:

Democrats and progressives exploded with outrage after the Senate took a giant step toward reopening the government Sunday night, with many calling for Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s ouster.
Schumer (D-NY), who voted against the bipartisan package to end the longest government shutdown in US history, was slammed for failing to prevent five Democratic defections that allowed the measure to advance, despite Republicans making no concessions on keeping Obamacare subsidies due to expire at the end of this year.
“Senator Schumer is no longer effective and should be replaced,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) chided on X. “If you can’t lead the fight to stop healthcare premiums from skyrocketing for Americans, what will you fight for?”
“Tonight is another example of why we need new leadership,” jeered Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), who launched his primary challenge to Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) last month, on X. “If @ChuckSchumer were an effective leader, he would have united his caucus to vote ‘No’ tonight and hold the line on healthcare.
“Maybe now @EdMarkey will finally join me in pledging not to vote for Schumer [as conference leader after the 2026 elections]?”

Democrats have been acting this way for 20 years, going back to the G.W. Bush administration, which is when young leftists started calling themselves “progressives” to differentiate themselves from regular liberals (e.g., Joe Lieberman and Hillary Clinton) who had supported Bush on the Iraq war. Whenever a Republican is in the White House, the left wing of the Democratic Party — especially the always-online activist types — demand that Democrats in Congress fight! fight! fight!

This kind of maximum-resistance stance is easy for people whose only stake in the game is social media clicks, or for congressional Democrats elected from deep-blue states or districts. The problem comes in swing states and districts, where being a “common-sense” Democrat is much closer to what the voters want, and where voting to shut down the government makes you look like an extremist. One could speak of similar tendencies on the Republican side, but Democrats have been wrecked time and time again by this fight! fight! fight! mentality — they won a congressional majority in 2006, then lost the House in 2010 and the Senate in 2014. Four years later, Democrats won a majority again in the 2018 midterms, only to lose both the House and Senate in 2022.

So now, having demanded that Schumer and the Senate shut down the government — while trying to blame Republicans — now the “progressive” grassroots of the Democratic Party are ready to ditch Schumer because he ended the shutdown without getting anything substantial as a consequence. It’s a beautiful thing, to watch your enemies waging war against each other. Let’s hope they keep it up.



 

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Big Win for President Trump as House Votes to Pass the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’

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This is the kind of blogging I very seldom do, because the legislative process is generally boring, when it’s not painful. Grant that sometimes, the process is both boring and painful, but only the ultra-nerdy policy wonks ever get excited about this stuff, and I’ve never been one of those.

Both House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune deserve praise and gratitude for getting the votes necessary for passage of H.R.1, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (yes, that’s the official name). Given that Republicans have a razor-thin House majority, and they’re six votes shy of a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, this was a near-miraculous accomplishment. Bradley Jaye at Breitbart:

Republicans successfully met Trump’s Independence Day goal – belittled as unrealistic by the establishment media – clearing the path for a bill signing ceremony Friday that undoubtedly will be one for the ages.
Trump, in a Thursday morning Truth Social post, accurately called the legislation “one of the most consequential bills ever.”
The bill, which codifies into law much of what Trump has done through executive action and unlocks much more that required Congressional approval, may be considered by history as Trump’s crowning achievement. . . .
[T]he legislation manages to include almost every campaign promise Trump made on his Shermanesque march through all seven swing states, delivering wins conservatives never could have dreamed of during the Barack Obama or George W. Bush — or even Trump 45 — administrations.
Although Democrat fearmongering on Medicaid reforms has received outsized attention from the establishment media, the legislation not only extends or makes permanent Trump’s 2017 tax cuts — including no taxes on tips, overtime, or social security – but delivers on Trump’s signature issue of border security.
In many ways, the big, beautiful bill realizes the promise of Trump’s 2016 win, during which the mogul destroyed the open borders globalists’ stranglehold on the Republican Party.

Even discounting for the MAGA fever hype factor of that description, this is nevertheless a major win for Team Trump, and may help congressional Republicans stem the expected 2026 mid-term backlash. Historically, the president’s party loses seats in mid-term elections, but the Democrats are in disarray, demoralized and discombobulated after the wretched end of Biden’s embarrassing one-term stint in the White House, so it’s possible the GOP can avert the typical mid-term defeat. Meanwhile, let me throw out a somewhat crazy take on how and why this deal got done:

The Israel-Iran war.

What was the biggest threat to passage of the Big Beautiful Bill? A Senate filibuster. Mike Johnson could whip his caucus and twist arms to get enough votes to pass the bill in the House, but how could it ever get past the Senate, where it takes 60 votes (or 59 senators, plus the VP’s vote, if necessary) to get “cloture” and let a bill proceed to an up-or-down vote.

OK, so the Big Beautiful Bill got final House approval on June 10. Three days later, Israel launched its attack on Iran, targeting their military leadership and nuclear weapons program. The war culminated June 22 with the U.S. striking three Iranian nuclear facilities, and two days later, Trump announced a ceasefire ending what he called “The 12-Day War.”

Trump’s decisive action as Commander-in-Chief served as a stark contrast to Biden’s weakness and now let me ask you, who is the Democratic Party leader in the U.S. Senate?

Say what you will about Chuck Schumer — and I’m pretty sure I’ve never said anything good about him — he has always been pro-Israel, and as much as Chuck hates Trump, you have to imagine that him seeing Trump standing strong against the mullahs in Iran counted for something.

Perhaps my hunch on this is crazy, but how else do you explain why Schumer didn’t wage a filibuster to stop what is obviously a major legislative victory for Trump? As much as our “America First” friends may lament it, I say Trump won by playing the Zionist card.

Anyway, Stephen Miller is in the gloat zone.

Really, this is a big win, and we don’t get many of those on Capitol Hill, so it’s best to gloat all we can when we get the chance.



 

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Making Sense of Democrat Disarray and the Future of the MAGA Revolution

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We have had a pleasant couple of days laughing at the misery of the Democratic Party. After Chuck Schumer abandoned his threat of a government shutdown, grassroots Democrats erupted in fury at what they saw as Schumer’s “betrayal” of the anti-Trump cause:

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez argued Schumer’s “almost unthinkable” move caused a “deep sense of outrage and betrayal” across the Dems’ ideological spectrum — and pointedly didn’t rule out a primary challenge against him.

Unfortunately for AOC’s dreams of running a Democratic primary campaign against Schumer, he won’t be up for election again until 2028, by which time he’ll be 77, and is more likely to retire than to seek a sixth term in the Senate. Three years is a long time in politics, and we can’t predict the future, but how likely is it that Schumer letting this continuing resolution pass in March 2025 will still be an issue in November 2028, even if he did decide to run again?

Democrats are divided and demoralized, and the angriest voices among them are also the loudest. They have lost their way in large measure because the Biden presidency, coming as it did on the heels of the COVID-19 pandemic and the George Floyd riots, was built on a foundation of delusion. It was possible, if you were a Democrat, to believe that Biden’s victory was a decisive rejection of everything Donald Trump represented, and that Democrats would never suffer any negative consequences for whatever errors of policy subsequently ensued.

Unfortunately for Democrats, the errors of the Biden era were numerous and quite harmful, and the appearance of the 2020 election as a decisive anti-Trump referendum proved to be an illusion. Once Biden’s cognitive decline became undeniable, and he was forced off the ticket in favor of Kamala Harris, there was a decisive shift in the other direction, yet even then Democrats remained in denial. The media kept hyping up the “joy” of Kamala’s campaign, and the usual suspects produced polls showing Harris leading Trump by four, five, even six points during that August/September period. They wanted to believe . . .

False hope turned to bitter disappointment, and Democrats have still never recovered from the psychological trauma of November 5.

Believing they had forever banished the Trump menace four years earlier, Democrats found themselves in a waking nightmare — Trump didn’t just squeak by with narrow margins in the so-called battleground states, as he had in 2016, but actually won the nationwide popular vote by a margin of 2 million votes. This wrecked their narrative about Trump’s first term, where the “Russian collusion” hoax promoted by Hillary Clinton had fostered the idea that Trump’s presidency was illegitimate. Now the shoe was on the other foot — anyone could compare the vote totals from 2024 with the totals from 2020 and see that some 6 million Democratic votes had mysteriously disappeared. Were they ever real? Did Biden actually win in 2020, or had Democrats stolen that election with their mail-in voting mischief and ballot-harvesting schemes?

Once the election was over, Biden drifted off to Delaware and, if the media tried to avoid making Kamala Harris the scapegoat for Democrats’ defeat, certainly her reputation asa a loser made it difficult for her to be viewed as a potential future party leader. Matt Margolis at PJMedia summarizes the Democrats’ current leaderless condition:

After their humiliating defeat in the government funding battle, a devastating new CNN poll shows the party’s favorability has cratered to an abysmal 29%—the lowest since 1992. The numbers don’t lie; this is a spectacular fall from grace.
The party has hemorrhaged support, suffering a jaw-dropping 20-point collapse in favorability since January 2021, when Joe Biden was inaugurated. . . .
The leadership vacuum is so profound that when asked who leads the Democratic Party, one respondent summed it up perfectly: “No one. That’s the problem.”

Now, take at the chart at the top of this post, from Ballotpedia, and you’ll see that 67% of Democrats in the House of Representatives were elected by margins of 15% or more. Life is easy for a Democrat in a D+15 district. Two-thirds of Hakeem Jeffries’ caucus don’t have to worry about getting reelected, ever. They can stay in Congress until the day they die. It is from the ranks of these Democrats in safe districts that the greatest rage against moderation or compromise will be heard. Alexandria Ocasia-Cortez was reelected by a margin of about 38 points — 69% to 31% — and can go as far out to the radical extreme as she wishes without any fear of electoral repercussions. But if she drags the rest of the Democratic caucus with her, that’s going to be a much smaller caucus, because it’s going to be hard for Democrats to compete in “battleground” districts if AOC is calling the shots. Let’s take a closer look at those districts:

Democrats face a problem of simple arithmetic — of the closest districts in the country, more are currently held by Democrats than by Republicans. So if, in the next midterm, each party were to flip half of the other party’s “battleground” districts, the result would be a net gain for Republicans. Of course, we can’t predict what the political climate will be in November 2018, but the Democrats have more members holding onto their House seats by slender margins, compared to Republicans. In fact, Republicans have more “safe” districts than do Democrats, by a significant margin. Even though Speaker Mike Johnson has a very narrow Republican majority, he has more protection against a complete wipeout in the midterms, whereas Democrats risk a net loss of seats, even in a midterm election where the president’s party historically loses congressional seats. If the GOP plays its cards right between now and November 2026, they have an opportunity to deal Democrats another shattering blow like they did last November.

If the “MAGA Revolution” seeks to have a lasting impact, there needs to be a laser-focused effort to achieve Republican victory in the 2026 midterms. Securing another two-year hold on majorities in both the House and the Senate, at a time when Democrats are unpopular and suffering a leadership vacuum, would bring about a real crisis for the “progressive” grassroots of the Democratic Party going into the 2028 presidential election campaign. The prospect that J.D. Vance (or whoever wins the GOP nomination in 2028) could win what would in effect be Trump’s third term? Oh, you think Democrats are panicking now, just you wait and see! Maintain the MAGA momentum another three or four years, and they’ll all be fleeing the country like Rosie O’Donnell.



 

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Chuck Chickens Out: No Schumer Shutdown, CR Will (Barely) Pass Senate

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Because you’ve probably already seen the news elsewhere, permit me to begin by saying that Chuck Schumer may be the leading cause of anti-Semitism in America. Everyone who knows me knows that I am a righteous Gentile, the exact opposite of a Jew-hater, a philo-Semite who is more fanatically Zionist than Bibi Netanyahu. But when I contemplate the profound dishonesty of Chuck Schumer . . . Well, it occurs to me that anti-Semitic prejudice didn’t just magically materialize out of the ether; Schumer is the embodiment of every hateful stereotype, and actually looks like a cartoon in Der Stürmer. Some pious rabbi needs to talk to senior officials of the Anti-Defamation League about their Chuck Schumer problem. The man is becoming a shanda fur die goyim.

With that preamble, now time for the news:

On Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) declared that he will not vote against moving forward with a Republican-backed stopgap bill to avert a partial government shutdown at the end of the week.
The announcement, in which Schumer criticized President Donald Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) effort led by Elon Musk, marked an abrupt turnaround. Just one day ago, the top Senate Democrat insisted the Republican majority did not have enough votes for the House-passed continuing resolution to clear a key procedural hurdle.
“While the CR bill is very bad, the potential for a shutdown has consequences for America that are much, much worse. … I believe allowing Donald Trump to take even much more power via a government shutdown is a far worse option,” Schumer said in remarks on the Senate floor.
He added later: “I believe it is my job to make the best choice for the country, to minimize the harms to the American people. Therefore, I will vote to keep the government open and not shut it down.” . . .
The Democrat leader’s statement came after a Senate Democrat meeting in which reporters said they could hear Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) shouting about a shutdown.

Speaking of shouting about a shutdown, I had a rather heated phone call last week with a young friend, who unwisely spends too much of his time in the online MAGA echo chamber, and was therefore pro-shutdown.

Look, it’s not as if I’m a squishy RINO sellout. I just happen to be about 25 years older than my young friend, so I have some institutional memory on this topic. Well do I remember the fierce budget battles between Gingrich-led congressional Republicans and Bill Clinton in the mid-1990s, when “government shutdown” first became a headline, and Republicans took a severe public-relations beating, only to fold their cards because Bob Dole couldn’t keep Senate Republicans in line.

This has always been the big problem facing the conservative movement. Every time we get a GOP House majority, we are confronted by the problem of the Senate filibuster. Unless Republicans can get to 60 votes in the Senate, they must negotiate with the Democrats to be able to pass anything, and so the Freedom Caucus types eventually have to accept a deal that is antithetical to their principles. Personally, I agree with Grover Norquist’s most famous quote: “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” But that doesn’t change the reality of how legislation gets passed, nor does it change the political calculus of how to maintain a Republican congressional majority. Having finally gotten Trump elected to a second term, the clock is now ticking down to the 2026 midterms, and it will be some kind of miracle if we can stop Democrats from taking over Congress again. The last thing we need, at a time when the GOP is running the whole show in D.C., is to have a government shutdown, which will be perceived (by the moderate “swing” voters, at least) as evidence that Republicans aren’t competent enough to do basic “keep the trains running on time” governance.

So I found myself raising my voice in last week’s phone conversation with my young friend, who can’t see it from this kind of long-term big-picture perspective. Experience proves that we cannot suddenly change everything in Washington; conservatives must build an effective governing majority, and then proceed step-by-step through the legislative process. This kind of patient labor strikes the young hotspurs as timid, lacking the kind of a revolutionary excitement they crave. But we must remind the callow youth that they stand on the shoulders of giants, being heirs to a movement that began long before they were born. It was during the historical apogee of liberal prestige — when FDR’s New Deal commanded the allegiance of an overwhelming majority — that a tiny handful of dissenters organized what became the conservative movement in America. Hayek, Kirk, Weaver, Chambers, Regnery, Buckley — by the early 1950s, the torch had been lit, and was passed along from Taft to Goldwater to Reagan. Alas, we have lost much that ought to have been conserved, and yet despite such defeats, nevertheless the fight continues.

Pardon that digression, but there are too many people on “our” side who are encouraging an irresponsible attitude toward the current situation, and I just want everybody to calm down about it. Let the Democrats stir outrage among the kook fringe on their side, appealing to the fathomless ignorance of their voters. Back to the news:

The Senate needs three-fifths majority — or 60 votes — to invoke cloture and overcome a filibuster on the GOP’s six-month continuing resolution. Because Republicans have a 53-47 majority, they cannot clear that threshold without some kind of bipartisan agreement. The spending legislation will need only a simple majority to prevail in a final vote. . . .
It was not immediately clear how many Democrats or independents will join Schumer, though his opposition to a shutdown may signal better odds for the Republican continuing resolution. Still, some on the Left have expressed stern disapproval of the plan.
Many Democrats had previously released statements claiming they would resist the GOP measure. Prior to Schumer, Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) was the sole Democrat to openly state that he would not support blocking the Republican stopgap bill. . . .
One Republican — Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) — signaled that he will vote against the bill. However, that does not necessarily mean he would oppose breaking the filibuster. . . .
The GOP-led House passed a 99-page continuing resolution, which provides funds to various federal agencies and programs through September 30, via a 217-213 vote on Tuesday. All but one Republican and a single Democrat — Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) — supported the measure. The rest of the Democrats and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) opposed the bill.

There was a parade of Democratic senators on Twitter yesterday declaring that they would vote against the CR, but the final vote — i.e., yea or nay on the passage of the bill — isn’t the issue. It’s the cloture vote that is the hurdle. If all 53 Republicans vote for cloture, and Chuck Schumer can deliver six Democrat “yea” votes, then when you add J.D. Vance’s tiebreaking vote, that’s the 60 votes needed to end the filibuster. Once that’s done, getting 51 votes for passage won’t be difficult.

If we can trust Schumer when he says he is now against the shutdown, that means he’ll find a half-dozen Democrats to “walk the plank” for the sake of avoiding a shutdown (for which Schumer apparently sees that Democrats would be blamed). That buys him another six months to try to work up some kind of new wicked scheme, and I hope the ADL will intervene to stop him, because otherwise this living Der Stürmer caricature might keep stirring up Jew-hatred past the point of no return.

Now, about those Puerto Rican stereotypes . . .



 

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