Category: Donald Trump

Georgia: How’s ‘Jim Crow 2.0’ Working?

Posted on November 5, 2024November 5, 2024Comments

Despite the fact that early voting has set historic records in Georgia, a certain Democrat remains permanently disgruntled:

Former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams is claiming that “voter suppression” is occurring in Georgia despite record turnout in the Peach State.
During Friday’s installment of “CNN News Central,” co-anchor Kate Bolduan asked Abrams what she believes is driving the surge in early voting.
“While we are excited about who is showing up, we have to understand that turnout does not mean there is not voter suppression activity,” Abrams replied.
She suggested that one of the reasons for long early voting lines is because residents can no longer use the “easier” method of voting by mail.
“People who are disabled, people who have lost their homes are facing harder times casting their ballots, but they refuse to be silenced. What we are excited about is that here in the state of Georgia, despite the government making it harder to cast your ballot, people are willing to fight to make it happen anyway,” Abrams continued.
Senate Bill 202, which was adopted by the Georgia General assembly in 2021, made several changes to absentee ballots. Prior to its passage, signature verification was the primary means of checking voter identity, according to the Fulton County website.
Absentee ballots could also be requested up until the Friday before the election.
The new method stipulates that Georgia voters provide their Driver’s License number or other forms of voter ID and must request their ballot at least 11 days before the election.
“Once again, Stacey Abrams is lying about Georgia’s elections, and over three million voters who have already voted know not to take her seriously,” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “She’s cost the state millions and it’s time for her to get real: Georgia has the leads the nation in voter accessibility and convenience and we run the most secure elections in the country.”
Georgia voters have already shattered multiple turnout records, but that did little to temper Democratic critics of the new rules for the 2024 presidential cycle put in place by the state’s GOP officials.
“I was just in Georgia. You know they passed a law that makes it illegal to give people food and water for standing in line to vote?” Vice President Kamala Harris told a rally crowd in Michigan earlier this week. “The hypocrisy abounds. Whatever happened to ‘love thy neighbor,’ right?”
Meanwhile, President Biden called Georgia’s election security laws “Jim Crow 2.0” in 2022.
Georgia’s Republican-majority legislature passed several laws since 2020 to increase security around the voting process after the Peach State was thrust under scrutiny in the previous presidential race.

As advocates of the new Georgia law have repeatedly said, it makes it easier to vote, but harder to cheat — and it’s that latter aspect of the law that Abrams and other Democrats deplore. There was massive “ballot harvesting” in Georgia in 2020, but they won’t be able to play that trick this year, which is one reason why Team Trump feels pretty confident about Georgia. Another factor that should help Trump in Georgia is the disgrace of Fani Willis, whose RICO case against Trump got wrecked in the courts. Let me put this as gently as possible — there’s Atlanta, and then there’s the rest of Georgia. Folks out in the hinterlands of Georgia don’t want anything to do with Atlanta, and Fani Willis is a perfect example of why people in the rest of Georgia despise Atlanta.

Polls close at 7 p.m. ET in Georgia, which means it will be an early indicator of which way this election is going. You can look at the county-by-county percentages from 2020 on Wikipedia and match them against what’s reported tonight, and from that county-by-county comparison figure whether Harris is under-performing Biden or not. Remember that Biden (allegedly) won Georgia by less than 12,000 votes, so even a slight shift in Trump’s direction would flip Georgia “red.” If Trump then holds onto North Carolina, all he would need is to win Pennsylvania and that’s it — 270 Electoral College votes, no matter what happens in Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona or Nevada. Furthermore, I think Mark Halperin is correct in saying that we’ll probably see the battleground states go one way or the other — it’s unlikely there will be a split decision.

A clear win for Trump in Georgia — say, 51%-47% or better — would be the first clue tonight that Kamala Harris is losing, and I think we should have a definite sense of that by 10 p.m. ET. Say a prayer.

Top Democratic strategist Jim Messina calling early voting numbers “scary” on MSNBC “is the biggest indication we’ve seen that the early vote is a problem for” Kamala Harris, says @MarkHalperin. Messina’s comments are “brutal honesty. Look at every major urban center in the swing… pic.twitter.com/iXEa027m17

— 2WAY (@2waytvapp) November 4, 2024

Election 2024: Be Prepared for Anything

Posted on November 3, 2024

The old Scout motto has always been wise advice, and as we brace ourselves for Election Day — to be followed by Election Night, and then perhaps Election Week or even Election Month — we ought to psychologically prepare ourselves for all possible contingencies.

We have now entered that phase of the campaign where there is nothing to be learned by checking Real Clear Politics for the latest poll data. Every major pollster has already released their final numbers and whatever predictive value polls may have is already incorporated into our expectations. About a week ago, a solid source passed along word that the Trump campaign’s internal polling showed them leading in Pennsylvania by three points — just shy of the four-point lead they would consider “safe” — and that in general the Trump team is “cautiously optimistic” about the election. Despite what Byron York calls the “final torrent of BS” in the past week, probably nothing has happened to alter that calculus, mostly because early voting is running so far ahead of any previous election year. What should we make of this report?

With just three days until the election, former President Donald Trump’s campaign remains unsettled about his prospects in North Carolina, a Sun Belt state that he’s claimed in two consecutive presidential elections.
When asked why, a Trump campaign official put it bluntly.
“If there’s one state that could bite you in the a–, it’s North Carolina,” the official said.
At the same time, Vice President Kamala Harris’ team, which less than two weeks ago feared the Tar Heel State was “a little bit slipping away,” is now seeing it as “very much in play,” a senior campaign official said.
Their dueling outlooks emerged as both campaigns landed in North Carolina, with the candidates rallying voters in a margin-of-error contest that’s raising the stakes in every battleground. Of late, Trump has deviated off course and into states like Virginia and New Mexico in the final days of the campaign, declaring he could expand his map.
Yet he’s made a plan of returning to North Carolina each day until the election.

My first thought: Head fake.

For weeks, I’ve been repeating the obvious: If Trump wins Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, that’s it, he’s the next president, and the outcomes in the other battleground states — Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada — would be moot, in terms of the Electoral College arithmetic. Anybody can look at the polls and see how solid Trump looks in Georgia now, which leaves North Carolina and Pennsylvania. As I said before, Team Trump feels pretty good about Pennsylvania and so they are devoting extra attention to North Carolina, just to make sure they don’t suffer a surprise loss in a state where the public polls have shown the race much closer than Georgia. And this move has the added benefit of encouraging the Harris campaign also to devote time, money and energy to North Carolina — if Trump’s worried about it, maybe she’s got a chance there — which means less of their attention is available to Pennsylvania, the state that will almost certainly decide the election.

Although I have long despised Nate Silver, his recent criticism of “herding” by pollsters deserves consideration. Even while there is a 6-point spread between the “outliers” of national polls — WSJ has it Trump +3, while Morning Consult has it Harris +3 — the polls in most battleground states seem to be bunched up, as if predicting that Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, etc., will all be nearly tied. As I say, Trump’s looking strong in Georgia, but even there, a certain amount of “herding” seems to be happening, as if many pollsters are afraid of showing Trump ahead by more than a couple of points. The “herding” effect appears most evident in Pennsylvania, where pollsters seem reluctant to go out on a limb and say either Trump or Harris could win by more than two points. If it comes out 51%-48% either way, the polls will generally have underestimated the margin of victory, and several of them will be wrong about who wins, but none of them be off by more than a six-point margin, and the most wrong of them will be able to say they weren’t alone. Everybody’s cheating on the final exam.

But what if Pennsylvania turns into a comparative blowout? What if, instead of a one- or two-point margin, it opens up to a four- or five-point margin? What if it’s Trump 52% to Harris 47%, or vice-versa? In that case, the pollsters showing a two-point lead for the candidate who loses will be somewhat discredited, but not utterly disgraced, while the pollster who shows a one- or two-point lead for the ultimate winner will puff out his chest in pride of his vindication: “Nailed it!”

Given the problem of “herding,” is there any way we can discover auguries from these particular entails? Well, here’s just a tiny clue: In their poll published October 12, New York Times/Siena College had Harris +3 in Pennsylvania, leading 50% to 47%. The latest NYT/Siena poll came out this morning, and it’s Trump +1 — 48% to 47%.

The word for that is “YUGE.” First of all, it represents a net shift of 4 points toward Trump, and secondly, does anyone think the New York Times would publish its final poll showing Trump ahead in Pennsylvania — which everybody knows is the crucial battleground — if there was any chance of a Harris win there? No way. Stick a fork in her, she’s done.

If my interpretation of this is correct, it would explain why the Trump campaign has added extra stops in North Carolina — they’ve got Georgia and Pennsylvania locked up, and they just need to avoid a surprise in North Carolina to assure they’ve got 270 Electoral College votes. But then again, I could be completely wrong: “Be prepared.”

However this election turns out, I don’t think we’ll know the result on Tuesday night, and we might not know on Wednesday, either. “Too close to call” will be endlessly repeated by the TV talking heads, as they point to the results in various “bellwether” counties, talking about how many precincts have yet to report in Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Detroit, etc. Even if Trump were to ultimately win a popular-vote majority and run the table in the battleground states — maybe even flipping New Hampshire, Virginia or New Mexico into the “red” column — such an outcome wouldn’t be conclusive enough for the media to call it a win on Election Night. Therefore, no matter how optimistic we may be, we must psychologically brace ourselves for disappointment. Even if it’s four years of President Kamala Harris, we can cope with it, somehow.

Byron’s column describes a Harris event in Pennsylvania:

Vote Trump, and the Media Will Die

Posted on November 1, 2024November 1, 2024Comments

Did you just orgasm? Or was that me?

We’re all kinda sticky after reading this quote:

“If half the country has decided that Trump is qualified to be president, that means they’re not reading any of this media, and we’ve lost this audience completely. A Trump victory means mainstream media is dead in its current form. And the question is what does it look like after.”

STRAIGHT INTO MY VEINS WITH THIS!

There is no better argument for electing Trump again — to announce, in no uncertain terms, that “the mainstream media is dead.”

Jake Tapper, Jim Acosta, Joe Scarborough, Norah O’Donnell, David Muir — tens of millions of Americans waving their middle fingers in the faces of all those pompous TV douchebags — VOTE TRUMP!

But here comes Byron York to urinate in our cornflakes, with a column reminding us that the election is actually very close and, as much as it boggles our minds, Kamala might actually win it:

There are some political races in which, if you go to a few rallies by each candidate, you get a pretty good idea of who is going to win. This presidential race is not like that. If you go to former President Donald Trump‘s rallies and Vice President Kamala Harris‘s rallies, you’ll have wildly different experiences, but you’re also going to find large crowds of highly enthusiastic voters who just love their candidate. The race is not only tied in the polls but is tied in the impressions of intensity and strength that each candidate’s events leave with an outside observer.
In the Real Clear Politics average of national polls, six of the nine most recent polls are tied, or the candidates are separated by a single percentage point. The results in the swing states are similar. In five of the seven swing states, including here in Pennsylvania, the two candidates are separated by 1 point or less. So, the poll numbers of a tied race confirm one’s observations and vice versa.
A lot of Republicans would not buy that argument. . . . [M]any Republicans believe Trump has the election in the bag and that it might not even be close. . . .

(Hat-tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.) Y’know, I like Byron York. Always enjoyed bumping into him out on the campaign trail in Iowa or South Carolina or wherever, back in the day where sometimes we’d be the only two conservatives in the squad of journalists covering an event. So I respect Byron’s instinct here, his sense that it’s important to bring some balance to the story, so that his conservative readers — most of whom have made it a habit to ignore the mainstream media — are not unaware of the possibility that Kamala could somehow win this thing.

The Democrats who turned out on a weekday afternoon really loved Harris. As we waited for the rally to begin, I asked a dozen women — there was a definite gender gap in the crowd — what they liked best about Harris. They all gave glowing answers: “Her positive energy.” “Her willingness to include everyone in the conversation and the party.” “She’s brilliant and kind, and I really do think she cares about the people.” “I like the joy she brought.” “Her respect for institutions.” “She represents modern America — it’s been centuries and centuries of the same people, and it’s time to change.” “She protects access to women’s own bodies and bodily autonomy.” “She’s a reasonable person and is going to protect democracy.” “Her inclusivity and representation for all.” “She’s honest.” “Her character.” “Her decency and honesty.”
And so on. Nearly all of the answers focused on what the voters saw as Harris’s attributes, as opposed to any specific campaign pledge she has made. And, of course, many of those same voters might have had no opinion of Harris six months ago. But even if their newfound love for the Democratic candidate is just a measure of temporary partisanship, it’s still a positive for Harris.

There were between 4,000 and 5,000 people at this rally on Wednesday in Harrisburg, which is the Pennsylvania state capital. Gosh, who has time on a Wednesday afternoon to attend a Kamala Harris rally? Were these government employees, perhaps? Byron apparently didn’t think to ask the people at the rally what they did for a living, but it would make sense that a lot of them were clerks from state bureaucracies or legislative staffers. Harrisburg is in Dauphin County, which has gone for Democrats in the past four Presidential election, albeit by narrow margins. My point is that it’s not at all surprising that the Harris campaign was able to get as many as 5,000 people at a rally in Pennsylvania’s state capital, but when I inform you that Dauphin County has a population of 289,234, you can see why such a crowd isn’t really impressive, size-wise.

The vagueness of the reasons for why these people support Kamala, which they shared with Byron York, are indicative of the basic problem with the Harris campaign, i.e., its essential negativity, the fact that Harris expects to win simply by virtue of being Not Donald Trump.

Why do Democrats think that will be enough to win? Because it’s basically how Biden won four years ago (allegedly, I hasten to add). Nobody voted for Biden because they were wowed by the cleverness of his policy proposals, or his personal charisma. No, a vote for Biden was a vote against Trump, and that was all that mattered. That’s why Democrats thought they could get away with this ridiculous campaign — switching out candidates in July, and foisting upon the electorate a nominee who never got a single vote for president in any primary, running on a platform of . . . Well, what, exactly?

Nobody has a clue what Kamala Harris stands for, policy-wise, and the kind of people who turn out for a Harris rally don’t care. All they care about is that she gives them a chance to vote against Orange Hitler.

This worked for Biden in 2020, but will it work for Harris? Excuse me for being deeply skeptical of that proposition. And please, Byron — no more doomfest columns like this, OK? Our people need hope.

VOTE TRUMP AND THE MEDIA WILL DIE!

That’s a winning message, I think.

Can We Stay Sane a Few More Days? (Also: Has Trump Always Been Winning?)

Posted on October 31, 2024October 31, 2024Comments

Craziness is breaking out everywhere — ballots burned in Oregon, fake GOTV operations, voter suppression in Pennsylvania. For weeks I’ve been warning against getting too emotionally involved in all the election hype. Go vote, do whatever you can to help, but don’t let it drive you insane. Even as Democrats are struggling with existential dread of Orange Hitler, a lot of Republicans are paranoid about another stolen election.

“A few more days for to tote the weary load,” as the song says. Just do whatever it takes to maintain your grip on sanity, and maybe by this time next week, it will all be over, one way or the other. Either we endure another four years of Democrat blundering, or we’ll be laughing at the tears of MSNBC hosts and CNN panelists. Of course, we know which outcome we’d prefer, but I’m confident we can deal with whatever.

Maintaining my pose of sanguine optimism, then, what about this latest Quinnipiac Poll of Pennsylvania, with Trump 49% and Harris 47%?

A mere six weeks ago, Quinnipiac had Harris leading Trump in Pennsylvania by five points, 51% to 46%. Has there really been a net seven-point swing toward Trump since mid-September or — as I rather strongly suspect — has Trump actually been leading Harris in Pennsylvania the whole time? Political junkies are overdosing on poll numbers, clicking onto Real Clear Politics several times a day to see if there are any new polls to satisfy their sick craving for data.

While the data-addicted let the zig-zagging numbers send their moods swinging from manic hope to depressive gloom, it might all be an illusion. My gut hunch is that the vast majority of voters made up their minds which way they’d vote long ago. It seems evident that, after Democrats dumped Biden and subbed in Harris — remember when it was a “right-wing conspiracy theory” to suggest they were planning such a switch? — Democrats got a temporary boost, as some of their core voters were more enthusiastic about Kamala than they had been about Joe. But was this boost really enough to shift the entire dynamic of the election?

If you were watching the polls, you saw Kamala zoom ahead of Trump by mid-September, when the RCP national average had her leading by a solid two points, and there were two polls (Morning Consult and Reuters/Ipsos) that had her six points ahead, as well as others (NBC News and Susquehanna) with Harris +5. Really? C’mon, really?

Here we are now, at the end of October, and the current RCP national average has Trump ahead by a fraction and, of the 14 polls comprising this average, six have Trump leading, four have Harris ahead, and four show an exact tie. That’s the national vote, mind you, but we know that the election will actually be decided by a handful of battleground states. Right now, RCP shows Trump with more or less decisive leads in both Georgia and Arizona, two states Biden (allegedly) won four years ago. Harris leads slightly in Wisconsin and Michigan, while Trump leads by one point or less in Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Nevada.

We don’t know what the final outcome will be, but if Trump does win, we’ll have to look back at those September polls and ask, “Was that real? Was Kamala ever actually ahead? Or are pollsters just playing the old game of shifting their numbers in late October, to avoid looking like fools for their ridiculous pro-Democrat slant?”

Five more days. Stay sane, my friends.

BOOM! We Are So #Winning!

Posted on October 29, 2024Comments

Of course, I must add the necessary “don’t get cocky” disclaimer, but ladies and gentlemen, this news is YUGE:

Democrat presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris is waving the white flag in North Carolina, surrendering the state to former President Donald Trump as her campaign withdraws nearly $2 million in planned ad buys from television stations statewide one week before the election.
The more than $1.7 million in canceled ad buys by Harris’s campaign in North Carolina suggests that her team believes, given polling data and early vote data, that the Tar Heel State is no longer in play for her.
Trump’s senior campaign adviser Chris LaCivita jumped at the news on Tuesday morning, celebrating Harris’s team giving up on the state one week before the election . . .

?@KamalaHarris? giving up on North Carolina..pulling money out. Maybe to drop in Virginia to try and stop the slide ? pic.twitter.com/oTcCAuTJYx

— Chris LaCivita (@LaCivitaC) October 29, 2024

It is fact, by the way, that polling shows Virginia now a lot closer than it was in 2020, when Biden won it by 10 points. There are important House races on the ballot in Virginia that Democrats can’t afford to lose, and it may indeed be that they’re making this move to “try and stop the slide” in Virginia. More important, of course, is the apparent surrender in North Carolina, the only “battleground” where Democrats were trying to flip a state that went for Trump four years ago. If indeed, Team Kamala has waved the white flag in North Carolina, that means they’re not strictly playing defense, trying to hold onto states that Biden (allegedly) won.

Weeks ago, it was clear that Trump had a straightforward path to victory — hold North Carolina, flip Georgia and Pennsylvania, and nothing else mattered. Even if Trump were to lose Arizona, Nevada, Michigan and Wisconsin, he’s still the winner (exactly 270 Electoral College votes) with the NC/GA/PA trifecta. Georgia has looked pretty solid for Trump all along (thank you, Fani Willis), and a source told me this week that the Trump campaign’s internal polls have them up by three points in Pennsylvania. That’s a little closer than they would like it, but they are “cautiously optimistic” in Pennsylvania. Now, Team Kamala surrenders North Carolina? YUGE! That frees up Republican resources for the late push in Pennsylvania — and Michigan, Wisconsin, etc.

My hunch — and it’s not a completely uneducated guess — is that Trump’s got Arizona nailed down and he looks like a winner in Nevada, too, but that’s likely to be a lot closer. Michigan is at least close enough that Democrats there are still sweating it. If Harris wins Michigan and Wisconsin, and Trump wins Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada, then Pennsylvania is the whole game. Meanwhile . . .

Today, I went and voted early. I don’t live in a “battleground state,” but I do live in a competitive House district, so it matters. What made me decide to vote today was that I watched the video of Steve Bannon’s press conference after he got released from federal prison:

If that doesn’t make you vote, I don’t know what will.

Democrats ‘Increasingly Worried About a Number of Issues Plaguing’ Kamala

Posted on October 10, 2024

Remember what I told you in mid-September? “Kamala Is Underperforming” was the headline, at a time when the newly-minted Democratic presidential nominee was still riding her post-convention “bounce.” A careful comparison of Harris’s poll numbers to Joe Biden’s numbers in 2020 and Hillary Clinton’s numbers in 2016 showed that she was weaker against Trump than either Joe or Hillary.

Ace of Spades highlights the troubling trends that have Democrats hitting the panic button, with the quote in my headline from a story in The Hill which quotes one Democratic strategist thus:

Democratic strategist Anthony Coley, who served in the Biden administration, acknowledged the trepidation, pointing to the stagnant poll numbers in the weeks following the Democratic National Convention, when Democrats were making comparisons between Harris’s campaign and former President Obama’s run in 2008.
“Now that the sugar high is gone, people have realized what Kamala Harris has said from the start, which is that she is the underdog,” Coley said. “This is going to be a fight. … These numbers are just so stubborn.”

What he means by those “stubborn” numbers is that Kamala got to a certain level in the polls, and can’t get past it. She’s reached her ceiling, and it’s not high enough to give Democrats confidence that she can win. Trump’s numbers are solid — his voters aren’t going anywhere, and the number of “undecided” voters is very small. And then you start looking at polls for the battleground states and . . . Uh, oh. Internal polling by Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin’s campaign shows Harris losing by three points to Trump there, and Democrats are also starting to worry about Michigan. If both of those Midwest “blue wall” states are shaky for Harris, we could be looking at 300+ Electoral College votes for Trump. And the signs of trouble multiply from there.

It’s a simple arithmetic problem: How does she get to 270 Electoral College voters if, for example, Trump wins Pennsylvania. Do the math and you realize that, if Trump wins Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina, that’s the whole ballgame — Wisconsin and Michigan become irrelevant. As matters stand now, Georgia looks pretty solid for Trump, Harris has no better than a 50-50 chance in Pennsylvania, and whatever’s going on in North Carolina, it’s a state that Trump won twice, so that flipping it to Harris would appear to be a rather desperate hope.

What, therefore, are we to make of this headline from NBC News? “Harris and Democratic allies descend on Arizona in all-hands push before early voting.” The obvious inference is that Team Harris is worried enough about some other state (or combination of states) that they find it necessary to expend resources trying to get 11 Electoral College votes from Arizona, a state where practically every poll shows Trump leading. If you are a Democrat worried about Kamala’s chances, this ought to be a flashing red light, the trigger that turns your headache into a full-blown migraine. Look, if CNN’s aggregation of public polls has Harris +1 in Pennsylvania, that almost certainly means Trump is winning Pennsylvania, and perhaps by as much as 4 or 5 points.

Leaked Kamala Harris Internals from Open Labs:

Wisconsin – ? Trump +1
Pennsylvania – ? Trump +4
Michigan – ? Trump +2
North Carolina – ? Trump + 6
Georgia – ? Trump + 7
Arizona – ? Trump +6
Nevada – ? Harris +3
NE-2 – ? Harris +5 pic.twitter.com/ZKRw7dwX5d

— OSZ (@OpenSourceZone) October 9, 2024

Do I trust those polls? Not really, but there is a general consensus that, as a candidate, Kamala is not all that and a stack of pancakes. A former Democratic Party fundraiser puts his finger on the fundamental problem — the Democrats are ignoring the demos:

Consider the long-time friendship between Kamala Harris and billionaire donor Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Steve Jobs. The New York Times described the women as being so close that they’ve gone on vacation together and consider each other family. Powell Jobs sat in Harris’ exclusive friends and family suite at the DNC last month. She was also instrumental in getting Biden to step down to clear the way for Harris; one of her top aides circulated a polling memo to other key influential donors that allegedly showed Biden’s inability to win.
It was another example of a megadonor overcoming the will of the people — and making things worse for voters. Now that the Kool-Aid from the DNC is wearing off, people are waking up to the realities of an untested candidate. Harris is barely beating Biden in key swing state polls, dodges questions from the press, and continually gaffes answers on significant policy issues. She can barely answer basic questions about her plans for regular people in friendly encounters with people like Oprah.
This is what happens when a candidate is anointed by donors and not selected by voters.

Exactly. Harris was never as popular as Biden. She flopped in the 2020 primaries, exiting the race in 2019 before a single vote was cast. If Biden had announced in 2019 that he would not seek a second term, that would have allowed Democrats to choose their candidate in an open primary, and how likely is it that Harris would have won such a primary against, e.g., Gavin Newsome, Josh Shapiro, Wes Moore, et al.? What happened instead was that Biden decided to run again, despite his increasingly obvious cognitive impairment and then, after his debate meltdown in June, was forced off the ticket, with Harris anointed as the nominee.

Kamala didn’t win the nomination, it was handed to her, gift-wrapped on a silver platter, and many voters who might not be eager to see another Trump presidency are neverthless reluctant to vote for this ill-qualified woman who reminds us that “DEI” stands for Didn’t Earn It. With 26 days until November 5, the Democrats have nobody but themselves to blame for this unforced error. The party’s billionaire donors got what they paid for, but voters won’t endorse this corrupt bargain.

The Only Trick in Their Bag

Posted on September 19, 2024September 19, 2024

Look, I get it: Biden put Democrats in a bad spot. He could have — and should have — announced in early 2023 that he would not seek a second term, thereby making it possible for Democrats to have a primary to choose their 2024 presidential candidate. Unfortunately for Democrats, while senile dementia diminishes many cognitive functions, it does not diminish egotism, and therefore Joe insisted that at age 81, he was still perfectly capable of enduring the rigors of a reelection campaign.

Biden did the wrong thing (“Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to fuck things up,” as Obama famously said) and the consequences are that now Democrats are stuck with Kamala Harris as the nominee. She has never been popular, doesn’t have a record of accomplishment, and the Biden administration’s policies are unpopular, so the whole basis of the Democratic campaign is demonizing Trump: “ORANGE MAN BAD!”

During a press briefing on Tuesday, Fox News senior White House correspondent Peter Doocy asked Jean-Pierre, “How many more assassination attempts on Donald Trump until the president and vice president and you pick a different word to describe Trump, other than ‘threat’?”
Jean-Pierre told Doocy she completely disagreed with the premise of his question, calling the way he asked it “incredibly dangerous” because Americans are watching.

This is disgraceful and bordering on conspiracy at this point.

The Dems can’t run on policy so they are running on demonizing @realDonaldTrump. https://t.co/SVVnd3U7pN

— Derrick Van Orden (@derrickvanorden) September 17, 2024

If it is your misfortune to reside in one of the “battleground” states — Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, etc. — you can’t turn on your TV without being bombarded by Democratic ads portraying Trump as a menace. Meanwhile, the news media let Kamala Harris go unquestioned as she blabbers word-salad nonsense, and almost no one in the media mentions the real truth: Kamala is underperforming.

We are now 47 days away from Election Day. Early voting has already started in Pennsylvania. God willing, we only have to put up with this for another seven weeks. Try not to let it drive you crazy.