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Sheriff Bob Wins Re-Election

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If you’re a fan of law enforcement, you know Sheriff Bob Gualtieri of Pinellas County, Florida. He is a veteran lawman who went to college and got a law degree, worked as a lawyer and then returned to the sheriff’s department as legal counsel and became chief deputy before being appointed sheriff by Gov. Rick Scott in 2011.

Pinellas County — St. Petersburg, Largo, Clearwater, across the bay from Tampa — had a serious problem with teenage car thieves. That problem got reduced slightly in 2017 when three of the juveniles died in a fiery crash in a stolen Ford Explorer:

The SUV ran through a red light — it was going 117 mph just 2½-seconds before impact, according to crash recovery data — and then collided with a 1999 Toyota Camry in the middle lane of U.S. 19 N, according to the Sheriff’s Office.
The Camry driver, Ricky Melendez Jr., was on his way to work.
The Explorer was sent airborne, crashed into five parked cars at a dealership and then struck a billboard pole 10 feet above the ground before tumbling to stop on Tampa Road.

Here is Sheriff Bob’s press conference about that incident:

 

This guy knows how to do a press conference. Anyway, some left-wing pest of a “social justice” Democrat ran against Sheriff Bob this year, and amid all the hype about high turnout, I worried that the sheriff might be in trouble, but he cruised to victory with a 25-point margin, 62%-37%. 

Y’know, I’m always looking for a dark-horse long-shot candidate, somebody with a populist “outsider” image like my late friend Herman Cain, and the current occupant of the White House. It’s kind of early to be talking about 2024, but if Sheriff Bob starts gaining a bit more of a national media profile over the next couple of years . . .

Well, never say never. Impossible things happen all the time.




 

Damn It, Iowa — No Hope Allowed!

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As I have explained, maintaining my mental health during the final weeks of the campaign requires me to avoid anything that might give me hope that Donald Trump could be elected. This is actually easy, given how most polls show Joe Biden cruising to a landslide victory. The NBC/Wall Street Journal poll has Biden winning by 10 points — TEN FREAKING POINTS! — which would have to be catastrophically wrong for Trump to have a chance. In terms of my Zen of hopelessness, this is just what I need, but some of y’all refuse to cooperate:

Republican President Donald Trump has taken over the lead in Iowa as Democratic former Vice President Joe Biden has faded, a new Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll shows just days before Election Day.
The president now leads by 7 percentage points over Biden, 48% to 41%. Three percent say they will vote for someone else, 2% aren’t sure and 5% don’t want to say for whom they will vote.
In September’s Iowa Poll, the candidates were tied at 47% to 47%.

In the span of one month, according to this poll, Biden has lost 6 points, while Trump has gained one. Recall that in February, Biden placed third in the Iowa caucus, so we can’t expect Democrats there to be too enthusiastic about “Landslide Joe.” Furthermore, in 2016, Trump won Iowa by more than 9 points, so if he wins by 7 points this time, it would actually show an erosion of his support. And when you recall how slender Trump’s margins were in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, the loss of 2 points would spell defeat. So may hopelessness remains intact, but then there’s this little data point from the Iowa poll:

Both candidates largely hold onto voters within their own parties. Ninety-three percent of Democrats support Biden, along with 4% of self-described Republicans. And 89% of Republicans support Trump, along with 2% of Democrats.
But Trump has regained an edge with those who identify as independents — a bloc key to his 2016 win in Iowa. According to National Election Pool exit polling published by CNN, independent voters favored Trump 51% to 38% over Democrat Hillary Clinton that year.
In the Register’s September Iowa Poll, Biden led with independents 50% to 38%. But today, Trump wins them back and leads 49% to 35%.

Whoa! Biden has lost 15 points with independents? This cannot be true. Nate Silver tells me there is an 89% chance Biden is winning, and yet independents have turned against Biden? How can I protect my precious sense of hopelessness against this contradictory evidence?

Well, I’ve been watching CNN all day. That should do the trick.




 

Good News: Democrats Are Worried

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People keep telling me their predictions about the election, and I don’t want to hear them. I have done the Electoral College arithmetic and know that it is easily possible for President Trump to win, even if it’s going to be close and we might have to wait for late returns.

More than that, however, I’ve reached my Zen of pessimistic calm, as I said Wednesday: “Bleak hopelessness is true objectivity.” Being convinced we are utterly doomed is a source of tranquility.

Democrats are now suffering an agony of fear. Four more years of Trump? No, they can’t handle that. It’s driving them to sheer panic:

Democrats are sounding the alarm about weak voter turnout rates in Florida’s biggest county, Miami-Dade, where a strong Republican showing is endangering Joe Biden’s chances in the nation’s biggest swing state.
No Democrat can win Florida without a huge turnout and big winning margins [in Miami] to offset losses elsewhere in the state. But Democrats are turning out at lower rates than Republicans and at lower rates than at this point in 2016, when Hillary Clinton won by 29 percentage points here and still lost the state to Donald Trump.

You can read the whole thing. There are other omens of a possible miracle victory for Trump, including a Rasmussen poll that indicates Trump may get 31% — THIRTY-ONE PERCENT! — of the black vote.

But don’t give me hope. I’m more comfortable with despair, especially as I watch Democrats writhe in agony during these final days before the election. Besides, how bad could it possibly be?

Twelve years ago, when the Republican Party nominated John McCain as its presidential candidate, he got less than 46 percent of the popular vote and only 173 Electoral College votes. Whatever happens on Election Day this year, almost no one expects President Trump to do worse than that.
According to Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight poll-based prediction, we enter the final weekend before Election Day with an 89 percent likelihood that Joe Biden will win. Basically, the odds are 8-to-1 against Trump’s reelection. Yet the president’s supporters are undaunted, recalling that Silver’s final 2016 forecast gave Hillary Clinton a 71 percent chance of being elected and yet Trump beat her in a result that broke the Democrats’ so-called “blue wall” in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Miracles can happen in politics, and Republican voters are praying for another divine intervention next week. Bombarded by a barrage of discouraging news coverage — even Fox News seems to be part of the “Landslide Joe” propaganda team now — the conservative faithful quite desperately seek omens that may portend more hopeful tidings.
Well, there’s this: Four days before the election, Joe Biden today is making a campaign trip to Minnesota, which, as Trump campaign communications chief Tim Murtaugh points out, is “a state that hasn’t gone to a Republican candidate for president since 1972.” . . .

Read the rest of my latest column at The American Spectator.




 

Media Promotes BLM Lies in Philadelphia, as Rioting Continues for the Second Night

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Looting is already being reported in Philadelphia tonight, the second night of #BlackLivesMatter riots following the Monday afternoon police shooting of 27-year-old Walter Wallace Jr. In last night’s Mostly Peaceful™ Protest, “76 people were arrested for burglary including three with guns, 11 were arrested for assaulting police officers, and three were arrested for failure to disperse,” according to WPVI-TV.

Why riot over this case? Wallace was shot after he charged two police officers while brandishing an 8-inch knife. This was not the first time cops had to deal with Wallace, nor even the first time that day:

Police were called dozens of times in recent months about problems at Walter Wallace Jr.’s home, and had responded twice on Monday to reports of disturbances at the West Philadelphia house before two officers answered a third call and shot him as he approached them with a knife, according to law enforcement sources.
What happened during those earlier visits — including which officers responded and how much they knew about Wallace’s mental health problems — remained unclear Tuesday.

Yes, a lot “remained unclear” about what happened Monday, except that a knife-wielding maniac got shot by cops. While the media keeps repeating the theme that Wallace suffered from “mental health problems,” lots of people have problems, but they usually don’t get shot by cops. Why? Because they don’t charge at cops with 8-inch knives.

Who was Walter Wallace Jr.? You have to read down to the 13th paragraph of the Philadelphia Inquirer story to find out:

In and out of court since he was 19, Wallace had convictions for crimes including resisting arrest and robbery. Court records show that city judges routinely sought to get him mental health treatment.

Oh, he had “convictions for crimes”? Maybe that’s a fact important enough to include in a headline, as Information Liberation does:

Meet Walter Wallace Jr, The Career Criminal
Whose Shooting by Police Triggered Riots in Philly

There’s some brutal for you, and maybe people would take a different view of the subject if they understood that Walter Wallace Jr. has been a violent menace to society his entire life. But the mainstream media won’t give you that kind of context, forcing you to read through a dozen or more paragraphs before they inform you that the lunatic who charged cops with a knife had an extensive criminal record. Would you like to see the suspect’s mug shot? How about 12 mug shots?

As Chris Menahan of Information Liberation says, Wallace “has so many mugshots I couldn’t fit them all into one properly-sized header image . . . Wallace had a criminal record going so far back I can’t even find the whole thing.” Charged in 2015 with aggravated assault and four misdemeanors, Wallace took a plea bargain, pleading guilty to two misdemeanors — terrorist threats and simple assault — and was sentenced to three years’ probation. You might think this was important, but here’s the lead of the story at WCAU-TV, the NBC affiliate in Philadelphia:

A day after he was shot and killed by two police officers, sparking protests and a night of civil unrest in Philadelphia, family members of Walter Wallace Jr. are speaking out, describing him as a husband, father and aspiring musician who struggled with mental health issues.

An “aspiring musician who struggled with mental health issues”! The guy was practically Mozart, you might believe from that description, but if you keep reading until you get to the 21st paragraph:

Court records also reveal Wallace’s extensive criminal history.
He was arrested in March after he allegedly threatened his child’s mother over the phone, saying “I’ll shoot you and that house up.”
In 2019, he was charged with resisting arrest by “kicking the windows and door panels of a police patrol car.”
In 2016, during a robbery, he allegedly grabbed a woman by the neck and held what she believed to be a gun to her head, according to court records.
In 2013, Wallace’s mother had a protective order against him which he allegedly violated when he “threw water in her face and punched her in the face” and “threatened to return and shoot” her, according to court records.

He punched his own mother in the face, but you wouldn’t know that unless you read more than 20 paragraphs into the story. Never mind — go steal a big-screen TV at Wal-Mart, because social justice.

 




 

PHILADELPHIA RIOT

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A free advertisement for the Trump campaign broke out in Philadelphia last night. The Mostly Peaceful™ Protest included arson, looting and police seriously injured when they were run down in the streets by a rampaging motorist. What inspired this spontaneous expression of free speech was an incident in which cops responded to a 911 call about a man with a knife. Walter Wallace Jr., 27, reportedly had mental health problems. Police pulled their guns and ordered Wallace to drop the knife. Instead, he charged at them, and was shot about 10 times. Immediately, it was claimed (a) Wallace was not close enough to the cops to present a deadly threat, and (b) the cops fired more shots than were necessary to stop Wallace. To which I would reply (a) how close is “close enough”? and (b) how many times do the cops have to yell “drop the knife”?

Undecided voters in Pennsylvania can now ponder those questions while the Philly P.D. battles the rioting mob of Joe Biden voters.




 

Joe Biden Is Not Barack Obama (and Other Truths the Media Elite Can’t See)

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In 2016, Donald Trump got 62.9 million votes, or about 2 million more votes than Mitt Romney got in 2012. Who were those voters? Hillary Clinton sneered at them as “deplorables,” and media elites have spent the past four years trying to pretend those voters don’t matter. You see evidence of that kind of make-believe thinking everywhere, including the fervent hope that Joe Biden can “flip” states like North Carolina, Georgia and even Texas. These delusional beliefs are not merely symptoms of Trump Derangement Syndrome, but also a failure to understand what made Barack Obama so successful. It wasn’t just that he was “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” to quote Biden himself. Obama also had an excellent speaking voice, a fact I noted in a 2009 column:

Even his harshest critics will credit Barack Obama for being a tremendous orator. Put him in front of a TelePrompter with a good text, and the man’s sonorous baritone works wonders. For this power, his speechwriters can claim no credit. He could read the ingredients from the side panel of a box of pancake batter (“…dextrose, partially hydrogenated soybean oil with mono- and diglycerides…“) and inspire standing ovations from an audience of adoring Democrats.

Hillary Clinton didn’t have that, and neither does Joe Biden. Whatever else may happen in this election, Biden will not get Obama-level support — from black voters or anyone else — for the simple fact that Biden is not Obama. When you see polls that predict, for example, Biden winning North Carolina with a 4-point margin, you have to realize that the survey sample has been “weighted” according to the pollster’s speculative estimate of the electorate, an estimate that includes (among other things) a guess about how many black voters will turn out. A lot of smart-guy pundits would have you believe that Biden can win North Carolina because he’ll get Obama-level support from black voters there.

To such a proposition, I can only reply, we’ll see.

Count me skeptical about “Landslide Joe.” The Trump-hating media elite are projecting their own biases onto the electorate, assuming that their disdain for the president is shared by “swing state” voters whom they’ve never actually met. Maybe they’re right. I certainly cannot rule out the possibility that Biden will win, and if that happens, I’ll be going over vote tallies and exit-poll data like everybody else trying to figure out in hindsight what happened and why. Maybe in such a scenario, attention will focus on the accusations of financial mismanagement by Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale, which allegedly drained millions of dollars that Trump could have used for advertising in the final weeks of the campaign. But such hindsight recriminations on the Republican side won’t happen unless Biden wins, and I am not the only experienced campaign-watcher who is deeply skeptical about Biden’s chances.

Byron York covered a massive pro-Trump caravan in Washington, Pennsylvania, that attracted more than 2,000 vehicles, and the thing is (a) this is spontaneous grassroots activism not sponsored by the official campaign, and (b) this got next-to-zero coverage in the regular media. Meanwhile, what about the polls? Once you look past the topline numbers, you find all kinds of anomalous indications that “Landslide Joe” isn’t nearly the commanding front-runner his media fanboys seem to believe he is. Polls in Pennsylvania show Biden below the level of support in Philadelphia that Hillary Clinton had four years ago. If Joe is slipping in Philly, while rural Pennsylvanians are so fired up they’re organizing their own rallies, are we really supposed to believe Trump is down by five points there? And then there’s Ohio:

Brilliant yellow maple trees surround my mother-in-law’s home in rural Ohio, and the roads in her part of the state are lined not only with the colorful foliage of late October but also with signs expressing support for President Trump’s election. Anyone can look at the results from 2016 and see that Trump racked up majorities of 2 to 1 or more in this part of Ohio — 72 percent in Morrow County, 71 percent in Crawford County, 67 percent in Knox County, 66 percent in Richland County, 64 percent in Marion County. In fact, Trump won 80 of Ohio’s 88 counties four years ago, defeating Hillary Clinton by an eight-point margin statewide.
If you believe the polls, Joe Biden is neck-and-neck with Trump in Ohio. Three recent polls (New York Times, Quinnipiac, Rasmussen) showed Biden with a one-point lead, and the current RealClearPolitics average of Ohio polls has Trump ahead with a margin of less than 1 percentage point. But nobody believes the polls, especially when the numbers are starkly contradicted by on-the-ground evidence like the proliferation of roadside Trump signs. . . .

Read the rest of my latest column at The American Spectator.




 

Ohio Sheriff Offers Free One-Way Tickets to Celebrities Threatening to Leave U.S.

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Butler County is a suburb of Cincinnati:

Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones says he will help purchase one-way plane tickets for any celebrity who wishes to leave the country if President Donald Trump is reelected.
The sheriff, who has gone viral in the past for his Facebook posts, including his comments on the tensions between communities and police across the country. “I won’t tolerate it, period. You shoot at the police expect us to shoot back,” Jones said in September.
Now, Jones is commenting on the upcoming presidential election.
“Celebrities threatening to leave the United States if the president is re-elected. This happened in 2016 and it is believed not one celebrity left then and it appears the same threats are being made this election year,” Jones wrote on Facebook.
“I hope you do leave and if there’s any way I can help — I’m not a rich person — but I would be willing to throw in $10 to a special fund to help get you a flight or whatever it takes,” Jones said in a video which now has 125,000 views. . . .
“I’ll even help them pack,” Jones wrote.
In the video, the sheriff explained how he believes the United States is the greatest country in the world, “regardless of who the president is.”
“I will help fund that trip. You just can’t come back,” Jones said.

You tell ’em, sheriff!