The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Debate: J.D. Vance Defeats Tim Walz, Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan

Posted on | October 1, 2024 | 1 Comment

Tim Walz not answering a question about China

America wanted the answers to two crucial questions:

  1. Is there any politician in America less qualified for high public office than Kamala Harris?

    2. and

  2. Is it possible for debate moderators to be worse than ABC’s David Muir and Linsey Davis?

The answer to both questions is a surprising “yes.” Tim Walz is less qualified than Kamala, and Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan were the worst debate moderators in the history of debate moderators.

It was another three-way gang-up, with the three Democrats (Walz, O’Donnell and Brennan) taking turns hurling accusations at Vance. Every question was either a Democratic Party talking point or, in some cases, a set-up to give Walz a chance to explain away his own various scandals. Like, they asked Walz about changing his gun-control stance, and he does his yada, yada, yada (obviously a rehearsed response) and then — without giving Vance a chance to reply — they moved on to housing.

Then, after Walz gets to do his spin on housing, they go to Vance and then back to Walz, so he can “respond to an allegation” that Vance made about Harris’s immigration policy. This is one example of a pattern that repeated itself throughout the “debate.” Any criticism Vance made of the Biden-Harris administration was labeled by the moderators as an “allegation” to which Walz was then invited to respond.

Give credit to J.D. Vance. He was focused and unflappable, maintaining his poise and stating his points clearly and confidently. Also, Vance is just much better-looking than Walz, which matters a lot on TV, especially when the target audience is confused suburban white women who can’t make up their mind who they want to vote for: “Hey, that guy with the beard has cute blue eyes . . .” That’s a few votes in swing states.



 

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Category: Debates, J.D. Vance, Tim Walz

In The Mailbox: 09.30.24

Posted on | October 1, 2024 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 09.30.24

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Condolences to my favorite actuary & sumo fan, Mary Pat Campbell, on the loss of her husband Stu. Requiem aeternam dona eis Domine; et lux perpetua luceat eis.
Did you back the Starquest Indiegogo campaign but haven’t heard from the Wrights? They want to hear from you!
Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

The shape of things to come? (@skscartoons on X)

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Hurricane Helene – Aftermath In The Big Bend
EBL: Hezbollah Terror Leader Hassan Nasrallah Gets Sent To Hell , Maggie Smith, RIP, and Kris Kristofferson, RIP
Twitchy: She Was Sleep-Deprived?! MSNBC Says Kamala Has To Address Communist Memes, and Villain Of The Year
Louder With Crowder: Popular actor shocks Hollywood with his endorsement of Donald Trump to “make America great again”, Eight illegals arrested looting from flood-ravaged victims in Tennessee, and Drag queens demand swing state NBA team stay out of their, quote, “gayborhood”
Vox Popoli: The Corpocracy Devours Itself, Head of the Snake Strategy, Late-Stage Retardery, Disordered and Unaccountable, and Don’t Get Too Excited
Postcards From Barsoom: White Ethnic Cleansing As Social Control, 
Stoc Observations: Infinite Imagination, also, The Sun God Theory
Upstream Reviews: In The Palace Of Shadow & Joy, 
Tom Kratman: The Care & Feeding Of YOUR Right-Wing Death Squad – Splitters!
Defending The Wood Perilous: The Grooming Of America (and the World)

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: The Spiritual Battle is for Eternity
American Conservative: Zelensky’s Victory Plan Contains No Victory and No Plan, also, Ukraine-Skeptical Conservatives Win in Austrian Election
American Greatness: Department of Justice Sues Alabama to Keep Illegal Aliens on Voter Rolls, Trump Says He’s Working With Musk to Get Starlink to Areas Hit by Hurricane Helene, and Comer Subpoenas DHS for Records Related to Walz’s Ties to Chinese Communist Party Following New Whistleblower Revelations
American Power: Dana Bash and David Fisher, America’s Deadliest Election
American Thinker: American Blacks — Please Read This Before You Ever Vote Democrat Again, The Startling Metadata Hidden within the Polling: Voters Love Trump, and Who Fact Checks the Fact Checkers?
Animal Magnetism: Goodbye, Blue Monday
Babalu Blog: Cuban opposition leader says Castro dictatorship fears another massive uprising, Communist Cuba’s dwindling ration book spreads more hunger across the island, and Foreign Minister of Cuba runs amok in New York City, leads various communist pep rallies
BattleSwarm: Paxton Sues Biden Admin Over Gender Madness Yet Again, Nasrallah Lotsa Fallouta, and Fort Worth ISD Bets On “Equity,” Loses
Behind The Black: SpaceX launches two astronauts to ISS, setting new annual launch record for the U.S., Proposed commercial spaceport in Azores launches two suborbital demonstration rockets, Curiosity spots a corroded weathered rock, Perseverance looks uphill, and Course carnage at Harvard as more than 30 queer and Marxist classes get axed
Cafe Hayek: On Oren Cass’s “Lopsided Exchange of Cheap Goods for Financial Assets”, also, Oren Cass Carelessly Misinterprets Me
CDR Salamander: The Pentagon’s Gordian Knot – On Midrats, 
Chicago Boyz: Bombing the Houthis, also, He Who Must Not Be Named
Da Tech Guy: Must See Movies: All Through the Night (1942), Stating the Obvious – Kamala is the Iran/Russia Candidate, A memorable, for all the wrong reasons, 2024 Chicago White Sox season, and Five Fast Thoughts Under the Fedora
Dana Loesch: Faux-sassin Charged With Attempted Assassination Of Trump
Don Surber: Tell me about that Kamala landslide
First Street Journal: Insane: Minneapolis Caliphate Hires First Non-Citizen To Be A Police Officer, also, John Kerry lets us know that the Democrats have not given up on the idea of regulating speech
Gates Of Vienna: A Failed State and an Irresponsible Justice System, Farewell to the Italian Scooter Girl, and Jew-Hatred, Italian Style
The Geller Report: Netanyahu to the Iranian People: “The People of Iran, Know That Israel Stands By Your Side.”
Hollywood In Toto: Vindicating Trump Gives Chilling Election Preview, Zachary Levi’s Trump Support Shows True Hollywood Bravery, and Everybody Hates Ellen: Media Torch For Your Approval
The Lid: Elon Musk Warns Americans that the Democrat Party is Importing Millions of Illegals to Destroy Democracy
Legal Insurrection: Newsom Signs Bill Reversing Harris-Promoted Truancy Prosecution Law, Netflix Cancellations Skyrocketed After Founder Donated, Endorsed Harris, Biden Confuses Israeli Airstrikes in Yemen With Union Strikes, Walz Lied About Being in Hong Kong During Tiananmen Square Massacre, and Harris’s Photo of Her Talking Helene Relief With FEMA Fails on Many Levels
Michele Catalano: the week(s) in joy
Nebraska Energy Observer: Lost Weekend In The City of Thieves Part 5, also, Building, and Rebuilding, America
Outkick: Reds Legend Pete Rose Passes at 83, SJSU’s Brooke Slusser Speaks Out On Fight Against NCAA: ‘Title IX Exists For A Reason’, NASCAR Star Rescues Hurricane Survivors While White House Sleeps, The New York Mets Will Play October Baseball Thanks To A Wild Victory Over Atlanta, and Heidi Klum Has No Plans To Stop Running Around On The Beach With Her Boobs Hanging Out
Power Line: A criminal invasion, Memories of Hurricane Katrina, GOP Rising, and Thoughts from the ammo line
Protein Wisdom Reborn: Notes from a cluttered mind
Shark Tank: Donalds Responds To Zelensky’s Pennsylvania Trip
Shot In The Dark: Klink Salutes You, Tim Crow, and His Master’s Voice
STUMP: Ohio STRS Drama Continues, The Week In Meep – Happy Michaelmas! and RIP M. Stuart Grace
The Political Hat: What Was Seen Is Now Hidden Again
This Ain’t Hell: Deployment related pay delayed for deployed Soldiers, also, Vet/pilot Kris Kristofferson, 88, dead
Transterrestrial Musings: West Point
Victory Girls: Helene Leaves Mountain Towns Decimated In Appalachia
Volokh Conspiracy: Criminal Conviction Based on “Only Women Can Be Mothers” and “‘Transing’ Kids Is Abuse and Homophobia” Signs
Watts Up With That: Climate Obsessed Britain Closes the Last British Coal Plant, The Green New Folly: How Virtue-Signaling Killed a Ferry and Wasted Millions, and Are Hurricanes Getting Stronger?
The Federalist: Hurricane Helene Fallout Shows Why America Can’t Afford Another Potemkin Presidency, Kamala Harris Doesn’t Care About White People, America’s Current Schooling Catastrophes Were Set In Motion 100 Years Ago, How Does Nevada Keep Bad Actors From Abusing Its Insecure Online Voting System? Officials Can’t Say, and FEMA Website Admits Keeping You Alive In A Natural Disaster Isn’t Its Top Priority
Mark Steyn: Talking Trivia on the Cliff-Edge, Identity and Evasion, Democracy Dies In…Secret Service Headquarters, The Politicization of American Justice, and Americans Abroad: The Cold War in Whit Stillman’s Barcelona

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Category: Linkagery

Rule 5 Sunday: Loungewear.

Posted on | September 30, 2024 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

I forgot to mention this in the FMJRA, your usual source for all things Senators, but Pete Da Tech Guy has asked me to inform the commentariat that the Cubs are available for the upcoming 1974 season in our Dynasty Baseball league. The Cubs finished 57-105, eleven games ahead of the hapless Dodgers, so they’ll get to draft second.
If you’re of a certain age, you probably remember this hilarious Wendy’s commercial poking fun at the lack of choice in the former Soviet Union. Fortunately, our ladies’ choices in loungewear are considerably more attractive and varied. This pic comes to us courtesy of Rule 5 Texan on X.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.

Very nice.

ANIMAL MAGNETISM: Rule 5 Campaign Speech Friday and the Saturday Gingermageddon.

EBL: Saturday Night Girls With Guns, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, The MLF Of Norway, MAGA Surge, Big Night, Matlock, A Serious Man, Becky Foster, Blood Simple, The Julie Andrews Show, MAGA Danica Patrick, Everyone Should Avoid Olivia Nuzzi, Hotel Cocaine, Munich Oktoberfest 2024, and The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai

A VIEW FROM THE BEACH: Ekaterina Enokaeva, Fish Pic Friday – Laura Longnecker, Most Americans Expect Another Assassination Attempt, Mayor Adams Indicted, Tattoo Thursday, The Wednesday Wetness, Routh Letter Admits Assassination Attempt, Offers Bounty, Tuesday Tanlines, Oprah Plumps for Kamala, The Monday Morning Stimulus, Are Snakeheads Enjoying Some Midsummer Delight?, Who Elected Jill Biden?, and Palm Sunday.

FLAPPR: T.I.T.S. for September 27

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Category: Rule 5

FMJRA 2.0: Wait Until Next Year

Posted on | September 29, 2024 | Comments Off on FMJRA 2.0: Wait Until Next Year

— compiled by Wombat-socho

The season ended with the Pirates sweeping the Senators at Three Rivers, finally putting the season out of its misery. We finished last in the Beta Division of the American League at 67-95, six games behind the A’s but still ahead of the O’s and Royals, who finished at 62-100. This is actually the second-best season we’ve had so far if you exclude the short 1969 season when we were 60-66, but after last year’s 91-71 finish we were hoping to at least break .500.

In other news, a distressing notice from our friends at Flappr.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.

Time to compile the keepers list (it’ll be short)

STOP DOING THIS!
The Daley Gator
Flappr
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

FMJRA 2.0: One Last Series
The Daley Gator
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

Rule 5 Sunday: Moving Indoors
Animal Magnetism
Flappr
A View From The Beach
EBL

The Slow Death of Kamala’s ‘Joy’
Flappr
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

Sports, Politics and War: Morale Matters
The Daley Gator
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 09.27.24 (Returning From The Secret City Edition)
EBL
357 Magnum

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Category: FMJRA Award

Media Mourns Loss of Terrorist Leader

Posted on | September 28, 2024 | 1 Comment

After much blowback — were college interns working the weekend copy desk? — Associated Press has changed that headline, but what was the logic? How does the journalistic “mainstream” reach a point where a bloodthirsty Jew-hater like Hassan Nasrallah gets such a fond send-off from AP? Dig the euphemism in the lead paragraph, where Hezbollah is described as a “Lebanese militant group” when, in fact, they are a gang of Islamic terrorist thugs sponsored by Iran which, to their credit, the AP more or less admits farther down in the story:

An astute strategist, the 64-year-old Nasrallah reshaped Hezbollah into an archenemy of Israel, cementing alliances with Shiite religious leaders in Iran and Palestinian militant groups such as Hamas.
Under his leadership, Hezbollah fought wars against Israel and took part in the conflict in neighboring Syria, helping tip the balance of power in favor of President Bashar Assad.
Idolized by his Lebanese Shiite followers and respected by millions of others across the Arab and Islamic world, Nasrallah held the title of sayyid, an honorific meant to signify the Shiite cleric’s lineage dating back to the Prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam.
A fiery orator viewed as an extremist in the United States and much of the West, he was also considered a pragmatist compared to the militants who dominated Hezbollah after its founding in 1982, during Lebanon’s civil war.

You know who else was “fiery orator viewed as an extremist in the United States and much of the West”? A guy named Adolf Hitler. Perhaps you’ve heard of him. Anyway, Nasrallah is dead, as are other top Hezbollah leaders including Ali Karaki. Bibi Netanyahu is Israel’s Michael Corleone, settling all the family business. Can you imagine being a junior “militant” in Hezbollah and learning that you’ve gotten promoted because the guy above you in the terrorist hierarchy just got killed?



 

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Category: Israel, Lebanon, Terrorism

In The Mailbox: 09.27.24 (Returning From The Secret City Edition)

Posted on | September 28, 2024 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 09.27.24 (Returning From The Secret City Edition)

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Usual weekend deadlines for the usual weekend posts.
The week I spent at Oak Ridge TN was educational, informative, interesting, and unfortunately I was hideously jet-lagged and short on sleep for about half of it. That having been said, if you’re in the neighborhood, you should absolutely visit the K-25 Museum, which is chock-full of cool Manhattan Project information and spiffy exhibits.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.

“I picked a bad week to give up booze and smoking.”

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: A $12 Billion Jobs Program For Particle Physicists, Self-Defense Is Legal In Michigan, Good Guys 5 Bad Guys 0, Fecesbook & The CDC Conspired To Limit Speech, and What’s The Opposite Of Diversity?
EBL: Tropical Storm Helene Brings The Rain, also, MAGA Surge
Twitchy: Democrat Congresswoman’s Crazy Video Provides More Proof We Need Term Limits, Giorgia Meloni Wrecks “Little Macron” After He Stupidly Picks A Fight With Her, and Kamala Ran To The Border And Suddenly Believes It Shouldn’t Be Wide Open
Louder With Crowder: CNN discovers blue state parents pass their hate down to their kids while red state parents don’t, also, Democrat Rep insists the entire purpose of the DOJ is to go after Donald Trump & “Christian Nationalists”
Vox Popoli: A Futile Warning, Russia Changes Nuke Doctrine, I May Have Been Wrong, Reads Like Victory, and So Much for “Self Defense”
According To Hoyt: Things You Don’t Know You Need, Pebbles And Votes, and The Finite Pie
Upstream Reviews: The Princess Seeks Her Fortune, Nightfall In Middle-Earth, The Icarus Twin, A Loving Homage To 40 Years Of Transformers, and The Romanov Rescue, 
Defending The Wood Perilous: Babes In Regencyland, also, Gypsie Princess Effie’s Diary #11
Stoic Observations: The Major Leagues Vs. Congress, Family 171, and Wogs Of The Future, 
Postcards From Barsoom: To Shatter Men’s Souls, 
Flappr: Big TD’s Football Blog Week 3
Ammo.com: Gun Deaths In America

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
BattleSwarm: LinkSwarm For September 27
CDR Salamander: 20th & 21st Century Lessons With Chinese Characteristics, How Do You Say “Frog Soup” In Mandarin? There’s Already A War In Lebanon, Podcast #2, This Is What Your Navy With Accountancy In Primacy Looks Like, Diversity Thursday, and Fullbore Friday
Dana Loesch: Last Week In Legal – Pop Culture Edition, FCC’s Carr Says Soros Could Kick Conservatives Off Radio Stations, School Suspends Kid For Laying Out Cans In The Shape Of A Gun, Thursday Evening Culture, and The War On Warhammer
Don Surber: The cheat goes on, Who approved indicting Diddy? Does Trump pay them to endorse Kamala-dee-dah? Trump is not alone, and The least shocking endorsement of them all
Glenn Reynolds: Criminalizing Science Fraud,
Hans Schantz: September 2024 Based Book Projects,
michele catalano: Betting It All Away,
Protein Wisdom Reborn: Are You Racist? Notes From A Cluttered Mind, Totem Polls, Humpday Shrapnel, Of Mice & Mens, and Mental Sorbet 3
STUMP: The Week In Meep, IgNobel 2024 Winner, Taxing Tuesday – SALTy Trump, Cancer Watch, 
The Political Hat: Artificial Leg Muscles Mean One Thing: Catgirls Who Can Run, Dance, And Skip, When Optional Indoctrination Is Mandatory, and Free to Choose Friday, Revisited (Part 5)

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Category: Linkagery

Sports, Politics and War: Morale Matters

Posted on | September 26, 2024 | Comments Off on Sports, Politics and War: Morale Matters

The benefits of having a readership full of nerds is that sometimes they can teach you things, as in this comment on yesterday’s post:

Obscure wargaming reference here. In the old Avalon Hill Game called Kingmaker — a simulation of the Wars of the Roses — one of the most annoying random event cards is “Defeatism Rife”. Worse than “Plague!” and less amusing then “The King Goes Hunting”. No matter how powerful your faction is, you suddenly lose the ability to leverage your offices, bishoprics, and mercenaries. Your winning faction with an military power of 540 is now a weak 40 for a Turn.
In life, defeatism is similar. I love it — in my enemies and rivals. They defeat themselves before I even move against them. That is why despair is a sin — the Sin of Sloth IIRC.

One is reminded of the old adage that England’s wars were won on the playing fields of Eton, by which it was meant that the education system of British leadership caste was such as to instill in young men the attitudes necessary to victory. The old “stiff upper lip” disposition of British officers, the quality of calm amid crisis, the dogged persistence in the face of daunting odds and discouraging setbacks — “the playing fields of Eton” taught those qualities, somehow. If there is any cause to be pessimistic about America’s future, certainly the state of our education system is at the top of the list, because there is no effort to create leadership of that character. Indeed, our education system is run by people who lack patriotism and clearly do not wish to make our nation stronger. How could “gender theory” lectures contribute to such a project?

Whenever the topic turns to tactics and strategy in politics, we naturally borrow our metaphors from sports and warfare, both of which involve competition between rival teams, in which victory requires cooperation — good teamwork — by the winning side. One of the surest harbingers of failure in any such endeavor is when team members cannot restrain their selfish ambitions and suppress their personal pride in the way necessary for successful team cooperation. Think of the numerous humiliations that George S. Patton had to endure — e.g., being sidelined because of controversy over his slapping a soldier he regarded as a cowardly malingerer — before finally getting his chance at military glory. Or think about the “Wilderness Years” of Churchill, when he was frozen out of the Cabinet while Baldwin and Chamberlain pursued a disastrous policy of appeasement. Being able to keep up the fight — to maintain one’s morale — amid such discouragement is the stuff of greatness.

(Shameless Capitalism Alert: You can buy Winston Churchill’s The Gathering Storm and Their Finest Hour via our Amazon Affiliates link. What the heck, why not buy the entire six-volume set of Churchill’s World War II history? While you’re at it, go pick up the old 1976 “Kingmaker” game set from Avalon Hill. As always, when you purchase products through our Amazon Affiliates links, we receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thanks!)

In any long conflict, history teaches, the leader who emerges victorious at the end usually is someone who was relatively obscure when the conflict began. Prior to the American Civil War, U.S. Grant was certainly not the kind of figure anyone would have expected to end the war as top army commander, and when World War II began, Dwight Eisenhower was not a household name. The lesson history teaches is that men destined for greatness often have to “wait their turn,” to persevere through adversity and overcome disadvantages, in order to find their opportunity.

Carolina Panthers fans were celebrating Sunday after veteran quarterback Andy Dalton threw for 319 yards and three touchdowns to lead their team to their first victory of the season — in fact, their first win since last December. The Panthers had the worst record in the NFL last year (2-15) as No. 1 draft pick quarterback Bryce Young struggled in his rookie season and, by “struggled,” I mean failed. After back-to-back defeats to open this season, Carolina head coach Dave Canales benched Young and brought in Dalton, a 36-year-old who has bounced around the league since his glory days with the Cincinnati Bengals more than a decade ago. Dalton hadn’t done much during stints with Dallas, Chicago and New Orleans, and most NFL fans had figured he was nearing retirement while riding the bench behind the rookie QB Young in Carolina. Would replacing Young with Dalton make a difference for the Panthers, who seemed so lacking in overall talent? I didn’t expect any such thing, but what Andy Dalton did against the Raiders on Sunday was a clinic, a showcase of football excellence that seemed to lift the entire team to new heights. I still don’t think Carolina has a snowball’s chance in hell of making the playoffs, but for one day, Andy Dalton was Hercules in cleats, a demigod hero. (I should be writing scripts for NFL Films.)

That’s the kind of saga that inspires us to hope at times when our situation seems hopeless. There was no reason Panthers fans should have expected that, after more than 15 years in the league, Andy Dalton should suddenly recapture his former Pro Bowl form to spark an upset over the Raiders, and yet that’s what happened. The lession — never get demoralized. Don’t let the “Defeatism Rife” card defeat you.

Also from the comments on yesterday’s post, we were reminded of William Jacobson’s warning against “Operation Demoralize”:

 

Don’t let them demoralize you, and don’t be part of the discouraging chorus of Eeyores, spreading pessimism about the election.



 

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Category: History, Politics

STOP DOING THIS!

Posted on | September 25, 2024 | Comments Off on STOP DOING THIS!

Look, I don’t want to name any names or call anybody out, but I am sick and tired of the defeatist negativity that crops up in the comments every time I blog about the election. Whenever I point to hopeful signs about November (as I did on Tuesday), the comments fill up with a chorus of doomsayers, declaring that there’s no way that any Republican can ever win anywhere because the Democrats are certain to steal the election. It’s “rigged” to the point of 100% certainty, proclaim the chorus of Eeyores, who always see the glass as half-empty and never let a glint of optimistic sunshine penetrate their preferred gloom of hopelessness. STOP IT!

This struck me when I looked at the comments not only here, but over at my American Spectator column. There are some people who appear to be temperamentally averse to good news, and feel compelled to share their discouragement with everyone — Apostles of Defeatism, so to speak.

What got me about such comments on my American Spectator column is that some of them implied that I had not considered the possibility of Democrats cheating, when in fact I’d included no fewer than three such references, including a specific mention of “ballot harvesting.” What’s the point of writing, if people are not even going to pay attention to what you write? “Oh, here’s a headline suggesting Trump could win — let me jump in the comments to rain on everybody’s parade.”

Do these commenters not realize that, as co-author of Donkey Cons, I wrote an entire chapter about the Democratic Party’s long and sordid history of election fraud? Must I flaunt my credentials as having somewhat more expertise in politics than the average guy on his sofa yelling at the TV news? Or are my rhetorical skills insufficient to convey the impression that I know what I’m talking about?

If you are among the (evidentaly) few who actually bothered to read my American Spectator column in its entirety, you see that it hinges on the predictive value of polling: Examining how closely polls (both individually and collectively) predicted past election results, and using this data to estimate the final result based on the prior track record.

Producing such an analysis is made easier, as I said in my column, with the tools provided by Real Clear Politics. Anyone who really cares enough to investigate this issue can do it, but it does take some effort — apparently more effort than most big-time journalists are willing to do, or they’d be hitting the panic button at CNN and MSNBC by what such research reveals about Kamala Harris’s chances in November.

Let’s take one battleground state, Michigan, as an example. According to the RCP average as of Tuesday, Michigan is Harris +1.8, but on the same date in 2020, Biden was +5.2 in Michigan and, because his final official margin of victory was 2.8 points, this gives us a measurement of predictive value — a 3.4-point swing, so that if the RCP average has Harris +1.8, the predictive value is Trump +1.6.

As I explained in my column, you can do this not only with RCP averages, but with specific pollsters. For example, the Marist poll has Harris +5 in Michigan now. But in September 2020, when Marist was polling for NBC News, they had Biden +8, which is 5.2 points higher than Biden’s final margin, meaning that the Harris +5 result by Marist has the predictive value of a narrow Trump victory in Michigan.

Guess what? If you go back into the 2016 and 2020 results, nationally or state-by-state, you’ll have a hard time finding polls that don’t overstate the Democratic vote, sometimes by mind-boggling margins. Practically all public pollsters err in the same direction, and I don’t think this is a coincidence. They’re not polling to find public opinion; they’re polling to influence public opinion. Most polls are literally political propaganda for Democrats — disinformation! — and Democrats know this as well as anyone, which is why they’re doing their own “internal” polls, which tell a very different story than what most public pollsters are telling us.

Harris’s path to 270 Electoral College is very narrow, primarily because of how badly she’s doing in Pennsylvania. With 19 Electoral College votes, Pennsylvania is the largest battleground state and the RCP average on Tuesday had it Harris +0.6; on the same date in 2020, RCP had Biden +4.3 in Pennsylvania. Because he only won the state by 1.2 points, the current Harris result has the predictive value of Trump +3.1.

DONALD TRUMP IS WINNING PENNSYLVANIA!

Shut up, you damned Eeyores! I can picture you poring over the RCP average trying to find a gray cloud to darken the horizon. “What about this Quinnipiac poll showing Harris +5 in Pennsylvania?” Picture my grin as I tell you that, in 2020, Quinnipiac had Biden +13 in Pennsylvania.

Thirteen points! Any Quinnipiac poll showing Kamala Harris with less than a double-digit lead is, in fact, predicting a Trump victory.

Those of you who are addicted to pessimism — discouragement junkies, seeking your daily fix of gloom — will have to look elsewhere to satify your craving. It’s all sunshine and flowers here, baby.



 

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Category: Election, Polls
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