Majority Leader Mitch McConnell: The 'Senate's Time is at Hand' (VIDEO)

It's impeachment trial, Day 2.

The Majority Leader skewers the Dems and it's hilarious.

At at New York Times, via Memeorandum, "Trump Legal Team to Add Starr and Dershowitz for Senate Trial."

Elizabeth Warren Accused Bernie Sanders of Calling Her a 'Liar on National TV (VIDEO)

Most people are with Bernie on this, but it hasn't been disproved to me that Bernie's not a misogynist, as much as I like the guy.

The Bernie Bros mimic their model.

In any case, at LAT, "Can a woman win the presidency? Democratic debate delves into sexism in politics."

And the Other McCain, "Elizabeth Warren’s Media Helpers Try to Revive Her Campaign at Bernie’s Expense":

Tuesday’s Democratic presidential debate was so white that Antifa would punch it in the face, and moderators for CNN made it clear who they favored among the six white Democrats assembled on the Des Moines stage. We haven’t seen the memo from CNN chief Jeff Zucker, but it was obvious that the assignment was to (a) attack Bernie Sanders and (b) boost Elizabeth Warren. Perhaps many Sanders supporters — who saw their candidate get cheated out of the 2016 nomination by DNC insiders working for Hillary Clinton — will now agree with President Trump’s assessment of the media as “the enemy of the people.”

Elizabeth Warren Too Far Left?

You don't say?

At LAT, "Does her healthcare plan make Warren too liberal to win?":

Does her healthcare plan make Warren too liberal to win? https://t.co/0qpF0wp73A

— L.A. Times Politics (@latimespolitics) November 8, 2019

WASHINGTON  —  Among her many proposals, an interviewer asked Sen. Elizabeth Warren, which three would she like to sign into law first?

Her anti-corruption plan, an end to the Senate filibuster and a wealth tax, the Massachusetts senator responded Thursday to Angela Rye, the liberal activist and CNN commentator.

Notice something missing?

Warren never wanted health care to dominate her campaign. After a week in which her detailed, sweeping Medicare for all plan has done exactly that, she’d still prefer to focus elsewhere.

The issue threatens significant harm to her presidential ambitions. Her inability to escape it provides a clear lesson in the power that activists wield to box in candidates on issues they care about.

THE ACTIVIST TRAP

In 2018, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) gave clear instructions about healthcare to her candidates: Put Republicans on the defensive; focus on GOP efforts to wipe out protections for people with preexisting health problems; don’t get drawn into a debate over Medicare for all.

That strategy worked: Democrats swept to a majority in the House, capturing 40 seats — one of the largest electoral waves since World War II — and healthcare played a major role.

That game plan remains available to the Democratic presidential candidates; the Trump administration has given them plenty of ammunition. For example, administration lawyers in July asked a federal court to declare the Affordable Care Act invalid — protections for preexisting conditions and all — and a decision in that case could come any day.

Instead, the candidates have largely done the opposite of what Pelosi recommended. They’ve occasionally attacked Trump over his efforts to take health coverage away from millions of potential voters, but they’ve more often gone after each other on their respective plans to expand coverage.

The path they’ve taken illustrates a key dynamic that shapes primary campaigns, often regardless of candidates’ wishes, said Patrick J. Egan, a political scientist at New York University who studies the way parties define themselves to voters through ownership of specific issues.

“Both parties’ coalitions include single-issue activists” who “propel policy agendas and major legislation that contributes substantially to the party’s brand,” Egan said in an email.

That can help a party cement its position because the public generally trusts each party more on the issues it “owns,” such as “terrorism and crime for the Republicans and the environment and health care for the Democrats,” he said.

But that can be a two-edged sword. Activists “wield an immense amount of influence in party primaries” because they can help marshal volunteers, grassroots donors and energy, Egan noted. At the same time, however, they push policies that are “often more extreme than the public wants” — huge tax cuts for the wealthy, in the case of Republicans, for example, and Medicare for all in the current Democratic debate.

What’s the evidence that Medicare for all is “more extreme” than voters want? Some of the best information comes from a new study of voters in four key electoral battlegrounds — Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota — that the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Cook Political Report released Thursday.

Trump carried three of those four states in 2016 and almost surely needs to win them again for reelection. Currently, he’s deeply unpopular in the states he won: 57% disapprove of him in Wisconsin; 58%, in Michigan; 61%, in Pennsylvania, the survey found. Across the four states, half of voters say they “strongly disapprove” of Trump.

The poll also found Democrats have an edge in enthusiasm in those states and that Trump is the biggest motivator for voters.

Another piece of good news for Democrats: Health care ranks with the economy as the most important issue for voters in all four states, and a majority of voters disapprove of how Trump has handled the issue.

The bad news? A majority of voters in those states also say that a national Medicare for all plan that would eliminate private insurance — the sort of plan Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders advocate — would be a “bad idea”: 56% in Pennsylvania, 58% in Michigan, 59% in Wisconsin, 60% in Minnesota.

Even among Democratic voters, Medicare for all is not a top priority: About 60% of Democrats in the four states call it a good idea, but that’s notably less than the support for proposals such as a path to citizenship for undocumented residents or a ban on assault weapons.

Warren’s a smart politician, and for months she steered as clear of the healthcare debate as she could. Even as her advocacy of highly specific policy ideas fueled her steady rise in the Democratic race, she demurred when pressed on the specifics of healthcare.

“No one’s raised it,” she told reporters early this year when asked why she hadn’t released a specific healthcare plan. The consistent message from Warren’s campaign was that Medicare for all was “Bernie’s issue,” not theirs...

More.

William Jacobson on Shannon Bream's Show on Fox News (VIDEO)

I was watching, which is unusual, because I've been tuning out cable news this year for the most part. I happened to have Fox News on when William appeared.

At Legal Insurrection, "Elizabeth Warren’s Medicare-for-All tax plan is as credible as her claim to be Native American."

Liz Cheney Slams Elizabeth Warren as a 'Laughingstock'

You gotta love it!

At WaPo, "Rep. Liz Cheney says Elizabeth Warren is a "laughingstock" for having claimed Native American ancestry."

CNN’s Jake Tapper: “What about the language the President uses and the joking references to genocide against Native Americans?”

Rep. Liz Cheney: “Elizabeth Warren has made herself a laughingstock, and I don’t think anybody should be surprised that’s been the reaction to her” pic.twitter.com/15VbWPFLq4

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) February 10, 2019

Elizabeth Warren Releases DNA Test Showing 1/1024 Native American Ancestry

This has been the big story at Memeorandum all day.

See the Boston Globe (safe link), "Warren releases results of DNA test."

And at Twitchy, "MATH doesn’t add up! It gets WORSE for Elizabeth Warren and her DNA release (hint, she’s STILL Fauxcahontas)."

MATH doesn’t add up! It gets WORSE for Elizabeth Warren and her DNA release (hint, she’s STILL Fauxcahontas) https://t.co/IdMKPdokND

— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) October 15, 2018

And from William Jacobson, at Legal Insurrection, "Elizabeth Warren DNA test does NOT prove she’s Native American, contrary to the hype."

Elizabeth Warren DNA test does NOT prove she’s Native American, contrary to the hype https://t.co/pzcnb2zsZP pic.twitter.com/24lnwn4lQZ

— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) October 15, 2018

Elizabeth Warren Cut Off from Speaking Against Jeff Sessions Because She Violated Senate Rules

Heh.

From Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit, "THE TRAIL OF (CROCODILE) TEARS FROM THIS WILL BE ENDLESS."

ADDED: At USA Today, "Why Elizabeth Warren was accused of 'impugning' Jeff Sessions."

Democrats Divided on Their Path to 2016

From Karen Tumulty, at the Washington Post:

In the six weeks since their repudiation in the midterms, Democrats have seen the opening of fissures within their once-disciplined ranks, marking the start of an internal struggle between now and the 2016 election over the ideological identity and tactical direction of the party.

The tension — shown in high relief during the messy final days of the congressional session — is in some ways a mirror image of the stresses within the Republican Party, which has been divided between its tea party and establishment factions in recent years.

In the case of both parties, the argument pits the more populist, purist elements of the base against the more pragmatic center.

For Democrats, “it is a conflict that was looking for an occasion,” said William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who was a policy adviser to former President Bill Clinton. “The election provided the occasion.”

Having lost big in November, two wings within the party have been trading recriminations over which was more to blame while jostling for position to be the face of the Democrats going into 2016.

They are personified by former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton, the presumptive presidential front-runner by virtue of her stature and fame, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the anti-Wall Street clarion favored by many on the left to challenge Clinton for the Democratic nomination.

If the loss of the Senate intensified strains within the party, the $1.1 trillion spending bill that passed Saturday night raised two issues that acted as matches to gasoline. One was a provision rolling back portions of the 2010 financial regulatory law known as the Dodd-Frank Act. The other loosened campaign donation limits, allowing the wealthy to give three times the current maximum to the national political parties. That means even more clout for rich donors and the interests they represent.

In both instances, the question was not whether Democrats supported the individual provisions — they generally do not. It was whether individual members considered them so egregious as to merit blowing up a wide-ranging deal to which Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) had been a party and for which President Obama was personally lobbying.

“What we saw over the last couple of days is an example of a debate that is probably going to go on for a while in the party,” said Jim Manley, a Democratic strategist and former aide to Reid.

Proponents of the legislation argued that they had succeeded in preventing even more provisions weakening Dodd-Frank from being inserted in the bill. And at any rate, they said, the legislation was far better than anything Democrats could expect should they allow the debate to continue into next year, when Republicans will be in control of the House and Senate.

But Warren urged her colleagues to hold the line, particularly against the banks whose political influence she accused her own party of abetting.

“Enough is enough with Wall Street insiders getting key position after key position and the kind of cronyism we have seen in the executive branch,” she said in a fiery speech on the Senate floor. “Enough is enough with Citigroup passing eleventh-hour deregulatory provisions that nobody takes ownership over but that everybody comes to regret. Enough is enough.”

So strident was her opposition that it drew comparison with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), who had led the charge against the bill from the right based on opposition to Obama’s immigration policies.

Democratic leaders denied any symmetry.

Cross your fingers in the hopes that Fauxcahontas runs. She'll get a national vetting the likes of which was denied to the voters of Massachusetts. And of course, Hillary Clinton actually losing the Democrat nomination for a second time would be priceless. Heh.

Elizabeth Warren’s Government Shutdown

It's hard to find a more revolting Democrat dirtbag than Elizabeth Warren, and they've got a deep bench, so that's saying something.

From Jonathan Tobin, at Commentary:

The specter of a potential government shutdown is haunting Washington today. But it isn’t Ted Cruz and what the liberal mainstream media considers his gang of Tea Party obstructionists who are the principle threat to the passage of the so-called Cromnibus bill that will avert the possibility of a repeat of the 2013 standoff. Instead it is the darling of the liberal media, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, who is seeking to derail the compromise forged by House Speaker John Boehner and Democrats. Warren is calling on liberals to vote against the deal because among its provisions are measures raising the limits on campaign contributions and scaling back some of the onerous regulations on banks and Wall Street firms in the Dodd-Frank bill that have caused such havoc. But don’t expect the same media that labeled Cruz an arsonist to speak ill of Warren’s efforts to thwart efforts to keep the government funded.

Cruz has been loudly and frequently criticized both by liberals and some conservatives for deciding that his efforts to thwart the implementation of ObamaCare took precedence over the need to keep the government funded. Even those who sympathized him on the substance of this issue thought he was unreasonable in his insistence that voting for a compromise-funding bill made Republicans complicit with measures they opposed. The notion that principle ought to trump political reality and the necessity to avoid a standoff that could lead to a government shutdown (for which President Obama and his supporters were just as responsible as anything Cruz and the Tea Partiers did) was viewed as a disruptive approach that interfered with the responsibility of both parties to govern rather than to merely expound their views.

But the question today is why are those who were so quick to tag Cruz as a scourge of good government for his opposition to often messy yet necessary compromises to bills that require bipartisan support not putting the same label on Warren.

The reasons for this are fairly obvious. Most of the press clearly sympathizes with Warren’s rabble rousing on behalf of ineffective campaign-finance laws as well as a regulatory regime that has caused as much trouble as the problems it was supposed to solve. Warren’s rhetoric denouncing the rich and Wall Street is catnip for a press corps that shares her political point of view. By contrast, few in the media sympathized with Cruz’s last stand against ObamaCare, something that most in the president’s press cheering section viewed as a reactionary position that deserved the opprobrium they hurled at it.

Yet Warren’s attacks on the spending bill are no less extreme than anything Cruz was saying in 2013 or even now as he has ineffectively sought to rally conservatives to oppose the Cromnibus. Her claim that the Dodd-Frank changes were slipped into the bill in the middle of the night are false since they were negotiated with Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Barbara Mikulski, who is every bit the liberal that Warren claims to be. So is the notion that they are the product of a right-wing conspiracy is flatly false since, as the Washington Post notes, Democrats like Minority Whip Steny Hoyer and Rep. Nita Lowey voted for them in a stand-in alone vote last year.

She's a lying "Fauxcahontas" scumbag. That's why the leftist press lover her.

Keep reading.

Also at Politico, "Lindsey Graham: Elizabeth Warren’s ‘the problem’."

Elizabeth Warren's 'Festival of Hypocrisy'

Here's Charles Krauthammer on Senator Warren's grandstanding for the 2016 presidential primaries.

Leftists Want Elizabeth Warren Over Hillary Clinton in 2016

Warren gave the keynoted address today at Netroots Nation and the overwhelming consensus of attendees is Warren over Clinton for president in 2016.

Well, almost the overwhelming consensus. Communist John Nichols of the Nation, at the video, wants socialist Bernie Sanders, heh.

And at Politico, "Dem base: Fine with Hillary Clinton, pining for Elizabeth Warren."