Showing posts with label Outrage Culture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Outrage Culture. Show all posts

Sunday, January 27, 2019

A Stinging Defeat for President Trump

Actually, I'm glad the government reopened. I just wish it had been the Democrats who caved.

This feels like a real turning point in Trump's presidency, mostly it's really the one time I think he's seriously hurt politically. Democrats were gloating, as I would have been too, given both the stakes and polarization. But more importantly, Trump's capitulation, especially after the longest shutdown, hurt him with the base --- yes, even folks who've been die-hard Trump supporters were turned off by the long impasse.

If there's no deal on this supposed set of congressional conference negotiations, Trump will either deploy the Army Corps of Engineers or blow off any hopes of reelection.

We'll see.

At NYT, "For a President Consumed With Winning, a Stinging Defeat":

WASHINGTON — President Trump famously declared that in his administration the nation would become tired of all the winning. So on Friday he tried a little losing.

After the longest government shutdown in history, Mr. Trump surrendered with nothing concrete (or steel) to show for the battle, taking essentially the same deal that was on the table in December that he originally rejected, touching off a 35-day impasse.

With Senator Mitch McConnell on the telephone, rank-and-file Republicans in revolt and televisions in the White House showing air traffic slowing in the Northeast because of the shutdown, Mr. Trump bowed to the inevitable and agreed to reopen the government until Feb. 15 without the money for his border wall that he had demanded.

For a president who believes in zero-sum politics and considers compromise a sign of weakness, it was a bruising setback, a retreat that underscored the limits of his ability to bull his way through the opposition in this new era of divided government. As it turned out, the art of the deal at this stage of Mr. Trump’s presidency requires a different approach and the question is whether he can adjust.

“By any measure, it was an unequivocal loss,” said Patrick J. Griffin, who was the White House legislative director for President Bill Clinton during the government shutdowns of the 1990s. “No interpretation is needed. No wall and probably lost votes rather than gain or strengthen his base.”

The next three weeks will test whether Mr. Trump can rebound as he faces a new deadline to come up with an agreement. If he can find common ground with Democrats led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer while making progress on his wall, he may yet emerge from this searing ordeal claiming a political victory.

If not, however, he may discover his disgruntled fellow Republicans on Capitol Hill less willing to go along with a renewed government shutdown, forcing him to decide whether to provoke a constitutional clash by declaring a national emergency to bypass Congress altogether and build the wall without legislative approval.

White House officials argue that there are more moderate House Democrats who are willing to support a wall even though Ms. Pelosi has called the project “immoral” and opposed spending even a single dollar on it. In the days to come, they hope to either peel off those Democrats and force Ms. Pelosi to meet somewhere in the middle or to drive a wedge among Democrats highlighting their own divisions.

“Moving forward for the next three weeks, have the Democrats boxed themselves into a corner with zero for wall funding that makes them look weak on border security?” asked Marc Short, who was Mr. Trump’s White House legislative director earlier in his presidency. “Will the White House be able to work around Pelosi to gain enough Democrat support for some wall funding?”

After watching Ms. Pelosi this week disinvite Mr. Trump from delivering the State of the Union address while the government remained closed, Mr. McConnell concluded that she would never cave and decided to come off the sidelines to try to end the standoff. He scheduled votes for Thursday on two plans to end the stalemate, one on Mr. Trump’s terms and another Democratic version, mainly to demonstrate to the president that he did not have enough support to prevail.

After both bills failed to muster the 60 votes required for passage on Thursday, Mr. Trump was fed up and ready to get it over with, according to advisers. He was eager to get the dispute resolved at least temporarily so he could deliver his State of the Union address. He told Vice President Mike Pence and Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and senior adviser, to give him options.

They came back with four ways to reopen the government: a three-week spending bill that included a prorated portion of money as a down payment on the border wall pending further negotiations; a “clean” short-term spending bill that included no such money; a clean short-term bill with a bipartisan House-Senate conference committee to negotiate border security; or a declaration of national emergency that Mr. Trump would use to move money on his own while resuming government operations for the rest of the fiscal year...
Still more.
Posted by AmPowerBlog at 11:40 AM 1 comments
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Friday, January 25, 2019

Michelle Malkin Blasts Leftist Media's Coverage of #CovingtonCatholic Students (VIDEO)

She'a always hard-hitting.

At Fox News:



Posted by AmPowerBlog at 9:35 AM 0 comments
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Thursday, January 24, 2019

Megan McArdle Posts Truly Amazing Twitter Thread on the #CovingtonCatholic Controversy

I have not read her WaPo op-ed, but this Twitter thread is genuinely great.

I think it's the longest sustained political thread I've ever read, and she never loses the flow or rhythm. This is a cool thing about Twitter, and that's saying a lot.


Posted by AmPowerBlog at 2:20 PM 0 comments
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New York Daily News Accuses #CovingtonCatholic Students of 'Blackface' Racism

I'm not keeping up with this, especially all of the horrific attacks on the students.

Nick Sandmann wasn't even in high school at the time of this blackout basketball game, where the blackout is directed at all team opponents, regardless of race. But for leftists, racism is the catch-all demonizing attack. The left has launched a collective effort to destroy Nick Sandman, as well as his school. It's based not just in Trump hatred, but in vicious anti-Catholic bigotry as well.

Dana Loesch is demanding a retraction, and she's persistent.



Posted by AmPowerBlog at 1:30 PM 0 comments
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Tuesday, January 22, 2019

The Obligatory Covington Catholic Kids in #MAGA Hats Harassed Elder Native American 'Vietnam War Veteran' Blog Post

As you may have noticed, I've held off from posting on this story.

I have to admit, the very first short video I saw looked like it could have been the Catholic students harassing the Native American man. But I didn't comment about it. I kept doing my regular reading and tweeting, etc., and then more and more videos became available, and more information became available, and then there was a backlash against the backlash.

It turns out, for one thing, that the so-called Native American "Elder," Nathan Phillips, is not a Vietnam veteran. This Aint' Hell, the military blog, put in official requests to get government confirmation of Phillips' military service. See, "Nathan Phillips – “Vietnam Times” Veteran." Now, though, the Washington Post is correcting its initial story on the controversy, saying in fact that Phillips did not serve in Vietnam.

It's a big deal.

On Twitter:



Okay, as you also may know, this story has just dominated Twitter for days, and for me it was overwhelming keeping up with all the different reports and hot takes. Your mileage may vary.

In any case, see Robert Stacy McCain, "Lessons From an Online Lynching (Why #StandWithCovington Is Going Viral)."

And at Reason, Robby Soave did his homework, watching hours of video, to post a smackdown debunking over the weekend. See, "The Media Wildly Mischaracterized That Video of Covington Catholic Students Confronting a Native American Veteran." Also, "If You Still Think Nick Sandmann’s Smile Is Proof of Racism, You’re Seeing What You Want to See.

Neo-Neocon has been doing awesome stuff on this, but see in particular, "The Covington chronicles: on hating the face of a teenage boy." And she's linked by Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit, "NEO: Nathan Phillips and the surprise video."

Although these kind of lynch mob stories aren't new, this whole thing for me has been extremely clarifying. Twitter is a radioactive dump of hatred and lies, and as the site's run by leftists, it won't get better. I don't use any other social media, so I begrudgingly continue to use it, even though it sucks.

And of course no amount of factual truth seems to change minds in our extremely ideologically polarized era. And it's interesting, because I keep hearing people say, "talk to each other; listen to the other side." But talking to each other is only helpful if the "other side" is open to what you have to say. I work with radical leftists. They have their narrative and they don't budge. If you get on the wrong side of them, especially in any official capacity, they can be merciless, even using the power of the state to coerce compliance with the leftist agenda (the school hired lawyers to investigate me for disciplining a black student at one point). It's bad.

Check this leftist's thread for the perpetuation of the left's diabolical narrative, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary:


So again, it's been clarifying. If you're a Trump supporter leftists want to destroy you. They literally want to kill you. (See Uncle Shoes on Twitter, for example, a guy who wants to burn down Covington Catholic High School, with all the kids inside.)

More later. (*Sigh.*)

Posted by AmPowerBlog at 5:00 PM 1 comments
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Sunday, January 13, 2019

Democrats Look to Clamp Down Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (VIDEO)

Norms? What norms?

Well, she didn't get an assignment to the Ways and Means Committee, but she won't stop shaking things up on the Hill.

Wait 'till next year. If she backs primary challenges against centrist Democrat incumbents, you know she's going all out to overturn the entire centrist-seniority system in the House.

At Politico, "Exasperated Democrats try to rein in Ocasio-Cortez: The effort is part carrot, part stick. But it's far from clear the anti-establishment political novice can be made to play ball":

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is already making enemies in the House Democratic Caucus — and some of its members are mounting an operation to bring the anti-establishment, democratic socialist with 2.2 million Twitter followers into the fold.

The effort, described by nearly 20 lawmakers and aides, is part carrot, part stick: Some lawmakers with ties to Ocasio-Cortez are hoping to coax her into using her star power to unite Democrats and turn her fire on Republicans. Others simultaneously warn Ocasio-Cortez is destined for a lonely, ineffectual career in Congress if she continues to treat her own party as the enemy.

“I’m sure Ms. Cortez means well, but there’s almost an outstanding rule: Don’t attack your own people,” said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.). “We just don’t need sniping in our Democratic Caucus.”

Incumbent Democrats are most annoyed by Ocasio-Cortez’s threat to back primary opponents against members of their ranks she deems too moderate. But their frustration goes beyond that: Democratic leaders are upset that she railed against their new set of House rules on Twitter the first week of the new Congress. Rank and file are peeved that there’s a grassroots movement to try to win her a top committee post they feel she doesn’t deserve.

Even some progressives who admire AOC, as she’s nicknamed, told POLITICO that they worry she’s not using her notoriety effectively.

“She needs to decide: Does she want to be an effective legislator or just continue being a Twitter star?” said one House Democrat who’s in lockstep with Ocasio Cortez’s ideology. “There’s a difference between being an activist and a lawmaker in Congress.”

It’s an open question whether Ocasio-Cortez can be checked. She’s barely been in Congress a week and is better known than almost any other House member other than Nancy Pelosi and John Lewis. A media throng follows her every move, and she can command a national audience practically at will.

None of that came playing by the usual rules: Indeed, Ocasio-Cortez’s willingness to take on her party establishment with unconventional guerrilla tactics is what got her here. It’s earned her icon status on the progressive left, it’s where the 29-year-old freshman derives her power — and, by every indication, it’s how she thinks she can pull the Democratic Party in her direction.

The Freedom Caucus didn’t win many popularity contests in Congress the past four years, but it’s hard to dispute the hard-liners’ success dragging the GOP to the right.

Still, fellow Democrats are giving it their best, or planning to in the near future.

So far, most of them have kept their criticism of Ocasio-Cortez private, fearful she’ll sic her massive following on them by firing off a tweet. But a few are engaging with her in the hopes she’ll opt for a different M.O., especially when it comes to trying to take out Democrats in primaries.

Rep. Nydia Velázquez (D-N.Y.) is playing a key role. Like Ocasio-Cortez, Velázquez knocked off a longtime Democratic incumbent to win her seat, and they share Puerto Rican roots.

In private conversations with Ocasio-Cortez over the past few months, Velázquez counseled Ocasio-Cortez against targeting her Democratic colleagues in future elections. The two had a “long, long conversation” about the dynamics of Congress and Washington, and how there shouldn’t be a “litmus test” for every district, Velázquez said in a recent interview.

After she defeated Democratic incumbent Joe Crowley in shocking fashion last year, Ocasio-Cortez supported primary challengers to Democratic Reps. Stephanie Murphy of Florida, William Lacy Clay of Missouri and Mike Capuano of Massachusetts.

Only Capuano lost. But Velázquez told Ocasio-Cortez she should think twice in the future before backing primaries against her colleagues. Murphy, the first Vietnamese woman elected to Congress, represents a swing district and could lose her seat if she’s forced to move left in a primary, Velázquez said during the talk...
Posted by AmPowerBlog at 11:35 AM 0 comments
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Wednesday, January 9, 2019

How the Pursuit of Fame is Warping American Society

A really good piece, from John Hawkins, at Pajamas, "The Fame Trap: How the Pursuit of Fame Is Warping American Society":

“In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” – Andy Warhol

Fame used to be quite the rare commodity if only because there were fewer ways to become famous in the first place. Radio really started to take off in the 1920s, half of all American families acquired a TV in 1955, and the internet only started to be widely used in the early '90s. Facebook came along in 2004, YouTube in 2005, and Twitter in 2006. In 1991, there were 90 adult magazines in America. Today, there are millions of porn websites. The first UFC was in 1993. Amazon sells roughly 15 million regular books per year and another 22 million on Kindle. Amazon did not exist in 1993.

Because of the vast number of websites on the internet looking for something to cover, the almost inexhaustible number of large niches out there, and the nature of social media, fame seems closer than ever for most people and for that reason, more people than ever seem to be seeking it.

We have reality TV shows, where unstable, explosive people are put together and the rest of us “oooh and aaah” at the crazy things they do. Are you good at a video game? Well, there are plenty of people like you with hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitch and YouTube. Some people even go pro. There are also more than a few attractive women putting up pictures of themselves on Instagram looking sexy and getting contributions towards, well, whatever it is they do on Patreon. YouTube also has plenty of personalities making big bucks playing a role. Some of the numbers are just staggering.

WHAT GIRLS THINK ON THEIR FIRST PERIOD: 4.9 million views

I only ate LUNCHABLES for 24 hours: 2.5 million views

LOGAN PAUL - WHY 2018 WAS THE MOST IMPORTANT YEAR OF MY LIFE: 5.7 million views

RATING YOUTUBER APOLOGY VIDEOS 12 million views

Incidentally, the #1 channel on YouTube, PewDiePie, has 80 million subscribers. That’s greater than the population of the entire United States in 1900.

Of course, when you are talking about micro-doses of fame, they’re even easier to get.

Go scream at Ted Cruz and his wife while they’re having dinner and you can guarantee that tens of millions of people will see it. Tell a sad story about how someone didn’t tip you or a fast-food worker was mean to you and you can make headlines all over the country. Say something witty or maybe even not all that witty and if it catches the eye of someone famous and he retweets it, you may get tens of thousands of new followers and hundreds of thousands of likes. Candace Owens’ entire career on the Right is built on the fact that Kanye West liked what she was tweeting. And there are more than a few people with 50,000+ followers because Donald Trump retweeted them. Get enough Instagram or Twitter followers and you get treated like you’re important. Are you famous if you have 50,000 or 100,000 people following you on some social network? Not really, but the level of validation must feel like it. Then, there’s Joe and Jill Average's Facebook page. Here’s the best selfie they took out by the lake. It only took them 17 tries to get that shot. Here they are on a trip to Las Vegas, beside a pretty girl, making a goofy face at a statue.

You might argue that once you’re getting down to this level, people are chasing validation more than fame, but it’s not that different. They’re creating a brand that they hope will get as many people as possible to respond positively to them instead of showing their real life.

Of course, that’s not the only way we change our lives for fame. Those of us who have been around the internet for a while can remember when trolling was considered something unusual done by misanthropes living in their moms’ basements. Today, trolling is commonplace and is done by everyone from the president of the United States on down. Why? Because if you want that fame and attention, one of the best ways to get it is to find a popular post and post something that will irritate most of the people reading it. Then you’ll get lots of hate and aggravate lots of people, but you also may get new followers along with lots of likes and shares.

Not every person chasing that fame is inauthentic, bad or doing something wrong; nor is fame in and of itself a bad thing. But, what is chasing that fame turning us into as a society? What happens when hundreds of millions of people are looking to feel special for a little while as the likes, follows, and shares roll in or alternately, among the more dedicated, looking for a way to get their name in the news?

How many women do you think grew up dreaming of dressing in lingerie and offering lewds on Patreon to entice horny losers to give them money? How many people are wasting their lives on social media? I ask that as I just noticed a reply from someone on Twitter who has done 134K tweets with only 2,868 followers. What could she have done with that time if she had applied it to something meaningful in her life? That applies to what most of us are doing on social media. How much of Twitter is just people being deliberately cruel to other people or saying crazy things to get likes, shares and followers? 25 percent? 40 percent? 50 percent?
Keep reading.

Reading that line about lewd photos offered for money on Patreon, I just noticed that Bridget Phetasy's deleted her Twitter account. (She's still on Patreon, though.) I thought her breast photos were kind of weird, actually, and I certainly didn't think she was conservative, although a lot of folks on Twitter did.

In any case, I've posted 174 thousand tweets on that stupid website, although I'd argue that I've also been able to do "something meaningful" in my life, heh. In 2018, for example, I posted just 1,578 blog posts at American Power (check the sidebar). I spent much more time reading than ever, and I've been more involved as a father and a husband. Besides, as I mentioned the other day, I'm looking to spend less time on the Twitter hate-dump in 2019. All the best people are being deplatformed, and more and more I see people complaining that it's all hate all the time.

So, it's not quantity but quality. Thanks for tuning in folks. I'll still be on Twitter, because I use it as a news feed. But I'm not too worried about "validation," since it's mostly narcissists and haters on the platform nowadays anyway. (There are still some real good people using Twitter, of course, but the cost/benefit analysis is hard to justify anymore, FWIW.)

See Helen Pluckrose, for a case in point:


Posted by AmPowerBlog at 5:20 PM 0 comments
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Sunday, January 6, 2019

Tucker Carlson's Populist-Nationalist Monologue Draws Response (VIDEO)

Abby Hunstman and Conor Friedersdorf were among some of the prominent responses. Video below:




Posted by AmPowerBlog at 5:45 PM 0 comments
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Friday, November 23, 2018

Blame the 'Culture Wars' on 1968

From VDH, at Investors, "Did 1968 Win The Culture War?":
Most of the political and cultural agenda from that turbulent period — both the advances and the regressions — has long been institutionalized. The military draft, for good or bad, has remained defunct. There is greater transparency in politics, fewer smoke-filled rooms. Disabled children, once ostracized and/or dismissively labeled "retarded," are now far better integrated into society and treated more ethically as special-needs kids. The rights of women, minorities and the LGBT community are now widely accepted.

Yet lifestyles have been radically altered — and often not for the good. Before the late '60s, most Americans married before having children; afterward, not so much. One-parent households are now far more common.

Other legacies of the '60s include couples marrying later and having fewer children. A half-century later, these social inheritances often mean prolonged adolescence, older parents, delayed or nonexistent homeownership, and more emphasis on leisure time than on household chores.

Fashion remains '60s-influenced. There are few dress codes left. Even billionaires now dress in jeans, T-shirts and sneakers rather than slacks and wingtips. Wire-rim glasses of the 1950s were considered old people's spectacles. Then they became hip, and now they are standard.

The iconic drug of the '60s, marijuana, has been legalized in many states and soon may be decriminalized at the federal level.

Post-'60s movies routinely include the sort of profanity, nudity and graphic violence that was unknown in 1950s cinema. Big-screen romance is often no longer about courtship, romance and mystery, but lots of on-screen sex.

Promiscuity and hookups were redefined in the '60s as norms. They are now, too — but with lots of ensuing psychological, social and cultural damage.

Before the campus turmoil of the late '60s, there were almost no "studies" courses in the college curriculum. The ancient idea still persisted that the university was obligated to teach philosophy, literature, languages, science, math and the professions — along with the inductive method to use such knowledge to make sense of things.

Yet the impatient '60s threw out that disinterested notion as quaint, naive and a roadblock to utopia. The campus instead became a center of deductive progressive activism. Updated studies courses now train students to think politically correctly rather than empirically...
RTWT.

Posted by AmPowerBlog at 10:25 AM 0 comments
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Wednesday, November 7, 2018

Polarization Makes Gains in Senate, But Costs Republicans the House

A good piece, at LAT, "Republicans depend on Trump’s polarizing approach to gain in the Senate, but it costs them the House":
Throughout his 22 months in office, President Trump has focused intensely on a single political priority — maintaining the support of his base, even at the risk of alienating millions of other voters.

Tuesday night’s election proved both the wisdom and the risk of that approach.

In a deeply divided country, Trump’s efforts to stoke his supporters’ enthusiasm helped his party expand its margin in the Senate. But his heated attacks on opponents and denunciations of immigrants also helped Democrats retake control of the House and make major gains in races for governor.

White House aides were quick to pronounce the outcome a victory for the president. But if it was, it came with ominous overtones for his next big political challenge, in 2020.

Democrats won significant victories statewide in each of the big mid-Atlantic and Midwestern industrial states where Trump secured his upset victory two years ago. Their control of the House will give them license to investigate him and his associates for the next two years, a prospect no president welcomes, especially not one seeking reelection.

Overall, Democratic congressional candidates won considerably more votes than their Republican opponents. Like winning the popular vote in the presidential race, that doesn’t give a party any additional power. But as a rough gauge of public sentiment, it sets a troubling marker for Trump.

In 2016, he became only the fifth person in American history to win the presidency while losing the popular vote. No one has pulled that off twice.

The night provided a split decision in which the country’s liberal, Democratic cities and its conservative, Republican rural areas moved further apart politically than ever, leaving neither side with the sort of clear majority needed to resolve major national issues.

That’s not just a political abstraction. Settling big national issues almost always requires one party having the political strength to put its ideas into law.

Without that, Congress can only tinker: Both Trump and Democratic leaders, for example, have said they might agree on more money to build and repair roads, bridges and other types of infrastructure.

But Tuesday’s results point to two more years of political trench warfare and the worsening of major problems — an immigration system that both parties decry as broken, a healthcare system that remains the world’s most expensive even as it fails to cover everyone, rapidly rising federal debt, festering inequality.

Unsurprisingly, roughly three-quarters of voters in exit polls conducted for the major television networks said that the country is becoming more divided politically. Fewer than 1 in 10 said Americans are becoming more united.

For a generation, despite the efforts of four consecutive presidents starting with Bill Clinton, neither party has been able to create a long-lasting electoral majority. This period stands as the longest in more than a century in which neither party has managed to maintain clear dominance, controlling both the White House and Congress.

People in both parties who run campaigns, as well as academic experts who study them, provide a surprisingly consistent list of the reasons why stalemate has proven so persistent.

Personal leadership shortcomings are not the main problem, said UCLA political science professor Lynn Vavreck, coauthor of a newly released book, “Identity Crisis,” which analyzes the causes of Trump’s 2016 victory.

“I don’t think this is a failure of these leaders” as individuals, she said.

Instead, successive presidents have been stymied by a fundamental shift in politics in which both of the two major parties have grown more homogeneous and the mix of national concerns increasingly has turned toward issues of identity. Those two trends hardened partisan lines, making bipartisan compromise tougher and complicating any effort to forge a broader coalition.

Legislators “can shave a dollar per hundred off a tax bill, but how do you get gradations of equality?” Vavreck asked. “These issues are harder. It’s harder to see what compromise would look like.”

As each party has grown more internally united — one liberal, one conservative — party membership has increasingly overlapped with other ways in which people identify themselves — race, religion, region, even occupation and the entertainment choices people make. That has alienated the two sides further from each other, said Lilliana Mason of the University of Maryland.

“If you’re a Democrat, and you go to church with a Republican … it makes you understand them in a way that you wouldn’t have,” Mason said. As Americans have sorted themselves out along partisan lines, “we’ve seen a move away from cross-cutting identities” of that sort. As those dwindle, “people tend to be more intolerant” of those they see only as adversaries, she said.

Republican voters are now overwhelmingly white, conservative, older, rural, often evangelical Protestants. Democrats have have become the party of cities, of racial and ethnic diversity, of college graduates and younger people, and are largely secular. And politics increasingly revolves around “who you are, what your identity is,” Mason said.

Partisan media outlets and social media choices reinforce those identity lines.

A person watching CNN or MSNBC would find that “the world they’re reporting on is a different universe than the world Fox News is reporting on,” said longtime Republican strategist and pollster Whit Ayres.

“You have the ability to listen to only those outlets that reinforce what you already think” and emphasize “the rightness and goodness of your side and the evil and wrongness of the other side.”

Polling provides extensive evidence of the strain that sort of partisanship causes. Almost two-thirds of Americans, 63%, say that when they talk about politics with people with whom they disagree, they find they have less in common than they thought, according to a recent survey by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.

Over half of Americans, 53%, say they find such political conversations “stressful and frustrating,” Pew found.

That number has grown since 2016, when partisan divisions already ran deep...
Still more.
Posted by AmPowerBlog at 2:40 PM 2 comments
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Tuesday, November 6, 2018

What's at Stake in Today's Midterm Elections? Both Sides Say 'Everything'

From Susan Page, "What's at stake in the midterms? Both sides warn the future of our democracy is at risk":


WASHINGTON – What's at stake?

Democrats warn that the midterm elections Tuesday will undermine the future of America's democracy unless President Donald Trump's authoritarian instincts are curtailed. Republicans argue that the nation's sovereignty is at risk if Democrats prevail.

"Fear is the dominant issue, bar none," said Jeffrey Engel, director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University.

That's particularly remarkable because the economy is strong and the nation doesn't face an instant foreign policy crisis, although there are trouble spots around the world. Instead of a sense of peace and prosperity, the final weeks of the campaign have been dominated by violence and conflict: the mass murder of worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue, the mailing of improvised explosive devices to more than a dozen leading Democrats, the images of a caravan of Central American asylum seekers making their way across southern Mexico.

The campaign has crystallized clashing visions of what defines the nation: America First or an increasingly diverse population?
Keep reading.

Posted by AmPowerBlog at 5:30 AM 0 comments
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Monday, November 5, 2018

Sabato's Crystal Ball: Final Picks for Election 2018

Larry Sabato and company got egg on their faces in 2016, like just about everybody else, of course.

But I think this projection sounds about right.

See, "Final Picks for 2018":
There is the shifting political landscape that emerged nationally in 2016, with some traditionally Democratic blue collar small cities and rural areas across the North moving toward Trump and the Republicans, and some traditionally Republican suburbs dominated by voters with high formal educational attainment breaking sharply away from Trump and the GOP. Those latter areas make up a significant share of the competitive House districts, many of which seem poised to deliver for Democrats on Tuesday, although some Trumpy, traditionally Democratic turf is part of the Democratic House calculus too.
Keep reading.
Posted by AmPowerBlog at 6:45 PM 0 comments
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Why We're Headed for Huge Turnout

From Charlie Cook, at Cook Political Report:
A week before the midterm elections, both parties are filled with anxiety. Like football wide receivers who have been blind-sided one time too many, many Democrats are hearing real or imaginary footsteps—residual trauma from the 2016 election, when they thought things were going so well until they didn’t.

Similarly mindful of history, Republicans know that midterm elections are referenda on incumbent presidents and that President Trump is a particularly polarizing party leader, evoking the strongest emotions. They also know that in times of one-party rule across the White House, House, and Senate, it’s difficult to shift the blame to anyone else, so midterm elections are particularly explosive.

The Democratic nightmare of Nov. 8, 2016, a day in party history that will live in infamy, was triggered by overwhelming support for Trump in small-town and rural America, combined with white, working-class voters in trade-sensitive manufacturing areas. These were the places and types of people that Franklin D. Roosevelt attracted to the Democratic Party during the New Deal. They had begun flocking to the GOP before Trump came along, but with him as the face and the leader of the GOP, they shifted with much greater enthusiasm. Needless to say, ambivalence towards Hillary Clinton on the other side was a factor as well.

Education has become a key defining variable: The Republican Party has re-centered to those with less than a four-year college degree, and of course men, with ties to women and those with degrees loosening. This is what realignments look like. The gender gap that has been around at least since the days of Ronald Reagan is growing wider. Grievances among certain groups accumulated during eight years of President Obama, the rise of the tea-party movement being one obvious outward sign, then all exploded in 2016, with Trump lighting the fuse.

Any discussion of the voting patterns of these white, noncollege voters should note that this is a very big and broad group. It should be segmented into those who are and have long been conservative, middle-of-the-roaders, and finally those who are liberal and populist, who supported Bernie Sanders in 2016 and are intrigued by Elizabeth Warren, with few sympathies for more-establishment Democratic figures. Noncollege whites are not a monolithic group. It is also important that those who are conservative, white, evangelical Christians—whether they are college-educated or not—are a very distinct and important voting bloc. At least for whites, the Democratic Party has become the secular party.

While many Democratic strategists accuse fellow party members of being bedwetters, overly fretting about what happened two years ago, some very smart Democrats who examine a lot of data and early-voting patterns privately say they are seeing some signs that more Republican/conservative-leaning white working-class voters are showing increased electoral interest that is reminiscent of 2016. Possibly they’ve been triggered by outrage over what they perceive to be unfair attacks on Brett Kavanaugh during the fight over his Supreme Court nomination or, more recently, the caravan of Central American immigrants working their way up through Mexico toward the U.S. border—something they interpret as a middle finger aimed at Trump and the United States...
Keep reading.
Posted by AmPowerBlog at 5:45 PM 0 comments
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Pete Davidson Mocks Republican Candidate Who Survived IED Attack in Afghanistan (VIDEO)

Dan Crenshaw is the Republican running for the House in Texas' 2nd congressional district. He's a former Navy Seal member who served five tours of combat, two after he lost his right eye in an IED attack in Afghanistan.

Pete Davidson, famous for recently breaking off his engagement to Ariana Grande after less than a week, mocked the military veteran in the "Weekend Update" segment on Saturday. It didn't go over well. (I never watch anyway, but caught the outrage on Twitter.)

At USA Today, "SNL's Pete Davidson slammed for mocking Republican candidate who lost his eye in war."




Posted by AmPowerBlog at 5:30 AM 0 comments
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Sunday, November 4, 2018

Mother of All Meltdowns: If No Blue Wave, Leftist Rage Will Be Off the Charts

Heh. This is great.

At American Greatness, "The Stages of (Liberal) Grief: Anger":


Having explored the historical genesis of liberal derangement, especially in the wake of Donald Trump’s election in 2016, and having disclosed the role to be played by Denial after the probable failure of Democrats’ “blue wave” in 2018, we now proceed to the next stage of our analysis. We turn our attention to the forms of liberal Anger that are likely after November 6th.

Anger is, as previously discussed, the dominant emotion discernible in the Left’s reaction to Trumpism. In fact, rage is rampant among liberals. What has kept this anger in check, however, is a sense of assurance that the Trump phenomenon is something akin to a death spasm among conservatives. Leftists have long assumed that “progress” of the sort they desire is inevitable, and indeed they can point to many victories won in the last few decades. Moreover, soaked as they are in identity politics, the Left puts great stock in America’s changing demographics. They presume—understandably, given their inveterate anti-white racism—that the “browning” of America can only foretell doom for Republicans.

They ignore the obvious counterargument: this country has been “browning” for a long time, and the Republican Party is today stronger than it has ever been since the 1920s. In any case, it cannot be overstated how integral it is to the peace of mind of liberals to assume that the Republican Party will soon die an ignoble death, and therefore, they believe, any upsurge in nationalism or conservatism is a temporary aberration. The march of history towards the broad, sunlit uplands of progressivism will soon resume.

The failure of the “blue wave” would be a punch in the gut to this attitude of complacency and self-satisfaction on the Left. The American people will have chosen Trumpism and Republicans not once, but twice. As leftists see it, this will mean an affirmation of “hate” and a rejection of their own worldview of “inevitable” progress. The liberal throng (sometimes understandably mistaken for a mob) will have expended vast energies, and donated vast sums, to achieve a victory that remains elusive if not utterly improbable. The bile will rise in leftist throats as it begins to dawn on them that the last gasp of conservatism, which they perceived President Trump to hail, may instead be an enduring realignment of American politics that is favorable to Republicans. They will despair at the fact that millions of women and minorities, who by rights belong on the Democratic plantation, deserted the cause. They will, in short, experience anger on a scale that will make 2016-18 seem like child’s play.

What will be remarkable about liberal anger post-November 6, however, is that for the first time most of it may well be directed inward rather than outward. What do I mean by that? Up to now, divisions and grudges on the Left have been deferred and subordinated successfully to the overarching project of reversing the effects of the 2016 election. The one thing on which the Left could agree was that it despised Donald Trump and everything he stood for (even if , in some instances, what he stood for was the exact same thing Democrats had long been supporting). A truce was arranged, whereby Democrats and liberals would sweep under the rug any lingering questions about the methods by which Hillary Clinton and the “moderates” in the Democratic Party defeated Bernie Sanders and the progressives in 2016.

Even Clinton’s appalling ineptitude in her conduct of the 2016 election would be forgotten. Liberals would let bygones be bygones, and they would refocus on the urgent task of discrediting and obstructing the work of the Trump administration, and of removing President Trump from office. This left-wing consensus, this facade of liberal unity, will soon collapse in a heap in the early morning hours of November 7, absent the prophesied “blue wave.” Consensus and unity were always understood to be necessary because they were the price of victory in 2018 and beyond. When that victory does not arrive, it will be bedlam.

Liberal anger, therefore, should crest in the weeks and months after the midterms, and it will engender a great deal of internecine fighting among leftists. The Democratic establishment will struggle mightily to tamp down this ugliness, and the media will struggle to conceal it. We can anticipate strident calls from the Sanders wing of the party for the resignation of DNC chairman Tom Perez. He may well heed these calls. Activists will push for the party to move to the left on major issues, and their insistence that a Democratic House, if one is elected, produce articles of impeachment against the President will be more akin to an ultimatum or a threat than a mere request. Impeachment, however, will be unlikely to materialize, because Democrats representing swing districts will not cooperate. These Democratic Congressmen will therefore be subjected to a steady stream of invective from their fellow Democrats. The Democratic caucus, in short, will be riven by divisions as serious as those scarring the Democratic Party as a whole. It is doubtful whether a Democratic House could even function under these circumstances...
Keep reading.
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California Matters Tuesday

My district's in play, the 45th congressional, where two-term incumbent Mimi Walters has a good chance at being shown the door. Their campaign has not done door to door canvassing and outreach, while the Democrat Katie Porter's campaign has come to our house thrice in the last week, one time leaving voter information materials at our door when no one was home.

At LAT, "California hasn't mattered in national politics for a long time. Here's why this Nov. 6 is different":

California — big, bounteous, beautiful — is pretty much used to irrelevancy come election day.

Sure, the state has produced many leaders of national import and helped countless more finance their political pursuits. But it’s been two decades since California was a presidential battleground, and longer still since the state played a meaningful role choosing a major party presidential nominee.

Successive congressional wave elections have come and passed, cresting without ever breaching the Sierra Nevada.

This year is different.

Unaccustomed as it may be, California stands at the center of the fight for control of the House, with at least half a dozen seats up for grabs, or more than a quarter of the 23 that Democrats need to seize the majority. A handful more could tip the party’s way if Nov. 6 produces a blue tsunami.

History favors the Democrats. With rare exception, the party holding the presidency loses House seats at the midpoint of a president’s first term. The current occupant could, of course, defy expectations; Donald Trump wouldn’t be in the Oval Office if he hadn’t managed to upend a number of political verities.

Trump won the White House while buried in a California landslide — no surprise there — and six of the seven congressional districts he lost to Hillary Clinton are key to Democrats’ hopes of taking over the House, which they last controlled in 2010. (The seventh, the mostly rural Central Valley district represented by three-term GOP incumbent and perennial target David Valadao, seems like a considerably further reach.)

Midterm elections are typically a referendum on the nation’s chief executive, and that dynamic has not helped Republicans in California, where the president remains deeply unpopular. Call it the Trump undertow.

Embattled GOP Reps. Mimi Walters in Orange County and Jeff Denham in the San Joaquin Valley would probably be headed to relatively easy reelection if the president hadn’t stirred such an outpouring of Democratic antipathy. Republicans would also be much better positioned to hang on to the northern Orange County seat of Rep. Ed Royce, who is retiring after more than 20 years in office.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, who hasn’t faced much of a threat since his first election during the Reagan era, might not have his back to the wall in coastal Orange County but for his cozy relationship with Russia, which interfered in the 2016 election to benefit Trump.

Setting the president aside, the competition also reflects political and demographic changes that have transformed California.

The state’s burgeoning Latino population has grown more politically active and pro-Democratic in response to the belligerent tone sounded by many Republicans. The GOP’s embrace of religious conservatism also pushed many live-and-let-live Californians away from the party.

That helped turn Orange County, a onetime Republican bastion, into a congressional battleground, along with the high desert outside Los Angeles, where two-term GOP incumbent Steve Knight is fighting for reelection, and northern San Diego County, where Republicans are struggling to hold the seat being vacated by Rep. Darrell Issa after nine terms...
More.


Posted by AmPowerBlog at 5:55 PM 0 comments
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Partisan Realignment After the 2016 Election

This is the best piece I've read on our current crisis of political polarization.

It's not a crisis of governmental institutions. It's a crisis of the party system. What a great read.

From Stanford political scientists David Brady and Bruce Cain, at National Affairs, "Are Our Parties Realigning?":
THE STRUGGLE FOR THE GOP

The election of Donald Trump was even more of a blow to any expectations of a new equilibrium than the back-and-forth elections of the prior decades. Not only was he not a standard Republican on free trade, taxes, entitlements, and so on, but the Republicans in Congress did not expect him to win. Their reaction to his victory was to try to pull together and pass the legislation they thought mandated by their 2010 wins six years earlier: end Obamacare, reform taxes, cut regulation, and increase energy production, among other longstanding Republican agenda items.

But the narrow Senate margin and Trump's lack of policy knowledge and legislative skill left Republicans with only a tax-bill victory. Obamacare is still the law of the land; immigration reform and budget policy remain problematic; and Trump is a more divisive president than either Bush or Obama. Thus our system — already burdened by partisan divisiveness, close elections, and few incentives for parties to cooperate on public policy — is saddled with an inexperienced, chaotic president and a governing party with no clear sense of what it wants or what voters want.

One result has been a struggle to define the GOP, which has sometimes seemed like a fight between the party's longstanding priorities and some of President Trump's particular emphases. But the battle lines have not been very clear — especially since neither the practical and contemporary meaning of the party's longstanding priorities nor Trump's beliefs are actually all that clear at this point, and since disputes about the president's character often overshadow internal policy debates.

If Republicans lose one or both houses of Congress in 2018, then the battle lines could be drawn more clearly, because those congressional Republicans who have held back criticism of Trump in order to pass legislation will no longer need to restrain themselves in the battle for the party. The 2018 and 2020 election cycles will, by and large, shape what Republicans become post-Trump. Republican incumbents might buy into Trump's views on immigration, deficits, trade, and so on to appease the Trump base, and thus change the party. Or the battle between Trump-like candidates and traditional Republicans could yield a new set of internal divisions and patterns. Or traditional Republican views might come to be reaffirmed.

The dimensions of the battle are revealed in survey data that YouGov has collected over the past few years. Starting in May 2015, they interviewed a panel of 5,000 Americans 17 times, with more interviews scheduled prior to the 2018 elections. The results have shown that Trump voters, compared to those Republicans who voted in the primaries for other candidates, are older, whiter, less well-educated, have lower incomes, and are disproportionately from the Southern, border, and Midwestern states. They are also, on average, angrier about politics, more likely to believe that many in the government are crooks, and  more dissatisfied with government. They are very anti-trade and anti-immigration and favor taxing the rich (those making over $250,000).

When asked about illegal immigrants living in the U.S. now, 70% of Trump supporters said they should be required to leave, while less than 35% of other Republicans agreed. In fact, a slight majority of other Republicans thought that they should be allowed to stay and acquire citizenship. On social issues such as gay marriage and the death penalty, Trump supporters were much more conservative than their fellow Republicans; in fact, a majority of other Republicans opposed the death penalty. In the post-election surveys, by a two-to-one margin, Trump Republicans favored a Muslim ban, while other Republicans opposed the ban. The battle for the heart and soul of the party is underway.

While these issues will be important, perhaps even more important is the extent to which Trump Republicans and other Republicans differ regarding the president. The August 2017 YouGov re-contact survey showed that 92% of early Trump supporters liked him, with 72% liking him a lot; Republicans who weren't early supporters, however, liked him less, with only 29% liking him a lot. The president's ability to retain the support of his base means those Republicans running for Congress must face the delicate task of appealing to that base in both the primary and general elections. Ed Gillespie's run for governor of Virginia in 2017 was an excellent example of such balancing. As one Washington Post article put it a few days before the election, "Gillespie is at the center of a civil war that is dividing his party, one pitting the Republican establishment he personifies with his four-star credentials against the anti-Washington forces that propelled President Trump's rise."

The battle between the Trump wing and other Republicans will play out numerous times over the next two election cycles, and the future of the party hangs on who wins. Crucial to Republican success will be suburban independents and Republican women who chose Trump over Hillary but today do not like the president. Off-year election turnout numbers in Virginia and Alabama confirm the importance of these voters.

THE RACE TO REALIGNMENT

In American political science, the standard party-change model has focused on "realigning elections," wherein one party achieves dominance that lasts long enough to resolve the key issues generated by the instability of the era. Those issues, in our time, appear to be challenges like immigration, inequality, family and social breakdown, worker insecurity, automation, trade, America's role in the world, and environmental challenges, among others.

Some observers suggest that Democrats have the best chance to arrive at a formula that captures a durable majority on most of these issues. As of this writing, the 2018 generic congressional poll favors Democrats by seven points (according to the RealClearPolitics average), and Trump's popularity is low. Historically, presidents in their first term often lose seats at the midterm election. And winning the House, the Senate, or both in 2018 would be seen as a harbinger of winning control of the government in 2020.

Control of all the elected branches would give Democrats a base of support from which to reduce inequality, reform the immigration system, and restore American leadership in the economic realm, on the environment, and in other respects. Nice scenario, if you ask any progressive. But there are many reasons why the Democrats are likely to fail in their efforts to create a new stable majority. The first and most obvious is that Democrats, like Republicans, are badly split on how the party should respond to both the Trump presidency and the dominant issues of our time. The result is that the number of Democrats running for president in 2020 may well be in the double digits, creating divisions that resemble those the Republicans faced in 2016.

Second, potential candidates are already favoring policies, like Medicare for all and free tuition, that even Californians know are not affordable. These views don't actually represent today's Democratic coalition all that well. In YouGov surveys, Democrats, by over two-to-one, favor cutting spending over raising taxes to balance the budget, and by almost two-to-one, they believe that quite a few in government do not know what they are doing. In regard to free tuition, 40% of Democratic voters are either against it or are not sure that it would work. Thus, the Democrats have not achieved agreement within their party regarding policies that deal with today's core challenges, and a multi-candidate presidential primary is not likely to resolve the issues and create a stable majority. That leaves the Democrats, like the Republicans, divided and not unified, and, just as with the GOP, the necessary changes seem more likely to occur in primary and general-election contests over the next few electoral cycles. The Democratic Party does not look ready to step up; the Republicans don't either.

Here again, a student of history would be reminded of the closing decades of the 19th century, when there were pro-silver Republicans and pro-gold Democrats (like President Cleveland) and the same intra-party mix on tariffs and immigration and many other prominent issues. Control of the government shifted back and forth between these unsteady parties over and over again. But by 1896, the sorting of the parties had occurred, and Republicans were pro-gold, pro-tariffs, and so on, while the Democrats under William Jennings Bryan were the opposite. The electorate, in that case, chose Republicans, and the ensuing stability gave rise to economic growth and a period of prosperity.

A broadly similar transformation is very likely in our future. The sorting process in the Republican Party has begun, with the Democrats to follow in 2020. This time the sorting will not be conservatives to the GOP and liberals to the Democrats, since that has already occurred and has defined the very order that is growing exhausted. Rather, the coming era will be defined by questions like what do conservatism and liberalism mean to Republicans and Democrats, and which vision will the American people support? Whichever way it turns out, the parties have finally begun the process of adjusting to the realities of the new global economy.

The shapes our parties are likely to take might be easier to see if we consider their most extreme possible forms — which aren't where we will end up but can show us the contours of possibility. For Republicans, these are the possible alternatives on either pole: a Trump-like Republican Party that is anti-immigrant, protectionist, anti-gay marriage, dependent on entitlements, white, old, not well-educated, and concentrated in the southern and central United States; or a party that favors markets and smaller government, and is not anti-immigration per se but is, rather, more libertarian and diverse in membership.

The Democrats, likewise, face a similar polar choice: a Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren Party that pushes socialist-leaning policies (Medicare for all, free tuition, a smaller military, higher taxes, and more regulation) joined to an identity politics that excludes moderates from swing states; or a Democratic Party more like that envisioned by the Clinton-era Democratic Leadership Council, which is center-left on economic policy, inclusive on social issues, relatively moderate on defense and immigration, and somewhat resistant to identity politics.

The battles between these alternatives have already begun in some primaries. And the likely outcome is not any of the polar opposites, but a shuffling of the issues that gives shape to complex coalitions...
RTWT, at the link.
Posted by AmPowerBlog at 5:40 PM 0 comments
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Tuesday, October 30, 2018

The 'Radicalization' of Cesar Sayoc

First off, it should be said that I'm glad no one was killed. I don't know what went wrong with Cesar Sayoc's improvised explosive devices (the mail bombs), or whether the bombs were meant to detonate at all, but it's blessing that no one was harmed.

That said, I can't but help thinking that if the targets had been Republicans and Fox News there'd be no outrage or media investigations. When Bernie-supporting leftist James Hodgkinson opened fire at Republicans, almost killing Rep. Steve Scalise, there was very little leftist introspection regarding a Democrat Party "climate of hate" that contributed to the attack. I remember maybe two days of coverage on CNN, a few stories in the newspapers, and that's about it. There was no long national dialog on a so-called toxic environment. Here's the Google search results for "James Hodgkinson shooting suspect." There's one result for June 21st, but besides that the latest date for search findings are June 14th, the day of the shooting. I see a couple more results for the search "Republican congressional shooting." In October 2017, Alexandria (Virginia) Commonwealth Attorney Bryan Porter released a investigative report on the shooting, covered at the Chicago Tribune, "Gunman who shot Steve Scalise cased baseball field for weeks before rampage."

With the mail bombing attempts, along with the horrific mass murder at the Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue, the leftist media is exploiting the events to blame President Trump, Republicans, and their supporters for the violence. Some media leftists have been over the top with their accusations, especially Julia Ioffe, who yesterday claimed the President Trump had radicalized more people than Islamic State.

In any case, it's an awful moment on American politics. I've been teaching my classes this semester, and I've been focusing a lot on partisan polarization and the sources of current political divisions and dysfunctions. I've mentioned, for example, that we had frequent violence during the 1960s, especially the assassinations of President Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King. I've said I hope things don't get as bad as they were then, but now I'm thinking they're just as bad. The murder of the 11 elderly Jews in Pittsburgh breaks my heart.

More later.

Meanwhile, here's leftist "investigative journalist" Andrew Kaczynski at CNN, for what it's worth:


Posted by AmPowerBlog at 5:30 PM 0 comments
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Monday, October 29, 2018

Blaming Normal Americans for Nuts Will Backfire on Dems

From Kurt Schlichter, at Town Hall, "Democrats Blaming Normal Americans for Nuts Will Blow Up In Their Faces at the Ballot Box":


You know, there's nothing that Normal Americans can identify with more than a guy living in a Ford panel van covered with Trump memes and soccer manifestoes who sends bombs that don't work to Democrats who support policies that don't work. Likewise, Normal people totally identify with – let me get the liberal narrative du jour right here – a Trump-hating freak who shoots up a synagogue. And I think it’s a terrific midterm strategy for our Democrat friends is to keep making that idiotic case. (extreme sarcasm for the benefit of the willfully obtuse)

The Official Media is in a frenzy explaining how Donald Trump personally instructed Kooky Weirdo de Florida to mail pipe bombs to washed up Dem hacks and that nameless garbage being in Pittsburgh via a series of cunningly encrypted dog whistles. “Make America Great Again” is apparently code for “Mail bombs!” Nothing says “Murder Jews” like moving the embassy to Jerusalem and ending the Iran deal.

Oddly, of 63 million Trump voters, only one jerk managed to decode this cipher. The other hated Trump for liking Jews too much. But, as CNNMSNBC’s brain trust and such thinkers as rock legend Joe Scarborough teach us, their crimes are on all of us anyway for some reason.

We’re all to blame for one kook’s real terrorism because…well, he thought Trump was part of the giant Zionist conspiracy to make him a friendless loser, so it’s not clear why. Maybe it being a useful lie is reason enough.

We’re also to blame for the other idiot’s pantomime terrorism pursuant to the dippy moral calculus proposed by the same peeps who spent eight years slobbering over the protege of Bill Freaking Ayers. Ayers, as you would never know from watching our media, was a leader in an actual campaign of political bombings that actually maimed and killed actual people. So, when libs feigned shock at those raising the possibility that leftists might be responsible for doing something leftists had a history of doing (as well as a history of faking hate crimes where they were the victims) at a politically convenient time, the faux outrage rang hollow.

And how faux the outrage was - and so very selective too. Leftists demand you ignore the near-miss massacres at the Family Research Council and the baseball field by committed leftists who were not any crazier than their political allies, only more proactive. The message is that you Normal Americans are complicit for voting for a guy who doesn’t hate your guts.

I think that on November 6th, the Democrats are going to get a message back from the people they are shamelessly lying about.

Normal voters are not going to look at this blood libel and say, “Yeah, I feel personally responsible for the actions of that Elizabeth Warren-channeling fake Indian stripper guy with a kilometer-long rap sheet who totally would not have done anything nutty if it weren't for Trump. And also for the crimes of a scuzzy coward who hates Trump. I guess I have a moral obligation vote for people who will ruin this surging economy, restore America to its rightful place as a laughingstock on the world stage, and attack my rights of free speech, free exercise of religion, and to keep and bear arms to protect myself from exactly these kind of aspiring Stalins. Because that idea makes sense. I'm convinced.”

I think Normal people are going to be furious at these lies...
More.

Posted by AmPowerBlog at 3:45 PM 0 comments
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Wednesday, October 24, 2018

Is the Wave of 'Bomb Threats' a Far-Left 'False Flag' Operation?

Here's the gasping headline at the Daily Beast, "Pro-Trump Media Insists Bomb Threats Against Clinton, Obama, CNN Are ‘Pure BS,’ a ‘False Flag’."

I'm bothered by these letter bombs, and so far as I've read they're the real thing --- for example, the bomb that was sent to George Soros' house on Monday. It's wrong. Violence is never the solution to political differences, unless we're ready to fight a new civil war in this country, and I don't think we're there. (It's not 1861, in other words.)

That said, this idea of a "false flag" is appealing to me, because I don't put anything past desperate Democrats.

Robert Stacy McCain goes there (click on the time-stamp to read the whole thread):


Added: From Michelle Malkin:


Posted by AmPowerBlog at 3:35 PM 0 comments
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