Expect Election Day to Be a Repeat of 2016

At least someone's willing to say it. 

Hat Tip: Instapundit, "IS IT JUST ME, OR HAS THE MEDIA’S TONE SHIFTED IN THE LAST FEW DAYS?"

It's Keith Koffler, "Biden is leading Trump in 2020 polls. But expect Election Day to be a repeat of 2016 --- Biden and his campaign are making mistakes that will ensure little of this matters. And the polls are almost certainly wrong again":

Opinion | Keith Koffler: Biden is leading Trump in 2020 polls. But expect Election Day to be a repeat of 2016. https://t.co/WmAK8HQBlc - @NBCNewsTHINK

— NBC News (@NBCNews) November 1, 2020

Contrary to the prevailing wisdom among the cognoscenti, history and current circumstances suggest President Donald Trump is going to defeat former Vice President Joe Biden — for some of the very same reasons he came from behind in 2016 to shock the Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

It is understandable why conventional wisdom is getting this wrong again. Trump is down in the polls, the nation’s demographics are continuing to change in ways unfavorable to Trump and Republicans, the coronavirus has wrought death and economic destruction throughout the land and Trump’s personality provokes stormy oceans of antipathy — perhaps most crucially among women and suburban voters.

But Biden and his campaign are making mistakes that will ensure little of this matters. And the polls are almost certainly wrong again. The only question is by how much.

The economy is turning around, playing to Trump’s strength. The president has made significant outreach to minorities, and a relative handful of Black voters switching from Democrat to Republican could help him secure states like Georgia, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and North Carolina. Not to mention that Trump — unlike Biden — is actually campaigning for the job.

Think of it. Clinton wandering around the woods near her home in Chappaqua, N.Y., kicking herself for not appearing even once in Wisconsin. Meanwhile Biden is only now belatedly hitting the trail — a little. This is a risky experiment. Every modern presidential candidate has traveled as much as humanly possible — and then traveled some more. Meeting and speaking to voters — responsibly — is key. Biden is exploring the political equivalent of eating consommé with a fork.

Campaigning does not just reach voters. It imparts a sense of vigor, industriousness and sociability that people want in a leader. I don’t think Trump should be drawing so many people to celebrations that feature sardine-packed, mask-less supporters whose health is at risk. But his rallies suggest that better days are ahead — the theme of most winning presidential campaigns.

Thursday, there was a significant indicator that happy days may indeed soon be here again. The Commerce Department released the U.S. gross domestic product number for the third quarter, showing growth rate of around 33 percent. This will feed directly into Trump’s argument that he is best positioned to save the economy.

Trump complains endlessly about mail-in ballots, ignoring that they may help him. Many more Democrats are voting by mail than Republicans. But these ballots are more likely to be rejected because mistakes were made filling them out or they were late — or simply got lost.

And while the Covid-19 numbers are rising, this does not necessarily benefit Biden. Trump has been arguing that it is time to open up the economy and stop worrying so much about the spread of the virus. People have pandemic fatigue, and they are eager to go back to their regular, pre-Covid lives, even if this sometimes means endangering themselves or others.

And not only is Biden staying home, his army of volunteers and canvassers have been cooped up as well, doing outreach on their parents’ Wi-Fi instead of out seeing voters. The Biden campaign only recently emerged from the basement — with the exception of its leader — after Trump’s operatives had already spent months contacting voters on their doorsteps. Refusing to mobilize voters by showing up in their neighborhoods early and often is another likely ill-fated Biden experiment in ignoring modern campaign practice.

You also should not underestimate the vast amount of damage created by Biden’s second debate suggestion that he would eventually eliminate the oil industry. When moderator Kristen Welker asked him whether he would “close down the oil industry,” Biden answered “Yes,” he would transition from it. When Welker then asked why he would do that, he responded, “Because the oil industry pollutes, significantly.”

Although the economy may be on the upswing, the American public is still suffering...

Alex Curry, Dang!

Hubba hubba!

The #Friday office 🎃 pic.twitter.com/K3I0W9AzrL

— Alex Curry (@Alex_Curry) October 30, 2020

Mark Levin Absolutely Explodes

 Man, I like Mark Levin, but sheesh, he needs some mood stabilizers or something.

Dang!

My appearance on Hannity TV last night pic.twitter.com/ghhC7M85bE

— Mark R. Levin (@marklevinshow) October 30, 2020

Trump Gets Late Election Bounce with Florida's Democrat-Leaning Colombian Constituency

More on Florida, at Foreign Policy. 

Just watch Florida next Tuesday. Florida's results should come right around at 5:00pm, and absentee ("mail-in") ballots are counted before election day. We'll know who's winning in the Sunshine State. 

The rest is all fluff. Well, actually, if Trump wins both Florida and Pennsylvania ... well, it's going to be a laugh riot. 

See, "In Florida, Many Colombian Americans Fear Biden Is Soft on Socialism."

What If Biden Loses Florida?

 He's toast, says Nate Silver. 

But you gotta click through, at Althouse, for the link. 

See, "'Polls show Mr. Biden leading by five to 13 points, but I grew up around here and am dubious. This place — the land of hoagies and Bradley Cooper and Rocky Balboa worship'..."

Trump Up 48-to-44 in Florida?

So that's why the leftist "Latinx" journos at LAT are alarmed. 

See, "For Latinos, combating disinformation about the election often starts at home." 

Hmm. Florida Hispanics are Cuban. There might be some newer arrivals from other countries, but like Cubans, they're also escaping communism and tyranny. With the Democrats going so far left this year, and the anarchy of antifa and Black Lives Matter, this poll, at AoSHQ, is not surprising. 

See, "American Greatness Poll: Trump Takes Four Point Lead in Florida."

Pamela Horn, Country House Society

At Amazon, Pamela Horn, Country House Society: The Private Lives of England's Upper Class After the First World War.

V-Shaped Recovery in U.S. Manufacturing

This is interesting. Frankly, you have to read WSJ just to get straight economic news. 

See, "Why You Might Have Trouble Getting the Refrigerator, Can of Paint or Car You Want":

A couple eager for a kitchen upgrade sold their existing refrigerator, stove and dishwasher, planning to replace them immediately. They were shocked to find out new appliances would be out of stock for months. https://t.co/6uBdrLjchM

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) October 25, 2020

From makers of cars to appliances to paint cans, U.S. manufacturers are falling behind on demand for goods that Americans are buying up as the Covid-19 pandemic drags on.

Factory production of consumer products has largely recovered after shutdowns this spring related to the virus crippled manufacturing across the country.

But as companies rush to restock, buyers are snapping up items at an even faster pace, leading to inventory shortages on goods that have recently surged in popularity with people spending more time at home and nervous about travel, executives, retailers and analysts say.

Five months after vehicle production restarted, car dealers are still seeing their stockpiles dwindle as public transit-averse buyers flock to the new-car lot and more people relocate to the suburbs and countryside.

A surge in home-improvement projects has left paint producers with not enough cans and appliance makers short on parts to produce refrigerators, kitchen mixers and washing machines. 

Supply-chain disruptions, worker absences and other challenges related to virus-proofing the workplace are further complicating manufacturers’ efforts to catch up. Some executives say it won’t be until early next year before stock levels return to normal.

“We do not have the inventory on the new side or the preowned side to meet the demand that’s out there,” said Mike Jackson, chief executive for AutoNation Inc., the U.S.’s largest publicly traded dealership chain. He said he expects availability to improve next year.

Some manufacturers with big consumer businesses, including 3M Co. MMM -0.53% , Harley-Davidson Inc. HOG 1.93% and Ford Motor Co. F -0.61% , are expected to report earnings for their latest quarters this coming week, likely offering more insight into the state of U.S. supply chains.

Production of long-lasting consumer goods, like appliances, trucks and furniture, was down nearly 50% in April from January levels, according to data provided by the Federal Reserve. But over the summer it rebounded, and in September, production was up 1% from January, the data shows.

For buyers, shortages can be a letdown. But for businesses, there is also upside. With inventory tight, auto makers and dealers say they are able to charge more for vehicles, driving stronger profits. And the pent-up demand should help keep sales robust into next year, some executives say.

“It’s good that we have an exceptionally strong order book, but we are, of course, trying to minimize any customer frustration,” Marc Bitzer, chief executive of appliance maker Whirlpool Corp. , said on a call last week with analysts.

After widespread plant closures this spring, manufacturers began bringing workers back in late May under new safety protocols, many scheduling overtime to make up for lost production.

But the restart efforts were slow-going at first, with suppliers also struggling to reopen and factories confronting high rates of worker absences.

It wasn’t until August that many U.S. factories were back to a normal level of production, but by then, demand had also bounced back faster than many had expected, depleting inventories and creating a bigger supply gap, executives and retailers say.

Auto makers, in particular, have been straining to keep up with demand for new vehicles as low interest rates, extra cash from stimulus checks and growing interest in owning a car have stoked sales.

Part of the problem is that auto makers continue to grapple with supply-chain shortages, particularly on items from Mexico, and aren’t always able to get parts needed for the features and configurations buyers want, analysts and executives say.

 

*****

Still more.

'Joe Lied'

Following-up, "What We learned from Tony Bobulinski." 

On the cover of today's New York Post:

What We learned from Tony Bobulinski

 From Kim Strassel, at WSJ, "The Biden ‘Family Legacy":

Here we go: https://t.co/SukHlG1zGs

— Kimberley Strassel (@KimStrassel) October 22, 2020

Joe Biden has a problem, and his name is Hunter. Because the former vice president hasn’t had to answer any questions on this topic—and continued to refuse to do so in Thursday’s debate—that problem could soon become America’s.

That’s the reality now that a former business partner of Hunter Biden’s has come forward to provide the ugly details of the “family brand.” Tony Bobulinski, a Navy veteran and institutional investor, has provided the Journal emails and text messages associated with his time as CEO of Sinohawk Holdings, a venture between the Bidens and CEFC China Energy, a Shanghai-based conglomerate. That correspondence corroborates and expands on emails recently published by the New York Post, which says they come from a Hunter laptop.

In a statement, Mr. Bobulinski said he went public because he wants to clear his name, which was contained in those published emails, and because accusations that the information is fake or “Russian disinformation” are “offensive.” He attests that all the correspondence he provided is genuine, including documents that suggest Hunter was cashing in on the Biden name and that Joe Biden was involved. Mr. Bobulinski says he was also alarmed by a September report from Sen. Ron Johnson that “connected some dots” on the CEFC deal, causing him now to believe the Bidens sold out their U.S. partners.

Mr. Bobulinski’s text messages show he was recruited for the project by James Gilliar, a Hunter associate. Mr. Gilliar explains in a December 2015 text that there will be a deal between the Chinese and “one of the most prominent families from the U.S.” A month later he introduces Rob Walker, also “a partner of Biden.” In March 2016, Mr. Gilliar tells Mr. Bobulinski the Chinese entity is CEFC, which is shaping up to be “the Goldmans of China.” Mr. Gilliar promises that same month to “develop” the terms of a deal “with hunter.” Note that in 2015-16, Joe Biden was still vice president.

As the deal takes shape in 2017, Mr. Bobulinski begins to question what Hunter will contribute besides his name, and worries that he was “kicked out of US Navy for cocaine use.” Mr. Gilliar acknowledges “skill sets [sic] missing” and observes that Hunter “has a few demons.” He explains that “in brand [Hunter is] imperative but right know [sic] he’s not essential for adding input.” Mr. Bobulinski writes that he appreciates “the name/leverage being used” but thinks the economic “upside” should go to the team doing the actual work. Mr. Gilliar reminds him that those on the Chinese side “are intelligence so they understand the value added.”

This dispute almost derails the deal. Hunter is hardly visible through most of the work, until final contract negotiations ramp up in mid-May. He brings in his uncle Jim Biden for a stake. (Mr. Gilliar in a text message soothes Mr. Bobulinski with a promise that Jim’s addition “strengthens our USP”—unique selling proposition—“to the Chinese as it looks like a truly family business.”) Hunter in texts and emails wants offices in three U.S. cities, “significant” travel budgets, a stipend for Jim Biden, a job for an assistant, and more-frequent distributions of any gains. As for annual pay, he explains in an email that he expects “a hell of a lot more than 850” thousand dollars a year (the amount Mr. Bobulinski, the CEO, is getting), since his ex-wife will take nearly all of it.

Mr. Bobulinksi pushes back, warning Mr. Gilliar in a text that they need to “manage” Hunter because “he thinks things are going to be his personal piggybank.” The duo worry about his “mental state,” substance abuse, and his ability to make meetings.

Hunter, in his own angry texts, makes clear that his contribution is his name...

RTWT.

Alan Taylor, William Cooper's Town

At Amazon, Alan Taylor, William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic.

Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, Cynical Theories

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody.

Evelyn Taft's Thursday Forecast

 It's been cool, overcast. Its' a nice break from the heat.

Here's the fabulous Ms. Evelyn, for CBS News 2 Los Angeles:

Governor Kristi Noem Pushes Back (VIDEO)

 On the Ingrhram Angle, last night: 

Gad Saad, The Parasitic Mind

Gad Saad, The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense.

Hunter Biden's Laptop Allegedly Features Photos of 'Underage Girls'

 At Big League Politics. "SHOCK CLAIM: Rudy Giuliani Says Hunter Biden Laptop Had Pictures of “Underage Girls,” Bizarre Texts."

RELATED: This is gold, Scaachi Koul, at BuzzFeed, via Memeorandum, "Jeffrey Toobin Can't Be The Only Person Masturbating On Work Zoom Calls."

Benjamin J. Cohen, Currency Power

At Amazon, Benjamin J. Cohen, Currency Power: Understanding Monetary Rivalry.

Everything is 'White Supremacist'

 Big eyerolls here, but it's absolutely true.

And it's the most stupid thing. I feel bad for white people, especially meekly progressive whites who are too afraid of being labeled "racist" (and having their lives destroyed) to stand up to the bullying. 

At NYT, "'White Supremacy' Once Meant David Duke and the Klan. Now It Refers to Much More":

THIS—>”’White Supremacy’ Once Meant David Duke and the Klan. Now It Refers to Much More.” The New York Times https://t.co/jhgUkDPq3H

— Christina Sommers (@CHSommers) October 17, 2020

"As July 4 and its barbecues arrived this year, the activist and former N.F.L. quarterback Colin Kaepernick declared, “We reject your celebration of white supremacy.”

The movie star Mark Ruffalo said in February that Hollywood had been swimming for a century in “a homogeneous culture of white supremacy.”

The director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, one of New York City’s most prestigious museums, acknowledged this summer that his institution was grounded in white supremacy, while four blocks uptown, the curatorial staff of the Guggenheim decried a work culture suffused in it.

The Los Angeles Times editorial board issued an apology two weeks ago describing itself as “deeply rooted in white supremacy” for at least its first 80 years. In England, the British National Library’s Decolonising Working Group cautioned employees that a belief in “color blindness” or the view that “mankind is one human family” are examples of “covert white supremacy.”

In a time of plague and protest, two words — “white supremacy” — have poured into the rhetorical bloodstream with force and power. With President Trump’s overt use of racist rhetoric, a spate of police killings of Black people, and the rise of far-right extremist groups, many see the phrase as a more accurate way to describe today’s racial realities, with older descriptions like “bigotry” or “prejudice” considered too tame for such a raw moment.

News aggregators show a vast increase in the use of the term “white supremacy” (or “white supremacist”) compared with 10 years ago. The New York Times itself used the term fewer than 75 times in 2010, but nearly 700 times since the first of this year alone. Type the term into Twitter’s search engine and it pops up six, eight or 10 times each minute.

The meaning of the words has expanded, too. Ten years ago, white supremacy frequently described the likes of the Ku Klux Klan and David Duke, the neo-Nazi politician from Louisiana. Now it cuts a swath through the culture, describing an array of subjects: the mortgage lending policies of banks; a university’s reliance on SAT scores as a factor for admissions decisions; programs that teach poor people better nutrition; and a police department’s enforcement policies.

Yet the phrase is deeply contentious. Influential writers such as Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ibram X. Kendi, a Boston University professor, have embraced it, seeing in white supremacy an explanatory power that cuts through layers of euphemism to the core of American history and culture. It speaks to the reality, they say, of a nation built on slavery. To examine many aspects of American life once broadly seen as race neutral — such as mortgage lending or college faculty hiring — is to find a bedrock of white supremacy.

“It is not hyperbole to say that white supremacy is resting at the heart of American politics,” Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor of Princeton, a socialist activist and professor of African-American studies, said in a speech in 2017.

But some Black scholars, businessmen and activists — on the right and the left — balk at the phrase. They hear in those words a sledgehammer that shocks and accuses, rather than explains. When so much is described as white supremacy, when the Ku Klux Klan and a museum art collection take the same descriptor, they say, the power of the phrase is lost.

Prof. Orlando Patterson, a sociologist at Harvard University who has written magisterial works on the nature of slavery and freedom, including about his native Jamaica, said it was too reminiscent of the phrases used to describe apartheid and Nazi Germany.

“It comes from anger and hopelessness and alienates rather than converts,” he said.

The label also discourages white and Black people from finding commonalities of experience that could move society forward,

Professor Patterson and others said. “It racializes a lot of problems that a lot of people face, even when race is not the answer,” Professor Patterson said.

Glenn C. Loury, a conservative-leaning economics professor at Brown University, hears in the term an attempt to spin a mythic narrative about a fallen America.

“So we declare structures of our country are implacably racist,” Professor Loury said. “On the other hand, we make appeals to have a conversation with that country which is mired in white supremacy? The logic escapes me.”

Then there are those whose cultural signposts are found outside the Black-white divide. The essayist Wesley Yang, the son of Korean immigrants and the author of “The Souls of Yellow Folk,” often examines racial identity and has found himself watching the debate over these words as if through a side window. Did this thing called white supremacy really so neatly define the lives of Black people and Latinos and Asians?

“The phrase is destructive of discourse,” he said. “Once you define it as something that has a ghostly essence, it’s nowhere and everywhere”..."

Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution

At Amazon, Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500-1800.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's Labour Party Wins Landslide Election

This is not good. 

Have you paid attention to this woman? She's a budding leftist totalitarian, and New Zealand voters handed her at least three more years of power. Remember, she forced a major gun confiscation program following the Christchurch massacre in 2019, and New Zealand's coronavirus crackdown this year is perhaps the most draconian of any democracy on earth. 

And she's a creepy "Karen" type of woman who assumes she knows what's best for you. "Cringe" is only putting it mildly. 

At the New Zealand Herald, "Election results 2020: Labour's Jacinda Ardern wins second term, crushes National's Judith Collins; Winston Peters and NZ First out; Act's David Seymour and Greens' James Shaw and Marama Davidson get 10 MPs each."

The Sydney Morning Herald, "Victory an endorsement for Jacinda's steady hand in unsteady times." 

And the Guardian U.K., "New Zealand election 2020: Jacinda Ardern to govern New Zealand for second term after historic victory -- New Zealanders give Labour more votes than at any other election in past five decades."