Posts Tagged ‘Joseph Donnelly’

More 2018 Post Election Analysis

Thursday, November 8th, 2018

Busy as hell today. Here’s some more election analysis of note:

  • Jim Geraghty:

    Dear God, did the Senate Democrats’ strategy on Brett Kavanaugh backfire on them on an epic scale. I do think that before the Kavanaugh fight, the Democrats were on the path to that “Blue Tsunami.” And then they decided that rerunning the Neil Gorsuch fight wasn’t going to be enough; they had to fully embrace a bunch of accusations that had no supporting witnesses.

    Claire McCaskill, gone. Finally. I laid out her devilish luck in yesterday’s Jolt; for at least twelve years, Missouri Republicans yearned for a chance to take her on in a relatively normal political environment with a candidate who wasn’t a walking Superfund site of toxicity. Lo and behold, with no political wind at her back, no good GOP rivals being knocked out by the political equivalent of anvils falling from buildings or alien abductions, Josh Hawley won . . . by about 144,000 votes. The old “Vote liberal for four or five years, veer back to the center in election years” strategy of red-state Democrats finally stopped working.

    Taylor Swift could not deliver Tennessee for Phil Bredesen. In retrospect, the hype around the former governor looks like wishful thinking on the part of Democrats. He last won a statewide race in 2006, and as soon as Marsha Blackburn nationalized this race, it was over. Blackburn won by about 245,000 votes last night. You figure that Democrats will have a hard time recruiting a top-tier candidate anytime soon.

    Rick Scott won in Florida! Never underestimate this man again. If aliens invade Florida in 2022, Scott will lead the forces of humanity to a narrow upset victory, because that’s what he does every four years — win something that nobody thinks he has a chance to win, by about one percent. Florida Democrats will console themselves that it was so close, but with the high turnout, four-tenths of a percentage point comes out to . . . about 34,000 votes. After the 2000 presidential election, that’s a Florida landslide.

    As of this writing, Mike Braun is on pace to win Indiana’s Senate by 10 points, or about 189,000 votes. A lot of people are pointing to this result as a polling failure, but remember that because of Indiana’s strict anti-robocall laws, pollsters survey this state less frequently because they have to use live interviewers. The lesson here is, trust your instincts! A GOP candidate in a longtime Republican-leaning state, the home state of the current vice president, up against a Democrat who won with 50 percent in a presidential year and who votes against Kavanaugh a month before Election Day . . . has a really good chance to win and win comfortably.

    Face it, we’re not even that upset that Joe Manchin won in West Virginia. His victory offers the lesson that any red-state Democrat could have improved their chances for reelection by voting for Brett Kavanaugh.

    We should give Beto O’Rourke a bit of credit; coming within three points is better than any Democrat running statewide in Texas since . . . Ann Richards, I think? But that’s . . . not a victory, which is a fair expectation when you raise $70 million and spend $60 million. And because of the scale of the turnout, those three points amount to 213,750 votes. Turnout was more than 8.3 million votes, and I recall seeing O’Rourke fans insisting that if turnout surpassed 8 million votes, then their man was certain to win. Guys, there are a lot of Republicans in Texas.

    Bad: Nancy Pelosi as Speaker again. Good: Getting to run against Nancy Pelosi again, since she’s now the highest ranking elected Democrat in the country.

  • Kevin D. Williamson:

    I am happy to see the admirable Senator Ted Cruz reelected in Texas, where you can almost buy a Senate race but not quite. I like Senator Cruz a great deal (and I like him even more when he’s not campaigning) but I’d have enjoyed watching a reasonably well-qualified ham sandwich defeat Robert Francis O’Rourke, one of the most insipid and puffed-up figures on the American political scene.

    Snip.

    The Democrats have gone well and truly ’round the bend. I spent a fair part of last night with Democrats in Portland, Ore. — admittedly, a pretty special bunch of Democrats, Portland being Portland and all. The professional political operators are what they always are — by turns cynical and sanctimonious — but the rank and file seem to actually believe the horsepucky they’ve been fed, i.e., that these United States are about two tweets away from cattle cars and concentration camps. The level of paranoia among the people I spoke to was remarkable.

    Fourth, and related: The Democrats don’t seem to understand what it is they are really fighting, which, in no small part, is not the Republicans but the constitutional architecture of the United States. The United States is, as the name suggests, a union of states, which have interests, powers, and characters of their own. They are not administrative subdivisions of the federal government. All that talk about winning x percent of the “national House vote” or the “national Senate vote” — neither of which, you know, exists — is a backhanded way of getting at the fact that they do not like how our governments are organized, and that they would prefer a more unitary national government under which the states are so subordinated as to be effectively inconsequential. They complain that, under President Trump, “the Constitution is hanging by a thread” — but they don’t really much care for the actual order established by that Constitution, and certainly not for the limitations it puts on government power through the Bill of Rights and other impediments to étatism.

    Noun. etatism (usually uncountable, plural etatisms) Total control of the state over individual citizens.”

  • Sean Trende:

    Overall, Republicans had a tough night Tuesday. When all is said and done, Democrats look to have gained around 35 seats in the House, seven governorships and over 330 state legislators. Yet as rough as it was, it could have been much worse for Republicans. In Barack Obama’s first mid-term in 2010, Republicans picked up 63 House seats and 700 state legislative seats — numbers that were not out of the question for Democrats for a large portion of this cycle. In the Senate, Republicans actually expanded their majority — as it appears they will pick up 3 seats — whereas Democrats lost 6 seats in the 2010 midterms.

    In many ways, it was a strange election. If you had told me in August that Democrats were going to win more than 30 House seats, I would have bet a large amount of money that the Senate would also be in play. I would have a difficult time accepting that Florida would elect Ron DeSantis governor and (as it now appears) Rick Scott as senator. The notion that Ohio’s Senate race would fall into the mid-single digits, that Mike DeWine would win the Ohio governor’s race handily, or that Michigan’s Senate race would be decided by fewer than seven points all would have seemed ludicrous. Martha McSally keeping Arizona close (and possibly winning) would not seem possible.

    Snip.

    1. The GOP got killed in the suburbs. We can place Republican losses into three broad buckets: “perennial swing seats” (Colorado’s 6th, Arizona’s 2nd), “sleeping/problematic candidates” (Oklahoma’s 5th, South Carolina’s 1st), and suburban districts. This last category is by far the broadest, and it accounts for around two-thirds of the Republicans’ losses. This is a significant long-term problem for the party if it continues.
    2. This probably doesn’t count as a wave. If you look at the Index I referenced on Monday, our preliminary results suggest that things have moved about 23 points toward Democrats. That’s a substantial shift, but it falls short of even “semi-wave elections” such as 2014 (a shift of 26 points toward Republicans) and 2006 (a movement of 30 points toward Democrats). Obviously, as results trickle in this might shift further, but probably not by much.
    2. Money. One of the ways to resolve the tension between what we saw in the House versus the Senate (and to a lesser extent, governorships) is that Democrats had a massive fundraising advantage in the lower chamber. This allowed them to catch a number of incumbent Republicans napping, and to spread the playing field out such that the GOP just had too many brush fires to put out. Oklahoma’s 5th Congressional District, for example, flipped in part because Michael Bloomberg’s team spent $400,000 on the air in the final week of the election. To the extent we wish to deduce anything about 2020 from these midterms, we should bear in mind that the next election will probably be fought on a more even financial playing field.

    Snip.

    This all takes place against the backdrop of a booming economy. Finally, it is important to note that Republicans should not have found themselves in this position amid a vibrant economy. It is quite unusual to have a result this bad in a time of peace and prosperity. Some of this is the suburban realignment, but some is driven by Donald Trump’s more extreme actions, which alienate suburban moderates.

    On the other hand, if Trump can smooth out the rougher edges that turn suburbanites off, he could prove to be a formidable candidate in 2020. Most of his states from 2016 continued to support Republicans this cycle. But, on the other hand, he hasn’t shown much interest in smoothing out those edges. And if the economy slides into recession, all bets are off.

  • Ed Rodgers:

    While Tuesday night was not a complete win for Republicans, there was no blue wave, either. By most measures, Republicans beat the odds of history and nearly everyone’s expectations, while Democrats were left disappointed as the fantasy of Beto O’Rourke, Andrew Gillum, Stacey Abrams and others winning fizzled. Not one new progressive Democrat was successful bursting onto the scene. It will take a few days to process the meaning of this year’s election returns, but the instant analysis is clear: Democrats may have won the House, but Trump won the election.

  • Jazz Shaw on what won’t be happening:

    Let’s look at what won’t be happening, despite the fever dreams of the Democrats. First, there will be no big ticket legislative packages going through. No major immigration reform supporting the highest priorities of either party. No new tax cuts, but also no tax increases. No new gun control legislation. The fact is, these folks will be lucky if they can name a new Post Office.

    The President isn’t going to be impeached. The Democrats would need to round up every one of their members in the House to get the ball rolling and too many of them are on record saying that would be too extreme. And even if they managed it in the House there is zero chance of a conviction in the Senate. Donald Trump will finish his first term at a minimum.

    The wall isn’t going to be finished. That’s somehow become a badge of honor among Democrats, despite being one of the most doable solutions to immigration problems imaginable. If we’re going to get any money at all for additional wall construction, the new House majority will want a massive pound of flesh in return.

  • Kurt Schlicter: “Look For Democrats To Blow Their Meager Success By Being Jerks”:

    No, they want all #resistance, all of the time, and they are going to do everything they can to appease their looney base by launching investigations and screaming and yelling. That’s not going to help the newbies keep those new House seats in 2020. It’s going to be especially funny when all these rookies who promised the suckers back home they would never vote for that San Francisco liberal monster get strong-armed into casting their very first vote for Mistress Nancy.

    And if they decide to obstruct and agitate, then Trump can be in opposition to them and run against the do-nothing House in 2020. Nobody is better than Trump when he has an enemy. I’m kind of hoping the Democrats choose the path of jerkiness just for the nicknames he’ll bestow in his tweets.

    Oh, and please, impeach him over Russia Treason Traitor stuff. Please. Toss the Trump in that briar patch and he’ll be president forever.

  • George Neumayr thinks Trump helped in Florida:

    The national media portrayed Trump as a weight on Republicans. In fact, he was their source of energy. Had the Florida GOP been ambivalent about Trump and kept him out of the state, Ron DeSantis and Rick Scott would have lost. Journalists mocked DeSantis for “tying himself to Trump,” but they now fall silent as it becomes clear that that was perhaps his only winning strategy.

    The press propagandized relentlessly for Gillum, who was flush with money from George Soros and Tom Steyer, while kneecapping the scrappier DeSantis over minor lapses, and Gillum still couldn’t win. Notice also the media’s silence about Obama. Yet again the darling of journalists shows himself to be a crappy campaigner for others. In his narcissistic shade nothing grows.

    The media’s excited talk of a “blue wave” in Florida never struck me as very convincing as I walked around various cities in Florida. The media’s giddy keenness for Gillum was never reflected in any of the conversations I ever heard. In mid-October, I walked around the Volusia County mall in a MAGA hat as an experiment to test the media’s claims of a spreading anti-Trump backlash. Nobody seemed to care in the slightest. In fact, a self-described independent who said that he “had voted for Jimmy Carter” made a point of walking over to me as I sat in the mall’s food court to express his support for Trump’s policies. “I didn’t vote for him,” he said, “but he is delivering results.”

  • Dems are currently up 30 seats in the House, which puts them up to 225.

    Your Obligatory “Day Before the Election” Horserace Post

    Monday, November 5th, 2018

    Election day is tomorrow! So here’s a brief roundup of the state of play:

  • Here’s the way Real Clear Politics breaks down Senate races:

    They show North Dakota Democrat incumbent Heidi Heitkamp as gone, which already brings Republicans up to 50 seats with victories in Tennessee (likely) and Texas (even more likely).

    The races they have as tossups are:

    • Arizona: The late John McCain’s seat. I expect former fighter pilot and Republican Martha McSally to beat Kyrsten “Meth Lab of Democracy” Sinema based on the latter’s baggage and blunders, and the importance of border control to Arizona residents.
    • Florida: Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson is in a very tough fight with Republican Governor Rick Scott, but Republican turnout seems to be surging. Keep in mind that in 2014, Scott beat the odious Charlie Crist by only 64,000 votes. It being Florida, it may not be decided until the recount.
    • Indiana: Democratic incumbent Joe Donnelly (D), the last of the Stupak Block Flipper still in office, has been in a virtual tie with Republican challenger Mike Braun. Trump walloped Hillary by 19 points in 2016, while Donnelly managed to eek out 50.04% of the vote in the very Democrat-friendly year of 2012. I think he’s toast and Braun wins.
    • Missouri: Republican challenger Josh Hawley has lead polls against incumbent Democrat Claire McCaskill ever since the Kavanaugh vote in a state Trump won by 18 points in 2016. Stick a fork in her.
    • Montana: Incumbent Democrat Jon Tester should be in deep trouble in a state Trump won by 21 points, but polls show him with a small but sustained lead over challenger Matt Rosendale. Chalk this up as the toss-up Senate race Republicans are most likely to see slip away.
    • Nevada: Polls show Republican incumbent Dean Heller slightly behind challenger Jacky Rosen. See the mention of big crowds at Trump rallies further down in a state Hillary won by just over two points. Heller eked out a two point win in face of Obama’s big 2012, and I think he survives by the skin of his teeth this year as well.
    • West Virginia: You would think that Democratic incumbent Joe Manchin would be in deep trouble in a state where Trump walloped Hillary by 42 points, but he’s maintained a small but persistent lead over challenger Patrick Morrisey. The Last Blue Dog may survive 2018, but I suspect this one will go down to the wire.

    Any “Likely Democrat” races Republicans can pull an upset off in? Maybe New Jersey where, despite substantial leads, Democrats have been pouring last minute funds in to save indicted sleazebag Robert Menendez. But that’s a pretty high mountain for Republican challenger Bob Hugin to climb.

  • Vegas oddsmaker Wayne Allyn Root, who correctly predicted Trump’s upset win two years ago, similarly sees another GOP win in the offing:

    Don’t look now, but it’s all happening again. Nate Silver says Democrats have a 80%+ chance of winning the House. Cook Report says Democrats will win the House by 40 seats. All the experts say it’s over- Democrats will win. I’ll go out on a limb and disagree again.

    I see Florida Democrat Governor candidate Andrew Gillum holding a rally with Bernie Sanders and the whole place is empty.

    Barack Obama could not fill a high school gym in Milwaukee.

    I witnessed firsthand Joe Biden and Obama at separate events here in Las Vegas playing to small crowds.

    Meanwhile I was opening speaker for President Trump’s event in Las Vegas last month- with 10,000 waiting in line for hours in a place where no one cares much about politics. This is a phenomenon.

    Does that sound like the GOP is losing 40 seats? Dream on delusional Democrats.

  • National Review‘s Jim Geraghty sees Democrats pulling off an extremely narrow win to take the House.
  • One of the seats he see’s flipping is the Texas 32nd Congressional District, currently held by Republican Pete Sessions. The district went very narrowly (1.9%) for Hillary Clinton in 2016, but went for Romney by over 15 points in 2012. I tend to think Sessions barely wins reelection, based on a strong economy, the long-time Republican nature of the district, and incumbency.
  • My prediction: Republicans keep the Senate, and we won’t actually know if they keep the House until most of the recounts are done.

    Kavanaugh: The Aftermath

    Tuesday, October 9th, 2018

    Brett Kavanaugh has been confirmed to the United States Supreme Court, but the Democrats’ last-minute Hail Mary smear attack has inflicted lasting damage…on themselves:

  • What exactly do Democrats mean by “take the gloves off?”

    There is a dangerous and irresponsible strain of opinion telling the Democratic Party today that when they lose, it’s because they aren’t fighting hard enough…The thesis goes something like this: the left has total dominance of the culture, and total dominance of the popular vote, so the answer to why they lose not infrequently is that the system is rigged against them, and they must fight all the harder and “take the gloves off” or something like that to achieve their ends.

    The gloves have been off for a very long time in American politics. How quickly we forget the attempted murder of multiple Republican politicians including Steve Scalise, who may never walk normally again. Just this past week we saw a Democratic staffer who doxxed multiple Republican Senators on the Judiciary Committee indicted, facing nearly 50 years in federal prison for his crimes. We saw Cory Gardner revealing his wife had received graphic texts of a beheading after his vote for Kavanaugh, along with their home address. And in Washington, we saw whatever all this is.

    And this is not new, of course – it stretches back a long time. The gloves were off for the American Left in the late 1960s, when campus and activist violence became normalized. They were off in the 1970s when the outgrowth of that spirit of protest led to the sequence of Weathermen bombings that crisscrossed the nation.

    Snip.

    What this whole “we’re the wet rag party” talk really translates too is: we, the abidingly secular Americans who were repeatedly promised we were the ethnically and sexually diverse and dominant coalition during the Obama years, now feel frustrated by being merely ascendant and feel instead entitled to absolute and immediate victory. And that justifies the “we’re coming for you” attitude today. Because any roadblocks or speedbumps for that agenda are now viewed as the vestiges of dead old white men protecting the interests of modern old white men.

    This was a surprisingly dominant viewpoint as recently as a few years ago, accepted even among intelligent people on the right. Then a surprising group of people came along willing to say: No. And that has made all the difference.

  • The Kavanaugh witch hunt has radicalized the normals:

    Even the gimpiest of conservagimps can’t pretend that the attack on Kavanaugh isn’t an attack on us. The last few weeks has made it impossible for them to live in denial any longer. Hell, when Bret Stephens wakes the hell up you know the alarm is going off. At this rate, next we will see anti-Trump sex symbol George Will announce that the Democrats have been “unsporting.”

    Snip.

    But the rest of us are woke, and getting woker . We are red-pilled, and getting red-pillier. We are getting, you might say, militant.

    See, we Normals get that if they can do this to Brett Kavanaugh, they can do this to anyone. If they win, they can destroy anyone Normal, or Normal-friendly, by a mere accusation (Notice how none of this applies to the elite – since they really don’t care about sexual abuse, their own gross collection of woman beaters, abusers, and pervs get a pass). This is the left’s dream tool. They don’t have to prove anything. They simply have to point, screech “Witch!” and their enemy disappears like in that bizarro universe Star Trek episode where Spock had a beard.

    But it has become clear that we are not accepting this, because to accept this is to accept our own submission to these goofs in perpetuity. At first, the response was anecdotal. Hugh Hewitt had a bunch of women callers dial in, all of them irate, in what he described to me as an unprecedented “avalanche.” I personally got emails from center right folks, Normals, who do not like politics. In fact, they hate politics. But now they are paying attention. And they are mad. Every man knows he has a bull’s-eye on his back. Every woman knows her husband, brother, or son could be next. These people aren’t afraid of men being held accountable for things they did, but of false accusations that liberals would strip them of their ability to defend themselves against.

    he attempted human sacrifice of Brett Kavanaugh on the altar of unrestricted abortion is too much for them. And now the polls are making it clear that that they are angry, ticked off, and ready to low crawl over jagged glass shards to vote against the Democrats who instigated this atrocity.

    Sure, anecdotes are tricky. But the polls are less so. Heidi Heitkamp is gone. She’s toast. Claire McCaskill, toast. That goofy guy in Indiana, looking bad. Manchin? He knows what time it is, so he might weasel through.

    We are not going to forget what happened here. And this is going to have a lasting impact, but not one the Democrats are going to like.

  • More proof of the Kavanaugh effect on 2018 races:

    Several public polls have shown a fading “enthusiasm gap” between Democratic and Republican voters since the Kavanaugh fight escalated. The campaign arm for House Republicans reported an explosion in small-dollar donations. “[W]hat the Kavanaugh experience has done is gotten Republicans excited,” Rep. Steve Stivers, R-Ohio, chairman of the NRCC, told Fox News.

    Other polls showed Republicans pulling away in red-state Senate races. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., both broke 50 percent in the CBS/YouGov polls. Blackburn is running to replace Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., who voted against Kavanaugh, is down by nearly 9 points in the RealClearPolitics average. The Cook Political Report has shifted the Montana Senate race in the GOP’s favor.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Even Democrats taking back the house is no longer the slam dunk Democrats previously pretended.
  • Poorly written editorial blames white women for Kavanaugh’s confirmation, voting Republican. “After a confirmation process where women all but slit their wrists, letting their stories of sexual trauma run like rivers of blood through the Capitol, the Senate still voted to confirm Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.” Yes, there’s nothing like spicing up your turgid, far-left Social Justice Warrior feminist prose by breaking out the purple pulp writing cliches of the 1930s!
  • LinkSwarm for March 17, 2017

    Friday, March 17th, 2017

    Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Insert your own Irish-related drinking joke here.

  • President Trump’s approval ratings rise.
  • Did Obama use a British intelligence agency to spy on Trump? (Maybe not.)
  • Did the Obama Administration use Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac as a slush fund to pay for ObamaCare?
  • Senate Democrats are paralized what do to over Neil Gorsuch. Everyone agrees Gorsuch is extremely qualified, but the leftwing nutroots are threatening to primary any Democrat who votes to confirm him. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Finally: “A House panel held a hearing on possibly splitting the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Thursday morning.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • In talking about the House GOP’s pathetic ObamaCare replacement, Stephen Green hits the nail on the head: “Congress is warped because the American electorate has yet to accept that other people’s money does eventually run out — and that we are all the other people.” That’s why we need someone committed to reform in the White House, and Greece and Venezuela’s examples fresh in the public’s eye…
  • Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey: “What we reject is immigration without assimilation.” (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)
  • ICE arrests 248 illegal aliens, most in the sanctuary city of Philadelphia. “20 had a conviction and/or pending charges or 48 percent (88 of those arrested had criminal convictions and 32 of those arrested have pending criminal charges). In addition, 50 had been previously removed from the United States and subsequently illegally re-entered.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Meanwhile, in Australia: “Teacher quits after primary school students threaten to behead her.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • “Iraqi government forces besieged Islamic State militants around Mosul’s Old City on Thursday, edging closer to the historic mosque from where the group’s leader declared a caliphate nearly three years ago.”
  • Former Democratic Representative Dennis Kucinich says that one of his phonecalls was wiretapped. “If a member of Congress can have his phone tapped, this can happen to anybody.”
  • Ten Senate Democrats are vulnerable in 2018. They’re prime targets for takedowns in the midterm elections. But the process starts now, not then…In order of vulnerability (most to least), the target list features: 1) Joe Donnelly-IN; 2) Bill Nelson-FL; 3) Sherrod Brown-OH; 4) Claire McCaskill-MO; 5) Heidi Heitkamp-ND; 6) Tammy Baldwin-WI; 7) Jon Tester-MN; 8) Joe Manchin-WV; 9) Debbie Stabenow-MI; 10) Bob Casey, Jr.-PA.” Agree with the list, but not the order, since Heitkamp hails from a state Trump won by 36 points. But seeing Stupak bloc flip-flopper Donnelly go down at last would be extremely satisfying…
  • Breakdown of 2016 Presidential race demographics. Least likely to vote for Trump: Black single women. Most likely to vote for Trump: Mormons. Usual poll caveats apply. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Remember convicted felon Brett Kimberlin? There’s always some Kimberlin news floating around the blogsphere, usually in relation to his latest ludicrous lawsuit getting laughed out of court. But this week he made the news for being involved in selling hoax documents designed to bring down Donald Trump. “The entire set of documents appear to have been forged as part of an elaborate scam.” So, like most Kimberlin escapades, the story ends in embarrassing failure. (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
  • Cenk Uygur: Why the Democratic Party is useless. 1. As with all these critiques of the Democratic Party from the left, it’s right about the party being a corrupt institution for entrenched interests and wrong about America being gung ho for socialism. 2. Boy, that “not being polite” stuff sure helped Democrats recall Scott Walker! 3. “Cenk Uygur” sounds like a dark, forbidding fortress at the edge of Mordor.
  • Holland is the canary in the European coalmine of radical Islamization. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Speaking of Holland, Geert Wilders placed second in Dutch elections, which falls short of a serious challenge to the Islamophillic and Eurocentric establishment.
  • Dear Sen. McCain: (Sigh).
  • Rand Paul fires back: “He makes a really, really strong case for term limits. I think maybe he’s past his prime. I think maybe he’s gotten a little bit unhinged.”
  • Germany wants to fine companies for not censoring fast enough. What do you want to bet that objections to the rousing success of their Muslim immigration policy are first on the list of things to be censored?
  • Camille Paglia has a new book out, and offers up an interview where she talks about modern feminism (against), southern women (for), working class men (for), Michel Foucault (against), and pornography (for).
  • Soros Fellow Flees Country While Wife Arrested For Welfare Scam.” It seems that earning $1.5 million a year at the Washington, D.C., offices of Mayer Brown LLP just wasn’t enough for Fidelis Agbapuruonwu… (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Three #BlackLivesMatter protestors arrested for beating up a homeless man.
  • Man gets a C when he should have gotten an A for a school assignment. So he did what any of us would have done: Successfully amends the Constitution. (Hat tip: Texas Supreme Court Justice Don Willett’s Twitter feed.)
  • Dwight has some Austin-related memoes from the police beat.
  • “Coming up next on Most ShockingMormon Justice!”
  • King Kong burns.
  • He divided them again!
  • Schumer steals again. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Singer Kelly Clarkson is selling her Tennessee mansion. I like how it’s half typical rich-person mansion, and half Bass Pro Shop…
  • Post Election Analysis: Bart Stupak’s Turncoats Go Down in Flames

    Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010

    One of the most satisfying results of last night’s election was just how many of Bart Stupak’s block of ObamaCare flippers went down in flames.

    If you remember back to the ObamaCare debates, Stupak’s bloc of “Pro-Life Democrats” was never, ever, ever, ever going to vote for a bill that included government funding of abortions. That is, right up until they did.

    As shown below, on November 2, the clear majority of them paid the price for betraying their principles as well as their constituents. Unless otherwise noted, the election margins below are taken from this CBS table. Since WordPress doesn’t let me set font colors to red, I’ve marked GOP pickups in bold.

    • Rep. Jerry Costello of Illinois’ 12th district defeated Republican Teri Newman
    • Rep. Joseph Donnelly of Indiana’ 2nd district edged Republican Jackie Walorski by less than 3,000 votes.
    • Rep. Brad Ellsworth left his Indiana’s 8th Congressional seat for an unsuccessful run for the Senate. Republican Larry Bucshon flipped the seat by defeating Trent Van Haaften by almost 40,000 votes.
    • Rep. Bart Stupak retired from Michigan’s 1st congressional district when it became apparent his ObamaCare betrayal doomed his electoral chances. Republican Dan Benishek flipped the seat by defeating Gary McDowell by 25,000 votes.
    • Rep. James Oberstar of Minnesota lost to Republican Chip Cravaack. You may also remember Oberstar for racking up only a single in-district donation to his reelection campaign.
    • Rep. Steve Driehaus of Ohio’s 1st district lost to Republican Steve Chabot by 23,000 votes.
    • Rep. Charles Wilson of Ohio’s 6th district lost to Republican Bill Johnson by 10,000 votes.
    • Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio’s 9th district beat James Iott (AKA Nazi Costume Guy) by a wide margin.
    • Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper of Pennsylvania’s 3rd district lost to Republican Mike Kelly by over 20,000 votes.
    • Rep. Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania’s 11th district lost to Lou Barletta by over 15,000 votes.
    • Rep. Solomon Ortiz of Texas’ 27th district loses to Republican Blake Farenthold by less than 1,000 votes.

    That’s eight out of eleven Stupak bloc flippers whose seats are now in the hands of the GOP. And of those eleven races, I correctly picked ten, missing only Donnelly’s narrow victory in Indiana’s second district (which I originally had down as a longshot).

    A few lessons:

    1. Voters hate ObamaCare.
    2. They hate congressmen who break promises. (Republicans should take special note of this one anytime they contemplate letting a GOP-controlled congress slip back to the old free-spending ways of the Bush43 years.)
    3. They hate Blue Dog Democrats who vote like liberals when the really important issues are on the line.
    4. Voters may be wising up to the fact that it doesn’t matter how much a Democrat swears up and down how Pro-Life, fiscally conservative, pro-gun, etc. they are; when push comes to shove, they’ll always cave in and vote with their liberal leadership.

    As a reward for laying down their careers in the cause of ObamaCare, at least Blue Dogs have the consolation of the respect and gratitude of liberal activists everywhere. Ha, just kidding. The Daily Kossacks are saying “we can do without their sabotage.”

    Oh yes, I’m sure that running Democrats ideologically closer to Nancy Pelosi than Dan Boren in places like Indiana, Pennsylvania and Ohio is a great way to pick up seats. I encourage you to get started on that right away.

    BattleSwarm Blog’s Election Prediction for 2010: GOP Gains 67 House Seats, 10 Senate Seats

    Monday, November 1st, 2010

    With the election tomorrow, I thought it was high time to offer up my own election predictions.

    I have carefully and scientifically evaluated each and every House and Senate race, taking into account length of incumbency, previous voting trends for each district and state, fund-raising advantage, the most recent polls, and the fact that every preceding clause in this sentence prior to this one has been a complete and utter lie.

    I have looked at a lot of polls and data but damn, there are only so many hours in the day. My predictions are based on general national mood, gut-feeling, and detailed looks at trends for select races.

    This is going to be worse for the Democrats than 1994. The rise of the Netroots and the overwhelming support among the traditional news media dangerously blinded liberal insiders from how badly out-of-sync with the rest of the country they had become, and their insistence to push onward with ObamaCare despite widespread opposition and a lousy economy turned what was already going to be a bad year for them into a once-in-a-lifetime political slaughter.

    I predict that the Democrats will lose 67 House seats.

    As I admitted above, that’s not a wild-assed guess, but a guestimate based on current polling data and news on individual races. I don’t see Republicans gaining less than 50 seats, and there’s an outside possibility they could get 100. To my mind, it’s much more likely they’ll gain more than 67 than less than 50.

    Among the individual House races, I predict all the Stupak-bloc flippers except Marcy Kaptur (who had the luck to draw Nazi Uniform Guy as her opponent) and Jerry Costello (much as I appreciate GOP candidate Teri Newman popping in to say the race is tied, I just don’t see any traction at all in a 54% Obama district; I’d love to be surprised) will lose, including:

    1. Rep. Joseph Donnelly of Indiana
    2. Indiana’s open 8th congressional district (formerly held by Brad Ellsworth)
    3. Michigan’s open 1st congressional seat (formerly held by Bart Stupak)
    4. James Oberstar of Minnesota
    5. Steve Driehaus of Ohio
    6. Charles Wilson of Ohio
    7. Kathy Dahlkemper of Pennsylvania
    8. Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania
    9. Solomon Ortiz of Texas

    Additionally, I’m predicting that all of the following Democrats representing districts that voted for McCain in 2008 lose their jobs:

    1. Bobby Bright of Alabama
    2. Arkansas’ open 1st congressional district (formerly held by Marion Barry (AKA “the other Marion Barry”))
    3. Arkansas’ open 2nd congressional district (formerly held by Vic Snyder)
    4. Ann Kirkpatrick of Arizona
    5. Harry Mitchell of Arizona
    6. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona
    7. John Salazar of Colorado
    8. Betsy Markey of Colorado
    9. Allen Boyd of Florida
    10. Suzanne Kosmas of Florida
    11. Jim Marshall of Georgia
    12. Baron Hill of Indiana
    13. Ben Chandler of Kentucky
    14. Louisiana’s open 3rd congressional district (formerly held by Charlie Melancon)
    15. Frank Kratovil of Maryland
    16. Ike Skelton of Missouri
    17. Travis Childers of Mississippi
    18. Gene Taylor of Mississippi
    19. Mike McIntyre of North Carolina
    20. Heath Schuler of North Carolina
    21. Earl Pomeroy of North Dakota
    22. Harry Teague of New Mexico
    23. Michael McMahon of New York
    24. New York’s open 29th congressional district (formerly held by Eric Massa)
    25. John Boccieri of Ohio
    26. Zack Space of Ohio
    27. Christopher Carney of Pennsylvania
    28. Mark Critz of Pennsylvania (serving the remainder of the late John P. Murtha’s term)
    29. John Spratt of South Carolina
    30. Stephanie Sandlin of South Dakota
    31. Lincoln Davis of Tennessee
    32. Tennessee’s open 6th congressional district (formerly held by Bart Gordon)
    33. Tennessee’s open 8th congressional district (formerly held by John Tanner)
    34. Chet Edwards of Texas
    35. Tom Perriello of Virginia
    36. Rick Boucher of Virginia
    37. West Virgina’s first district (held by Allan Mollohan, who was defeated in the Democratic primaries)

    That’s 46 seats right there, and I think there’s easily another 21 seats to be had in districts that went narrowly for Obama in 2008 to provide the final margin of victory.

    I predict that the Democrats will lose 10 Senate seats.

    The Senate is a tougher nut to flip this year, and as I set down to gauge Republican chances, I was shocked to find that, despite insider predictions, I actually had them winning ten seats to take control of the Senate. Running down the Senate races that Real Clear Politics shows as tossups I was only getting nine seats, but then I remembered that Blanche Lincoln is losing so badly in Arkansas that they had that down as a safe Republican flip.

    Republicans should take over the following ten Senate seats:

    1. Arkansas
    2. Colorado
    3. Illinois
    4. Indiana
    5. Kentucky
    6. Nevada
    7. Pennsylvania
    8. Washington
    9. West Virginia
    10. Wisconsin

    Much as I’d like to see an upset in California, I don’t see Carly Fiorina getting any traction in an overwhelmingly blue state; I think the out-migration of California’s best and brightest due to the high tax rates, crummy economy, the overwhelmingly powerful public sector unions and a near-bankrupt government (all related phenomena) has, ironically, made Californian even bluer.

    The two races of the ten that will be most difficult for Republicans to pull off are Washington and West Virginia. Washington may be the tightest, simply because the Left Coast is so blue, but Rossi has been steadily gaining on Murray, and actually pulled ahead in the latest PPP poll. And PPP usually has a Democratic bias, so in a wave election, you have to give it to the Republican if polling is within the margin of error.

    In West Virginia, I’m going to go out on a limb and predict a victory for Republican John Raese even though Joe Manchin is up four points in the most recent poll, for the following reasons:

    • McCain won West Virginia by 13.1 points in 2008, which was four points above the poll RCP average. Asking Manchin to run 14 points better in 2010 than Obama did in 2008 is a pretty tall order.
    • The state has been trending Republican for years. It went for Clinton over both Bush41 and Dole, but for Bush43 over Gore by 6.3%, and Bush43 over Kerry by 12.9%.
    • West Virginia fits the classic demographic pattern for “Reagan Democrats”: It’s 94.4% white, and is relatively rural and blue collar, and with a household income significantly below the national average. Those are the very voters that are abandoning Democrats this year.
    • Along those same lines, Hillary Clinton beat Obama handily here in 2008, even though Obama had all but clinched the nomination at the time. West Virginia voters fit the classic “Jacksonian” profile, the portions of the Democratic base that has been most alienated by Obama’s policies.
    • Say what you will about the late Senator Robert Byrd, but he was extraordinarily popular in his home state right up to the end. But his name isn’t on the top of the ballot this time around, and without that reminder of their old “born and bred” Democratic allegiance to remind them, 2010 may finally be the year when remaining West Virginia conservative Democrats make the switch to the GOP.
    • The areas that have been most fruitful for Democratic fraud efforts in the past have been urban enclaves with strong Democratic minority machine politics, which are pretty much absent here.
    • Logic dictates that if that this truly is a nationalized “wave” election, it will show up strongly here.

    Honestly, I think the Democrats taking the Washington senate seat is more likely that West Virginia.

    So the Republicans take both House and Senate in an electoral slaughter unprecedented in modern times. So I have foretold, and so it shall be!

    And if you disagree, post your own predictions below.

    117 House Races in Play?

    Tuesday, October 19th, 2010

    Over at NRO’s Campaign Spot, Jim Geraghty lists a whopping 117 House races in play. His list includes all of the races I highlighted as as competitive, as well as two from my list of longshots:

    • Joseph Donnelly vs. Jackie Walorski for Indiana’s second congressional district.
    • Barney Frank vs. ex-Marine Sean Bielat for Massachusetts’ Fourth Congressional District.

    Republicans aren’t leading all those races, and there’s no guarantee they’ll actually win the ones they are leading, and even beyond that there’s no guarantee that if they do win, it will be outside the margin of the usual Democratic fraud.

    Says Geraghty:

    My current assessment is in line with the conventional wisdom: Roughly 100 seats are in play under the broader definition, and it’s hard to see Republicans winning fewer than 40 of them. The ceiling depends on how angry the country is on November 2, but it is pretty darn high . . . 60? 70? 80?

    The possible peak of the wave keeps getting larger…

    There’s No Such Thing as a “Pro-Gun Democrat” As Long As Nancy Pelosi is Speaker

    Thursday, July 15th, 2010

    All across the country, Democrats running for office “are embracing gun owners’ rights [and] winning favor from the National Rifle Association.”

    Overall this is a good development, as it shows how unpopular gun control is outside of a few extremely liberal urban enclaves. However, voters should not mistake a politician taking the popular side of an issue with deeply held belief. As long as Nancy Pelosi remains Speaker of the House of Representatives, no House Democrat can be considered Pro-Second Amendment, stated positions and NRA endorsements not withstanding.

    Every one of those “pro-gun Democrats” is probably just as committed to Second Amendment issues as Bart Stupak was to Pro-Life issues. Remember him? He was a hero to Pro-Life forces and was even going to receive a “Defender of Life Award” for refusing to cave in on including taxpayer-funded abortions for ObamaCare.

    That is, right up until he folded-up like a three-card-monte table when Pelosi put the pressure on him. He was bought off for an empty promise and a handful of magic beans. But it wasn’t just Stupak who caved. There were ten other “staunch Pro-Life Democrats” who folded with him:

    • Rep. Jerry Costello of Illinois.
    • Rep. Joseph Donnelly of Indiana
    • Rep. Brad Ellsworth of Indiana
    • Rep. James Oberstar of Minnesota
    • Rep. Steve Driehaus of Ohio
    • Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio
    • Rep. Charles Wilson of Ohio
    • Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper of Pennsylvania
    • Rep. Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania
    • Rep. Solomon Ortiz of Texas

    (And all of whom just happened to have raked in huge earmarks after their vote.)

    Look at all those “Pro-Life Democrats” willing to fund abortions with taxpayer money when Nancy Pelosi snapped her fingers. Now ask yourself: Were any of these Democrats any less “Pro-Life” than your Democratic congressman is “Pro-Second Amendment?”

    Moreover, many of those “Pro-Gun Democrats” are the same “Pro-Life Democrats” who flipped for Pelosi. Take a look at their NRA ratings from 2008 (the NRA hasn’t released all their 2010 rankings yet):

    • Joseph Donnelly? A.
    • Brad Ellsworth? A.
    • Charles Wilson? A.
    • Paul Kanjorski? A.
    • Solomon Ortiz? A.

    All of them betrayed their “deep beliefs” on abortion. There is absolutely no reason to believe they wouldn’t do the same thing on gun control.

    The NRA can only rate votes and questionnaires, it can’t tell when someone is lying, or who will fold when enough pressure is applied. The Democratic nutroots, their funding sources, their staffers, and the entire media establishment is just as anti-gun as they are pro-abortion. That’s the “reality-based community” Democratic politicians live in. That’s the same community that will be lauding them for their “courage” when they betray voters’ trust to vote how Pelosi wants them to. It will also be the same community offering them cushy job opportunities should those same voters retire them in November. Democratic House members only have to face voters once every two years; they have to face liberal insiders every single working day.

    If you don’t think Democrats would still love to ban guns, take a look at how Democratic Mayors like Richard Daley of Chicago and Michael Nutter of Philadelphia want to make an end-run around that whole pesky Constitution: “American gun manufacturers should be held responsible in the World Court, since American-made guns are used in violent crime elsewhere in the world.” I’m sure that a World Court ruling against gun ownership would provide Obama, Pelosi and Reid with just the political excuse they need to start “reluctantly” drafting gun control legislation. And Pelosi herself has made no secret of her own gun control agenda.

    The only safe course of action is to assume that, should gun control make it back up to the top of the Democratic agenda, any “Pro-Gun Democrat” could flip their vote if that’s the one Pelosi needs to assure the bill’s passage. And they only way to prevent that from happening is to vote Pelosi’s Democrats out of power come November, no matter whether some of them have an “A” rating from the NRA or not.