This morning, following yet another special election defeat, chastised Democrats are doing a lot of soul searching as to why voters keep rejecting their message.
Ha, just kidding! They’re calling voters “toxic bigots.”
First up: Feminist Jill Filipovic, who is not happy at all that Karen Handel has shattered a “glass ceiling” by becoming the first woman from Georgia elected [Correction: First Republican woman] to the U.S. House of Representatives:
At what point is this not a failure of Democrats but toxic, vindictive voters willing to elect hateful bigots? https://t.co/EYNDuzxzGL
Democrats and progressives were convinced they had a chance to win this race, and the fact that they didn’t suggests that their real problem is that they don’t actually know where they can win. They’re walking around with a false sense of their own electability — just seven months after they were convinced Hillary Clinton would win the 2016 election easily.
Yes, there’s a lot of road ahead, and there will be easier districts for Democrats to win in 2018. But when you add up all the spending and use the most recent numbers reported in the New York Times, it calculates to a $9 million advantage for the Democrats. ($23.6 million raised by Ossoff + $7.6 million spent by outside groups preferring him = $31.2 million; $4.5 million spent by Handel + $18.2 million spent by outside groups preferring her = $22.7 million.)
If you fall short in an open-seat special election, in a district Trump barely carried, with a candidate who avoids gaffes and with a giant spending advantage . . . just where the heck are you going to win?
Democrats show show no sign of learning a lesson from this defeat: “I don’t think Democrats understand that their *Resistance* strategy is not working. But they are so emotionally invested in it, they can’t see their way out.”
Another big loser from last night: Planned Parenthood. “By tacking a $735,000 price tag onto Ossoff’s failed effort, Planned Parenthood has revealed its own futility at influencing elections.”
Six reasons Democrats lost GA-6. Including carpetbagging and nationalizing the race with outside money. “Ossoff received more money from California than Georgia. Voters took it as an insult, and acted accordingly.” Also: “The GA-6 may be an upscale, suburban district, but voters there still aren’t interested in Alyssa Milano’s take on politics.” (Hat tip: Big Gator 5’s twitter feed.)
Mr. Ryan, who tried to unseat Ms. Pelosi, Democrat of California, as House minority leader after the November elections, said she remained a political drag on other Democrats. Ms. Handel and Republican outside groups tied Mr. Ossoff to Ms. Pelosi in campaign events and television ads, casting him as a puppet for what they described as her liberal agenda and “San Francisco values.”
“They’re still running against her and still winning races, and it’s still a problem,” Mr. Ryan said.
More on the same theme: “Republican operatives say that 98 percent of voters in the 6th District already had an impression of Pelosi when they conducted their first internal poll, and she was 35 points underwater. When presented with the choice of whether they wanted a representative who would work with Paul Ryan or Pelosi, six in 10 picked the Speaker and three in 10 picked the minority leader.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
As long as Democrats’ desire to win elections takes a backseat to their need for moral preening over their own “tolerance” and their emotional need to label voters who reject their policies as racists and bigots, expect them to continue losing elections…
Here’s Jim Geraghty’s piece on how to survive Thanksgiving with relatives who have been freebasing those “how to talk down to your racist redneck JesusLand freak relatives about Trump” articles from Salon and Vox.
And to celebrate, here’s the classic “Turkeys Away” segment from WKRP in Cincinnati:
Edited to Add: Via Ace of Spades comes an alternate take on the subject: “How to Talk to Your Pansy Marxist Nephew at Thanksgiving.”
You know how American leftists claim socialist Denmark is paradise on earth? Yeah, not so much. “Denmark’s suicide rate has averaged 20.8 per 100,000 during the last five decades, with its highest level of 32. The American suicide rate averaged only 11.1 during the last five decades, and has never exceeded 12.7. Danes are deeply deprived, driven by severe narcissism, and so more than 11 percent of adult Danes – the supposed happiest people in the world – are on antidepressants.”
The Arab–Israeli conflict is a bitter and ugly one. My own view of it is that the Palestinian Arabs have some legitimate grievances, and that I stopped caring about them when they started blowing up children in pizza shops. You can thank the courageous heroes of the Battle of Sbarro for that. Israel isn’t my country, but it is my country’s ally, and it is impossible for a liberty-loving American to fail to admire what the Jewish state has done.
And that, of course, is why the Left wants to see the Jewish state exterminated.
Greece approves new “austerity” measures that they’ll no doubt continue to cheat and ignore while spending money they don’t have.
Speaking of Greece, “More than one in five school-aged refugee children in Greece have never been to school, a study has revealed. Child refugees stranded in Greece have been out of school for on average 1.5 years, and many of them ‘cannot even hold a pencil.'”
Why feminists hate sex: “The new feminist puritans see heterosexual sex as confirming and reinforcing outdated gender roles. That men and women not only have sex but enjoy it is a threat to the notion that both gender and sexuality are merely social constructs, to be crafted and rejected as instinct takes us.”
Why did 16 Republican Senators save the agency that’s hell-bent on creating instant public housing slums across America?
More proof that Social Justice Warriors hate everything, no matter how cute.
World’s oldest woman, and last living American born in the 19th century, dies. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Listeria outbreak among frozen fruits and vegetables. “Some of the affected products were sold under brand names such as Earth’s Pride, Panda Express, Signature Kitchens and Trader Joe’s.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Rehab for Internet addiction. “The program costs $25,000 for 45 days at the center.” Obviously I can’t be addicted to the Internet, because there’s no way I could afford the rehab…
It seems that Bernie Sanders supporters are finally waking up to the fact that Democratic Party “Superdelegates” are designed to screw over mere voters unwilling to toe the party line. And this year, that means “Bernie Sanders supporters.”
Every Democratic member of Congress, House and Senate, is a Superdelegate (240 total). Every Democratic governor is a Superdelegate (20 total). Certain “distinguished party leaders,” 20 in all, are given Superdelegate status. And finally, the Democratic National Committee names an additional 432 Superdelegates—an honor that typically goes to mayors, chairs and vice-chairs of the state party, and other dignitaries.
Here is where I would put a paragraph detailing the process by which the DNC goes about selecting Superdelegates…except I can’t find any online. As far as I can tell, DNC head Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who is 100% in the tank for Hillary, gets to give her up to an additional 432 delegates. Or almost as many delegates as those chosen by all the actual Democratic Party voters in New York and Pennsylvania combined.
As of this writing, Hillary Clinton has 387 superdelegates. Bernie Sanders has 16.
“This is what makes Clinton so powerful in the Democratic race — even while she and Sanders battle it out among rank-and-file voters, she has a massive lead among superdelegates. Altogether, she already has 394 delegates and superdelegates to Sanders’ 44 — a nearly ninefold lead.”
(Interestingly, among them is a Wendy Davis, but not the Texas Wendy Davis. This Wendy Davis is a city commissioner for Rome, Georgia, a small city of some 35,000+ people. And yes, she’s backing Clinton…)
Also note that list of 20 “Distinguished Party Leaders,” in addition to your Bill Clintons, Walter Mondales and former DNC heads, includes David Wilhelm, whose claim to being distinguished is…running Bill Clinton’s 1992 Presidential campaign.
There’s a good chance that Sanders, the candidate whose popularity comes in large measure from complaining that the game is rigged against the little guy, is going to get screwed out of the nomination because the Democratic Party Presidential nomination process is rigged against the little guy…
Presidential elections, Islamic terrorism, gun rights, crooked locksmiths: Something for (almost) everyone in your Friday LinkSwarm:
So why did Hillary Clinton take $675,000 for three speeches to Goldman Sachs? “That’s what they offered.” I actually like the refreshing honesty about that answer, since we already know Granny Crooked McCankles is all about the benjamins. But Hillary saying she hadn’t decided to run for President yet when she took the money? That’s just pissing on our leg and calling it rain…
Why is the Republican establishment willing to consider one heresy to their worldview (subsidizing the working poor) but not another (actually enforcing immigration law and securing the borders)?
According to Donald Trump, Ted Cruz gave us ObamaCare. By voting to confirm John Roberts. Before Cruz was even in the senate. Hey, why should Ted Cruz even bother to run for President if he’s capable of time travel?
To recap: Gun-control activists declared Virginia their proving ground and poured unbelievable amounts of money into a state-senate election; then they lost that election; then they bet big on executive actions instituting new gun control; they watched as those actions were not only reversed but gun rights were expanded.
If we take Virginia as the bellwether that the gun-control activists envisioned, then gun control is dead as a 2016 issue.
And according to this legal paper by Instapundit Glenn Reynolds, lower courts are scrutinizing even modest post-Heller gun rights restrictions.
The Iowa Caucuses are today! Why they’re Monday rather than the usual Tuesday, I couldn’t tell you. (And speaking of elections, today is your last day to register to vote in the March 1 Texas primary.)
Here’s a LinkSwarm with more than a dollop of presidential election news:
Back in 2015 the CBO estimated 21 million Obamacare enrollees in 2016. They are now estimating 13 million will sign up this year. How many will actually sign up is not going to be known for another year or so, but I wouldn’t particularly bet on it being more than 21 million, and I wouldn’t particularly counsel against thinking that it’ll be less than 13 million.
Oh, the news gets better. The original claim that 11 million people signed up for Obamacare in 2015 has likewise been revised by this report, which now apparently reports 9.5 million. And here’s something that will really reassure folks worried about our deficits: the original assumption was that there would be 15 million subsidized plans and 6 million unsubsidized ones in 2015, or 71%/29%. The actual totals were 11 million subsidized, 2 million unsubsidized, or 85%/15%. Let me put it a different way: the Obama administration has managed to somehow simultaneously drastically miss their signup goals AND do so in a way where there won’t even a commensurate savings for taxpayers.
“The Clintons have made careers of defying our assumptions about how low they can go.”
Hillary’s emails disqualify her from the presidency. “There is near certainty that at least the Russians and the Chinese but also the Iranians and North Koreans were reading all incoming and outgoing email to Hillary in real time from almost the moment she hooked up her ‘home brew’ server.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Bernie Sanders: The bum who wants your money. “Despite a prestigious degree, however, Sanders failed to earn a living, even as an adult. It took him 40 years to collect his first steady paycheck — and it was a government check.”
“If there is anyone with a chance of underperforming his 28 percent of the electorate (again, the new Register number), it is Trump. And if Trump does underperform, the question will be whether he falls enough for Cruz to catch him.” (Hat tip: Conservatives4TedCruz.)
Trump does poorly among Republicans with college degrees, but well among those with less education. “He is continually the candidate not only with the highest very favorable rating, but the highest very unfavorable rating. He is utterly unacceptable to a very significant portion of the Republican electorate.”
Enivironmentalist predictions from 1970: “Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions.” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
Both state-senate districts were overwhelmingly Democratic. In 2012, President Obama carried Morse’s district by 21 percentage points and Giron’s by 19 points.
These were the first recalls of legislators in Colorado history. Nationally, recalls of state legislators, particularly state legislative leaders, has been very difficult. Morse and Giron were only the 37th and 38th state legislators in U.S. history to face recall votes (before this vote, precisely half the efforts had succeeded). Prior to Morse, there had only been four recall elections against legislative leaders, and the legislative leader was retained in three of those four races. Giron was also a powerful senator, serving as vice chairman of the very important, especially for her rural district, Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Energy Committee.
Not only did getting a recall on the ballot require a number of signatures amounting to 25 percent of all the votes in the previous election, but the Democrats didn’t take even that battle lying down. During the signature-gathering effort, recall proponents were outspent by the groups backed by billionaire Mayor Bloomberg that went in earlier with ads to discourage signature gathering.
In their last races for the state senate, in 2010, Morse raised $163,972 and Giron $68,710. By the last filing for the recall, on August 29, Morse had raised $658,230 and Giron $825,400. While the NRA had donated $361,700, just two billionaires, Bloomberg and Eli Broad, donated a total of $600,000 between them. Left-wing organizations such as the Daily Kos and MoveOn.org continually bombarded their members with requests for money. Of the $3.5 million spent on the recall election, almost $3 million came from its opponents.
It’s one thing for a deliberately polarizing legislator like Morse to lose a close race in a swing district. It’s quite another for Giron to lose by 12 points in a district that is 47% Democratic and 23% Republican. One reason is that in blue collar districts like Pueblo, there are plenty of Democrats who cling to their Second Amendment rights. As the Denver Post noted, 20% of the voters who signed the Giron recall petitions were Democrats….
For abuse of office, John Morse and Angela Giron have been recalled from office by the People of Colorado, to be replaced by legislators who will listen before the vote.
Today’s example of media bias on firearms comes to from the Denver Post.
For starters, the headline writer displays a rather loose grasp on reality: “Colorado recall slows gun-control momentum.”
Uh, what momentum? The gun grabbers have lost every fight since the initial knee-jerk legislation.
Writer Ryan Parker works a bit of rhetorical slight of hand further in: “And while the pro gun-control movement — on both the state and national level — had significant momentum following the Aurora and Sandy Hook massacres of 2012, Thursday night’s history-making recall election may have all but stopped Democrats’ response, Second Amendment supporters claim.”
“Had” momentum being the key word here, and only in the immediate aftermath, and only where it was possible for liberals at the state level, backed by overwhelming in-kind support from their local and national media wing, to exploit the tragedy by pushing rushed, ill-conceived legislation through against the wishes of actual constituents. Did Mr. Parker not notice the crushing defeats the gun-grabbing agenda experienced at the national level? Was he on vacation when that downpayment on the gun-grabbing agenda, Manchin-Toomey, failed to make it out of the Senate? That’s point when “momentum” for the gun-grabbing cause went from “small and slowing” to “non-existent.”
Also, note how Parker reprints one whole sentence from an NRA spokesman, but concludes with three paragraphs from members of the gun-grabbing camp.
Democratic incumbents simply don’t lose in states like Delaware and California unless they have done something very, very wrong. They certainly don’t lose by 12 points. In fact, even in the great GOP midterm election of 2010, only a handful of Republicans won in districts where the president approached 60 percent of the vote (using his 2008 numbers, of course), and most of those were in Illinois, where Obama’s vote share had been somewhat enhanced by his “hometown hero” status. It’s just really difficult to write these results off completely, especially given that these were relatively high-profile special elections, driven by issues rather than personality….
The bottom line is that there is something of a damned-if-you-do/damned-if-you-don’t aspect to the Democrats’ argument. If this isn’t about turnout, but rather is a reaction to policy, then relatively modest gun-control efforts look pretty radioactive, and an awful lot of Democrats who supported the federal gun-control bill ought to look over their shoulders. This is especially true in Colorado, where nine Democrats occupy seats that are more Republican than the ones Republicans just flipped.
Elected to replace them were Republicans George Rivera in Pueblo and Bernie Herpin in Colorado Springs. They promised to be responsive to and representative of the people. This seemed to strike the right chord with voters who have tired of local legislators joining the liberal metrocentric crowd in Denver.
Florida New York Times/Quinnipiac 2012 sample: 36% Democrat, 27% Republican, 33% Independent.
Each party’s share only shifts a few percentage points, but the overall split goes from D+3 to D+9.
One again, the New York Times thinks Republicans are too stupid to figure out the con. If they’re going to be that absurdly biased, why not just cut out the middleman and poll Obama for America staffers directly?
Remember: The business model of The New York Times is to envelop liberals in a soft, warm, comforting cocoon of reassurance that their ideas and leaders are popular. You saw this in 2010, when it dangerously blinded them to the coming Republican wave until too late. The same patterns is repeating itself this year.
U.S. Rep. Michael Burgess, representing Texas’ 26th Congressional District, endorses Tom Leppert. The 26th runs from south of Ft. Worth up to the Oklahoma border (or at least did before this year’s redistricting), so it’s right in Leppert’s backyard. Though not one of the more prominent members of the Texas delegation, Burgess has an impressive 95% rating from the American Conservative Union, making this really the first notable conservative endorsement Leppert has picked up.
Leppert get’s a mostly flattering profile by Big Jolly Politics’ David Jennings, though Jennings does ding him for his support for Dallas workers to unionize. (Jennings doesn’t mention Leppert’s contributions to liberal Democrat Ron Kirk’s Senate campaign.) Jennings also says he doesn’t have much use for the term “RINO”:
By now, if you have read this far, it should be clear that Mr. Leppert is not some wild-eyed liberal trying to pick the pockets of the taxpayer. You wouldn’t know that if you listened to the self-appointed RINO hunters in the Texas Republican party. Gawd I hate that term.
Hmmm. I may resemble that remark…
Leppert’s communication guy Shawn McCoy is leaving the campaign, being replaced by Daniel Keylin, though Leppert campaign manager Josh Kivett will be handling those duties during a transition period.
This is an interesting piece by Glen Bolger on why Republicans will enjoy a house majority for at least the next four years. There are several statistical reasons:
Presidents who win re-election have small coattails, at best.
Republicans picked up 9 House seats the year Bush 43 won reelection, but Democrats lost 35 seats when Carter got creamed by Reagan.
State legislative gains have given Republicans extensive control over redistricting. In 1981, Republicans only controlled redistricting for 55 House seats, while Democrats controlled it for 225 seats. By contrast, next year Republicans will control redistricting for 193 House seats, while Democrats will only control it for 44 seats.
