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Sen. Alex Padilla, the California Democrat appointed to fill Kamala Harris’s Senate seat after she became vice president, wants Americans to be more certain to register to vote by linking it with free tax preparation. Padilla is leading a push for the U.S. Treasury Department to provide voter registration services at federally funded centers that prepare taxes for low- to moderate-income people, disabled people and people with limited English at no cost to them.
“Limited English,” like “undocumented” or “migrant,” is code for those illegally present in the United States. Federal law bars illegals from voting but Sen. Padilla helps them violate the law. As California’s secretary of state he deployed the “motor voter” plan that registers illegals to vote when they get their driver’s license.
After the 2016 election, Padilla refused to cooperate with a federal probe of voter fraud, and he wouldn’t say how many illegals voted in 2018 or 2020. That year Gov. Gavin Newsom tapped “election chief” Padilla for the U.S. Senate. The senator nobody voted for wants false-documented illegals registered to vote when the government does their taxes “at no cost to them.” It’s motor voter at a whole new level.
Biden has brought in more than seven million illegals, with no background checks, health records, English skills and so forth. Add Padilla’s plan to Biden’s “most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics.” The mail ballots, the 2000 Mules, the squads of politiqueros, and so forth, all remain in place.
By these means, the citizens of a constitutional republic become fundamentally transformed into subjects of a woke junta, headed by a wax-works effigy of a president. Ask yourself how you like it so far.
Last week the mainstream press ranked President Biden’s State of the Union address up there with the Sermon on the Mount. I reviewed it in detail and found it to be “The SOTU from hell,” but then I wasn’t the target audience. My assessment might have been unreliable.
In my comments I asked to whom the speech was addressed. That wasn’t clear to me. I guess it was addressed to all the Democrats who’d loved him before. He didn’t want them to walk out on him.
Taking a look at the polls after one week, the Hill reports that, ahead of the State of the Union, Biden’s approval rating in a Yahoo News/YouGov poll was 40 percent. In a new survey released on Tuesday by the same team Biden’s approval rating had fallen to 39 percent.
That does not appear to be an outlier: “Other polls also show the president failed to moved the needle following his address to Congress. FiveThirtyEight’s calculation of Biden’s approval rating showed him with just more than 37 percent Tuesday. On March 6, the day before the State of the Union, he had just under a 38 percent approval rating from the ABC News pollster.”
Trump and Biden have each secured his party’s respective nomination and are running neck and neck. The lack of excitement is almost palpable. It is same as it ever was before Joe got hopped up last week to shout into the void.
Via Rich Lowry/NRO.
As John notes, blue collar workers or minorities voting for policies that actually help them is an important trend, and a complement to Steve’s post about the border problem. As he showed, “immigration” helped to flip California from red to blue in presidential elections, so Democrats seek to repeat that trend “across the entire country.” That’s why Biden has brought in millions, and that’s a problem.
The possibility of becoming a public charge can cancel the prospect of legal immigrants becoming legitimate American citizens. On the other hand, for many illegals becoming a public charge is the goal. The ideal set-up is to get on welfare and work under the table for cash. That’s what enables the transfer of more than $63 billion to Mexico in 2023, a seven-percent hike from the previous year. In effect, the USA subsidizes the Mexican government.
Those on welfare have a problem becoming U.S. citizens and that’s what California attorney general Xavier Becerra was on about when he cited 10 million “immigrants” in California alone. It is illegal for foreign nationals and even registered aliens to vote, but California’s “motor voter” program registers false-documented illegals to vote when they get their driver’s license. Squads of politiqueros bribe, coerce and threaten the illegals to vote “a certain way,” code for Democrats.
Absent an independent investigation, citizens can have more than a reasonable doubt on ballot propositions to legitimize crime (Proposition 47), the recall vote for Newsom, and his reelection in 2022. Citizens may also have reasonable doubt on the 2020 presidential vote.
Stumbling Joe Biden, who campaigned from his basement, is a wax-works effigy of a president. On the other hand, with an eye on California, he has imported an electorate by the millions. As David Horowitz has often noted, Democrats are good at voter fraud and Republicans are poor at preventing it. So the nation could get four more years of Joe Biden, or someone even worse. All things have limits, except human stupidity and malevolence.
In his SOTU Thursday, Joe Biden used the term “illegal” but failed to mention or condemn Antonio Ibarra, the Venezuelan national charged with murdering University of Georgia student Laken Riley, whom Biden twice misnamed as “Lincoln Riley.” On Saturday, Biden apologized for using the term “illegal,” and took it to another level.
“I’m not going to treat any, any, any of these people with disrespect,” Biden told MSNBC. “Look, they built the country. The reason our economy is growing.” Such nonsense is nothing new for Joe Biden.
“You know, 11 million people live in the shadows. I believe they’re already American citizens,” said Vice President Biden in 2014. According to Delaware Democrat, all the 11 million wanted was a chance to contribute, so “let people vote.” Biden is not going to disrespect “any, any, any” of those he has brought in, even the criminals, because they add to his imported electorate. When criminal illegals murder Americans, Biden isn’t going to “disrespect” the murderer.
In 2014, false-documented Mexican national Luis Bracamontes gunned down Sacramento deputies officers Danny Oliver and Michael Davis. During his trial, Bracamontes said he wished he killed more cops, and yelled “black lives don’t matter” at Danny Oliver’s wife, Anthony Holmes, whom he shot five times, and members of the jury. Vice President Biden never mentioned the case, not even to denounce “gun violence.”
In late 2018, a gang-affiliated criminal illegal calling himself Paulo Virgen Mendoza shot dead Newman, California, police officer Ronil “Ron” Singh, a legal immigrant who came to the United States to work in law enforcement. Seven other illegals aided the killer’s flight before the fugitive murderer was apprehended. Joe Biden ignored the case. He is not going to disrespect “any any, any” member of his imported electorate, not even the criminals who murder innocent Americans.
By shunning the term “illegal,” Biden effectively cancels immigration law. The Delaware Democrat also renders meaningless all the procedures people such as Scott Johnson’s wife go through to become American citizens. For Joe Biden, legal immigrants and legitimate citizens are non-persons, and it was the “undocumented” who actually “built the country,” and are now the reason “the economy is growing.”
Conrad Black has called Joe Biden “a pallid effigy unable to utter complete sentences without requesting the approach of the teleprompter,” and a “wax-works effigy of a president.” Legal immigrants, legitimate citizens, and parents of those slain by illegals can be forgiven for regarding Joe Biden as a wax-works effigy of a human being.
Earlier today, I posted the official GOP response to Joe Biden’s SOTU hate-fest, by Senator Katie Britt. Britt’s speech was an impressive performance in its own way; if I were a Democrat, I think she would scare me.
But for us data guys, Stephen Moore’s Unleash Prosperity Hotline has the numbers:
A lot of tall tales and a few outright fabrications in the Biden speech last night – and far too many to enumerate here. But we will revisit three here.
“My administration cut the deficit by $1.7 trillion.”
This isn’t just a little bit false, it’s an extraordinary and audacious misstatement of fact. The baseline deficit over 10 years, as measured when Biden came into office versus the latest forecast, shows nearly $6 trillion added to the debt since Biden arrived on the scene.
So how does a $6 trillion addition of red ink possibly equate to a $1.7 trillion reduction in the deficit. Someone didn’t pass his basic math exam in high school.
“We will make the rich pay their fair share.”
The top 1% of American tax filers now pay an all-time record high 46% of taxes. This is according to Biden’s own IRS. Does he think the rich should pay ALL the taxes?
That is actually a good question. I think that for many Democrats, the answer may be Yes. But within reason, experience shows that lower rates mean higher collections, especially from high earners.
“I inherited an economy [from Trump] that was on the brink…”
Actually, the economy grew by – ready for this? 33% in the third quarter of 2020 and 4.1% in the 4th quarter of 2020. The economy was in a full-scale COVID recovery when Biden came into office.
Oh, and Inflation was 1.4%.
Gas prices were $2.39 per gallon.
If you think of it as a relay race, Trump handed the baton to Biden in first place, with a rapidly growing lead. But Biden tripped over his own feet–both literally and figuratively–and turned the strong position that he inherited (and not only economically) into a fiasco. That I why I don’t see how he can be re-elected, despite Trump’s manifest flaws.
If you don’t get the Unleash Prosperity Hotline, you should. You can sign up for its frequent and always informative emails here.
Joe Biden is a pitifully weak presidential candidate, but elections don’t win themselves. Economic malaise ought to make any Republican challenger the favorite, but the issue that will clinch the election is illegal immigration. And the gloves need to come off. Like this:
I am told that CNN is refusing to air this. They ran out the clock on a pre-SOTU ad buy — then rejected it, calling several of its claims unsubstantiated. Fox and MNSBC aired it. In case you missed it: https://t.co/4osMsLypnf
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) March 8, 2024
As Scott notes, while Biden delivered the “SOTU from Hell,” Turner Classic Movies ran Casablanca. Those who tuned in witnessed fearful symmetry on the current state of America, with Joe Biden starring in the role of Philippe Pétain.
Back in 1940, the French WWI veteran, already in his 80s, struck an armistice with the German National Socialist invaders, then in alliance with Stalin’s Soviet Union. The Nazis made Pétain head of their puppet government in Vichy, allowing him to govern parts of France under their supervision. Casablanca shows a mural of Pétain, with his famous slogan, “Je tiens mes promesses, meme celles des autres,” – “I keep my promises, even those of others.” That’s Joe Biden all over.
The Delaware Democrat is the puppet of a globalist-leftist-woke axis, and their every wish is Biden’s command. As he showed in his September 1, 2022 speech, like something staged by Leni Riefenstahl, Biden regards those who want the nation to be great as the enemy. In the openly partisan FBI, Biden deploys his own Gestapo.
In Casablanca, Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) asks Louis Renault (Claude Rains) if he’s pro-Vichy or Free French. In similar style, Americans must decide if they support the constitutional republic they have known or its steady demolition by the Biden Junta. In Casablanca, Resistance leader Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid) welcomes Rick back to the fight, and Laszlo is sure “our side will win.” In America, things aren’t so clear.
“We have put together, I think, the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics,” said Joe Biden in 2020. That includes mail ballots, election laws changed by judges instead of legislators, elimination of ID requirements, ballot harvesting, massive voting by illegals, and so forth. That extensive organization remains in place for access by the eight million settlers Biden has brought into the country, with no criminal background checks, health records or job skills. In 2014, vice president Biden said those who enter the country illegally are “already American citizens.” All they want is a chance to contribute so “let people vote.”
As David Horowitz (Radical Son) has often noted, Democrats are good at voter fraud and Republicans are poor at preventing it. If that doesn’t change, as Rick told Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman), “you’ll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life.”
Senator Katie Britt of Alabama delivered the Republican response to Joe Biden’s SOTU speech. Not many people watch these rejoinders–for that matter, not too many watch the SOTU–but Britt’s response is getting a fair amount of buzz. She likely was chosen to contrast with Biden’s angry, more or less demented persona; if so, she played that contrast to the hilt.
Her speech was really a thespian performance, and not my style at all. But she prioritized illegal immigration, and was highly effective on that issue. Her appeal was directed to swing voters, especially women. And as performances go, it was very skillful. Check it out:
Whatever Doctor Feelgood is operating in the White House these days injected Joe Biden with whatever cocktail that enabled him to yell nonstop for over an hour last night. And that is a good thing.
Before the speech, my wife, with her usual knack for getting at the heart of things, said that we should be rooting for Biden to get through the speech. Because if he collapsed midway in, the Democrats would be able to replace him on the ticket. And in truth, the only question last night was not whether Biden would give a good speech, or whether he would convince anyone not already committed to voting against Donald Trump, but whether he would remain upright.
We conservatives should be glad that he did, as he now continues his march toward the nomination as one of the very few Democrats Donald Trump might actually beat. So thanks, Doc.
The comedian Richard Lewis, of blessed memory, is credited with the formulation “the x from hell.” Having watched President Biden’s State of the Union Address last night in order to comment on it this morning, I found it to be the SOTU from hell. Thank you, Mr. Lewis.
The White House has posted the text of the speech “as prepared for delivery.” That isn’t exactly how he gave it. You have to see it to get the full flavor. I have posted the White House video at the bottom.
Herewith are my impressions of Biden’s delivery and my observations on the speech in the form of bullet points:
• The Democrats in the audience broke out in cheers of “Four more years.” You have got to be kidding. Let me begin with a prediction. Even if Biden wins reelection to another term this coming November, he will not be giving four more State of the Union addresses. No way no how.
• Esquire used to pose a rhetorical question as a caption on a photograph of Richard Nixon that it published in its annual Dubious Achievement Awards edition: Why is this man laughing? The question to be posed for this speech is Why is this man shouting? He is an angry old man.
• This was a terrible speech terribly delivered. It’s a good thing no drug test was required before the address. Biden sounded hopped up. He spoke too fast. He slurred his words. He was frequently difficult to understand. He shouted a variety of clichés and shibboleths as though we might otherwise miss their depth and meaning. The disparity between the shibboleths and the shouting was almost funny.
• Biden sounded like a 45 rpm record playing at 78. It was an old record — it had scratches at several places that caused it to skip the groove.
• To whom was this speech addressed? The opening reflected the poor judgment of Biden’s daycare minders in the White House. As I heard it, the country needs to be protected from two threats: Russia and Donald Trump (“my predecessor”).
• This SOTU was a nakedly partisan campaign speech. I have to think that viewers lacking the persuasion of Democratic partisans were quickly turned off. In any event, the speech was a disgrace.
• And that’s not all. The speech was also disjointed and telegraphic. It covered everything from potato chips to computer chips. If it conformed to the laundry list mode of bad State of the Union addresses, this was a laundry list in Morse Code. You had to know the lingo of the proposed laws on Biden’s list. I had no idea what he was talking about when he got to his list.
• TCM counterprogrammed last night’s SOTU in part with Casablanca. You may recall that Humphrey Bogart responds to a comment with one of the movie’s many great lines: “I was misinformed.” Despite its thematic incoherence, anyone who took Biden’s speech at face value last night was misinformed. The misinformation gave it the thematic unity it otherwise lacked. A serious student of politics and the economy could write a dissertation exposing the misinformation conveyed in the speech.
• In his Russia/Ukraine remarks at the top of his speech Biden vowed, “We will not walk away.” Trisha Yearwood, call your office. Walk away, Joe — please. (I’m referring to Biden himself, not Ukraine.)
• The justices of the Supreme Court who chose to attend must have been thrilled to find themselves the villain of Biden’s condemnation of the Dobbs decision. The Supreme Court has returned the legality of abortion to the states. Biden both condemned the decision and celebrated its electoral impact. Abortion is not only a positive good on its own terms, it’s good for Democrats on the hustings. Wrapping it in the mantle of IVF, as he did last night, seemed to me a cruel joke.
• Biden wants to raise taxes on those not paying paying their “fair share.” Who isn’t paying his “fair share”? Billionaires aren’t. Corporations aren’t. That’s the bad news. We must be paying our “fair share.” That’s the good news, assuming we can draw that inference. Maybe someone can ask Karine Jean-Pierre about it at the next White House press conference.
• Biden wants more price controls on pharmaceutical products. When the AMA opposed the dangers of socialized medicine in days of yore, they were on to something.
• “Trickle down economics” came in for a beating. Does anyone who didn’t live through the Age of Reagan know what he was talking about? It was what Democrats condemned as “trickle down economics” that gave us the seven fat years of the Reagan boom. It was “trickle down economics’ that gave us the Trump boom — the boom for which so many voters are nostalgic today.
• Biden actually decried “shrinkflation” in the potato chips portion of his remarks. Some translation is required. “Shrinkflation” = inflation = Bidenomics.
• Biden implied that corporate shenanigans account for “shrinkflation.” Does anyone not understand why “shrinkflation” has broken out under the Biden administration?
• Biden decried “junk fees” and proclaimed his good works in saving us from them. This is “junk politics.”
• Biden reiterated his claims to have “cut the deficit.” He failed to mention that the decline occurred because pandemic spending from President Donald Trump’s tenure expired as scheduled. Biden didn’t do a damn thing. As CNN puts it, “Biden’s own actions, including laws he has signed and executive orders he has issued, have had the overall effect of worsening annual deficits, not reducing them.”
• By the way, in fiscal year 2023 total government spending amounted to $6.13 trillion and total revenue to $4.44 trillion. The resulting deficit amounts to $1.70 trillion, an increase of $320 billion from the previous fiscal year.
• Biden promoted many more federal spending programs I had never heard of. He apparently means to “cut the deficit” even faster and deeper.
• Biden bragged about his continuing student loan giveaways in the face of the Supreme Court ruling that found him to have exceeded his authority (in Biden v. Nebraska). One would like to see the thought bubbles over the heads of the Supreme Court justices.
• Biden talked about illegal immigration. He campaigned in support of it last time around. He invited it during the 2020 campaign. He facilitated it from his first day in office. Yet it’s not his fault. When it comes to the flood of illegal immigrants and related burdens, his theme song is Bob Dylan’s “It ain’t me, babe.”
• Biden saved his remarks on Israel and Hamas for the end of his speech. He won’t walk away from Ukraine, but he will walk away from Israel. He announced his Gaza rescue plan as advertised. It’s his plan to rescue himself in Michigan and rescue himself from his party’s pro-Hamas wing.
• Biden acknowledged: “Israel has a right to go after Hamas.” Thanks, big guy.
• Biden also toed the Hamas line in implicitly attributing responsibility to Israel and omitting the relevant facts: “More than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed. Most of whom are not Hamas. Thousands and thousands are innocent women and children. Girls and boys also orphaned.” See Abraham Wyner’s Tablet column “How the Gaza Ministry of Health Fakes Casualty Numbers.”
• Biden peddled “the two-state solution.” What’s wrong with this picture? As Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer puts it: “Anybody talking about Palestinian state right now is living on another planet.”
• I enjoyed and appreciated Speaker Mike Johnson’s slight shakes of his head to express his disagreement with Biden’s misinformation. He did it just right.
• Although I could say more, these observations are already too long. I will conclude here. The competition is stiff, but this must have been the worst SOTU of all time.
Tonight is the State of the Union speech. I know it’s hard to contain your excitement. Many Bingo and drinking games suggest themselves.
We all know that Joe Biden is a pretend president, so just who in the White House thought it was a good idea to have him have a Zoom call with actual pretend presidents—Hollywood actors who have played the president, soliciting their advice on how to approach his speech tonight. And what we get it this:
You may’ve heard I’ve got a big speech coming up.
So, I thought I would hear from some folks who have done the job before – sort of. pic.twitter.com/7wFYVQm7Xm
— President Biden (@POTUS) March 7, 2024
Maybe Biden’s staff came up with this exercise just to distract him from doing anything today. Or to make him feel good about himself. If all these Hollywood pretenders say he’s doing a great job, it must be true.
Missing from this roster: Dave. Kevin Kline, that is. Maybe they didn’t want the subtle reminder of an imposter in the Oval Office. Too close to the current truth.
Digging deep into the Super Tuesday primary results, I foresee President Biden facing off for a rematch against President Trump. Can you feel the excitement? The two candidates represent juggernauts within their respective parties.
Let’s take the Democrats first, courtesy of RealClearPolitics. What we have here is one full boatload of results. They raise the question: who is Marianne Williamson and what is she doing here? She is the best-selling author of a variety of books including A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of a Course In Miracles, A Woman’s Worth, Illuminata, The Healing of America, and Illuminated Prayers. Her books have been translated into more than twenty languages. Williamson continues to inspire audiences on a global scale as she lectures internationally in the fields of spirituality and new thought.
I infer from the results that Democrats resist the light. They resist new thought. Also, we don’t have a prayer. We need a miracle.
Biden’s presents himself as a throwback to the old-fashioned Democratic Party, yet he has adopted the policies of party’s far left. Most prominent among these policies is the opening of our borders and the implicit rejection of the sovereignty of the United States. Over the past three-plus years these policies have wrought great damage. Biden wants to test the outer limits of Adam Smith’s proposition that “There is a great deal of ruin in a nation.” One can’t help but wonder if we can put ourselves back on track.
It’s not Joe Biden’s Democratic Party. It’s the woke left’s Democratic Party. It’s the party of those who say the things which are not.
Biden made an appearance during the narrow window of his waking hours yesterday. He appeared to have dropped in from outer space. He sounded like he had not been briefed since he blasted off from his homeworld. J.B., phone home.
FULL VIDEO:
REPORTER: "What's your message to Democrats who are concerned about your poll numbers?"
BIDEN: "My poll numbers? The last five polls you guys don't report. I'm winning — five! Five in a row!" pic.twitter.com/Mz5gWQMRSA
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 5, 2024
On the Republican side of Super Tuesday (also courtesy of RCP), President Trump wrapped up the Republican nomination. Nikki Haley will suspend her campaign later this morning.
This is Donald Trump’s Republican Party. If President Trump were to keel over and leave us with an open convention in Milwaukee next July, I assess the odds that the delegates would turn to Haley at zero. It would be a politician in the mold of Trump — probably Ron DeSantis, or perhaps J.D. Vance or Vivek the Mistake. Trump has transformed the Republican Party. By contrast with Biden and the Democrats, he has stamped the party in his image.
I am surprised by the not insubstantial fraction of votes that Haley pulled yesterday. Some portion of the Haley represents Democrats voting in open primaries. Haley won Vermont, but even if she were the nominee she would lose it in November. Vermont is a socialist state. I’m not talking about Vermont. Assuming Trump can survive the Democrats’ lawfare, he cannot win without a united Republican Party. He has some work to do to put the Republican house together. His choice for vice president could help.
It is difficult to project the state of play in the coming months. My crystal ball is cloudy. Much depends on the course of the Democrats’ lawfare against Trump and, to a lesser extent, the nature of the campaign Trump runs. I think he best serves his own interests at this point when he is out of the news and provides the alternative to Biden. If the election can be reduced to a binary choice, Biden should lose. The Democrats’ lawfare means to preclude that.
Yesterday brought more news of the illegal immigration that Biden has invited, inflicted, facilitated, fostered. Biden’s derelictions in office are historic in nature. The Daily Mail reports, for example, “Biden administration ADMITS flying 320,000 migrants secretly into the U.S. to reduce the number of crossings at the border has national security ‘vulnerabilities.'” The New York Post reports “Elon Musk says Biden flying 320K ‘unvetted’ migrants into the US sets stage ‘for something far worse than 9/11.’” Elon Musk — he’s no dummy.
The true numbers involved in the invasion that Biden invited are staggering, whatever they are, as are the secondary effects. As I say, we need a miracle, or something like it.
As Steve notes, Joe Biden can’t even handle his cue cards and calls to dump the Delaware Democrat are surging by the day. That recalls events from the summer of 1972, another crucial election year.
The incumbent president was Richard Nixon, hated by the left for his role in exposing Stalinist spy Alger Hiss (see Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case). In 1972, the Soviet Union still controlled Eastern Europe under the Brezhnev Doctrine. For the American left, defense of the USSR was the primary task and in 1972 they had the candidate they wanted.
After WWII, George McGovern opposed President Truman’s “aggressive anti-Soviet policy,” which he considered “dangerous.” In 1948 McGovern supported Henry Wallace and the Progressive Party, a front for the Communist Party. In 1972, McGovern’s position on “arms control” was essentially the same as the Soviets. America is to blame for the Cold War, McGovern believed, so the Soviets must arm and America must limit.
Nixon retained vice president Spiro Agnew, former governor of Maryland. McGovern picked Sen. Thomas Eagleton, a Harvard law grad and devout Catholic who opposed abortion and the war in Vietnam. McGovern backed Eagleton “1000 percent,” but then came an anonymous call.
On three occasions during the 1960s, Eagleton had been hospitalized for depression and undergone electroshock treatment. After only 18 days, McGovern dumped Eagleton for Eunice Kennedy’s husband Sargent Shriver, who had never run for office. Nixon bagged 60.7 percent of the popular vote to McGovern’s 37.5 and in the electoral college Nixon topped McGovern 520-17. The South Dakota Democrat carried only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.
“McGovern would have lost anyway to an incumbent Nixon,” notes Victor Davis Hanson, “but the margin of defeat in one of the greatest landslides in presidential history was often attributable to the sheer chaos of changing a vice presidential candidate so late in the campaign.”
In 2024, with chaos on every hand, Democrats seek to dump the addled Biden. As this plays out, Kamala Harris proves capable of rivaling Biden in sheer incoherence. As Trump likes to say, we’ll have to see what happens.
Kyrsten Sinema announced today that she will not seek reelection to her Arizona Senate seat:
Sinema’s move is significant but not unexpected. She raised only $595,000 in the final quarter of 2023, a fraction of the totals that Lake and Gallego each raised — although Sinema maintains nearly $11 million in her campaign account.
So it sounds like her mind was made up a while ago. Sinema’s withdrawal means the race will be between Republican Kari Lake and Democrat Representative Ruben Gallego. Gallego is a far leftist; this is how Lake describes him:
He votes with Joe Biden 100% of the time, supported the Iran Deal, sanctuary cities, defunding the police, and voting rights for everyone pouring across the border. He even called the border wall “stupid.”
Lake will now be a heavy favorite to flip the Senate seat, obviously a desirable outcome. But I am a little sorry to see Sinema go. She was an old-fashioned–i.e, sane–Democrat. A dinosaur, in other words. While she no doubt voted with the Dems most of the time, there were important instances, as for example the original “Build Back Better” disaster, when she stood in the breach on behalf of the Republic. And I have it on good authority that she couldn’t stand her Democratic colleagues, which perhaps contributed to her decision to walk away.
In any event, while Kari Lake will likely mark an important step toward restoring Republican control of the Senate, we owe Kyrsten Sinema a debt of gratitude.
Last week I observed in “Liberal Fragility” how liberal law professors supposedly break down in tears they are so depressed that the Supreme Court has taken a turn away from the palmy days of their beloved Warren Court (which, recall, Barack Obama once said did not go far enough in the direction of true “equality”). Just imagine how much Xanax is being ingested after yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling that leaves Trump on the ballot.
I expected something like this from Keith Olbermann:
Dissolve the Court! Remind me again who is the threat to democracy and trasher of “democratic norms”? Almost makes you long for the good old days of court-packing.
But I hadn’t expected that a supposed conservative could be equally idiotic, but then the side-effects of Trump Derangement Syndrome, for which there is no vaccine, appear to be even worse that I thought:
Today’s third NY Times installment about their most recent poll piles on the bad news for Biden: not only are you losing to Trump head-to-head, and are unpopular, but today we learn that more voters like Trump’s policies and record better than Biden’s.
Here’s the graphic depiction:
Some excerpts from the Times:
And despite holding intensely and similarly critical opinions both of President Biden and of his predecessor, Americans have much more positive views of Donald J. Trump’s policies than they do of Mr. Biden’s, according to New York Times/Siena College polls.
Overall, 40 percent of voters said Mr. Trump’s policies had helped them personally, compared with just 18 percent who say the same about Mr. Biden’s policies. . .
Women are 20 percentage points more likely to say that Mr. Trump’s policies have helped them than Mr. Biden’s have, despite the fact that Mr. Trump installed Supreme Court justices who ultimately overturned the right to an abortion and that about two-thirds of women in America think that abortion should be legal in all or most instances.
In a separate Times story, the Biden message to doubting Democrats is—drop dead. Well that’s the headline the NY Daily News would have used. Instead the Times headline is:
“For Democrats Pining for an Alternative, Biden Team Has a Message: Get Over It.”
. . . The Biden team views the very question as absurd. The president in their view has an impressive record of accomplishment to run on. There is no obvious alternative. It is far too late in the cycle to bow out without considerable disruption. . . Members of Mr. Biden’s team insist they feel little sense of concern.
The Supreme Court has held 9-0 that the Colorado Supreme Court erred in blessing the disqualification of Donald Trump from the state’s primary election ballot under section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court’s opinion is per curiam. Justice Barrett concurs in part and concurs in the judgment. Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson concur in the judgment (i.e., the result). The Court’s opinions are posted online here.
The Court’s per curiam opinion commanded a majority and its reasoning represents the law. It rests substantially on the exclusive power of Congress to enforce section 3 against candidates for federal office, “especially the presidency.”
Does the opinion leave open the possibility that Congress might refuse to certify Trump as president if he were to be elected president on the ground that he is guilty of insurrection? If Congress has not prescribed any means other than conviction of the crime of insurrection to make the determination underlying application of section 3, I doubt it. See opinion at 10. However, I may be mistaken. Perhaps the opinion cannot be read that broadly.
The opinion concludes (emphasis in original, citations omitted):
All nine Members of the Court agree with that result. Our colleagues writing separately further agree with many of the reasons this opinion provides for reaching it. So far as we can tell, they object only to our taking into account the distinctive way Section 3 works and the fact that Section 5 vests in Congress the power to enforce it. These are not the only reasons the States lack power to enforce this particular constitutional provision with respect to federal offices. But they are important ones, and it is the combination of all the reasons set forth in this opinion—not, as some of our colleagues would have it, just one particular rationale—that resolves this case. In our view, each of these reasons is necessary to provide a complete explanation for the judgment the Court unanimously reaches.
Read the whole thing here.
UPDATE: Although he characterizes it as a 5-4 decision, Andrew McCarthy supports my reading of the per curiam opinion: “What that means is that if Donald Trump were to win the presidential election, congressional Democrats would not be able — in the next January 6 joint session of Congress — to refuse to ratify his victory on the grounds that he is an insurrectionist. Under the Court’s holding, it is now a prerequisite to enforcement of the Section 3 disqualification that a person must have been convicted under the insurrection statute.”
Just a guess, but I think the word has gone out from the Obama redoubt in Martha’s Vineyard and/or his shadow White House in Kalorama that the New York Times needs to lead the push this week to force Biden out of the race. The Times is doom-scrolling its latest poll showing Biden on his way to certain defeat to Trump. Yesterday’s installment gave the raw numbers—Biden is eroding across the board.
Today the Times is out with another headline of doom, whose contents could have been part of yesterday’s story, except the Times wants to mile their poll for maximum effect. Biden’s own voters think he is too old:
Widespread concerns about President Biden’s age pose a deepening threat to his re-election bid, with a majority of voters who supported him in 2020 now saying he is too old to lead the country effectively, according to a new poll by The New York Times and Siena College.
The survey pointed to a fundamental shift in how voters who backed Mr. Biden four years ago have come to see him. A striking 61 percent said they thought he was “just too old” to be an effective president. . . Seventy-three percent of all registered voters said he was too old to be effective, and 45 percent expressed a belief that he could not do the job. . .
This unease, which has long surfaced in polls and in quiet conversations with Democratic officials, appears to be growing as Mr. Biden moves toward formally capturing his party’s nomination.
I’m guessing those “quiet conversations” will start to be less quiet fairly soon. Gavin Newsom has his phone programmed on speed dial.
Here’s one of the graphics:
In case Democratic elites aren’t getting the message, the Times director of polling Nate Cohn offers his own separate “analysis” of the matter:
The Big Change Between the 2020 and 2024 Races: Biden Is Unpopular
Why is President Biden losing? There are many possible reasons, including his age, the war in Gaza, the border and lingering concerns over inflation. But ultimately, they add up to something very simple: Mr. Biden is very unpopular. He’s so unpopular that he’s now even less popular than Mr. Trump, who remains every bit as unpopular as he was four years ago.
President Biden’s unpopularity has flipped the expected dynamic of this election. It has turned what looked like a seemingly predictable rematch into a race with no resemblance to the 2020 election, when Mr. Biden was a broadly appealing candidate who was acceptable to the ideologically diverse group of voters who disapproved of Mr. Trump. . .
That’s gotta hurt. Then there’s this:
We didn’t ask whether Mr. Biden should drop out of the race. We considered it — in fact, we discussed it for days — but many respondents may not know the complications involved in a contested convention.
Subtext: “Doctor” Jill: Get your husband to do the right thing for the interest of the Party. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s installment.
P.S. It was the suddenly plummeting polls that prompted LBJ to drop out of the 1968 race at the end of March.
As is now more widely reported, President Biden relies on cue cards for just about everything, but it looks like even this extreme measure is failing. Here in reading from a prepared statement on a notecard about getting food to Gaza, at the 30-second mark Biden twice says we’ll be opening up more corridors to “Ukraine.” Italian PM Meloni looks around the room wondering if someone is going to help this poor doddering old man.
Biden: “We are concerned about the humanitarian situation in Gaza
Look at Italian PM trying hard not to laugh
pic.twitter.com/FJFFusvYWM— Dr. Eli David (@DrEliDavid) March 2, 2024
The New York Times is out with its latest poll today, and they can’t sugar coat the bad news for Biden (and good news for Trump) that it contains. The headline says it all:
The poll has Trump with a five-point lead.
Some internals from the article are even more devastating than these headline numbers:
The poll offers an array of warning signs for the president about weaknesses within the Democratic coalition, including among women, Black and Latino voters. So far, it is Mr. Trump who has better unified his party, even amid an ongoing primary contest. . .
Mr. Trump is winning 97 percent of those who say they voted for him four years ago, and virtually none of his past supporters said they are casting a ballot for Mr. Biden. In contrast, Mr. Biden is winning only 83 percent of his 2020 voters, with 10 percent saying they now back Mr. Trump. . .
One of the more ominous findings for Mr. Biden in the new poll is that the historical edge Democrats have held with working-class voters of color who did not attend college continues to erode.
Mr. Biden won 72 percent of those voters in 2020, according to exit polling, providing him with a nearly 50-point edge over Mr. Trump. Today, the Times/Siena poll showed Mr. Biden only narrowly leading among nonwhite voters who did not graduate from college: 47 percent to 41 percent. . .
Mr. Trump’s policies were generally viewed far more favorably by voters than Mr. Biden’s. A full 40 percent of voters said Mr. Trump’s policies had helped them personally, compared to only 18 percent who said the same of Mr. Biden’s.
The gender gap, for instance, is no longer benefiting Democrats. Women, who strongly favored Mr. Biden four years ago, are now equally split, while men gave Mr. Trump a nine-point edge. The poll showed Mr. Trump edging out Mr. Biden among Latinos, and Mr. Biden’s share of the Black vote is shrinking, too.
Memo to Trump: Don’t blow it.
James Biden has now admitted that he paid his brother Joe $40,000 out of funds he received from CEFC China Energy, which is generally regarded as a front for the Chinese government.
“Where did you believe the source of the money that was going into [Hunter Biden’s company] Owasco, prior to being sent to you, was coming from?” an investigator asked James during the Feb. 21 interview.
“CEFC,” James conceded — following an extended back-and-forth in which the first brother’s attorney Paul Fishman tried to argue that “money’s fungible” before being reminded by a House staffer that James “did not have sufficient funds” to make the $40,000 alleged loan repayment on his own, “so it is traceable.”
Of course, the goalposts in the Joe Biden bribery scandal have repeatedly been moved:
Democrats have defended the alleged loan repayments as evidence of nothing more than Joe Biden being a supportive brother. But Republicans say it makes clear that the president benefited from his relatives’ dealings as he repeatedly interacted with their business associates, including in the CEFC venture.
I think Republicans have made a mistake in seeming to go along with the Democrats’ theme that money has to be traced to Joe’s bank accounts in order to count. Under federal bribery law, Biden is guilty if he “demands, seeks, receives, accepts, or agrees to receive or accept anything of value” not just for himself, but for “any other person or entity” in return for “being influenced in the performance of any official act.” People who bribe politicians are rarely dumb enough to make checks payable to the politicians themselves. Most often, they go to family members.
Republicans also shouldn’t fall for the Democrats’ spin about Joe not being involved in “his son’s overseas business dealings.” So, what business was Hunter in? Did he own or run a company that produced any products or provided any services? No. Hunter’s only business was peddling Joe’s influence. And for that to work, it had to be plausible that Joe was in on the deal, and would use his influence to benefit CEFC, or whoever. This is why Hunter would bring his father in on the telephone when he was meeting with Joe’s customers.
Notwithstanding the ever-moving goalposts, I think this is an instance where the Democrats’ control over the news media actually works to their disadvantage. They have been lulled into thinking that they can get away with their candidate’s having turned his power as vice president into tens of millions of dollars in illicit gains for his family and himself, because the New York Times, the Associated Press, and the usual gang of suspects try to run interference.
But in their blundering way, Republicans have managed to convey to a large majority of voters that Joe Biden is a corrupt pol. It is one of several reasons why, in spite of Donald Trump’s grave defects as a candidate, I don’t think Joe Biden can be re-elected.
I keep seeing Trump skeptics and their media svengalis say that while Nikki Haley is not coming close to beating Trump in any primary battle, she is getting sufficient support to conclude that there is a critical mass of Republicans who don’t like Trump and may not turn out for him in November, and boy is he in big trouble because of this.
Don’t buy it.
I note that back in 1980, the Michigan primary was held May 20, and even though Ronald Reagan was well on his way to securing the Republican nomination, George H.W. Bush still pulled off an upset in that primary, beating Reagan by 150,000 votes. (Bush also beat Reagan in the Pennsylvania primary in April.) Michigan looks to be the kind of state that favors moderate Republicans.
When all the primaries were over, Reagan had received a cumulative 7.6 million votes, while Bush had received 3.1 million, with John Anderson a distant third with 1.5 million. But add Bush and Anderson’s totals together with the also-rans (Dole, Baker, Connally, Phil Crane, etc) and you conclude that Reagan’s majority was less than a landslide (7.6 million to 4.6 million for the rest of the field—certainly a much smaller margin than Trump’s margin in the current contest. Despite the massive doubts about Reagan—his age, his “controversial” opinions, etc—he walked away with a landslide.
But, you hear, Trump is essentially running as an incumbent, and should have incumbent-level margins. This is an unimpressive argument, especially when you allow for the circumstance, not seen since 1912, of a former president coming back to challenge for the nomination. To the contrary, Trump is running far ahead of his totals from the 2016 contest. He’s gotten stronger, not weaker, since 2016.
P.S. For trivia buffs, Harold Stassen got 25,000 votes in the 1980 GOP primaries.
The Michigan primary was held yesterday. President Biden defeated Uncommitted, Marianne Willison, and my cousin Dean Phillips on the Democrat side. Dean commented on Twitter for the benefit of his former friends in the party: “If you resent me for the audacity to challenge Joe Biden, at least you’ll appreciate how relatively strong I’m making him look among primary voters!”
President Trump handily defeated Nikki Haley on the Republican side. Here are the current results posted by RealClearPolitics. Note the differential in turnout.
One can infer that Biden and Trump will be their respective party’s presidential nominees, but the results seem slightly more surprising than expected. Axios managing editor/politics David Lindsey offers a brief take on the results that I found helpful:
There wasn’t much doubt that President Biden and former President Trump would romp to victories in the Michigan primaries Tuesday. But Biden’s win in particular revealed his vulnerability in a crucial swing state that could decide the presidency in November….Arab American and young voters — key to Biden winning Michigan in 2020 — turned out by the tens of thousands on Tuesday to vote … not for Biden, but for “uncommitted” in the Democratic primary.
• The protest vote, driven by anger over Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war, had drawn more than 77,000 supporters with 70% of the ballots counted — several times more than organizers expected.
• That took some of the glow from a victory in which Biden got more than 80% of the vote, and confirmed that Biden has some serious persuading to do between now and November.
• “We need more than just nice words and hope. We need a permanent ceasefire” in Gaza, Layla Elabed, campaign manager for Listen to Michigan, told CNN. The group was behind the “uncommitted” vote effort.
Other takeaways from Michigan:
1, Biden has other problems, too.
• Another jolt for the president’s campaign Tuesday: A jarring enthusiasm gap between the Democratic and Republican primaries.
• Nearly 40% more people voted in the Republican primary than in the Democratic contest — despite the protest campaign that aided turnout on the Democratic side.
• Trump, who once again defeated former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, got more votes on the GOP side than the total number of votes cast in the Democratic primary between Biden, “uncommitted” and two other candidates.
2. It wasn’t all good news for Trump.
• That surge in GOP voters was driven in part by about 27% of Republicans voting for Haley, whose support continues to be not nearly enough to win the Republican nomination — but enough to show that a sizable chunk of the GOP may never be on board with Trump.
• Haley’s campaign might not last beyond Super Tuesday next week, when Trump is expected to score hundreds of delegates and put a virtual lock on the GOP nomination as 16 states hold contests.
• But Haley’s level of support suggests that many of her backers may stay home in November — or even vote for Biden, if Trump is on the ballot.
Whole thing here.
We seek to read the tea leaves in the results. As some sage has famously observed, “It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.” George Eliot’s narrator in Middlemarch puts it this way: “Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous.” To read the tea leaves we have to project ahead to next November. How will the candidates look at that time? Our crystal ball is cloudy. Both Biden and Trump are hobbled by weaknesses that will be magnified over the next eight months.
For Democrats this is the Weekend At Bernie’s election. It has become increasingly difficult to keep Biden upright during business hours. His brain is fried. His managers have to keep him under wraps. He is an embarrassment. Playing to his party’s activist base, he has left undone what should have been done and he has done that which should not have been done.
For Republicans this is the “In the Jailhouse Now” election. The electoral impact of the Democrat lawfare on Trump are particularly difficult to predict, but they can’t be good for him. They impose their own limitations on Trump in terms of time, money, and who knows what else. That’s what it’s all about. Anyone can see storm clouds ahead.
I absolutely hate the clichéd last resort of scoundrel pundits as the election approaches. You know, “it depends on turnout.” With respect to what should be the insuperable problems each candidate confronts, let’s just say “it depends on how it turns out.” They can’t both lose. One of them is going to prevail.
My pal Henry Olsen explains in his recent Telegraph column that Trump is underperforming his polls in recent contests, and appears to be stuck between a very solid floor and a rigid ceiling. Perhaps, but the Telegraph included this graphic, taken from recent Pew polls, that suggests a different picture:
To be fair, a generic Republican ought to be polling about 60 percent of the white vote, and that’s just where Trump is stuck. It would be a delicious irony if Trump wins in November through an increased share of minority votes. It will plunge Democrats into a crisis.
In 2001, 2005 and 2017, some Democrat House members objected to the certification of electoral votes for the winning Republican presidential candidate. Those objections, while “denialist,” were only symbolic. But Democrat leaders in the House are now suggesting that if they control that body following November’s election–as they well might–they may refuse to allow a victorious Donald Trump to take office.
The Atlantic did the original reporting, behind a paywall. This is from the Election Law Blog:
Murray and other legal scholars say that, absent clear guidance from the Supreme Court, a Trump win could lead to a constitutional crisis in Congress. Democrats would have to choose between confirming a winner many of them believe is ineligible and defying the will of voters who elected him. …
In interviews, senior House Democrats would not commit to certifying a Trump win, saying they would do so only if the Supreme Court affirms his eligibility. But during oral arguments, liberal and conservative justices alike seemed inclined to dodge the question of his eligibility altogether and throw the decision to Congress.
“That would be a colossal disaster,” Representative Adam Schiff of California told me. “We already had one horrendous January 6. We don’t need another.” …
The choice that Democrats would face if Trump won without a definitive ruling on his eligibility was almost too fraught for Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland to contemplate. He told me he didn’t know how he’d vote in that scenario. As we spoke about what might happen, he recalled the brutality of January 6. “There was blood all over the Capitol in the hypothetical you posit,” Raskin, who served on the January 6 committee with Schiff, told me….
The Democrats have become so insane on the subject of Donald Trump that it is hard to know which of their mutterings to take seriously. But if Trump wins the election and a Democrat-controlled House refuses to certify his election on the ground that he is an “insurrectionist” under the 14th Amendment, we will be past the point of a constitutional crisis. If that happens, the only realistic path forward will be disunion, possibly accompanied by civil war, but preferably not.
This is one reason why the Supreme Court should put the 14th Amendment theory out of its misery, once and for all. It is obvious that the drafters of that amendment meant the just-concluded Civil War, in which 600,000 Americans lost their lives, when they referred to “insurrection or rebellion” against the United States. In contrast, the January 6 protest was not one of the 50 most destructive riots of the last few years, and the only person killed was Ashli Babbitt. Not a single participant in the protest was arrested in possession of a firearm. Some insurrection!
In the interest of preserving the Republic, the Supreme Court should rule definitively that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment does not apply to Donald Trump.
Vaunce News 