It’s Wednesday, November 6th, 2019…but before we begin, the journalist previously assaulted by Antifa in Portland claims to have been the victim of another attack by the Far Left goons, as…
“So they came with these printed masks of my face…pounding on the door, was trying toopen the door,” Ngo added.“Fortunately I had security footage.(Yeah, big help!)By the time the police arrived…they were all gone. (Welcome to the real world!)But I released it just so that the public can be aware of the intimidation tactics of this violent extremist movement.“
Sorry, Andy, but they HARDLY seemed to be “pounding” at your door.
Here’s a hint: next time these anarchists come to your front door, if you really feel threatened, don’topen it, simplyunlock it. And when the first one crosses the threshold…
“At first glance, President Trump’s reelection chances don’t look good. Stories about impeachment and presidential misbehavior dominate the news. Trump’s disapproval rating is high. Independent voters are against him. GOP congressmen are retiring from suburban districts that trend Democratic. The generic ballot is about where it was last cycle. Trump’s win in 2016, when some 78,000 voters in three states gave him the Electoral College, was a close-run thing.Seems hard to repeat.
And yet liberals are filled with apprehension. They are coming to recognize the potential size of the president’s pool of supporters. They fret over the capacities and liabilities of the eventual Democratic nominee. (And with good reason!)
And their concerns are related: Trump’s ability to recapitulate or expand his winning coalition depends in large part on the identity of his opponent. Given these uncertainties, it would be foolish to predict Trump’s fate. He might even be stronger than he appears.
“Despite demographic trends that continue to favor the Democrats, and despite Trump’s unpopularity among wide swathes of the electorate, it will still be difficult for the Democrats to prevail against an incumbent president who has presided over a growing, low-unemployment economy and retains strong loyalty among key sectors of the electorate,” write Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin of the Center for American Progress. No conservatives they.
The Democratic difficulty has a name: the Electoral College…
…The voters who put Trump over the top have not abandoned him. “Some 62 percent of voters approve of Mr. Trump’s job performance in the 450 counties in which Mr. Trump outperformed 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney by 20 points or more,” according to the Journal. “That is up from a job approval rating of 43 percent in those counties during Mr. Trump’s first year in office.” It is also 17 points greater than his overall job approval rating in last month’s Journal / NBC News poll. If Trump’s demeanor and brand of national populism has repelled the educated professionals who inhabit America’s economic, political, and cultural institutions, it has failed to drive away his core supporters. It may even attract them.
...Which is why the identity of the Democratic nominee matters. A study by the Public Religion Research Institute in coordination with Brookings found that one third of Americans say their vote will depend on the winner of the Democratic primary. These uncommitted voters identify as moderate and politically independent. They don’t like Trump, but may wind up in his column if the Democratic nominee strikes them as immoderate.(Gee, given the current crop, what are the chances of THAT?!?)A Democratic nominee whose agenda is out of step with the public would be exactly what Trump needs to increase his support among his base and reclaim lost ground among independents and white voters with college degrees.
As I write, Elizabeth Warren leads in both Iowa and New Hampshire.
Now you know why Democrats are worried.“
Though we agree with most of Matt’s assessments, we believe he, like many Conservative pundits and writers, grossly underestimates or discounts Trump’s support among not only college-educated Whites, but Blacks and Hispanics as well…ourselves and almost all of our friends and readers included.
For more on the subject of the Dimocrats rapidly fading field, we turn to the Morning Jolt, where Jim Geraghty details…
Since we’re on the subject of Elizabeth Warren supporters, in a lengthy but must-read commentary, the great Victor Davis Hanson relates the inner-workings of…
Those who continue to confuse past military service, no matter how heroic, with a present-day willingness to subvert the wishes of the American people as expressed in a lawful election for personal/political advancement would do well to remember Benedict Arnold was a heroic patriot/warrior in the Revolution…
…until he…
…wasn’t.
Next up, writing at NRO, David Harsanyi highlights…
“...Supporting constitutional protections for institutions and individuals who aren’t being harassed is just posturing. So the pertinent question is this: In what real-world political debate involving faith has Buttigieg — or any Democratic-party candidate, for that matter — supported the defense of religious freedom over its “constraint?”
Does Buttigieg believe that religious establishments should be able to hire teachers who agree with their teachings, even when those teachings have long held that homosexuality is sinful? Is he concerned that nuns and other Americans with similar belief systems are being compelled by the state to participate in programs that offer abortifacients and birth control? Is he troubled by the fact that taxpayers may be forced to fund abortion on demand (apparently, the only constitutional right that Democrats believe should be unconstrained)? Is he concerned that business owners around the nation are being compelled by the government to produce artistic works that undermine long-held tenets of their faith?
If not, his prevailing concern isn’t the maintenance of the Constitution, or the free practice of faith that it protects, but the advancement of his own political ideology. And that’s no principle at all.“
Mayor Pete: unprincipled and hypocritical!
And in the EnvironMental Moment, Reuters is reporting the European…
“The aviation industry is to launch a campaign it hopes will counter a ‘flight shaming’ movement that has weakened demand for air travel in Europe where some travellers are increasingly concerned about their environmental impact.
The industry’s image has been damaged this year by a growing Swedish-born movement led by activists such as teenager Greta Thunberg calling for greater action against climate change, including ditching air travel.
…The campaign will try to explain to the public how the industry is reducing its environmental impact, countering what de Juniac said had been “misleading information.”
…Flight shaming has dented demand in Europe, particularly in northern parts but also in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. “It’s difficult to measure and beyond European borders we have seen nothingbut it will come,” de Juniac said. Commercial flying accounts for about 2.5% of global carbon emissions today but without concrete steps to alleviate the problem, that number could rise as global air travel increases.
…Airlines have warned of the negative impact of the flight shaming movement and some have criticised the industry for so far failing to explain itself…”
“But it will come“: when…and where? Certainly not China and India, not only the world’s two largest emitters of CO2, but the two most populous nations on the planet; and both of which are only easily accessible by air. The United States? Sure,…about the same time Americans start driving the speed limit.
You get the point.
Sorry, but were we the European airline industry, we wouldn’t spend Euro one attempting to convince such benighted, misguided fools of the benefits of air travel. Let ’em take the train; or better yet, the…
…boat!
In a related item from the WSJ forwarded by Jeff Foutch, Andy Kessler suggests we…
“…Crichton observed: “Once you abandon strict adherence to what science tells us, once you start arranging the truth in a press conference, then anything is possible.” That includes children at the United Nations yelling, “How dare you.”It’s knee-jerk analysis. I call it the Crichton Conundrum: “I’m against it, so these theories must be right—even though the science is most likely bunk.”Shallow, but sadly a reality.
The conundrum is everywhere. Take the $15 minimum wage, a so-called living wage—who could be against that? The problem is that the alternative isn’tnecessarily $8 or $10 an hour; often it’s no job and $0 an hour. Lo and behold, restaurants are closing in San Francisco.
Or take net neutrality. No one wants an un-neutral internet, even though that enables innovative pricing to help fund fiber-optic and wireless buildouts. Similarly, we all feel good about “natural” forest management and now California burns.
These arguments are often vague, even Orwellian—the expressions “net neutrality” and “climate change” conceal their shallow concepts. But they’re also Crichtonesque in the way they foreclose any argument from the other side. If you’re against food stamps or children’s health spending, you’re heartless, even though they are inefficient, ineffective and rife with fraud. And friendly sounding No Child Left Behind and Common Core?Sorry, math scores went down.
Free college, day care and medical care? Didn’t Cuba try that?Free or price-controlled goodsalways end up like subsidized bread in the Soviet Union. You get less of it and empty shelves. The same is true of rent control, as California will soon learn. (Unfortunately, California never seems to learn anything from experience!)
Nobel Prize-winning economist (who could be against that?) Joseph Stiglitz last year suggested relief of Puerto Rico’s burdensome debt. Ah, relief—except then Puerto Rico would probably not be able to borrow again for a long time (which applies to student loans as well). And then there’s social justice.No one is for injustice, but now campus mobs are threatening free speech.
Many counterarguments are hard to frame. You can’t just argue the opposite.Crichton reminds us to question the science, the data and the studies, and to argue outside the box you’re put in…
…Crichton would have a field day today: democratic socialism, implicit bias, medical marijuana, open curriculum, small class sizes, surveillance capitalism, HOV lanes, electric-vehicle credits, renewable-fuel standards, carbon taxes—it never ends. We’re sorely missing the other side of the argument.“
Which brings us, appropriately enough, to The Lighter Side:
Then there’s this take on the end of Daylight Savings Time from Ed Hickey:
Finally, we’ll call it a day with yet another sordid story straight from the pages of The Crime Blotter, and this just in from P.G. County, the garden spot of suburban Washington:
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