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J-Pod Warns Democrats
One of the under-appreciated services the GOPe and the Neo-con faction of pundits perform for Democrats is providing counsel from a more ‘objective’ position, given both Democrats and Neo-cons don’t want to see Trump win again. John Podhoretz is no rabid partisan here, but an objective observer sounding the alarm. A friend from the other side of the aisle dispensing good advice.
This article outlines the problem(s) with Biden in polling and other indicators and holds the readers’ hand through the pain of the facts. Couched even in the most optimistic terms, the data John Podhoretz cites looks quite bad for Biden:
Michael Tyler of the Biden campaign offered a ready response to the bad news: “Polling continues to be at odds with how Americans vote, and consistently overestimates Donald Trump while underestimating President Biden.”
I’m sorry, but this is simply untrue, and Democrats should not take false comfort.
Later in the article citing the growing support from Hispanics:
But the poll, and others like it, make clear that Mr. Trump has continued to make remarkable inroads with Hispanic voters.”
46-40! When Trump was insulting a judge in Wisconsin for being Hispanic, or showing his love for Latinos by eating a taco bowl at his desk, who would ever have thought this possible?
Of course J-Pod claims Trump insulted a judge ‘because’ he was Hispanic, and therefore somehow all Hispanics. This is identity politics that the GOPe love to hide behind and simultaneously advance like a Roman phalanx, using their political spears from behind a shield-wall of Democratic half-truths and toxic racial memes. They will advance the Democrat identity politics of Well, I never! How can someone say that! all day if they don’t fully agree with the Republican in question.
Then there is the egregious act of celebrating Mexican cuisine as a clear indication of awkward bigotry.
Yes, it is indeed ‘possible’ because most Hispanics are not hypersensitive and so quick to take offense. Certainly the ones who aren’t all that happy about the rapid influx of their (artificially constructed) demographic pouring over the borders aren’t going to hold this supposed faux pas as some massive grudge.
Rather than focusing on imagined slights, most Hispanics look at, and look for, results. Apparently the author believed it wasn’t possible to gain support and respect from Hispanics by actions across the board, taken at full measure, the entire economy, crime and other positions including, family, freedom of religion and abortion. They are only interested in one thing, you see – trying to stamp out the stereotype that Hispanics eat tacos all the time, or something… After a while I think the Neo-cons internalize all the left’s accusations and are desperate to deflect onto their factional opponents. Not me! Them! Not us! It’s those MAGA people! Watch, I’ll accuse them of being racially insensitive myself!
Hispanics are not monolithic as Mr. Podhoretz fancies they are. He seems surprised that the vast majority of legal, voting Hispanics might just want to make America great again and they might be a different strain than marxist Hispanic activists who promote racial friction, and a group Mr. Podhoretz believes is representative of La Raza (the race).
And that’s not the only jaw-dropping result among a Democratic constituency. African-Americans are still overwhelmingly Democratic, but…not quite so overwhelmingly. This poll puts Trump’s support among black people at 23 percent, with 66 percent supporting Biden.
Jaw-dropping maybe for Podhoretz, but this trend has been growing steadily since Trump entered the race in 2015. My jaw remains in its upright position. Somehow J-Pod was able to restrain himself from citing how supposedly racist Trump is, however, he offers no speculation or insight as to why this increase of black support might be. Could it be they see a better economy under Trump? Could it be that they are waking up to these scams the Neo-cons are running? Maybe they think Biden is far more advanced in the racism department than Trump? Maybe they are getting wise to the Democratic party’s tactical use of fear-mongering every election cycle?
And remember that Trump himself has an enthusiasm problem of some size owing to questions about his character and the legal action against him, as suggested by. (sic) Nikki Haley’s not-disastrous showing against him (even if much of her vote has come from people who never voted for Trump in the first or second place).
Now “not disastrous” is considered a ‘win’ for JPod. The levels of copium these people ingest and barf-out unawares is astounding. As to, “people who never voted for Trump in the first or second place” they are called Democrats, but maybe John gets paid by the word.
The question is whether Biden himself is looking at these numbers—and in moments of clarity is able to discern the colossal humiliation he may be on the verge of experiencing, not to mention historical judgment that will be rendered of his feckless decision to hold on to the reins of power should he lose in November.
Of course he’s not looking at the numbers and he’s already humiliated himself and our country.
Might he, therefore, get himself out of the race and give Democrats a chance to do what they clearly think is the most important thing they can do—save America from another Trump term?
The point of this article: Help Democrats understand they are driving off a cliff and should ditch Biden. Free advice from someone who cares!
In conclusion, we get to why John Podhoretz is so readable and educational (for me anyway). He was able to write an entire article about how Biden is losing without one positive reference to the guy that’s winning and how that could *possibly* be. Well done! Then, the university-educated author uses the poets, Yeats and Tennyson and incorporates passages on age beautifully, almost Noonan-esque for his lofty conclusion:
Biden claims to love poetry. And there are two great poems about senescence. One is Yeats’s “Sailing to Byzantium,” with its savage lines: “An aged man is but a paltry thing,/A tattered coat upon a stick.” In it, the poet yearns for release from his paltriness; he feels his soul has been “fastened to a dying animal,” which is his body.
The other is Tennyson’s “Ulysses,” which is far more inspiring: “Though we are not now that strength which in old days/Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;/One equal temper of heroic hearts/Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will/To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
He obviously wants to be seen as the Ulysses of Tennyson; weakened by time and fate, but strong in will, and unyielding. But as he moves about the world in full view of the people who will decide his future, he seems far more like a tattered coat upon a stick fastened to a dying animal. He would truly be the Ulysses of Tennyson if he were able to see himself clearly and realize that the only real act of a heroic heart would be to yield.
Good Sir, for the good of the nation, will you yield?
Subtext – please Democrats save yourselves… and us neocons because Nikki Haley is just one “not disastrous” showing away from obscurity!
Published in Politics
Yeah, I’ve been getting that subtext from a lot of “GOPcorp” and “Conservatism, Inc.” “Please, please replace Joe Biden on the ticket or Trump will win again!”
If they were truly opposed to Democrats, why would they give them advice on how to win?
No, Drew, he’s playing N-d chess like Trump does. He hates Democrats, so he knows they won’t take advice from a noted Republican, much less an Israel-loving, “Palestinian”-hating, Zionist Jew! He’s counting on them to double down on FJB and thus to go down in a historic defeat.
Or maybe he’s just a professional observer of politics, had a column to fill, and decided to work out why what the Democrats are doing doesn’t make sense.
Meh… I think Democrats already know all this. They’ll pretend they don’t and will lie and say “nothing to see here” but they have to know.
It’s interesting how conservatives think publications like Commentary or National Review need to be advocacy or propogandists for Trump. I appreciate that they’re not doing this. I think they generally give pretty good analysis of Trump even though they don’t like him. There’s enough shills in the media out there if all you want is pro-Trump propaganda or advocacy. Enjoy.
In a world composed of people doing things that don’t make sense, some of those things will be worse than others, i.e. some will be more senseless than others. Biden has focused on those, so he is a good opponent for Trump.
Two of the most senseless things coming from Trump-haters more than from Biden supporters are the notions of “Christian Nationalists” and “rural white rage”. I think these two just might finish the Democrats because such massive lies cannot stand any scrutiny at all.
This really reveals the worst about the Trump-haters, non-thinking evil.
I’ve been hearing about the threats of “Christian Nationalism” since the 80’s. Rural white rage used to be noble when they voted Democrat. It seems they’ve really upped the ante in scapegoating these people publishing they’re “threats to democracy”. I wonder when they’ll start publishing and disseminate overtly cartoonish images of dangerous rural white people to really hammer home the point of dehumanizing these people.
No one is asking for advocacy or propaganda. I don’t read partisan drivel either. But this is, again, an entire column explaining how Biden is losing while deftly avoiding any reference to how and why the Trump team is winning. It’s uncanny that there’s not one sentence that attributes any of these trends to positive things Trump is saying or doing – or has done – and focusing only on Biden losing. According to JPod, there are only two reasons Trump is doing well (or Biden badly) the economy, and Biden’s age. Nothing about the border policies, the war in Ukraine, the bogus law fare and the scandalous fashion our Intel agencies have been brazenly operating.
So I don’t think the analysis is accurate at all. Yes, we all, including Democrats know Biden is in real trouble. The author is showing how much he doesn’t know by saying he’s surprised, and using words like ‘jaw-dropping” referring to fundamental shifts that are ongoing and pre-existing.
And speaking of “shilling”, how does explaining that Nikki’s non disastrous finish(es) as a sign of hope fit?
NR and Commentary regularly shill for their agenda, don’t be naive Kay.
Have you noticed there is only a handful of Ricochet members who discuss these points?
Only the war in Ukraine issue could even be a subject of debate regarding whether it is conservative POV or not and yet hardly anyone shows up to discuss the other 3 issues. Oh, and Trump, not even an avowed conservative, recognizes all as needing corrective actions.
Maybe Trump support takes these things off the table.
Democrats take advice from Republican ‘friends’ all the time. Why does CNN have Mitt binders-full-of-women Romney on? Why does MSNBC have Liz Cheney on?
Moreover, if you read my post you will see Podhoretz quoted “(even if much of (Haley’s) vote has come from people who never voted for Trump in the first or second place)” show how he’s not bothered that Haley attracts quite a few Democrats – and doesn’t even call them Democrats, they are some strain of virgin GOP voter because calling them actual Democrats defeats his (already feeble) argument.
It smacks of J-Pod not being on the team. I understand that maybe political writers don’t want to be on the team. I just used to think that National Review as on the team. Maybe they are.
Just not mine.
Oh, for sure. Too many in both factions aren’t recognizing that there are now more than one team operating on the so-called right. The NR types are legacy Republicans whose focus is on National Security, Corporatism/Globalism and are fine with an all-powerful deep state using the media and the Justice Department to censor exclude and punish alternate narratives and effective dissenters. These are fundamental political positions that go well beyond the old divide between R and D’s like fiscal responsibility, entitlements or the tax code (which never changes much anyway from corporate Republican crowd like Paul Ryan).
With the continuation of the Haley quest to damage Trump and poison the well, we see their true colors. They actually prefer Biden or some other Democrat to Trump.
Which conservatives think that? Not Franco in this post. Not me. Not Bob Thompson. Who?
It’s just that it’s hard to square a claim of being conservative with such Trump hate to the point of pining for a healthier Biden to support without the qualms of turning over the keys to a dementia patient. Even on a lesser of two evils basis I have doubts that many of this type would pick Trump over Biden.
Especially since the Trump hate itself is based on false propaganda and advocacy.
Trump has probably had more hate and false propaganda thrown at him than any other politician. There’s no doubt about that.
Is J-Pod pining for a healthier Biden? That’s not my read. I see people on this here site get upset when Commentary or N.R say anything critical of Trump and lazily attribute it to TDS. They don’t want these publications to be objective organizations with a conservative bent. They want them to be advocates for Trump. They have a team view of what they want from these publications to be but that’s not why they exist.
That’s exactly what I would want them to be. I don’t read them so I don’t know what they have been publishing. Have they been hot on Lawfare and the neglect of proper investigations and law enforcement by the DoJ and the FBI and the abusive use of information classification by our intel agencies, among other very specific crimes committed directly by federal bureaucrats against a sitting POTUS?
Or do you just think such has not been taking place?
I agree about all the abuses you state. It sounds like your problems are with their editorial decisions.
Exactly!
I listened to a bit of the flagship podcast (first time in years) and the division between those who “get us” (Lucretia and Hayward) and those who don’t (Yoo) quickly became painfully obvious. Lucretia is dealing with the effects of illegal immigration every day — like many Americans. Yoo and J-Pod live in their comfy coastal bubbles.
Anyone who expends energy giving advice to Democrats or obsessing over Trump’s flaws is worse than useless in the fight against the Left. They’re making us fight the globalist commie Left with one hand while the other is defending against their backstabbing.
There are two teams in this (deadly) game — normal Americans and the Left. Pick one.
BTW, Haley has clearly chosen. She’s no friend of mine.
This made me LOL.
I for one, don’t want for these publications to be any different than they are. But they are not objective. They have a ‘bent’ and it’s sort of conservative and quite neocon. Any assessment of a publications bias should consider what they don’t say, what they don’t focus on, and what gets left out of their commentary.
I am simply pointing out that these tendencies to disparage Trump and support any desperate neocon contender is revealing. It’s obvious.
To be accused of wanting advocacy… I’m laughing now … when I say these people would rather a Democrat in the White House than Trump has me question their sanity not to mention their ‘conservative bent’.
I agree JPod is not hoping for or expecting a healthier Biden.
He wants the Democrats to dump him and get someone else. That’s the point of the entire exercise.
But why?
If Biden is losing and Trump the undisputed Republican nominee winning, what’s the problem? He could be lecturing the Democrats about why they are losing voters, but he doesn’t do that because he doesn’t really like the new MAGA GOP with these new hispanic and black voters and those swarthy rural working-class dropouts who don’t understand how the world hangs in the balance over how much dough we give some backward corrupted country so more conscripted Ukrainian young men will die as long as they minutely attrit and degrade Russian forces for the meta-war with Oceania.
The breakthrough in the GOP receiving minority votes is wholly ignored. This is a political pundit who is supposed to notice and comment on things like this. Instead I gather for John these voters should be staying on the plantation like good Democrats, I guess, reserving Republicanism for the smart people who like to see our country police the world using other people’s kids as cannon-fodder for their next fiasco.
He and his faction have distinctly different issues that basically puts them in a different political party that’s averse to the many many voters who will be casting ballots for Trump. The divorce is well underway (thanks Nikki for making it obvious that the GOPe has been ‘cheating’ while voters were deployed), we are now just fighting over the name “Republican”. In my view they can have it as far as I’m concerned, the appellation is both tainted and meaningless.
It’s a good jab, but just calling them Democrats wouldn’t be sufficient to explain the maneuverings and machinations.
It’s not wise to underestimate the number of people who, through only reading newspapers and watching CNN etc, actually think Biden is perfectly healthy and doing just fine.
That’s correct. And it would also have not served him to name these people Nikki energized for no reason “Republicans who loathe Trump”. They weren’t all Democrats . These Republicans didn’t vote for him before and won’t vote for him now. These people didn’t vote for him in 2016 the win, or in 2020 the loss. They are a non-factor and will remain so in 2024.
Left unsaid is that very few of the people who voted in the primaries for Nikki Haley will vote for Trump. The Republican Nikki section will stay home, and the Democrats will vote for the Democrat against any Republican opponent. In other words a meaningless exercise in terms of promoting some form of ‘republicanism’, just a PR exercise to damage the obvious Republican nominee.
This causes me to loathe Haley. She’s fighting for the other team.
Some of the “Republican Nikki section” will actually vote for Biden, as in 2020. And they voted for Hillary in 2016.
I don’t see these people and those of us supporting Trump ever in the same place again. Whenever we were it was just a big mistake or misdirection. It is satisfying to see and understand that.
Since when have they been under any scrutiny? As long as their media lapdogs repeat the Narrative that whites and Christians are evil (to say nothing of those both white *and* Christian), the Democrats will be fine.
When both whites and leftist “Christians” proclaim the evils of whitey and (conservative) Christians, I don’t see how Democrats will suffer. Nobody hates white people like lefty white people, and nobody hates conservative Christians like leftist “Christians.”
Never was.
If they suddenly shifted, I’d question why. I don’t think they’re trustworthy. So I don’t want them to be advocates for Trump because I’d never trust their instincts or their motivations.
I just want them to go the way of the Weekly Standard.
Many who have always voted Democrat are changing to support Trump. Not all are accepting the lies.
Do you really believe what you write, or are you just trying to insult conservatives into supporting Trump? I support Ukraine while simultaneously supporting free speech and freedom in general. Moreover, I support Ukraine because I support freedom in general.
Yes, I absolutely believe what I write. How are you insulted, and why pray tell shouldn’t conservatives support Trump?
If you support freedom, there’s a Cold War on freedom happening in the USA in your backyard. Are you unaware or just dismissing it since it’s happening to your political enemies or opponents?
How does supporting Ukraine in a war helping “freedom’? You do know that parties are outlawed, elections cancelled and it’s verboten to criticize Zelinsky and the war? You want to send my tax dollars to a corrupt regime and keep borders open here, which directly affects the sovegeinity and thus the freedom of our country.