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About Last Night
Random thoughts about the Trump victory:
1. I am way too damn old to stay up until 4 am. Whatever Florida does now should be done everywhere. After closing out the editor’s election thread at 3:30, my youngest started texting me from the middle of the Atlantic wanting to know what was going on. (Thanks, Elon… I think.)
2. Sherrod Brown’s defeat in Ohio was a bit of a surprise. He is one of the few Democrats in this state to show any statewide appeal. The party bench is thin, so he may not be done. The governor’s race is in two years.
I told the lad Brown’s defeat was payback for Brown having the audacity to nominate him to the Academy.
3. Speaking of Ohio governors, Mike DeWine gets to pick JD Vance’s replacement to serve until Nov. 2026. MAGA will want Vivek Ramaswamy, but DeWine is more of a Bush Republican. Names being floated include Matt Dolan, current Secretary of State Frank LaRose and former State GOP chair Jane Timken. Who gets to be the “senior” senator depends on when Vance resigns.
4. My basic assessment of Donald Trump remains unchanged. (I wrote in Ron DeSantis.) He remains underwater in personal approval numbers. That said, he has a window to be bold. If he can do that and control his worst instincts, I wish him well. I do think he is a lucky SOB. Four years ago, the Democrats had one job — not be crazy — and they couldn’t do it. And then they served him up Hillary Clinton 2.0. Harris had all of the appeal of Clinton and none of the policy chops.
5. Speaking of policy, the transgender issue and the anti-male agenda bit the Democrats big time. And they ran a faculty lounge campaign that was obviously never tested outside their own offices. Will they learn? Probably not. They usually react like they didn’t offer up enough weirdness.
Published in General
Yep.
This appears to be the case again, and, indeed, a D consultant on Megan Kelly’s coverage said this is what would happen. What will the monied donors say? Insulated as they are, probably the same.
Hopefully so, and one benefit to DJT that I’m sure you haven’t overlooked is it will keep them talking the crazy talk. We’ve only just begun to hear the Hitler/fascist stuff, but there is nowhere to go with it. They yelled it as loudly as possible and lost.
The leaders of the Democratic party made about every mistake one could think of. It’s almost like they let a Republican tell them what to do. There’s just too many boneheaded mistakes to mention. The biggest was letting Biden run for reelection. Pelosi and her crew should have given him the Godfather offer before he ran for reelection and had an open primary.
Less appeal than Clinton. And a less legitimate resume. Clinton was at least elected to something. Harris was appointed all the way up to the top for appearances. For her whole life.
I’d like to think that people saw through that and liked what DJT did last time.
It’s the economy and Harris never understood it.
She won her Senate seat. But granted, winning statewide in California is not indicative of broader appeal. Just ask Adam Schiff.
Harris was elected DA, Senator and VPOTUS.
My theory is that just when the refrain of “Trump is Hitler” managed to tug at the middle class lib’s grey matter, that individual made another trip to the grocery store and spent 30 to 60% more than they had in Jan 2020.
Inflation is causing increased homelessness, repo’ed vehicles, utility shut offs and lack of nutritious food to eat. (Meds figure into this too.)
But then at the grocery store, the newly arrived Haitian is buying four times the amounts of food that Mr or Ms Middle Class voter can, and then…
Uh Californians hated Harris as Secretary of State for California. She got in due to people voting straight Dem ticket, and also because somehow Republican ballots don’t seem to always end up in the system.
Her record as San Francisco’s DA was atrocious enough that many libs wanted anyone but her to be the Dem’s choice for Secretary of State.
Anybody listening to the soundtrack as we wait for Kamala to concede? I don’t know the song, but the lyrics include “Who won the world?” and “We won this m.f.” Uplifting, I guess.
Okay, fine. She was elected San Francisco DA against the incumbent. She won that one. But in 2007 she ran unopposed. In 2010, she ran opposite a Republican in a blue state and, surprise, won. Her only real competition was once they decided upon jungle primaries and she ran against Loretta Sanchez. And okay, she won that. Then she was appointed as VP.
But really, replace appointment with anointment. She was elected based upon her diversity credentials and who she knew for her entire life. So yeah, I was wrong, she was elected.
Come to think of it, I’m wrong about Clinton, too.
They’re both awful, neither is qualified and I take it all back.
I thought it was at 4:00? Is she late to her concession speech?
That is true. I don’t remember it being explicitly sold by the candidate, he successfully hid in his basement, but the regime media strongly implied that it was going to be a placeholder term. A short transition with an elder statesman to get us past Hitler and Black Plague II (the story in their head) and by 2024 the country can move on. The DNC probably hurt themselves by stroking Biden’s ego and convincing him that instead of being a placeholder, he could be another FDR.
Then, instead of letting Trump fade away, they decided to destroy him and unleashed all kinds of lawfare, only making him stronger. Biden thinks he’s the only one who can beat Trump and decides to run again. As you said, too many mistakes to mention. A political studies grad student could have a field day looking into the Biden term.
California elected Barbara Boxer as a senator so it doesn’t impress me that Harris won also. She rode Biden’s coattails in 2020 after being soundly rejected by Democrats in the primary. I don’t remember her DA campaigns at all since I didn’t live and S. F.
Like beauty, qualifications are in the eye of the beholder. Today I heard a liberal/progressive on WVLK’s morning show state that J. D. Vance is totally unqualified to be a VP candidate. The fool insisted that Harris is over-qualified to be prez. The lib always appears with a conservative in a point-counterpoint setting. I have no idea if he really believes the nonsense he spouts.
Blame that on Jon Meacham. Shortly after the inauguration he arranged an East Room get-together with Biden and Michael Beschloss, Michael Eric Dyson, Joanne Freeman, Eddie Glaude Jr., Annette Gordon-Reed and Walter Isaacson.
Beschloss was the main culprit according to Axios, filling him ideas that he could be as transformative as FDR and LBJ.
In the three years prior to the pandemic, I attended the annual Capital Case Defense Seminar in California. Whatever negative thing you have said or heard about Kamala Harris, I heard worse from the hundreds of very liberal attorneys who teach at and attend that seminar.
(slight edit)
Could it be that “knucklehead” will replace “potatoe” in the lexicon of political history?
Yes, she was late to her concession speech, which was given about 15 hours after it should have been.
She needed that long to ream every staff member she considered responsible for the loss.
The particular one that was most significant was the decision to let Democrats skate and only attack Republicans. Had the press maintained even a lopsided level of evenhandedness, Kamala Harris’s career would have been over either sometime during her rise in California, or most certainly when she indiscriminately provided bail money for criminals during the riots, and urged others to do so.
Which gave enough time for the ghost of P’nut to scamper across the stage.
Decision Desk HQ has just called Arizona and Nevada for Trump giving him 312 Electoral Votes to Kamala’s 226.
That is all. Go about your business.
Any news on the Senate races?
Razor thin in Nevada. Sam Brown leading only by about 1,700 votes. Could be a run off happening or at least a court challenge for a recount.
Kari Lake is going to lose in Arizona. She’s down about 60,000 votes with 72% of the vote counted.
Not certain that she was actually elected DA; it was like the Franken=-Coleman Senate race in Minnesota a few years back. Then, once you are an anointed lefty officeholder in California (same in Illinois, look at Obama’s initial races), you cruise, like a Schiff speeding by in the night.
Cal Secy of State? Are you sure you don’t mean AG?
I believe you but it seems hard to imagine.
Of course then I remind myself of Kate Steinle’s death at the hands holding a non-registered gun fired by a drunken illegal alien. And how the media and the attorneys who pride themselves as being “progressive” painted the shooter as a heroic figure for having endured poverty, alcoholism, and a prior attempt to deport him.
He had a fund set up for him and he received so many donations that his attorneys, dressed in $ 4,000 suits and $200 dollar haircuts got him off with a slap on the wrist.
The only bit of justice I noticed was the judge telling him to leave the USA and definitely never appear back in his courtroom again.
Sorry! I’ve done that for a week or more now. Thank you for the correction.
I’m reminded of the age-old definition of idiocy.
Kari Lake has proven she can’t win.