November 7, 2024

November 6, 2024

MAKE THE RUBBLE BOUNCE:

Posted at 10:08 pm by Glenn Reynolds

OPEN THREAD: Living in interesting times.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

CONSERVING CONSERVATISM MOST CONSERVATIVELY: Bulwark Crew Wishes Biden Would’ve Been More Authoritarian to Prevent Authoritarianism.

And don’t get them started on how much they appreciate the common sense of the average voter:

Or ask them for their thoughts on illegal immigration:

Posted at 9:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

HELEN AND I SPENT A COUPLE OF HOURS AT A FRIEND’S HOUSE, sipping champagne and gloating reflecting on the elections. Our hostess, a woman who built a very successful business up from nothing against considerable hardships, commented that she thinks Trump’s four years in the wilderness are worth it. She said he had been “fine-tuned by fire,” and is now tougher, and much more knowledgeable about what he faces, than he would have been if he had been re-elected in 2020. I think she’s right.

UPDATE:

Plus:

Posted at 8:47 pm by Glenn Reynolds

YES! Shelley Luther, former Dallas salon owner jailed during COVID-19, wins in TX House Dist. 62.

Flashback to May of 2020: A Look At The Democrat Dallas Judge Who Jailed A Salon Owner.

Luther was released on Thursday however by the Texas Supreme Court which came just after the state’s Republican Governor, Greg Abbott issued an executive order retroactively suspending local ordinances that throw citizens in detention for noncompliance with local stay home orders.

“Throwing Texans in jail who have had their businesses shut down through no fault of their own is nonsensical, and I will not allow it to happen,” Abbott said the day after Luther was given jail time.

Abbott Spokesman John Whitaker made clear in a statement to The Federalist however, that the governor’s executive order still allows local fines and other penalties such as license suspensions to be handed down to those who open without authorization, implying Luther may still have to pay $7,000.

Moye condemned Luther’s defiance as “selfish,” charging Luther with “putting your own interests ahead of the community in which you live.

“You disrespected the orders of the state, the county, and this city,” Moye told Luther.

The episode has become a rallying cry for opening up, where many on the Left supporting the lockdowns have flocked to Moye’s defense, while conservatives characterize the ruling as an authoritarian power-grab from the Democratic judge and prop up Luther as a heroine fighting to preserve civil liberties under stress from the pandemic. Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz went to the salon for a haircut on Friday and Abbott discussed the matter with the president at the White House.

Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton also charged Moye’s ruling as “outrageous,” a view which was echoed across Republican state leaders and earned backlash from an array of district judges in Dallas County labeling the criticism “inappropriate” for an independent judiciary.

As Glenn wrote back then, “Don’t miss the importance of this. The left/media (but I repeat myself) used to be able to make people so radioactive that even serious right politicians would shy away. Not anymore. This, and her half-million-dollar GoFundMe account, are serious blows to its power. Or maybe signs that that power is shrinking. Or both.”

Posted at 8:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

DISPATCHES FROM THE ONCE GOLDEN STATE:

● Recalls of Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao and DA Pamela Price Appear to Be Passing.

Flashback: Defiant Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao denies any wrongdoing in 1st comments following FBI raid; “I have done nothing wrong.”

● Daniel Lurie Poised to Be Next Mayor of San Francisco After Spending Record Sum In Election. “Lurie, the billionaire heir to a Levi’s jeans fortune who, with the help of his mother’s wealth, launched a campaign to become mayor of San Francisco, is well ahead of incumbent London Breed in ranked-choice votes.”

● Gascon Loses, Price is Recalled and Criminal Justice Reform Takes a Beating in California. “California voters on Tuesday approved a November ballot measure that will impose stricter penalties for repeat theft and crimes involving fentanyl, steering away from recent progressive policies that critics blamed for increased lawlessness…Proposition 36 will make it a felony for someone to steal merchandise of any value after two previous offenses and can lead to longer jail or prison sentences.”

Meanwhile, with Kamala Harris, a leftist Bay Area machine politician soundly thrashed last night by Trump, the San Francisco Chronicle yells, next batter up! The Democratic Party is now Gavin Newsom’s to lead. Does he have what it takes?

UPDATE:

Posted at 8:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

ROGER KIMBALL: The three reasons Trump won.

“Why Trump won.” That is my assignment. I shall treat it as a declaration, not a question. And even though I write before the returns are in, I can give you the reasons. After all, I have been predicting that Donald Trump would win “in a landslide” at least since July.

As has become increasingly clear over the past several weeks, there are three basic reasons that Trump won.

The first two are interwoven. Kamala Harris was a horrible candidate. Trump, on the contrary, was superb.

As to Kamala, her inarticulacy was a major stumbling block. So was her choice of running mate: Tim Walz may be the left-most governor in the country. Certainly, he is the weirdest. Harris’s 60 Minutes interview was a disaster, as was her interview with Bret Baier.

Often, Harris’s mistakes were fodder for Trump’s triumphs. Harris said she had worked the fry station at McDonald’s. There was no record of that, so Trump made hay of the apparent lie. He picked a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania, made French fries and handed out food at the drive-through window. A publicity coup.

Then there was the Garbage Gambit. Joe Biden called Trump supporters “garbage.” The White House tried and failed to walk back the remark. But Trump’s team came up with the splendid idea of having a garbage truck emblazoned with the campaign logo meet his plane in Green Bay, Wisconsin. They topped that by slinging a neon orange and yellow maintenance vest over the president. He emerged from the plane wearing it, conducted a brief interview from the cab of the truck and then proceeded to his rally where he explained to the adoring crowd why he was wearing the vest. Brilliant.

The media were furious in October that Trump was doing Retail Politics 101, because it simultaneously undermined all of their efforts to portray him as Orange Hitler, and because it demonstrated that Kamala couldn’t or wouldn’t do these sorts of basic campaign stunts. Biden never thought he’d get called on his plagiarism by the media in the 1980s, and curiously, in the 21st century, Kamala never thought anyone would call her on inventing a job at McDonald’s to grab some populist street cred, as the Washington Free Beacon did in late August. Even so, it’s a safe bet that numerous local Mickey D owners, particularly in California, would have been thrilled to have her spend an hour or two posing at making fries. That she couldn’t be bothered to do so speaks volumes about her overall failure as a presidential candidate.

Posted at 8:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG:

UPDATE: Eugene Volokh emails to suggest that the above chart is comparing apples and oranges: “Biden’s 81M was the final 2020 count; Harris’s 66M was the ongoing 2024 count, as of this morning. It appears that as of this morning there were still at least about 16M votes not yet included in the tallies, mostly but not entirely in Western states. In California, for instance, the current tallies include only 56% of the vote, and that amounts to 9.75M votes, so that’s about 7.7M votes not yet included in the totals in California alone. My rough projections from each state, based on how the vote broke down so far, is that there will be 9M extra votes for Harris and 7M for Trump, though there might be more (see https://reason.com/volokh/2024/11/06/quick-reminder-dont-compare-the-final-2020-popular-vote-totals-with-non-final-2024-vote-totals/). That will yield a total of roughly 76M for Harris and 79M for Trump, which is basically 5M less than Biden’s 81M for Harris and 5M more than Trump’s 2020 74M for Trump. It may even be a few million more (or possibly, though not likely, a few less). But it will be much more than the amounts reported so far in the right-hand column in the ZeroHedge comparison.”

Posted at 8:16 pm by Glenn Reynolds

CLAIRE LEHMANN: Revenge of the Silent Male Voter.

In the coming days, much will be written about working class concerns—issues that have become familiar focal points for those seeking to understand Trump’s support. But while inflation and border policies will have no doubt played a role in the Republicans’ landslide victory, we might also want to look at the sentiments expressed by young male voters—voters who represent a new and emerging contingent in American politics. Nothing about the young men I spoke to appeared particularly conservative or “right-wing.” Yet it was easy for them to explain why they voted for Trump. And if we zoom out and look at broader cultural trends, it should be easy for us to understand too.

If we take a macro perspective, we see that such young men have never known a culture in which males are not routinely described as “problematic,” “toxic,” or “oppressive.” Going to university, and working at modern companies, they live in a world of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies—many of which promote an insidious and pervasive form of anti-male discrimination. Yet to talk about it in public invites social ostracism. To criticise DEI is to risk being called a Nazi.

These young male voters know about theories of patriarchy and white supremacy, but they have never known a culture which celebrates the Great Man Theory of history. Thomas Carlyle’s nineteenth-century framework for understanding the past is seen as an anachronism, not worthy of serious thought. Today we acknowledge historical figures not for their feats, but for their crimes. Whether it is due to slavery, colonisation, racism, or sexism, we tear down the monuments of our past, while building no new heroes for our future.

The problem with this way of viewing the world is that it is alienating and self-defeating. It is also wrong. By any objective standards, Elon Musk is a great man of history, who is influencing the course of human civilisation for generations to come. As one party-goer told me, “He caught a fucking rocket with mechanical chopsticks.” Yet despite his achievements, Musk is more likely to be scorned than celebrated by the Democratic establishment.

This tension between achievement and resentment explains much about our current moment. The young men I met that night in Manhattan weren’t just voting for Trump’s policies. They were voting for a different view of history and human nature. In their world, individual greatness matters. Male ambition serves a purpose. Risk-taking and defiance create progress.

Related:

Even Bernie Sanders can figure it out: “‘It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them,’ the 83-year-old senator from Vermont wrote on social media.”

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll