WHY ARE DEMOCRAT-RUN CITIES SUCH CESSPITS OF POLITICAL HATRED AND VIOLENCE? Boston graffiti urges violence on Trump backers.

SPACEX FALCON-9 ROCKET EXPLOSION UPDATE: Solid oxygen may be the culprit. Yes, solid oxygen.

YOUNG COLLEGE-EDUCATED WOMEN WHO ARE VOTING FOR TRUMP SPEAK OUT: Good article from McClatchy’s DC bureau.

…interviews with about two dozen (young women) this weekend revealed a range of reasons as well as resentment that they should be expected to vote one way because of their age and gender. They say the election has celebrated young women and political engagement, but only if “it’s supporting liberal policies and Hillary,” Jackson said. Just because she’s a woman doesn’t mean we have to vote for her. Amanda Rider, 19-year-old student in York, Pa. “The legacy of having a woman president doesn’t need to be Hillary Clinton,” said Amanda Rider, an 19-year-old student from Harrisburg, Pa., interviewed at a Trump rally Friday in Hershey, Pa. “If I’m sexist because I don’t vote for you because you’re a woman, then fine, I’m sexist.”

PAUL RAHE: How I Might Be Wrong.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1277.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Clinton-Obama officials negotiated for jobs with Clinton-connected Teneo while agency subsidized Teneo client Dow.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: INTERNATIONAL MAN OF MYSTERY! MSNBC Commentator: ‘FBI Spy-Catchers Took Down … Victor Davis Hanson:

Well, maybe not. After all, Nance may have meant to say “Robert Philip Hanssen,” a former FBI agent convicted of spying for the Soviet Union (later known as “Russia”) in 2001.

Since Nance is actually a well-established counter-terrorism expert and not just a liberal media hack, I think it’s reasonable to conclude his allegations against Victor Davis Hanson were unintentional. Nevertheless, with the Democrats trying to blame the Russians to distract from their own scandals, Hanson should be watching his back. You never know what repercussions Hillary’s new Red Scare could bring.

Here’s a video from 2011 of Roger Simon interviewing VDH at his secret S.P.E.C.T.R.E-sized World Headquarters for Plotting International Evil. Notice that VDH (who often goes by his initials only, ala S.P.E.C.T.R.E, S.M.E.R.S.H. and T.H.R.U.S.H.) is dressed in largely dark hues to signify his criminal mastermind supervillain status.

OF COURSE SHE DID: Hillary Clinton directed her maid to print out classified materials.

FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: The Waning of American Primacy: President Obama’s successor may find that reversing American foreign policy decline will take more than a mere act of will.

That President Obama has been a singularly weak leader in foreign policy and national security is a view that was held by the entire field of Republican candidates for President this year, a sizable percentage of the American people and, perhaps to some degree, even Hillary Rodham Clinton, an exponent of a more conventionally muscular approach to American world leadership. Obama’s emphasis on the limits of U.S. power and the intractability of global challenges, along with his seeming aversion to “big box” military action indeed mark a change from the heroic style of presidential leadership the public has been accustomed to since World War II. While it is true that Obama is no pacifist—he ratcheted up the use of lethal drone strikes considerably above the level of George W. Bush—and that predecessors as illustrious as Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan also refrained from the large-scale use of force, the impression is widespread that Obama has deliberately forsaken the reins of global leadership and thus bears responsibility for American decline. The nearly unanimous verdict of critics is that Obama’s diffidence in wielding American power has diminished U.S. prestige, emboldened adversaries, and created a vacuum that revisionist powers have rushed to fill. . . .

The waning of American primacy under President Obama is due to several factors, some external and others internal. As has been frequently remarked for some years now, the emerging multipolar international system is more complicated and difficult to manage than any situation the United States has faced since the end of World War II. Its architecture today is essentially triangular, with China and Russia bidding, if not to rival the United States globally, then to supplant it regionally—and at a time when America’s traditional West European partners, particularly Britain and France, are either less able or less willing to pitch in. India’s emergence as a fourth great power is further diversifying the global chessboard. Lesser powers, such as North Korea and Pakistan, have the capacity nonetheless to destabilize the international system thanks to their possession of nuclear weapons. Adding to the complexity is the crumbling of states in the Middle East and elsewhere, the emergence of lethal non-state actors with global reach, such as al-Qaeda and ISIS, and the multiplication of threats to the global commons (potential pandemics and several environmental issues, for example), for which governance protocols are inadequate.

One metric of a changing global balance of power is greater vulnerability of U.S. territory to attack. U.S. strategy must now reckon with the ability not only of Russia and China to devastate the homeland but also potentially North Korea. Obviously, too, the United States must defend itself against terrorist organizations that will continue to strike its territory and would likely employ weapons of mass destruction should any fall into their possession; hence the abiding concern over unstable Pakistan’s vulnerable and constantly expanding nuclear arsenal.

Luckily, we’ve had Obama, Kerry, and Hillary Clinton on the job.

ROGER KIMBALL has thoughts on temperament.

THIS IS CNN: “The struggle is real. Just don’t stop and ask CNN for directions to Nevada, as you might end up in another state entirely.”

BRENDAN O’NEILL ON BREXIT AND THE COURTS: A Legal Coup Against The Electorate.

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MEDIA HEADLINE: MORE TRUMP VANDALISM! Trump’s Denver office vandalized twice in 24 hours.

OBAMACARE IS A MAJOR CAMPAIGN ISSUE: Yes, ObamaCare’s chickens have come home to roost. It’s the subject of my latest NY Observer column in “The War On Honesty” series so this is a bump. Obama needs to be held accountable for his lies, ie, you can keep your doctor and keep your policy. But mainstream media aren’t holding him accountable.

COMEDIAN DAVE CHAPPELLE STUNS MANHATTAN CROWD BY SLAMMING HILLARY, DEFENDING TRUMP, AND MOCKING TRANSGENDER ACTIVISTS; Calls Trump ‘The Most Gangsta Candidate Ever.’

TIME-WARNER-CNN-HBO SPOKESMAN BILL MAHER PRETENDS TO APOLOGIZE FOR CRYING WOLF AT BUSH, McCAIN AND ROMNEY:

This is a remarkable mea culpa from Bill Maher on how he treated Republican nominees before Trump. pic.twitter.com/xIzt9Rj91S

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) November 5, 2016

In response, Iowahawk adds:

For anybody who can’t understand why their attacks on Trump just won’t stick:https://t.co/FldVcvSExh

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) November 5, 2016

.@JeffiBelcher @sahilkapur When the VP of the US told black voters Romney was for the return of slavery, the entire rhetorical wad was shot.

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) November 5, 2016

Fun with Twitter searchhttps://t.co/wAKKGpiWVj

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) November 5, 2016

But then, long before Trump came along, the previous president or GOP candidate, who received brickbats and worse from the left is magically rehabilitated to bash the current nominee. Rinse and repeat, going back to Eisenhower and Goldwater.

This past July, Jonah Goldberg explored “How the Media’s History of Smearing Republicans Now Helps Trump.”

Last night, responding to Maher, Stephen Kruiser wrote, “As he points out [in the above clip], Maher gave a cool million to the Obama campaign in 2012 to prevent Mitt Romney from being elected. In the last few weeks before the election, Democrats were portraying Romney (the man they now describe as honorable) as a sexist animal abuser who gave a woman cancer. Check back in four years to see if they’ve really learned anything about crying wolf.”

Similarly, file this prediction from Twitter user Chris Antenucci away for future reference: “Bill Maher and most liberals in 2020: ‘This year’s nominee, Rubio, is making Trump look like a moderate. He’s a radical on abortion.’”

That’s a remarkably safe bet. We’re seeing lots of mea culpas from the media and its critics about how badly it blew its reporting this year and how deeply it was in the tank for the Democratic nominee. But they could virtually be rewrites of the same faux apologies we’ve seen at the conclusion of every presidential election since at least 2004. And yet, “unexpectedly,” the MSM just never seems to learn from them, do they?

Just think of the media as Democrat operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.

THE 2016 ELECTION MARKS THE DEATH OF ELITISM: I doubt it. America’s elite political class is taking a licking but it remains powerful. Salena Zito, however, thinks the 2016 pounding will prove fatal. Key argument: “…the power of elites to persuade us has evaporated.”

More:

…the governing class has failed us miserably, from wars in the Middle East that never end, to a healthcare bill that erodes our income to the politicization of the once trustworthy institutions of the Pentagon, NASA and the Justice Department.To them, the system is genuinely rigged, and the divide between the Ivy League educated and the state or trade school educated, between the haves and the have-nots, has become so deep that there is no bridge long or sturdy enough to connect them.

SETH BARRETT TILLMAN: Brexit, Miller, and the Ship Money case.

WITH THE WORST POLITICAL CLASS IN OUR HISTORY, WHY SHOULD WE HAVE A GOOD POLITICAL CULTURE? 2016: The demise of small-r republican politics.

Among the many complaints I have seen about this squalid presidential election—the most dismal choice of major party nominees since 1856—there’s one that I find missing: That it shows how our politics has become less republican.

That’s republican with a small r, in contrast to royalist. This is not an entirely new trend, but it is one that has reached a dismal culmination.

In his magisterial book “The Origins of Political Order,” Francis Fukuyama shows how the progress toward good government—”getting to Denmark” is his phrase—involves a change from the familial to the institutional. Progress comes when a nation has a competent state, the rule of law and public accountability.

The course of this election can be seen as more familial than institutional, with key roles played by the Clinton family, the Bush family and the Trump family.

Here’s the thing: Rule of law and public accountability stand in the way of graft.

AN ATTACK ON RAQQA DEVELOPING?: A US-supported Syrian force claimed it has begun an offensive operation to drive the Islamic State from Raqqa. ISIS calls the Syrian town its capital.

TRUMP HUSTLED OFF THE STAGE BY SECRET SERVICE: Yes, the news of the night, as well it should be. But why be surprised? Project Veritas provided credible evidence that Democrat operative Robert Creamer used terror tactics earlier this year to disrupt Trump rallies. Will the mainstream media now demand that Hillary disavow violence? Will the mainstream media demand she disavow Creamer the terrorist and his accomplice, The Hideous Scott Foval?

(Bumped, by Glenn).

WIKILEAKS: WASHINGTON POST’s KAREN TUMULTY KISSES UP TO JOHN PODESTA: ‘DON’T GO TO STRANGERS.’

Flashback: “I’ll bet that most Post journalists voted for Obama. I did. There are centrists at The Post as well. But the conservatives I know here feel so outnumbered that they don’t even want to be quoted by name in a memo.”

—The late Deborah Howell, then Washington Post’s ombudswoman, immediately after the 2008 presidential election.

Related: ‘Yeah, I’m In The Media. Screw You.’

—Button worn by the late Ginny Carroll, a Washington Post employee, to the 1992 Republican convention.

IRS SCANDAL UPDATE: Federal Judge: IRS Still Illegally Targeting Conservatives.