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Archive for 2020
November 8, 2020
REASON: The 2020 Election Results Look Like a Massive Rebuke of Socialism. “Summarizing the key lessons that Democrats should take away from election results that were much less favorable than expected, Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D–Va.) reportedly told fellow members of her caucus during a conference call on Thursday that they shouldn’t say the word socialism ‘ever again.’ This would be good policy advice, whether or not it’s good political advice. But as it turns out, socialism is looking like a major political loser this election cycle.”
WANT TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE RIGHT NOW? Donate to David Perdue’s Georgia Senate Runoff Campaign.
Also Kelly Loeffler’s Georgia Senate Runoff Campaign.
You might also volunteer, if you can spare the time.
NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG:
OPEN THREAD: Disport yourselves in the comments.
#FOXEXIT MOVEMENT BUILDS AS NETWORK HAS BECOME ANTI-TRUMP.
Related: Backlash Against Fox News Explodes.
More: The FOX News factor. “Some explanation [for Fox calling Arizona so quickly for Biden] is called for. So far as I can tell, however, FOX News is resting on its right to remain silent and moving on to celebrate the coming regency period.”
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Yes.
Got home the other night and Helen was watching Newsmax. We never watched Newsmax before the election. We haven’t watched Fox since.
WE NEED A PRESIDENT WHO CAN WORK WITH MEXICO: World leaders congratulate Biden except… Mexico’s Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
QUESTION ASKED: Is the Pandemic Over? Liberals Rally to Celebrate Media Projecting Biden’s Victory.
And a similar response from Vox’s Aaron Rupar: Journalist caught in act of rank hypocrisy doesn’t care because he doesn’t have to.
Or as Glenn Greenwald tweets, “How the media shifted so abruptly from ‘anyone going to a spacious beach is a super-spreading monster killing Grandma’ to ‘these mass, densely populated protests with people screaming on top of each other are so inspiring’ was one of 2020’s most credibility-destroying media acts.”
Well, one of.
WALL STREET JOURNAL: Joe Biden’s Non-Mandate: He may win the White House, but his party and progressive ideas lost.
Mr. Biden will win the popular vote, and he may eke out a narrow win in the Electoral College. In essence he’ll have reversed Mr. Trump’s victory in 2016 with hair’s-breadth advantages in Wisconsin and Michigan, and perhaps Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona. None of them will be by large margins. He will have vanquished an incumbent President, which is no easy task.
But look down the ballot, or across the country, and Mr. Biden’s potential victory looks remarkably limited and personal. Most new Presidents enter office having swept allies into Congress and statehouses as the public embraces his agenda and vision for America. Certainly this was true of Barack Obama in 2008 and to a lesser extent Mr. Trump in 2016. Mr. Biden had no such coattails.
Democrats lost seats in the House, giving up some of the suburban gains they made in 2018 while continuing to struggle in rural areas. The full results won’t be in for weeks, but Speaker Nancy Pelosi may find her majority cut in half or more to the smallest in 20 years.
Senate control may be determined by a Jan. 5 runoff for two seats in Georgia. But the GOP already looks to have won 50 seats to 48 for Democrats, who had expected to ride public dislike for Mr. Trump into the majority. A GOP Senate may compromise with Mr. Biden around centrist ideas, but the aggressive House agenda of the last two years would die again.
This result is all the more remarkable given that Democrats had nearly all of the media, Silicon Valley billionaires, and all of the leading cultural figures and institutions helping them. Even the Chamber of Commerce paid protection money. Democrats raised unheard of sums close to $100 million for some Senate races, outspending Republicans by two or three to one. They still could oust only two incumbents and lost one of their own.
The lack of coattails was also evident in the states, where Democrats spent heavily to flip legislatures.
The outfit that called itself the “Resistance” was composed of “nearly all of the media, Silicon Valley billionaires, and all of the leading cultural figures and institutions.”
JOURNALISM AS PERFORMANCE ART: CNN’s Don Lemon Weeps at Being ‘Overwhelmed’ by Biden Victory.
ALL THE BEST PEOPLE EXPECTED — AND EVEN ENCOURAGED — RIOTS IF BIDEN LOST. NOBODY FEARS THAT FROM TRUMP SUPPORTERS.
Related (From Ed): ThinkProgress founder Judd Legum is thisclose to getting it:
As Republican pollster Logan Dobson tweets in response, “Instead ask yourself: why was it boarded up in the first place?”
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): From the comments:
AS ALWAYS, LIFE IMITATES AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:
● Shot: Rioters Demand A Recount.
“We were all ready to loot and burn everything down — we must count again!” they said, joining with President Trump in his calls for legal challenges and recounts to dispute the apparent Biden victory. “There was obvious voter fraud in this election. We must get a Biden loss, no matter what!”
“I was all ready to do my Christmas shopping, and then Biden won,” said a dejected rioter as he stood there with an unlit Molotov cocktail. “How am I supposed to pick up a new Xbox now that Trump lost? Ugh. And I might not have another opportunity for these kinds of deals until 2024!”
Rioters are saying that if they do not get the results they desire, they may just riot and burn the country down anyway in protest.
—The Babylon Bee, Friday.
● Chaser: Even With a Biden Win, Portland’s Protesters Vow to Keep Smashing Stuff.
—Nancy Rommelmann, Reason, Friday.
SEEN ON FACEBOOK: “The 2000 recount was awful, but was still far more pleasant than what comes next by virtue of social media not existing.”
IN ITS RECREATIONAL-DRUG FORM, DMT IS VERY BAD FOR THE BRAIN. BUT THIS ISN’T QUITE THE SAME: An Amazonian tea stimulates the formation of new neurons.
Well, most of our institutions — and this goes double for the press — are run by people who value their standing with their peers above doing their jobs.
OLD AND BUSTED: Choose Your Adventure.
The New Hotness? Choose Your Hangover. Kevin Williamson: 2020 Election: Joe Biden, Donald Trump & Others All Claim Victory.
Joe Biden thinks he won the election. The Associated Press thinks he won, too. But the landslide some of his friends (and provisional friends) were predicting did not come to pass. His showing against the man he insisted was obviously and self-evidently the worst president in the history of these United States is not what one would have expected running against a man who was obviously and self-evidently the worst president in the history of these United States. He very well may end up having eked out a very slim win only to spend his time in office having his ideas, to the modest extent that he has ideas, ruthlessly smothered to death by Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans. Biden did not exactly sell his immortal soul to the Left in order to unify the party behind him, but he did give Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders a long-term lease on it, with excellent terms, which may have been a bad bargain: He got into bed with a clutch of self-declared socialists and then lost bigly in Florida as Latinos with some intimate experience of that wretched ideology said: ¡Socialismo, no! Biden will be faced with a choice between hobbling his own agenda by knuckling under to the battiest Berkeleyest nut-cutlets or throwing the Left under the bus and wonder where Kamala Harris is hiding the icepick.
As Jon Gabriel tweets, “You’ll never see anyone angrier on Twitter than Democrats after winning an election.”
GOING ALL OUT TO STOP THE SIGNAL: Last night Facebook wouldn’t let me post this link on Biden’s votes and Benford’s Law. It just didn’t work. They blocked the Bit.ly version too. Now several people report that trying to post it produces a claim that it’s blocked for “adult sexual exploitation,” which it has nothing to do with.
Updated and bumped (Charlie):
Or maybe not.
Another Update (Charlie):
Update (Charlie):
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: BLM Drops by Biden White House Celebration With a Message: “For all of you f**king journalists, for all of you white liberals who have been celebrating, getting drunk off your asses about Biden winning this election, you are all a bunch of f**king fools!”
Analysis: True. But to borrow from a classic Far Side cartoon, “Yes, they’re all fools, gentlemen…But the question remains, ‘What kind of fools are they?'”
LACKING IN CHARACTER AND FITNESS FOR THE PRACTICE OF LAW: Students Express Concerns Over Miami Law Professor’s Twitter Support For Trump In Presidential Election. Now, apparently, after four years of a bogus “Russia, Russia” narrative, you’re not even allowed to discuss voter fraud. The hell with these little Red Guards.
OVER 25 SHOT, 4 FATALLY, FRIDAY INTO SUNDAY MORNING IN LIGHTFOOT’S CHICAGO.
I thought a city led by the fearsome “Corona Destroyer” could solve all of its problems:
Chicago’s last Republican mayor left office in 1931.
ROGER SIMON: Media ‘Calling’ Elections in a Democracy Is Postmodern Fascism.
More or less unnoticed for decades, the media habit of “calling” elections—presidential or otherwise—is not only a betrayal of the democratic process, it has become a leading factor in a new form of post-modern fascism in which we are apparently living.
Saturday morning at 11:45AM, while President Trump was off playing golf, CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, the AP and USA Today, virtually in unison as if operating on some sort of pre-arranged cue, all made the call for Joe Biden with Fox News joining them all of ten minutes later.
It was like Pravda and Izvestia working together for what they assured the Soviet public was their own good.
Moments after that, horns were honking with joy and people dancing in the streets from Los Angeles to New York.
After all, the witch was dead. Which old witch? The orange witch! Ding-dong the wicked witch was dead!
Biden was our 46th president because the media declared it so.
Of course, this was nonsense. The election is still on-going, still undecided, and will be for several weeks of legal challenges, many of them justified.
What occurred at 11:45 was basically a media psy-op (psychological operation), designed to depress and silence the roughly seventy-one million who voted for Trump and rally the seventy-some million, if they indeed exist, who voted for Biden.
The truth is, in a democracy and/or a democratic republic …
No media organization has the right to “call” an election. Period.
It’s a Big Lie squared.
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense. And it’s a win-win for them either way. Demoralize Trump supporters now, and if Trump’s lawyers somehow salvage the election for him, send him into his second term with a Dubya-style asterisk, just as they did in 2016.
Related: SD Gov. Kristi Noem to former Clinton-Gore flack George Stephanopoulos: ‘We Gave Al Gore 37 Days to Run the Process’ — Trump Voter Deserve Same Consideration.
More: Media Cheered on Stacey Abrams for Challenging Election But Trashes Trump for Same Thing.