Author Archive: Ed Driscoll

November 7, 2024

ED MORRISSEY: Dems Enter Kübler-Ross Stage 6 of Grief: ‘Clawing Each Others’ Eyes Out.‘

Anger, denial, bargaining, depression, acceptance … eye-clawing? Has Elisabeth Kübler-Ross amended her 1969 work on the five stages of grief?

Or are Democrats just stuck in the first stage?

It didn’t take 24 hours from the call of Pennsylvania for Donald Trump before Democrats began running to their favorite media outlets to vent their rage at the result. Axios’ Andrew Solender offered up an overview headlined, “Democrats start clawing each others’ eyes out,” figuratively speaking.

Or at least we hope it’s figuratively speaking:

The dust has not yet settled from the 2024 election, but the Democratic Party’s blame game over their bleak showing has already begun in earnest.

Why it matters: Democrats across the ideological spectrum are quickly seizing on this raw moment to try to redefine the party in their image.

Read it all, but at least as presented, we don’t get any real eye-clawing. What we do see are the ideological factions of the Left trying to frame the loss as vindication for their own positions. That’s a natural process after a shocking loss; the RNC actually launched a formalized process for it after Mitt Romney’s loss to Barack Obama in the latter’s re-election effort in 2012, after being shocked by the results. (I eventually wrote a book about the lessons of 2012 called Going Red.)

Taylor Lorenz’s assurances that the New York Times is just another right-wing rag aside, the earnest pre-election pleading from assorted Times heavyweights is hilariously cringe:

But perhaps is simply needs a fun soundtrack another to liven things up:

While the Timespeople who shooting their clips to assuage their zanier readers, Heather Mac Donald writes that behind the scenes, it was party time at the newspaper: Trumped — The mainstream press is about to suffer its most definitive discrediting yet.

The press will continue to flog the Trump-as-dictator theme because it is secure in its ideological bubble. Before the election, the New York Times newsroom had brought in popcorn and cotton candy machines, fake sparklers, and goodie bags in anticipation of the coronation of “Madame President.” On November 6, the popcorn machine stood unceremoniously in a corner behind yellow police tape and an orange rubber traffic cone. Undaunted, executive editor Joseph Kahn and managing editors Marc Lacey and Carolyn Ryan sent a memo to their colleagues on November 6 praising the paper’s election coverage. They singled out for particular commendation a report that outlined Trump’s agenda: “to settle scores and enact a disruptive program on immigration, the economy, the federal bureaucracy and the judicial system.” Many Americans feel “unsettled and afraid,” said the editors. And apparently for good reason: “We are likely entering a period of change and uncertainty beyond anything America has experienced in our lifetimes.” Actually, what initiated a period of disruption beyond anything current generations have seen is enabling millions of Third World illegal aliens to enter the country, enforcing a mass delusion regarding the malleability of biological sex, ending meritocracy in favor of race and gender quotas, and setting up a collapse of the electrical grid through fantastical requirements regarding “green” energy.

Exit quote: “Expect another four years of fear-mongering as the Trump administration tries to restore the country’s constitutional architecture. Keep that scorecard in hand. Though the media will never admit it, their credibility, already threadbare, will be definitively decimated.”

Posted at 8:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Nov 7th, 2024

WATCH: The Lefty Meltdown Continues Over Trump’s Victory, Including One Woman Who Shaves Her Head in Rage.

Nothing really brings out the crazy quite like Trump does, and once it was announced that he had won the 2024 Election, there was much celebrating and reveling; however, one thing many people looked forward to was the insane meltdown of leftists all over the nation.

And boy, did they not disappoint. We might be getting some of the greatest meltdown moments in history this year, and why not? The corporate media and the Democrat Party spent years painting Trump as a violent, evil, sadistic, and hateful man, and a lot of these people truly believe they’re going to get plunged into some sort of theocratic nightmare or real-life Handmaid’s Tale.

We’ve already covered the initial videos that came out, and you can click on the link to see those if you haven’t already.

(READ: Enjoy Some of the Most Unhinged and Delicious Reactions to Trump’s Victory on Social Media)

But as time went on, things seemed to get even crazier. Let’s begin.

And, as always, LANGUAGE WARNING with these videos.

Let’s kick off with one of the craziest things I’ve seen. This woman is so angry about Trump being elected that she’s decided, in her rage, to cut her hair off.

Related: From Careless to Hairless: Lefty Women Are Saying Goodbye to Shags and Hello to Bald.

French women had their heads shaved forcibly after their nation was liberated from a totalitarian socialistic regime:

I realize that being liberated from the out-of-control authoritarianism of the Biden-Harris regime may feel a bit traumatic, but no reason to cosplay as former socialists who want to spread their ideology nationally, ladies.

Perhaps the most astonishing rebuke to this week’s scream theater has come from Hollywood actress/writer/producer/ Justine Bateman, who has taken to Twitter to humorously critique their bad lighting, camerawork, sound, and compositions. In addition to her cribbing approvingly from Libs of TikTok, Ace of Spades speculates that “she seems to be a fan of Nicole Shanahan and was, I guess, an RFKJr. supporter. I’ll take it! They’re on the team:”

 

Posted at 8:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Nov 7th, 2024

LOL: CNN Says Trump Won Because The Left Doesn’t Have a ‘Media Ecosystem.’

The late night comedy shows may not have been very funny after Donald Trump’s election victory, but the Wednesday edition of CNN’s Inside Politics was as PBS News Hour White House correspondent Laura Barron-Lopez got the panel to agree that one reason Kamala Harris lost is that, unlike Trump, she did not have a “media ecosystem” to help her get across the finish line.

Barron-Lopez desperately wanted to avoid the conclusion that Democrats need a reboot, “One thing that I think stands out also, we can’t have this conversation, a little bit to your point, Dana, is that maybe it’s not so much Democrats’ policies or messaging or the words they used specifically, but there is an entire right-wing media ecosystem that doesn’t exist on the left and it does not exist in the center or mainstream and people are getting their information in very different ways now.”

Here’s the clip of Barron-Lopez of PBS appearing on CNN and arguing that there’s no leftist “media ecosystem:”

Are the media playing the same semantic games that they played in 2008 and 2009 after Barack Obama won the election to pretend that they’re completely objective and centrist? Especially after propping up Kamala as much as they propped up Obama in 2008? After going all-in on Trump is Hitler, Netanyahu is Hitler, the Russian collusion hoax, etc., etc? They are!

Whatever the Journolist is called these days, it must be hopping this week, as Taylor Lorenz makes the identical point to Barron-Lopez on her Substack (say, why isn’t she in the WaPo anymore?): Why Democrats won’t build their own Joe Rogan.

While the right has spent years fostering a symbiotic relationship with alternative media, the left has failed replicate anything like it. There are simply no progressive content creators with Rogan’s cultural impact and online following, and a quick look at the podcast charts or trending channels on YouTube shows the disparity between conservative vs progressive creators’ reach online.

Without a network of culturally relevant influential content creators boosting and translating their messaging, the Democratic Party is rapidly losing credibility among younger, predominantly male audiences who have become ardent supporters of influencers that promote a distinctly conservative worldview.

This imbalance when it comes to online influence is no accident. It is the result of massive structural disadvantages in funding, promotion, and institutional support. And understanding why Democrats can’t (or really won’t) cultivate an equivalent independent media ecosystem that rivals what the right has built is crucial for anyone who hopes to ever see the Democrats back into power.

The conservative media landscape in the United States is exceptionally well-funded, meticulously constructed, and highly coordinated. Wealthy donors, PACs, and corporations with a vested interest in preserving or expanding conservative policies strategically invest in right-wing media channels and up and coming content creators.

This creates a well oiled pipeline for conservative influencers: young TikTokers, YouTubers, livestreamers, or podcasters are discovered, developed, and pushed to larger platforms, often with the financial backing of conservative billionaires or organizations on the right who have long recognized the content creator industry a valuable means of shaping public opinion and policy.

Organizations like Turning Point USA, PragerU, and The Daily Wire and others receive millions from backers who view them as advertising for a broader conservative agenda. These media entities act as content creator incubators and spend extensively on outreach, production quality, and audience growth. The resources and near unlimited funds they receive allow conservative content creators to grow rapidly and spread their message widely.

If only Dems had, oh, I dunno, the Washington Post, the L.A. Times, NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, PBS, and NPR in the tank for them. I’d add the New York Times to this list, but I have it on good authority that they’re in completely in the tank for Trump: Taylor Lorenz Says NYT Only Allows Right-Wing Opinions At Newspaper.

“Trump’s Podcast Offensive Worked,” River Page writes at the Free Press. So what caused guys to tune into Rogan and other podcasts so much?

None of these podcasts or streams are inherently political, and neither is the UFC. They are not right-wing media, in any traditional sense of the word. They are, though, the young male mainstream, representing a large but silent minority—one ignored by politicians at best and demonized at worst.

Each program in this system differs a bit: The Nelk Boys started out as a prank show on YouTube, Adin Ross plays video games, and Von has a successful stand-up career. Rogan is rather thoughtful, while Ross and the Nelk Boys are more interested in making the audience laugh. The Barstool Media Universe, presided over by Dave Portnoy, has a loose sports focus. What they all have in common though is that they involve men talking, mostly to other men, off the cuff. The audience doesn’t view them as journalists or thought leaders, but rather as para-social friends. They have natural, long-winded conversations that could go anywhere. It’s like hanging out—in a way.

I’m a 28-year-old man, and it’s virtually impossible to not encounter this media ecosystem, particularly if you’re online, whether through YouTube’s suggestion algorithm or as clips on TikTok. The fact that most streamers comment on the news, but don’t focus on it incessantly, is a reprieve from the 24-hour news cycle.

Several months ago, left-wing Twitch streamer Hasan “HasanAbi” Piker went on the liberal podcast Pod Save America. Twitch is a video platform where people stream themselves for hours, often while playing video games, and Piker is one of the most popular streamers there. He admitted on the podcast that his program was an outlier when it comes to politics. “If you’re a dude under 30 and you have any hobbies whatsoever—playing video games, working out, listening to a history podcast or whatever—[it] is completely dominated by center-right to Trumpian right-wing politics.”

That shouldn’t be a shock. Increasingly, every male interest, from going to the gym, apparently a fascist recruiting ground, to playing video games is decried as right-wing by the left. If you tell young men that everything they like is right wing, you shouldn’t be surprised when they start to believe you.

And as a result, we’ve entered some sort of bizarre hell-world in which Van Jones is a voice of sanity:

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Nov 7th, 2024

OH, THAT DEATH OF THE GROWNUP: Legos, Cocoa, and Coloring Books for Georgetown Students. At the McCourt School of Public Policy, officials are offering ‘mindfulness’ options to cope with the election. The only thing missing is a blankie.

On Wednesday, the day after the election, most of us are going to roll out of bed, have our breakfast, and get on with our day—no matter which presidential candidate wins. But students at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy—where diplomats and policymakers are molded—have another option: They can play with Legos. Seriously.

In an email to McCourt students, Jaclyn Clevenger, the school’s director of student engagement, introduced the school’s post-election “Self-Care Suite.”

“In recognition of these stressful times,” she wrote, “all McCourt community members are welcome to gather. . . in the 3rd floor Commons to take a much needed break, joining us for mindfulness activities and snacks throughout the day.”
Here’s the agenda (and no, you can’t make this up):

10:00 a.m.-11:00 a.m.: Tea, Cocoa, and Self-Care

11:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m.: Legos Station

12:00 p.m.-1:00 p.m.: Healthy Treats and Healthy Habits

1:00 p.m.-2:00 p.m.: Coloring and Mindfulness Exercises

2:00 p.m.-3:00 p.m.: Milk and Cookies

4:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m.: Legos and Coloring

5:00 p.m.-6:00 p.m.: Snacks and Self-Guided Meditation

I wanted to ask Clevenger why college and graduate students needed milk and cookies to recover from their stress—and how being coddled in college might someday affect American diplomacy—but she didn’t respond to my calls or emails.

More from the New York Post, in an article that’s likely not paywalled: Georgetown U. provides ‘self-care suites’ for coddled students stressed about Election Day — complete with milk and cookies and coloring books.

The coddling is akin to a move by the posh woke New York City private Ethical Culture Fieldston School that surfaced last week.

Fieldston is allowing any of its students who become “emotionally distressed” over the election to skip school Wednesday — an offer immediately ridiculed by one of its famous former parents, comedian Jerry Seinfeld.

“What kind of lives have these people led that makes them think that this is the right way to handle young people?” he told the New York Times incredulously. “To encourage them to buckle. This is the lesson they are providing, for ungodly sums of money.”

In November of 2020, Heather Mac Donald asked: Will America Succumb to Safetyism?

Wide swatches of Blue State America certainly have.

UPDATE: Joanne Jacobs on Teaching Fragility:

Ithaca College’s programming includes meditation, painting, cocoa and counseling.

The University of Oregon offers dogs, goats and Quacktavious the Therapy Duck.

Caitlin Flanagan tweets:

The morning after Pearl Harbor, my father joined every other man at Amherst College and walked into town to enlist. I once asked him what he’d done next. He looked at me in mild confusion: “I went to class”

It was the same with my father, who was a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of Nebraska, except he was in ROTC, which was mandatory for male students, so he didn’t have to enlist. He was going to war, but not yet. So he went to class.

The generations before safetyism were made of infinitely sterner stuff.

(Classical reference in headline.)

Posted at 5:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Nov 7th, 2024

FINALLY: A Democrat autopsy from a Republican consultant.

Republicans have, very foolishly, engaged in “autopsies” after recent election losses. This election, it’s the Democrats’ turn! The Democrats will engage in a circular firing squad for the next couple of years, with all factions doing their best to gain the upper hand by giving their rivals the shiv in the jailhouse shower. Allow me, a Republican political consultant without a dog in this fight, to answer the pressing question: who will Democrats blame for the campaign that inconceivably allowed the bad Orange Man to win and the obviously superior Kamala and Clooney and Oprah to fail?

First, let’s start with the obvious — black voters. The people at DNC HQ will be furious that black voters did not obey instructions and vote 95 percent for Democrats. It’s outrageous, really, when you think of all the great things white liberals have done for black people: BLM yard signs, volunteering once a year at a soup kitchen and promising young black men that Kamala would help them open weed stores. Yet even though the Democratic Party freed the slaves (young Democrats believe this), soooooo many black people voted for Trump. Shockingly ungrateful.

Second, brown voters. After everything Democrats have done for the brown people, their thanklessness stings even worse. All Democratic leaders religiously say “black and brown” in all their talking points, and Democrats have even opened the border to appease and accommodate Hispanics (who swung by fourteen points to Trump). Appallingly, Hispanic voters, who are legal American citizens, don’t want open borders! White liberal women have generously hired brown people to do their landscaping, clean their houses and raise their children — and despite all that, Hispanics have the nerve to vote for Trump and other Republicans. Even more ungrateful!

While being a wholly satirical parody account, Titania McGrath is not messing about today:

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Nov 7th, 2024

PLOUFFE GOES POOF! Implosion: Kamala’s Top Campaign Operative Deletes X Account.

The civil war within the Democratic Party is well underway after former President Donald Trump, and Republicans broadly across the country, completely trounced them on Election Day.

Accusations are flying and the blame game is in full swing, with many Harris operatives blaming President Joe Biden for the epic failure.

One of those operatives is former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe, who accused Biden of leaving the Harris campaign a hole too deep to dig out. Plouffe joined the Harris team shortly after Biden was pushed out of the 2024 race in July.

“It was a privilege to spend the last 100 days with @KamalaHarris and the amazing staff led by @omalleydillon who left it all on the field for their country. We dug out of a deep hole but not enough. A devastating loss. Thanks for being in the arena, all of you,” Plouffe posted on X Wednesday.

Twenty hours after sending the tweet, Plouffe deleted his entire account.

Flashback to The Hill on election Tuesday: Plouffe says Harris could win all 7 swing states.

David Plouffe, a senior adviser to Vice President Harris’s campaign, suggested Monday that the Democratic nominee could win all seven swing states.

“And, you know, just a couple hours ago, reviewing all the early vote data, what we’re projecting for Election Day, how we think undecideds are breaking, we have a credible pathway to all seven states tomorrow night to go into Kamala Harris’s column,” Plouffe told CNN’s Erin Burnett on “OutFront.”

“But we believe they’re all going to be close,” he said.

Burnett then asked Plouffe, “But you think you could win all seven?”

“Yes,” he responded.

As The Hill noted today, in an article headlined, “Top Harris adviser deletes account after post suggesting criticism of Biden,” “In reality, Trump won all seven, according to Decision Desk HQ projections.”

 

Posted at 4:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Nov 7th, 2024

MARK KRIKORIAN: Message to Illegals: Winter Is Coming, So Get Ahead of It.

President-elect Trump during the campaign promised “the largest deportation in the history of our country.” Polls taken during the campaign found widespread public support.

In an Axios poll this spring, 51 percent of respondents supported “mass deportations of undocumented immigrants,” including 42 percent of Democrats and 45 percent of Latinos.

A CBS News poll in June found 62 percent support for a “new national program to deport all undocumented immigrants,” including a third of Democrats.

Trump’s decisive victory this week gives him the mandate to make good on his deportation promise starting in January.

And that gives illegal aliens a couple of months to get out while the getting is good.

Mitt Romney was widely mocked during his 2012 run for the White House when he said he supported “self-deportation” as the way to reduce the illegal population. This approach, which my own Center for Immigration Studies pioneered as “attrition through enforcement,” was described by Romney as “people decide they can do better by going home because they can’t find work here because they don’t have legal documentation to allow them to work here.”

There’s more to it than just that, but the point is to get illegal aliens to return home on their own by making it impractical to stay. Romney took it too far, plaintively protesting that “we’re not going to round people up,” when, in fact, some significant number of people will have to be taken into custody and forcibly removed.

But the basic idea is sound. Persuading illegal aliens to go home on their own saves the government time and money.

Beyond that, which way forward? This:

Or this?

Or a bit of both?

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Nov 7th, 2024

NO. NEXT QUESTION? Will these celebrities follow through with their threats to leave America?

Has Bette Midler been spotted alive anywhere on planet earth in the last 24 hours? Bette Midler Not Handling Trump Win Well: Implies She’d Drink Drano, Nukes X Account.

Assuming she didn’t actually go through with her cri de coeur, she’s far from the only distaff leftist melting down this week: Watch: The Lefty Meltdown Continues Over Trump’s Victory, Including One Woman Who Shaves Her Head in Rage.

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Nov 7th, 2024

THE DAILY BEAST REPORTS THAT DEMS ARE PARTYING LIKE IT’S 1859: Joe Biden’s Vengeance: Democrats Descend Into Civil War.

According to Politico’s ‘Playbook’, Biden loyalists were especially bitter over unnamed quotes in a Politico article claiming the president was the “singular reason” for the damning defeat and saying a Democratic primary race would have given Harris more time and opportunity to run a better campaign.

The Biden aides blamed Barack Obama’s advisers for the Harris missteps that ultimately cost her any hopes of the White House.

“There is no singular reason why we lost, but a big reason is because the Obama advisers publicly encouraged Democratic infighting to push Joe Biden out, didn’t even want Kamala Harris as the nominee, and then signed up as the saviors of the campaign only to run outdated Obama-era playbooks for a candidate that wasn’t Obama,” a former Biden staffer told Playbook.

Yes, throughout Kamala’s brief campaign, the public saw what happened when the “Obama-era playbook” was run with a candidate who lacked all of the chops and rock star charisma of that was the 2008-era Barack Obama. Her election bid was also a constant reminder that it’s near-impossible to run a “change” campaign when the person running is the sitting vice president of a failed and flailing administration, who has a well-known track record, well-documented on video in the era of social media. With a series of promises designed to appeal to the far left during her stillborn 2020 campaign run, and a lengthy history in similarly far left Bay Area politics. This is why typically during a time of political crisis such as 1976, or economic crisis (real or imagined) in 1992 or 2008, Democrats like to introduce relatively unknown candidates that they can project a sunny “hope and change” theme onto such as Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and “the composite character” that was Barack Obama.

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Nov 7th, 2024

CIRCULAR FIRING SQUAD FORMS: Dems rage against Biden’s ‘arrogance*’ after Harris loss.

Democrats are directing their rage over losing the presidential race at Joe Biden, who they blame for setting up Kamala Harris for failure by not dropping out sooner.**

They say his advancing age, questions over his mental acuity and deep unpopularity put Democrats at a sharp disadvantage. They are livid that they were forced to embrace a candidate who voters had made clear they did not want — and then stayed in the race long after it was clear he couldn’t win.

“He shouldn’t have run,” said Jim Manley, a top aide to former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. “This is no time to pull punches or be concerned about anyone’s feelings. He and his staff have done an enormous amount of damage to this country.”

According to interviews with nearly a dozen officials and party operatives, Biden squandered valuable months only to end in disaster on the debate stage. And by the time he decided to pass the torch, he had saddled Harris with too many challenges and far too little time to build a winning case for herself.

The fresh anger at Biden came as Democrats devolved into a round of recriminations following Tuesday’s decisive loss to Donald Trump, with officials struggling to explain why a majority of the electorate voted Republican for the first time in 20 years.

* That “arrogance” very much continues today: Look at that Smirk! It’s Official, Nobody Seems Happier About Trump’s Win Than Pres. Joe Biden (Watch).

** Actually, the Bidens were setting Kamala up for failure right from the start, by heaping impossible amounts of tasks upon an already deeply in over her head Vice President Selina Meyer.

The coming years should produce a glorious slate of bios and memoirs, and when it comes to 2024’s “Making of the President” books, mister we could use a man like Theodore White again:

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Nov 7th, 2024

ROGER SIMON: After Trump’s Victory: ‘Justice Without Revenge.’

Arguably Trump’s most important appointment will be his attorney general.  It is likely he will get the person he wants because of the new configuration of the Senate.

Let’s stipulate that our justice system has been thoroughly raped, misused to an extent never seen in our history in the name of a wretched relatively recent epidemic almost as bad as COVID-19 known as “lawfare.”.

This is comprised not just of wannabe Torquemadas like Jack Smith and tedious gasbags like New York City DA Alvin Bragg and New York State DA Letitia James, but also the upper reaches of our society by FBI director Wray and his attorney general Merrick Garland, not to mention myriad legal hacks from Georgia to Colorado.

This misuse of our legal system to destroy political opponents absolutely must end.  The people who perpetrated it must be thoroughly exposed (not just in congressional hearings but in a court of law) and face legal consequences.

But it should be done in the Lope de Vega tradition of “Justice Without Revenge”.  In other words, as a suggestion, in the case of most miscreants, they should simply be stripped of their positions and lose their licenses to practice law, not suffer incarceration or further punishment.

Nevertheless, in the process, we must learn to what extent Jan 6 was an inside job. Wray dodged the question of government involvement (agents provocateurs) on multiple occasions but to the degree that it is true it must be fully known and Wray himself stigmatized.  Most, if not all, of those jailed for the “insurrection that wasn’t” will be released as promised by Donald Trump and made recompense.  That part is true justice.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Nov 7th, 2024

OUR POUTING PALACE GUARD MEDIA: All the late-night TV hosts melted down over Trump’s win. We’ve got the clips. 👨‍🍳👌

Well, not all of the late TV hosts – the often number one rated late night host was quite pleased the result: Gutfeld! reacts to the ‘media meltdown’ over Trump’s epic win (video).

This October 11th headline at the Wrap should have been a wakeup call for Camp Kamala that trouble was brewing in the heartland: Gutfeld! Ratings Soar, Outpace Late Night Interviews With Kamala Harris, Tim Walz.

Related: Fox News Leads Broadcast and Cable TV During 2024 Election Night Coverage.

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Nov 7th, 2024

DAN MCLAUGHLIN: The seeds of Kamala Harris’ defeat were sown four years ago.

If Trump had been re-elected in 2020, Democrats might have been reaping that reward now. Republicans would probably have lost House seats in both 2022 and 2024; instead, they look likely to hold their House majority and gain between three and five Senate seats. That Senate buffer could make it harder for Democrats to retake the upper chamber in 2026.

Worse, Joe Biden inherited a bunch of bad hands, and played them so poorly that he made them worse. In the process, his party alienated large voting blocs.

The pandemic produced supply shortages due to the interruption of manufacturing and transport, while bipartisan bills in 2020 pumped money into the system while people were at home and unable to spend it all. Inflation was inevitable, and appeared across the Western world. It would have bitten Trump had he been in office. But Biden flooded the economy with deficit spending while his party railed against energy producers. That not only made inflation much worse, it meant that Democrats shouldered all the blame for it.

There was no good way to leave Afghanistan, and Trump was paving the way to do so. There, too, Biden was the one to bite the bullet, then mishandled it to maximise the political fallout. His approval rating never recovered. Meanwhile, war in Gaza produced inevitable fissures in the Democratic coalition, which could have been papered over had it happened on Trump’s watch. By contrast, war in Ukraine may have divided Trump’s coalition much worse had he remained in office.

The Covid vaccines, developed under Trump, were first available under Biden. Heavy-handed Democrat-backed mandates caused a backlash that ended with the likes of Robert F Kennedy Jr defecting to the Republicans.

The pandemic artificially throttled immigration. Trump had capitalised on emergency authority to seal the border. Biden was left to deal with its end, and again, his poor choices created a dramatic migrant crisis.

Finally, Democrats overplayed the hand that Trump gave them on January 6, 2021. Had Trump remained in power, he wouldn’t have faced the same overreaching barrage of criminal prosecutions. Instead, Biden’s own Justice Department ended up trying to jail his opponent while elements of his party tried to get Trump thrown off the ballot. It backfired.

Back in April, the Politico noted that the Trump campaign “will use his trial to attract Black voters,”  using “his legal troubles — and issues of race in New York more broadly — to appeal to Black voters by suggesting that Trump, a 77-year-old white man from a family of privilege and with a history of offensive rhetoric, is beset by the same injustices that afflict Black Americans.”

It worked; the New York Post reported yesterday: Trump makes massive gains with Hispanics nationwide and black voters in swing states: exit polls.

Not surprisingly, given the left’s absolute obsession with replacing the Bad Orange Man’s custom-made Brioni business suit with an off-the-rack orange prison jumpsuit, as the Daily Signal noted yesterday, “Voters Saw the Left, Not Trump, as True Threat to Democracy.”

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll on Nov 7th, 2024

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:

Clearly, AOC is suffering from a strange case of amnesia, given her barnstorming “New Socialist ‘It Girl'” debut to the world in 2019, when she wanted to ban and regulate the entire US economy, her original chief of staff was photographed on multiple occasions wearing a T-shirt celebrating a Nazi collaborator, and she gave passionate shoutouts to Evita Peron and the Black Panthers. Such was the stuff of legend before everything went pear-shaped starting in March of the next year, thanks to Dr. Fauci’s form of authoritarianism.

Posted at 8:22 am by Ed Driscoll on Nov 7th, 2024

JOSEPH CAMPBELL IN JULY: Is Kamala setting herself up for a Dewey-versus-Truman defeat?

While noting the distance Harris has kept from the news media — she has neither granted an interview nor convened a news conference since emerging as the Democrats’ nominee — the New York Times nonetheless reported recently: “Some political strategists say Ms. Harris is doing exactly what she should be doing.”

Perhaps it’s not “exactly what she should be doing,” though — not when recalling campaign history and the case of Dewey, who served three terms as Republican governor of New York but twice lost the presidency as his party’s nominee.

Dewey in 1948 embraced a distant, glide-path strategy against President Harry Truman (D), sidestepping controversy and offering tame platitudes such as the importance of national “unity.”

“When you’re leading, don’t talk,” Dewey told a supporter, according to his biographer.

He specifically rejected suggestions by Republican leaders to undertake a vigorous, hard-hitting effort against Truman, who had become president in 1945 upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

“I will not get down into the gutter with that fellow,” Dewey said of Truman.

The last days of Kamala’s campaign seemed somewhat reminiscent of Harry Truman’s 1948 campaign, when Truman, struggling in the polls, went all out smearing Thomas Dewey with the F-word, which ultimately helped earn Harry his legendary “Dewey Defeats Truman” photo. But that would have seemed shocking just three years after the end of WWII, especially coming from the man who had ended it. 76 years later, after every Republican presidential nominee since has been declared a Nazi, the attack has lost its punch, especially after Kamala and Biden played footsie with those with a similarly vicious antisemitic bent.

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll on Nov 7th, 2024

NIALL FERGUSON: The Resurrection of Donald J. Trump.

This is a bigger comeback than Grover Cleveland’s in 1892, when he became the first—and, until last night, only—American president to win a second nonconsecutive term. This is a bigger comeback than Richard Nixon’s, when he was elected president in 1968, eight years after he lost by a dubious whisker to John F. Kennedy. It’s bigger than Winston Churchill’s multiple comebacks, the biggest of which were in 1940 and 1951. It’s bigger than Charles de Gaulle’s in 1958. It’s bigger than Napoleon’s Hundred Days in 1815. In fact, I am tempted to say that the only comeback it’s not bigger than is the Resurrection.

Why? Because all of Trump’s political opponents made a vain effort to destroy him. In the words of Elon Musk—who has been a key variable in Trump’s epic comeback—Trump is the man “who they tried to kill twice, bankrupt, and imprison for eternity.” Trump faced two assassination attempts, one of which came within an inch of killing him. He was indicted in four criminal cases and convicted in one of them. He was impeached twice as president, in December 2019 (over his infamous call to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky) and again in January 2021 (over the mob’s invasion of the Capitol on January 6).

In a civil case in May 2023, a Manhattan jury found him liable for sexually abusing and defaming the journalist E. Jean Carroll, awarding her $5 million in damages. Last May, he was convicted in a Manhattan court on 34 felony counts relating to hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels. My colleague Eli Lake puts the grand total at 116 indictments. This wasn’t just lawfare; it was total lawfare.

And still he won. He totally won.

What all this goes to show is that Trump is authentically antifragile. That term originated with my brilliant friend Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Let me quote his definition from the book Antifragile: “Antifragility. . . is beyond robustness: It is about loving randomness and disorder and benefiting from shocks. And love of randomness is love of errors. Antifragility has a singular property of allowing us to do things without understanding them—and do them well, mostly much better than by understanding them.”

Friedrich Nietzsche put it more elegantly: Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker. “What doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger.” That famous aphorism, from Twilight of the Idols (1889), will provide the perfect epigraph for the first serious biography of Trump, when a younger version of me gets around to writing it.

Speaking of analogies that involve the Other World, Seth Mandel on “The Sixth Sense Election:”

“I see dead people.” One of the most famous lines from any Bruce Willis film—and certainly the single best-known line in M. Night Shyamalan’s catalogue—was also a stroke of true genius. The Sixth Sense tells you the big twist up front but bets, correctly, that you won’t be paying close enough attention to realize it. Willis’s character is a specter, a figment the whole time, no matter how real he seems.

Last night was the Sixth Sense Election. We were told, up front and in no uncertain terms, that this was the “vibes election.” We were not misled—we misled ourselves. By every metric, Kamala Harris vs. Donald Trump was going to be the closest presidential election since 2000. On Election Eve, Nate Silver’s team put their data through 80,000 simulations; Harris won 40,012 times.

There were momentum swings, but the polling averages showed razor-thin margins. The momentum swings were vibe swings. They seemed real—it became conventional wisdom that a joke about Puerto Rico at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally would cost him Pennsylvania. We all watched the movie together.

Then came the twist: The campaign we watched wasn’t real. It was a specter, a figment all along.

It certainly felt like that each step of the way, but as with Biden in 2020 and almost with Hillary in 2016 and Gore in 2000, the power of the DNC-MSM to help get a stiff of a candidate over the finish line and eke out a win should not be dismissed. Hence all of our “don’t get cocky” reminders (which were increasingly puréed through the thesaurus as November got closer, just to spice things up).

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Nov 7th, 2024

November 6, 2024

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 on Nov 6th, 2024

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 on Nov 6th, 2024

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 on Nov 6th, 2024

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 on Nov 6th, 2024
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