HMM: VA Republicans Jump to In-Person Early Voting Lead, Model Shows.

Just 82,000 Virginians cast ballots during the first week of early voting, according to the state’s Department of Elections. That figure marks a sharp decline from the 270,000 voters who flocked to the polls during the first week of early voting in 2020. Of the 51,000 early votes cast in person, Republicans hold a 127-vote advantage, a data model provided by the Virginia GOP shows. While the state does not register voters by party affiliation, the model uses factors like primary voting history to extrapolate the voters’ partisan preference. Democrats have historically dominated early voting—President Joe Biden won Virginia’s early vote by more than 30 points against former president Donald Trump.

Those numbers will likely alarm supporters of former governor Terry McAuliffe (D.), who face an enthusiasm gap in their bid to defeat Republican challenger Glenn Youngkin. An August Monmouth poll found that Youngkin enjoys a 19-point lead with voters who describe themselves as being “more enthusiastic.”

The early voting numbers also come as Biden’s standing in the state slips significantly. According to a September poll conducted by Democratic consulting firm Global Strategy Group, 49 percent of Virginia voters hold a favorable opinion of Biden, while 50 percent of voters view him unfavorably. Biden won the state by double digits in November.

Republicans’ apparent lead among in-person early voters “clearly is concerning for Democrats, who traditionally have been the advocates of early voting and have turned out more than Republicans,” according to Mark Rozell, dean of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University.

Well, don’t get cocky.

IN OVER HIS HEAD: Republicans Get Out of the Way as Democrats Form a Circular Firing Squad. “The president badly overestimated his own abilities and underestimated GOP unity. He overestimated his ability to sell his agenda to both radical socialists and Main Street Democrats. In the end, the socialists undermined Biden by acting like radical socialists and throwing a tantrum when they didn’t get exactly what they wanted. And the Main Street Democrats got a bad case of the shakes when contemplating the passage of the $3.5 trillion budget bill without any obvious way to pay for it.”

I’m old enough to remember when Biden was sold to us as the man who could work with Congress, but aside from a couple of meetings with Manchin an Sinema, he’s been noticably absent from the process of pushing his own agenda.

He’s just not up to the job.

DOUBLING DOWN ON STUPID: Preschool Funding in $3.5 Trillion Spending Bill Is Modeled After Failed Head Start Program. “Fraud, abuse, poor outcomes, and high costs.”

WHO YOU GONNA BELIEVE, DEMS OR YOUR OWN LYIN’ EYES? Democrats Would Prefer That You Ignore All of the Violent Crime Around You. “Before you start jumping to conclusions about a correlation between the leftist fever to defund the police and a huge jump in the nation’s murder rate, you should probably be aware of the fact that the Democrats want you to know that there’s no problem at all.”

THEY DID NOTHING WRONG AND BIDEN CAN’T HAVE THAT: NYT corrects false claim that Border Patrol ‘whipped’ Haitian migrants; agents may still face discipline from Biden admin.

SMART GOVERNMENT: Governor Kathy Hochul Declares a Healthcare Worker Shortage Emergency of Her Own Making.

EVERYONE SHOULD: Lithuania could ban Chinese smartphones from state institutions as Xiaomi censorship row continues.

HMM: Did Pelosi Attempt to Take Over the Chain of Command Before Trump Left Office?

THAT’S WHY THERE’S TESTING: Tiles Fly Off SpaceX Starship Prototype During Testing. “The S20 prototype still has many stress tests ahead of the its first orbital launch. The spacecraft will have to undergo cryogenic proof and static fire tests, Teslarati reports. According to road closure postings, the first tests could kick off as soon as later this week.”

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Biden Is An Increasingly Toxic Combo of Addled and Untruthful. “To be a fly on the wall in places that Democrats are hanging out these days. Even the most die-hard partisans couldn’t possibly still be pretending that things are going well or that they will soon be better. Beltway Dems are probably bringing in Prilosec and Xanax by the trainload now. I can almost smell their flop sweat all the way out here in Arizona.”

GET USED TO SEEING THESE: Supply Chain Disruption Update. “I didn’t expect to do another supply chain disruption update just two days after the last one, but there’s a lot more news popping up.”

WELL, HE DID CREATE IT: Barack Obama Says Nobody Understands the Border Crisis Better Than ‘Big-Hearted’ Joe Biden.

THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT? Establishment Tries to Hide Likelihood That Cringe Fauci Film Has Been a Complete Flop. “Despite the documentary being released in major cities such as New York, San Francisco, D.C., and New Orleans on September 10, the likes of RottenTomatoes.com, Boxoffice Pro, IMDB.com, and BoxOfficeMojo.com have published no information about ticket sales or earnings data.”

ARE YOU THERE, GOD? IT’S ME, KATHY: Hochul’s New Religion: God Gave Us the Vaccines, and He Wants Us to Be Vaccinated.

ABOLISH THE FBI AND TAKE THE TAPES: Gaetz, Greene call on FBI to release 14,000 hours of footage from Jan 6.

DAVID SOLWAY: Kamala Harris: A Representative Figure and a Harbinger of Catastrophe.

AND NOW THIS: Power Outages Hit China, Threatening the Economy and Christmas.

WELL, HE DID: In Sworn Testimony, Generals Accuse Biden of Lying About Afghan Pullout.

FALSE NARRATIVES DON’T JUST ESTABLISH THEMSELVES, YOU KNOW: Twitter Censors Daily Signal Video About Border Patrol on Horseback.

AGAIN: 95% Vaccinated Harvard Business School Suspends In-Person Classes After Covid Outbreak.

POSTMODERN DEMS: The ‘comfort the comfortable’ coalition.

Last Wednesday, I saw a friend walking his dog in the late morning on Capitol Hill, attired in shorts and flip-flops. “Nice suit,” he said to me as we crossed paths. “Yep,” I said. “Busy week at work.” He laughed. “I am at work now.”

I don’t know my friend’s politics, but I assume he is part of the Comfort the Comfortable Coalition, that group of upper-middle-class urban professionals who the Democrats seem most interested in pleasing this election cycle.

Finley Peter Dunne, the noted scribe of the early 20th century, described his mission in life as comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. The Democrats seem much more interested in comforting the comfortable, those ascendant progressives who drive most policy decisions in their now fragile coalition.

Read the whole thing.

VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR WEEKLY INSANITY WRAP: Jen Psaki Is the Stupidest Person in the World (Or Hopes You Are).

Plus:

• Vanilla Ice is going to save the planet (really)
• Thanks, Madam Speaker! Introducing outsider-insider trading
• Shoplifting gang caught on video but not by Chicago police

So much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.

JOE BIDEN’S RETURN TO COMPETENT GOVERNANCE: AUKUS Reverberations. “Whatever the broader strategic merits of the pact, AUKUS demonstrates a distinct American inability to manage a coherent anti-Chinese coalition.”

No, it’s a distinctly Biden Administration inability.

PJ MEDIA VIP ROUNDUP: Don’t forget that VODKAPUNDIT promo code if you’ve been thinking of joining us.

Matt Margolis: Joe Biden Moves the Goal Posts on Herd Immunity. “On Monday, Joe Biden made the stunning claim that nearly 100 percent of Americans need to be vaccinated before our country can return to normal.”

Stacey Lennox: Prevent the Next Pandemic, Part 3: Depose Drs. Peter Daszak and Ralph Baric. “No one should diminish the fact that Dr. Peter Daszak from EcoAlliance and a team of researchers planned to shoo a bunch of chimeric viruses into a bat cave. However, the role of another American, Dr. Raplh Baric, is often overlooked in the discussions surrounding the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”

Yours Truly: Follow the Science: Eat, Drink, and Be Dairy. “The Swedes — hot on their own heels for having some of the best national COVID-19 outcomes despite no lockdowns or mask mandates — have done it again.”

#RESIST: Gov. Abbott Bypasses Biden On Lifesaving Antibody Care, Obtains Doses For Texas Outside Of Ration.