Election 2024 Issues

[GURPS]

Democrats in Massachusetts Look to Give Voting Rights to Foreign Nationals​

Democrat legislators in Massachusetts are looking to give foreign nationals on green cards the right to vote in municipal elections.

A series of bills filed by Democrat legislators in the Massachusetts House and Senate would open municipal voting rights to foreign nationals living in the state on green cards.

In practice, the policy would mean foreign nationals could cast deciding votes in Massachusetts towns and cities for mayor, school committee, city council, town council, board of selectmen, select board elections, school committee referendums, local ballot referendums, or other municipal races.

 

[GURPS]

Kari Lake to Campaign for Trump in Iowa, Roast Ron DeSantis Tonight at The Mad Meatball Pizzeria​

This comes as Tim Scott, Asa Hutchinson, Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, Vivek G Ramaswamy, and Ron DeSantis are set to appear at an Iowa presidential townhall forum with Tucker Carlson.

The Trump campaign event with Kari Lake will be held at the Mad Meatball Pizzarea in an apparent shot at Ron DeSantis, who President Trump has dubbed “Meatball Ron.” Lake told The Gateway Pundit, “we’re going to have a good time. It’s going to be a little bit of a roast.”


She added, “If Ron’s trolls have a problem with that, guess what? It’s called politics. Get used to it. Trump is a fighter. He gets up every day and fights. He takes more hits than Ron can even imagine taking. When you get into politics, and you run against a Giant, this is what happens.”

 

[GURPS]

 

[GURPS]

Yet rather than testing Biden's viability the way Republicans are testing Trump's, Democrats are letting Biden take the nomination by default.

He has two primary challengers, but few media outlets treat Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or Marianne Williamson seriously, and they have virtually no support from Democratic officeholders.

Biden won't debate Kennedy or Williamson, so voters won't find out how well he can do on a stage he doesn't control until it's time for him to face his general-election opponent.

By then, it'll be too late for second thoughts.

In April, only 47% of Democrats polled by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research said they wanted Biden to seek reelection.

If Democrats themselves aren't enthusiastic about Biden, how optimistic can they be about getting independents to turn out for him?

Their hope is that "negative partisanship" will do their work for them.

Voters don't have to like Biden as long as they dislike the Republican enough.

Democrats know how to run an anti-Trump campaign, and they'll adapt that strategy to remake any other Republican into Trump.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2023/07/18/the_frontrunner_who_looks_like_a_loser_is_biden_149508.html

 

[GURPS]

Political polarization in the U.S. is a fact. “According to the Pew Research Center, members of both parties who have unfavorable opinions of the opposing party have doubled since 1994, while those who have very unfavorable opinions of the opposing party are at record highs as of 2023 … American Facebook users on the political right and political left shared almost no common interests.”

Not only are two camps emerging, they are fighting, even at the expense of governance. GOP senators are rattled by a radical conservative populism that is taking rhetoric beyond mere talking points to its logical conclusions.

Republican senators say they’re worried that conservative populism, though always a part of the GOP, is beginning to take over the party, becoming more radical and threatening to cause them significant political problems heading into the 2024 election.
GOP senators are saying they’re being increasingly confronted by constituents who buy into discredited conspiracy theories such as the claim that Democrats stole the 2020 presidential election or that federal agents incited the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Growing distrust with government institutions, from the FBI, CIA and Department of Justice to the Centers for Disease Control and National Institutes of Health, make it more difficult for Republican lawmakers to govern.

The Democrats and Republicans are being pulled apart by the new Woke conspiracy attractors reshaping the scene. The old axis is being disrupted by a second dimension perpendicular to it. It’s interesting to watch the political parties try to cope. On the GOP side, it produced a plethora of outsider candidates. On the Dem side, it created a Brezhnev-like inbred stagnation. This is why RFK is shaking up the Dem primaries by running as a conspirator and why the GOP establishment candidates are languishing. The parties can only grow in forbidden directions, and the pressure to transform is plunging them into crisis.

The Last Election

pjmedia.com

 

[GURPS]

‘This Is a Really Big Deal’: How College Towns Are Decimating the GOP​

Growing population in America’s highly educated enclaves has led to huge gains for the Democratic Party. And Republicans are scrambling for answers.


MADISON, Wisconsin — Spring elections in Wisconsin are typically low turnout affairs, but in April, with the nation watching the state’s bitterly contested Supreme Court race, voters turned out in record-breaking numbers.

No place was more energized to vote than Dane County, the state’s second-most populous county after Milwaukee. It’s long been a progressive stronghold thanks to the double influence of Madison, the state capital, and the University of Wisconsin, but this was something else. Turnout in Dane was higher than anywhere else in the state. And the Democratic margin of victory that delivered control of the nonpartisan court to liberals was even more lopsided than usual — and bigger than in any of the state’s other 71 counties.

The margin was so big that it changed the state’s electoral formula. Under the state’s traditional political math, Milwaukee and Dane — Wisconsin’s two Democratic strongholds — are counterbalanced by the populous Republican suburbs surrounding Milwaukee. The rest of the state typically delivers the decisive margin in statewide races. The Supreme Court results blew up that model. Dane County alone is now so dominant that it overwhelms the Milwaukee suburbs (which have begun trending leftward anyway). In effect, Dane has become a Republican-killing Death Star.

 

[GURPS]

How can anyone even consider reelecting the ‘senescent, sticky-fingered, ill-tempered, spavined’ Biden?



Moreover, bank records don’t lie, and it’s highly unlikely that such a large number of federal whistleblowers (whose testimonies all appear to support the Republican’s claims) are lying. It’s become almost impossible for either Hunter Biden or Joe Biden to distance themselves from the House GOP’s claims that the family sold influence for cash.

Although this is the most serious problem the president is currently facing, there are many other obstacles that, in a sane world, would prevent his reelection bid. Besides the mess he’s made of our economy, our southern border, and so much more, it can no longer be denied that he is unfit, mentally and physically, to perform his duties.

Veteran journalist Conrad Black asked the question on many conservatives’ minds in a Thursday op-ed: How can the “weary and befuddled” people “notionally look themselves in the mirror next year and reelect a senescent, sticky-fingered, ill-tempered, spavined, pocket-borough political wheelhorse who in his prime had trouble with the truth, elemental elocution, and complex issues, to four more years as president?”

Good question.

 

[stgislander]

Veteran journalist Conrad Black asked the question on many conservatives’ minds in a Thursday op-ed: How can the “weary and befuddled” people “notionally look themselves in the mirror next year and reelect a senescent, sticky-fingered, ill-tempered, spavined, pocket-borough political wheelhorse who in his prime had trouble with the truth, elemental elocution, and complex issues, to four more years as president?”

Good question.

That's an easy question to answer. Because Orange Man's bad.

 

[Hijinx]

That's an easy question to answer. Because Orange Man's bad.

Democrats know as well as we do that Joe Biden was always stupid and now he is old demented and stupid, . They know somone else is running the country and they are happy with it whoever it is, and electing Biden keeps Obama in office.

 

[GURPS]

Florida Democrats Scurry to Rebuild Mail-in Voter Rolls After New Law Wipes Them Clean​

Florida’s wide-ranging new voting law, SB 90, is chock-full of rules that button up election integrity. Among its many actions is this one: “limiting the duration of requests for vote-by-mail ballots to all elections through the end of the calendar year of the next regularly scheduled general election.” It’s part of Florida’s move of mail-in voting from a four-year to a two-year registration window. This is a smart way to keep the rolls of voters registered to have mail-in ballots automatically sent to them from going stale and accumulating invalid names and addresses.

For engaged voters, this simply means logging onto the state website every two years instead of four to renew their requests for mail-in ballots. It’s as easy and convenient as clicking here and answering the questions. And of course, being eligible to vote in Florida.

But as any Democrat official will tell you (in so many words), Democrat voters are too stupid to participate in their own society by doing things like having a valid ID or using a computer. So naturally, party officials are simmering with outrage at the harsh new law. Here’s some not-biased-at-all reporting from NBC News:

Florida Democrats say they’re spending and organizing to chase down people who vote by mail after election officials across the state canceled all standing mail ballot requests this year.
The mass cancellations were to comply with a 2021 election law that added new restrictions to mail-in voting. The legislation — which was celebrated by Gov. Ron DeSantis and slammed by voting rights advocates as discriminatory — cut the duration of mail-in ballot requests in half from four years to two. It also required that existing requests for mail ballots be canceled at the end of 2022, forcing election workers to cancel millions of requests and start their lists of vote-by-mail voters from scratch.
In practice, that means that voters who requested mail-in ballots in 2021 or 2022 will have to make such requests again to vote in local races and the 2024 primary and general elections. In previous years, voters would not have had to request a ballot again for four years.

Since the COVIDification of elections, Democrats seem to come up with uncommonly large voter turnouts in state-wide and general elections. Part of their formula for accomplishing this is to first flood the zone with as many mail-in ballots as possible in the weeks leading up to Election Day. When Florida does things like tighten up the rolls of people and addresses to which ballots will be mailed, it makes it harder for Democrats to harvest enough of those ballots come counting time.

 

[GURPS]

NBC’s Todd: When GOP Base Realizes Trump Is Unelectable, ‘It May Be Too Late’​

He continued, “That’s what we know for now, and this is before any new indictments that could come from Jack Smith or from what’s going on in Atlanta. That’s the moment, I think, that all of a sudden Republicans are going to ask themselves ‘What are we doing?’ But I don’t think it’s going to happen before it starts to play itself out.”

Todd added, “It is astonishing to me how many people I run into who haven’t fully comprehended the fact that we’re about to do this. I think that when it becomes clear that that the public’s uncomfortable with this, it may be too late, and he may already have the nomination.”

 

[GURPS]

Meet Trent Staggs, The Mayor Working To Primary Mitt Romney​

he carpetbagging former governor of Massachusettes and 2012 Republican presidential nominee has routinely sold out the people whose values he pledged to faithfully represent and routinely capitulated to the Washington establishment’s consensus.

Routinely showing himself to be out of touch with the wishes of his constituents, Romney, nominally a conservative Republican, has so far voted with President Biden’s radical agenda nearly 60 percent of the time, long ago abandoning any semblance of fiscal or social conservatism. He also nearly sabotaged the reelection of his state’s senior senator, the stalwart conservative Mike Lee.

So what are Utahns to do?

Trent Staggs, the current mayor of Riverton, Utah, believes he has the answer: kick Mitt out of office.

Hoping to beat Romney in the upcoming Republican primary, Staggs is a first-time candidate for federal office who has already raked up considerable local support from Utah’s Fraternal Order of Police and a bevy of municipal officeholders.

Speaking with The Federalist, Staggs emphasized his focus on actually amplifying the concerns of Utahns in Congress’s upper chamber, positioning his candidacy as a holistic rebuttal to Romney’s initial pitch.

 

[GURPS]

 

[GURPS]

That’s among the findings of an analysis of fundraising for the first half of the year through ActBlue, the party’s primary donation processor. Small-dollar giving at the federal level totaled $312 million in the first half of 2023 — a drop-off of more than $30 million compared to this point in the 2020 cycle. The platform also had 32 percent fewer donors in the second quarter this year compared to four years prior, although its total fundraising increased slightly due to several factors, including more recurring donors and greater giving to non-federal groups.

“Because small donors are a proxy for enthusiasm, if people aren’t concerned about the drop-off in contributions, then they just aren’t paying attention or whistling past the graveyard,” said Ari Rabin-Havt, who served as deputy campaign manager on Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign. “The impact is from top to bottom. You can see it in the ActBlue number, you can see it from the DNC down through every group. There has to be a quick examination among Democrats about what is creating this enthusiasm gap.”

The lack of grassroots engagement is a warning sign for Biden ahead of a tough election cycle, raising questions about whether the 80-year-old incumbent is exciting the Democratic base the way he will need to win a second term. The new data also suggests that the threat of Donald Trump, once a huge driver of Democratic fundraising, is not motivating donors like it used to.

‘Whistling past the graveyard’: Dem fear grows over massive grassroots fundraising hit

The decline is a major warning sign as the presidential campaign heats up.

www.politico.com

 

[GURPS]

RFK, jr. and Trump's Achilles Heel​

By Douglas Schwartz

History provides examples of third-party presidential candidates swinging elections. Ross Perot denied George H.W. Bush a second term in 1992, running on the Reform Party ticket and garnering 18.9% of the popular vote. Bill Clinton won with only 43.0%. In 1980, Congressman John Anderson ran an incoherent candidacy yet captured 6.6% of votes. Reagan prevailed over Carter 50.7% to 41.0%. It is unclear if Anderson’s bid was engineered by Reagan’s campaign to split votes from Carter. Teddy Roosevelt's 1912 third-party run split Republican votes, yielding Woodrow Wilson, the first progressive leftist president.

Now comes RFK Jr. with a platform exhibiting substantial overlap with the MAGA agenda. Kennedy's recent interview with James O'Keefe reveals his targeting of MAGA voters, especially younger ones unfamiliar with his family’s dark history.

44:30: I think because of my ability to attract Independents and many, many Republicans that I actually have probably a better chance of winning the election than any other Democratic candidate.

Trump’s Achilles heel was allowing himself to be bamboozled into supporting the COVID narrative of the pharmaceutical-medical-globalist complex. Because of his congenital reluctance to issue a mea culpa and admit that he was conned, Kennedy could potentially appeal to this large segment of the electorate. Perhaps Trump is banking a mea culpa for an October 2024 surprise.

For solid realpolitik reasons Trump avoids attacking Kennedy and is modestly complimentary. Many assume a Kennedy independent run would pull more Democrat than MAGA votes. This could be a fatal error. Certain things are appealing about Kennedy and his late uncle and father. But to believe the Kennedy clan are saints is absurd. Exhibit A was Teddy Kennedy, with a seedy record including Chappaquiddick, waitress sandwiches, and perfecting a career of boozing, bonking, and borking in collaboration with a senator named Biden. Or his backdoor bromance with Yuri Andropov against Reagan. The morals of Teddy’s older brothers were not altogether different. Seymour Hersh, dean of investigative journalists and no conservative, assembled a 500-page tome of Kennedy family negatives. Their crimes and foibles were hardly confined to stealing the 1960 election from Nixon in Illinois and beyond. There is an extensive record of their payoffs and acceptance of bribes, collusion with mobsters and corrupt union bosses, womanizing, and promoting assassinations of foreign leaders. The posthumous sainthood of RFK, his brother’s consiglieri and enforcer, was the final plank in Camelot mythology. Camelot was more than myth. Hersh described it as “years of lies and cover-ups.”

Kennedy previously maintained he has “always been fiercely pro-vaccine” and supports “policies that encourage full vaccination for all Americans.” This obviously conflicts with his current stance. Kennedy is no conservative, supporting Hillary Clinton in her senatorial and presidential races. Kennedy’s schtick is a bipartisan fusion of anti-globalist rhetoric appealing to populists, combined with climate change/environmentalism. He inserts populist buzzwords at every opportunity. Right-leaning influencers now fawning over him need to explore his background and that of his ancestors, beginning with Joseph P. Kennedy’s organized crime roots. The family business morphed from crime to politics -- crime by other means. He is a skillfully repackaged Democrat, scheming over decades for this moment. A chameleon continuously reconfiguring in response to shifting political winds, appropriating MAGA issues which now possess currency. The same guy who supported Hillary Clinton whined when mean Republicans stole the 2004 election from John Kerry.

RFK, jr. and Trump's Achilles Heel

History provides examples of third-party presidential candidates swinging elections. Ross Perot denied George H.W. Bush a second term in 1992, running on the Reform Party ticket and garnering 18.9% of the popular vote. Bill Clinton won wit...

www.americanthinker.com

 

[GURPS]

Democrats continue to thrash Donald Trump — despite Joe Biden being in danger​

It is an article of faith in the political world that Democrats’ legal jihad against Donald Trump has the perverse goal of assuring he becomes the Republican presidential nominee.

The Dems’ reasoning is that prosecuting Trump will make him unbeatable in the primaries and unelectable in the general election.

It’s a clever, jujutsu-style move that aims to elevate the opponent before flattening him.

And the plan is working, with Trump’s GOP support growing into a dominant majority while he has been indicted three times by Democratic prosecutors.

A fourth set of criminal charges, by a Democrat in Georgia, waits in the wings.

But even the best laid plans can go awry, and potentially fatal cracks are starting to appear in this one.

Indeed, it’s possible the plot could backfire and help return Trump to the Oval Office.

 

[stgislander]

RFK, jr. and Trump's Achilles Heel​

By Douglas Schwartz

History provides examples of third-party presidential candidates swinging elections. Ross Perot denied George H.W. Bush a second term in 1992, running on the Reform Party ticket and garnering 18.9% of the popular vote. Bill Clinton won with only 43.0%. In 1980, Congressman John Anderson ran an incoherent candidacy yet captured 6.6% of votes. Reagan prevailed over Carter 50.7% to 41.0%. It is unclear if Anderson’s bid was engineered by Reagan’s campaign to split votes from Carter. Teddy Roosevelt's 1912 third-party run split Republican votes, yielding Woodrow Wilson, the first progressive leftist president.

Now comes RFK Jr. with a platform exhibiting substantial overlap with the MAGA agenda. Kennedy's recent interview with James O'Keefe reveals his targeting of MAGA voters, especially younger ones unfamiliar with his family’s dark history.



Trump’s Achilles heel was allowing himself to be bamboozled into supporting the COVID narrative of the pharmaceutical-medical-globalist complex. Because of his congenital reluctance to issue a mea culpa and admit that he was conned, Kennedy could potentially appeal to this large segment of the electorate. Perhaps Trump is banking a mea culpa for an October 2024 surprise.

For solid realpolitik reasons Trump avoids attacking Kennedy and is modestly complimentary. Many assume a Kennedy independent run would pull more Democrat than MAGA votes. This could be a fatal error. Certain things are appealing about Kennedy and his late uncle and father. But to believe the Kennedy clan are saints is absurd. Exhibit A was Teddy Kennedy, with a seedy record including Chappaquiddick, waitress sandwiches, and perfecting a career of boozing, bonking, and borking in collaboration with a senator named Biden. Or his backdoor bromance with Yuri Andropov against Reagan. The morals of Teddy’s older brothers were not altogether different. Seymour Hersh, dean of investigative journalists and no conservative, assembled a 500-page tome of Kennedy family negatives. Their crimes and foibles were hardly confined to stealing the 1960 election from Nixon in Illinois and beyond. There is an extensive record of their payoffs and acceptance of bribes, collusion with mobsters and corrupt union bosses, womanizing, and promoting assassinations of foreign leaders. The posthumous sainthood of RFK, his brother’s consiglieri and enforcer, was the final plank in Camelot mythology. Camelot was more than myth. Hersh described it as “years of lies and cover-ups.”

Kennedy previously maintained he has “always been fiercely pro-vaccine” and supports “policies that encourage full vaccination for all Americans.” This obviously conflicts with his current stance. Kennedy is no conservative, supporting Hillary Clinton in her senatorial and presidential races. Kennedy’s schtick is a bipartisan fusion of anti-globalist rhetoric appealing to populists, combined with climate change/environmentalism. He inserts populist buzzwords at every opportunity. Right-leaning influencers now fawning over him need to explore his background and that of his ancestors, beginning with Joseph P. Kennedy’s organized crime roots. The family business morphed from crime to politics -- crime by other means. He is a skillfully repackaged Democrat, scheming over decades for this moment. A chameleon continuously reconfiguring in response to shifting political winds, appropriating MAGA issues which now possess currency. The same guy who supported Hillary Clinton whined when mean Republicans stole the 2004 election from John Kerry.

RFK, jr. and Trump's Achilles Heel

History provides examples of third-party presidential candidates swinging elections. Ross Perot denied George H.W. Bush a second term in 1992, running on the Reform Party ticket and garnering 18.9% of the popular vote. Bill Clinton won wit...

www.americanthinker.com

I couldn't vote for him because of his voice. I have a hard time listening to him.

 

[Kyle]

I couldn't vote for him because of his voice. I have a hard time listening to him.

Not sure what’s wrong with his voice, I hadn’t heard anything, but it sounds like he’s about to cry whenever he talks.

 

[stgislander]

Not sure what’s wrong with his voice, I hadn’t heard anything, but it sounds like he’s about to cry whenever he talks.

It's like he had throat cancer surgery at some time. My dad sounded like that. Like his vocal cords never completely healed.

 

[Hijinx]

It's like he had throat cancer surgery at some time. My dad sounded like that. Like his vocal cords never completely healed.

Pretty sure it's a medical problem.