Closing out the Election and bringing in the new Administration

A few days after Election Day, I jotted down a few of my thoughts on what just happened. So I have just a few final thoughts on the election and the next administration.

There is no equivalent to how Republicans handled election defeat this year compared to Democrats in 2016.  In 2016 Democrats did this:

And then, after “literally shaking,” cried foul and proceeded to entertain the most ludicrous conspiracy theories of Russians stealing the election that would dominate nearly the entire 4 years of Trump’s presidency.  Trump supporters in 2020 dispensed with the hysterics and immediately dove right into a Chavez-Dominion-foreign server’s conspiracy.  That’s not to say that the idea of election fraud is a baseless conspiracy; it isn’t.  I absolutely believe that there was massive cheating.  That belief isn’t based on a silly hope, but on raw data that can easily be checked at the Here is the Evidence website, as well as multiple other available sources on the massive statistical anomalies.

What I don’t know if it was enough to turn the tide of the election.  The Powerline Blog put it well:

“… major questions remain unanswered. In several key swing states, there were midnight dumps of 100,000 or more votes, virtually all of which were for Joe Biden, something that can’t normally happen. Those dumps may have made the difference in the election. I have seen no attempt by any Democrat to explain or justify them. Maybe I’ve missed it, and maybe they somehow reflected actual ballots cast, but the burden of proof is on those who seek to justify such anomalies.

Even greater doubts about the election arise from the deliberately loose procedures that governed voting. Something like 69 million mail-in votes were cast, and until two months ago, everyone agreed that mail-in voting is highly susceptible to fraud. But the laxity in 2020 went far beyond the risks inherent in mail-in votes. I put it this way: I don’t know whether the Democrats stole the 2020 election, but I do know that they tried hard to steal it.”

Of course, I think everyone knew ahead of time there would be massive election fraud in this election.  I sure knew and President Trump, with his constant remarks about the election being rigged knew as well.   But if you know in advance there are going to be massive hijinks (I nice way to say felonies) what do you do about it?  I frankly assumed that Trump was preparing for that eventuality and there would be marshals and Justice Department lawyers on site at the known bad actor cities.  I was wrong about that.  Instead, Trump’s real plan turned out to be first, lose the election, and then second, go to court.

There have been few plans as dumb as that one.

So after it turned out Sydney Powell didn’t actually have a Kraken to release, I gave up.  Biden would be the next President.

Joe Biden is a great metaphor for a declining America vis-à-vis a rising China to replace us.  A doddering, mentally declining senior, preoccupied with minutiae like transgender bathrooms and identity politics headcounts rather than the serious business of being a great power, he symbolizes everything that the United States is right now.  Not that he knows it of course.  He’s a pre-Boomer.  Born in 1942, all he’s known is an America is a great power and doesn’t think anything he does will make it weaker because I doubt he believes America can be weak. So opening the borders and granting millions amnesty isn’t a fatal blow to the country, it’s just being neighborly.  We can handle them!  Reversing Trump’s trade policies on China?  Rather than a death blow to American manufacturing, Biden thinks he’s leading our good friends the Chinese into Democracy.  And as a bonus, they pay well too!

At least to connected people like the Biden’s.

For those hoping for a return to normality, they are going to be cruelly disappointed.  2021 is already starting to look like some dystopian movie.

The government and the media has already picked out 74 million Americans as the next Emmanuel Goldsteins.  Whether they lose interest in their jihad is up in the air, but I’m hopeful that our new government-media-woke corporate rulers will forget about how much they hate us and stay busy congratulating themselves on their multiple 5 year plans.  Hey it could happen!

But of course, I’m an optimist.

 

Ga Runoff-Pence-Electoral College-Trump Speech-Occupy DC…Oh My!

We are not even a full week into the New Year and one of my predictions has come into play.

Ossoff projected to win in Georgia, delivering Senate control to Democrats

CBS News projects that Jon Ossoff has defeated incumbent Senator David Perdue in Tuesday’s Senate runoff election in Georgia, handing Democrats control of the Senate in a dramatic shift that upends the balance of power in Washington. Democrat Raphael Warnock is also projected to win the state’s other runoff election against GOP Senator Kelly Loeffler.

We went right from that to the Electoral College certification taking place in Congress today meanwhile a Trump rally in Washington DC degenerated into a march on the capital and an occupation of the capital building by Trump supporters.

Luckily it was mostly peaceful.

Just to be clear, I’m a law and order guy and think they that what those protestors/rioters did was wrong and they should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, but I admit it was a bit disconcerting to hear Democrats suddenly agreeing with me. After spending all summer ignoring nationwide riots, arson, and violence, suddenly the Democrats have found a law and order spine. Of course in the current year’s sensibilities, applied law and order is only for Trump supporters; all others have a free pass.

Sometimes history drags, and sometimes it does an info dump in a day’s time.  January 6^th 2021 is one of those days. This little temper tantrum will have long reaching effects as the Democrats exert their newfound political control.  Vengeance may not be swift, but it will coming.

End of an (Trump) Era

As wacky as 2020 has been, in many respects, the election hasn’t drifted too far from how I assumed it would go nearly a year ago. I had said that Trump had a chance, but it was a small one.  Then as we got closer and closer to the election, “events dear boy, events;” began to make their presence felt.  Still, Trump might have been able to handle the COVID and BLM issues all things being equal, but as I said last month:

A normal vs woke election would be good news for Trump, but there is still another wrinkle out there.  In 2016, we knew who the President was by the wee hours of the morning after Election Day.  This year, it seems likely that we may not know for days or weeks.  In 2016, the Democrats just did not believe they could lose; all of their smartest pundits and talking heads told them so, and they acted, or didn’t act, accordingly.  This year, they are well aware of the possibility and have pulled out all the stops to make sure that doesn’t happen.  And by all the stops, I mean election fraud and cheating.  The table is being set for that in state after state.

… The combination of open ended receiving of late mail in ballots and allowing ballot harvesting probably spells doom for Trump’s chances in States that allow that.  Although Trump could possibly win Michigan [or other close swing States] on Election Day, it’s unlikely he would still be the winner ten days later.

So I figured if Trump didn’t win on Tuesday night, it was pretty much over.  So this has just been a big “waiting for the other shoe to drop” exercise for me.  But now that the other shoe has dropped, it’s important to pick up the pieces and see where we are at.

1.  No Blue Wave.   Frankly I didn’t know they were even expecting one.  I had cut out MSNBC, the Pravda by the Potomac, quite a while ago so I had no idea they were fully expecting to sweep the Senate too.  But I’ve read countless lefty (actually MSM) articles scratching their heads trying to figure out why Mitch McConnell wasn’t going to be beheaded in January by Chuck Schumer.  As I remember from the Obama win in 2008, victory only makes them angrier.
2. The end finally of the Never Trump movement?  With Trump gone, can the hundreds Lincoln Project never Trumpers go away now?  Given that they supported a Democrat over propping up a “conservative” alternative this year, as they did in 2016, they have nowhere to go but hat in hand to a Biden administration.  So…they’re Democrats.  Their departure will be good for the Republican Party.
3. Trump’s court challenges.  Trump will likely keep fighting as long as the courts allow, but the trail will be cold and there won’t be much in the way of relief as there never seems to be in voter fraud issues.  You can’t undo the fact that ballots were not segregated, as ordered by the Courts in Philadelphia.  The evidence is now safely buried in the Meadowlands.  However it’s possible that a combination of Trump court challenges and investigations by the DoJ Civil Rights Division could open wider investigations.  That will be a welcome change, at least until the Biden Administration shuts them down.
4. Vengeance is mine.  As I said earlier, victory only makes them angrier.  The Democrats may not get to behead Cocaine Mitch, but they are for sure planning to behead someone.  Settling scores seems to be on the mind of the Progressive Politburo.

 

This is, to say the least, an undemocratic attitude.  However it’s très French Revolution.  Given how insane the left has gotten over the past 4 years, will they step back from the brink, or continue to emulate the worst characteristics of 20^th Century Communist regimes?  Stay tuned.

October Surprises

It’s that time of the year again; the time when every possible food or drink sprouts a pumpkin spice equivalent and giant bags of discount candy clog the aisles of most American grocery and convenience stores.  Of course every four years it’s also the season of the October surprise, the media hit job designed by the Democrats and the media to take out whoever the Republican candidate is.

In 2016 it was famously the Hollywood Access tape, with its “grab them by the pussy” quote that the media was sure would destroy Trump and somehow…didn’t.  2012 had the more reliable release of the audio from Romney’s 47% quote which severely damaged his campaign.

This year is more challenging since Trump has been dealing with the equivalent of an October surprise every few weeks since he’s been President.  The media has never tired of releasing crazy stories based on “anonymous sources” that almost inevitably crap out and are never confirmable.  Most recently The Atlantic hit job, Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers’. Anonymous sources that were later contradicted by at least 10 confirmed named sources. Trump has ridden all of that out.

So if you are part of the DNC-media establishment, what could possibly take down Trump?

•  More sexual harassment accusations.  There could actually be Democratic groups preparing the latest batch of “victims” to go live in some massive media presentation right now.  The history of these types of accusations against Trump doesn’t have a very good success rate, but pile on, in conjunction with other October surprises, could be helpful.

• Trump says the N-word.  There have actually been multiple accusations of this in the past, but a fresh one by someone who actually sounds credible (not Michael Cohen MSNBC!) could put Trump on the defensive for a news cycle, but ultimately wouldn’t be a lasting hit, unless of course there is video of it.

And my favorite:

• The Southern District of New York US Attorney’s Office announces, or has leaked, a sealed indictment for Donald Trump, his family, or his business.  The indictment doesn’t have to be for a real crime and could go away after the election.  The important thing is that the story of an indictment is out there, right before the election.

There may be other types of October surprises in the wings that I’ve not thought of.  However Trump isn’t a normal politician and his idea of damage control is to go on the counter attack.  That’s a tactic that’s worked for him in the past, but one would think the media has learned something over the past four years and has a real zinger prepared to take out Trump in the final days of the election.

Or maybe not.

Election Foreboding

We’re down to the final election laps, coming in for a finish, and I’m filled with apprehensive thoughts about what’s to come.  Last year I wrote a piece in which I posited that although Trump has a chance to win again in 2020, it was a thin one, as the demographics of the electorate have gotten more unfavorable for Republicans four years later (as they do every four years) and all things being equal, Trump couldn’t win. His only chance was a major increase in turn out of his voters.  Turn out, in a country in which only about half the voting age population votes is crucial. 

However things never stay “equal” as 2020 brought us not only Covid, but “The Summer of George,” a social justice holocaust brought about by the death of George Floyd.  The rioting and arson got out of control almost exclusively as a result of Democratic governors, mayors, and city councils, which not only refused to do anything to stop the mayhem, but took the side of rioters. This provided us with the possibility, which I had discussed a few months ago, that the election may boil down to an election of normal people vs the Woke crazies.

A normal vs woke election would be good news for Trump, but there is still another wrinkle out there.  In 2016, we knew who the President was by the wee hours of the morning after Election Day.  This year, it seems likely that we may not know for days or weeks.  In 2016, the Democrats just did not believe they could lose; all of their smartest pundits and talking heads told them so, and they acted, or didn’t act, accordingly.  This year, they are well aware of the possibility and have pulled out all the stops to make sure that doesn’t happen.  And by all the stops, I mean election fraud and cheating.  The table is being set for that in state after state.  As I mentioned a few weeks ago, a Michigan judge overturned not only the law that required that mail in ballots arrive at the polls no later than Election Day, but also the law against ballot harvesting.  The combination of open ended receiving of late mail in ballots and allowing ballot harvesting probably spells doom for Trump’s chances in States that allow that.  Although Trump could possibly win Michigan on Election Day, it’s unlikely he would still be the winner ten days later.

The Democrats have already more or less promised Civil War if Biden loses, what about Trump Supporters if the election is lost and it appears it was lost due to voter fraud?  Republicans have traditionally swallowed hard and accepted the loss “for the good of the country.”  Most famously during the Presidential election of 1960 of Kennedy vs Nixon, Bob Dornan’s Congressional election, and Al Franken’s Senate race.  But that was then.  Democrats are used to Republicans rolling over for election fraud, and maybe they still think that would happen this year, but Trump is unlikely to accept his own defeat if there are actual, credible allegations of voter fraud in key states.

So I’m worried.

Why Trump should fill the Supreme Court Position

As if 2020 needed any more murder hornets to plague us this year…

WASHINGTON (AP) — Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a towering women’s rights champion who became the court’s second female justice, died Friday at her home in Washington. She was 87.  Ginsburg died of complications from metastatic pancreatic cancer, the court said.

Her death just over six weeks before Election Day…

Uh Oh.

Naturally the left went insane (again) almost immediately.

And between threatening burning the country down and civil war, it does bring up the totally legitimate question of whether the President should either hold off and leave the decision for the next President or just go ahead and pull the trigger now and try to ram another Supreme Court nominee through.

While mulling that over, I came across this…

Judge orders Michigan to accept mail-in ballots for 2 weeks after Election Day

Sept. 18 (UPI) — A Michigan judge on Friday ordered elections officials to accept mail-in ballots for two weeks after the 2020 election as long as they’re postmarked before Election Day.

The ruling substantially increases the amount of time ballots can be accepted in the state. Under existing law, officials count only mail-in ballots received by 8 p.m. on Election Day.

Get that? The judge overturned existing law.

But wait, there’s more!

In addition to extending the deadline for receiving mail-in ballots, Stephens also said a third party can submit a mail-in or absentee ballot for a voter — a practice described by critics as ballot harvesting.

As the judge ruled:

This court enjoins MCL 168.932(f) in this election from 5:00 p.m. Friday October 30, 2020 until the close of the polls on November 3, 2020, in so far as it limits the class of persons who may render an absent voter assistance. As a result, a voter casting an absent voter ballot in the November 2020 general election may select any individual the voter chooses to render assistance in returning an absent voter ballot, but only for the limited time period when assistance from the clerk is not required, i.e., between 5:01 p.m. on the Friday before the election and the close of polls on Election Day.

So in other words, the judge also overturned the law, making ballot harvesting legal.

So by having a partisan judge overturned the existing law in order to open the door wide open to electoral fraud means that it would be almost impossible for Trump to win Michigan, no matter how many votes Trump gets legitimately. The ballot harvesters will just turn in more ballots.

So the lessons I take from this is that Democratic judges ignore the law and constitution to get their way, so the right should do what we can to get a judge who respects the constitution on the court. The left intends to cheat to steal the election. We should recognize that and act accordingly.

Role Playing Election Chaos

I wrote a few weeks ago about the war gaming of the election ran by the Transition Integrity Project, an ironically named group whose real purpose seems to be simply to get Joe Biden elected, but behind the camouflage of a nonpartisan status  and a serious sounding name.  In the scenario that I mentioned, a replay of 2016 where Trump has an Electoral College victory but a popular vote loss, Biden wouldn’t concede and of course, chaos ensues.

In a follow up story in The Washington Post, TIG founder Rosa Brooks wrote an article fleshing out the wargaming experience with this take away, “A landslide for Joe Biden resulted in a relatively orderly transfer of power. Every other scenario we looked at involved street-level violence and political crisis. “

It’s been said before, but the summary is:  “Nice little country you got there.  It’d be a shame if something happened to it.”

I don’t hold the war gaming as any kind of oracle.  These are leftists playing make believe.  But it does show the intention of the left; they are simply not going to accept a loss this November, votes or no votes.  They would rather burn the country and it’s institutions to the ground rather than let Trump serve another term.

Once they pull that card, it’s over.  American political institutions won’t magically regrow.  We’ll lurch from crisis to crisis until some tyrant ends the lurching.

On the plus side… OK I’ve got nothing.

 

Normal vs Woke II: Electric Boogaloo

If it hasn’t already been obvious to you that CNN is beyond parody, it should be now.

Fiery But Mostly Peaceful

At this point, even the most distracted business traveler staring numbly at CNN in the passenger gate at the airport must realize how absurd their coverage is.  I mean, if even CNN dimbulb Don Lemon is starting to get it, it’s obvious to everyone…

“The rioting has to stop,” Lemon said. “Chris, as you know and I know, it’s showing up in the polling. It’s showing up in focus groups. It is the only thing — it is the only thing right now that is sticking.”

Showing up indeed as some polling from Minnesota, which has undergone almost three months of riots after the death of George Floyd, is finally making an impact on the election.

Hillary Clinton took Minnesota in 2016 and in spite of previous Trump campaign efforts to push it in the red column for 2020, wasn’t making much headway.  But now look, in July, Biden led in polling by 13 points.  But the week ending in August 18^th has the campaign at a virtual tie.

Minnesota is still a mostly blue state, and it could go for the Democrats anyway, but nothing about either Trump or Biden has changed in the past month, this is all riot related.  Riots that, should have been put down immediately rather than being indulged by woke state and local officials seeking to make common cause with BLM and Antifa rioters.

But normal people don’t like their cities and communities turned into war zones and being burned to the ground.  As I wrote about in June:

“It’s possible that the political re-alignment the country has been going through that began with Trump could veer off in unexpected ways.  We’ve mostly been looking at the 2020 election as elite vs deplorable,  managerial class vs blue collar workers, nationalists vs globalists, even the comments page vs the editorial board.  But this year it could spin around to normal people vs the Woke. “

If Don Lemon is aware of the threat this is to Democratic electoral prospects, than smart Democrats have probably been aware of this danger for a couple of months.  But so far the Democratic Party seems to be at the mercy of the mobs. If Trump wins in November, it may be on the backs of Democratic mayors, governors, and city councils which facilitated the destruction of their own communities.

Wokeism is insanity.  I’ll be anxious to see the polling next week from Wisconsin.

 

The Civil War Election

Civil War talk has been all the rage since the election of Donald Trump.  For myself, I don’t see a secessionist struggle of competing armies maneuvering across North America.  The imagery of civil war comes from our last civil war, with two competing governments and two professional armies engaging in more or less conventional warfare.  However Trump seems to have changed everything, including the 150 year old national consensus that there should be no further attempts at secessions.

Sure, there are State secession movements here or there.  Alaska, Vermont, and Texas have them, but these are small crackpot groups that are not really going anywhere politically.  Calexit is probably the biggest state secession movement, but I’ve always assumed there were too many competing interests that would oppose such a move to ever get it moving.

Until recently that is.

The New York Times recently ran a story called How the Media Could Get the Election Story Wrong. Ostensibly, the story is about the very likely possibility that we may not know who the new President is by the day after, or even the week after Election Day.  This seems a likely prospect to me.  The expansion of mail in voting and ballot harvesting means that like 2018, where several Republican wins on Election Day were turned to defeat a few weeks later, the ballots will just continue to trickle in until the right number is achieved.  It’s not over until the Democrat wins.  Democrats thrive in election chaos and in a tight race will want to draw out the process as long as possible.

However as bad as election chaos is, the Democrats are planning for something worse.  At the end of the article, there was this stunner.

“But conveniently, a group of former top government officials called the Transition Integrity Project actually gamed four possible scenarios, including one that doesn’t look that different from 2016: a big popular win for Mr. Biden, and a narrow electoral defeat, presumably reached after weeks of counting the votes in Pennsylvania. For their war game, they cast John Podesta, who was Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, in the role of Mr. Biden. They expected him, when the votes came in, to concede, just as Mrs. Clinton had.

But Mr. Podesta, playing Mr. Biden, shocked the organizers by saying he felt his party wouldn’t let him concede. Alleging voter suppression, he persuaded the governors of Wisconsin and Michigan to send pro-Biden electors to the Electoral College.

In that scenario, California, Oregon, and Washington then threatened to secede from the United States if Mr. Trump took office as planned. The House named Mr. Biden president; the Senate and White House stuck with Mr. Trump. At that point in the scenario, the nation stopped looking to the media for cues, and waited to see what the military would do. “

 

Well that’s unsettling.

Of course, one must keep in mind that the “Transition Integrity Project” is a lefty group.  Even the so called Republicans participating were never Trump Republicans.  But that seems to go to the point that this is giving us an idea of how the Democratic Party is really thinking.  After all, you can hardly get more establishment Democrat than John Podesta, and in this scenario he was the one who instigated the civil war.

I’ve recently been worried that this election will be the most chaotic and fraudulent in American history.  The bleating about mail in balloting is just another gadget in the election chaos toolbox.  And I’ve been worried about Electoral College shenanigans.  I wrote about this after the last Presidential election in which members of the establishment urged the electors to be “unfaithful” and vote for the establishment choice.  The Democrats even managed to sneak in one of their own as a “Republican” elector.  I hope the GOP is aware of this and screens their electors a lot better this time.

A year ago, I would have thought the worst I would have to worry about is Democratic get out the vote efforts in the nation’s cemeteries.  After all, the Democrats do have the Dead-American vote locked up. Now I have to worry about Democrats contesting an election that they’ve legitimately lost.

If 2016 was the Flight 93 Election, 2020 could well be the Civil War election.  Whether that’s the case this year or not, the clock is winding down on the American experiment.  I would hope for another reprieve but this little view into how the Democratic Party is strategizing makes me think I may not get one.

Is there a Secret Trump Vote for 2020?

Back in 2016, right about 4 years ago, I opined that in spite of the hopes of conservative media, there didn’t seem to be the hoped for Secret Trump voter; the voter who was not going to respond to polls, not going to have bumper stickers on their car or a sign in their yard because they didn’t want the blow back, but were going to vote for Trump anyway.  However as I noted at the time, the scant evidence of surprise votes for pro-Trump candidates in the 2016 Republican primaries didn’t really leave much evidence that they existed.

Trump still won, but barely, by a few tens of thousands of votes in a handful of key States that Hillary Clinton put almost zero effort into.  However, each election is a new opportunity, so what do the primary races look like so far?

From the Washington Examiner…

Kris Kobach loss continues a bad election cycle for Trump-style populists

The defeat of former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach in the state’s Republican Senate primary on Tuesday night continued a bad election cycle for populist, nationalist conservatives in the mold of President Trump.

While many Republicans celebrated Kobach’s loss to Rep. Roger Marshall, believing Marshall is much likelier to win the seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Pat Roberts and will require fewer party resources to do so, the immigration hard-liner’s defeat raises questions about how much Trump has transformed the GOP into his own image — and how important populism and nationalism were to his 2016 appeal in the first place.

Already in this election cycle, Rep. Steve King lost a Republican primary in Iowa, and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions was defeated in a primary to reclaim the Alabama Senate seat he held for 20 years. Former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio also narrowly lost a primary to win back his old office on Tuesday night. All are immigration restrictionists with ideological and stylistic similarities to Trump. Sessions and Arpaio were Trump endorsers in the Republican primaries four years ago.

“We may learn that Trump hasn’t changed the party as much as we thought,” said a Republican strategist who requested anonymity to speak candidly. “But that might not be decided until November.”

 

Although I’m not sure I would count Arpaio as indicative of Trumpism either way, Kobach and Steve King were longtime immigration restrictionists.  Jeff Sessions of course was a Trumpist before Trump was, but Trump endorsed his opponent, a typical establishment type simply out of his personal spite for Sessions.  The irony of that is if Trump and Tommy Tuberville both win their elections, Tuberville may well end up opposing Trump on key votes; votes that Sessions would have sided with Trump on.

Sometimes Trump can be his own worst enemy.

But endorsements aside, if there really were a large group of populists in hiding, they managed to stay pretty well hid during the primaries.  Sure there likely some are in big blue cities where pro-Trump sentiments could end you socially and professionally, but their votes are like raindrops in the ocean; they won’t make a difference in the election.

However there is a difference between populists and Republicans and moderate Democrats and Independents who are voting for Trump and just not talking about it.  As I noted in June, The Democrat decision to hitch it’s carriage to BLM and all matters of Woke nonsense could scare off a lot of normal Independents and Democrats, including those that live in competitive States.  If there is a secret Trump voter of any significance, it will be those voters that matter, and I’m pretty sure they have no interest in being outed or otherwise identified until Election Day.  We’ll just have to see.