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JANUARY 19,  2022

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT:

A MAJOR STORY, ONE OF THE BIGGEST POLITICAL STORIES OF THE YEAR – OVERNIGHT.  We're seeing a major exodus of Hispanics from the Democratic Party.  We're also seeing a major physical movement of African-Americans.  The Times they are a-changing. From Breitbart:   Many black Americans are leaving New York and California to seek decent wages and affordable housing in southern states, according to a Washington Post article that ignores the federal policy of importing foreign people to fill jobs and homes in New York and California.  “There is a noticeable lack of black people in these cities that were once the mecca for black America, for  people fleeing the Jim Crow South,” the Post’s reporter told an interviewer.  The Post reported January 14 on the southern migration, which is now reversing the historic “Great Migration” of  black Americans from the South to northern cities during the 1900s:  "For the second census in a row, Chicago and its suburbs lost Black population, which has decreased by 130,000 since 1990. In Michigan, both the Detroit and Flint metropolitan areas lost Black population in absolute terms … Metro New York recorded its second consecutive loss in Black population, losing about 110,000 Black residents since 2000. In California, metro Los Angeles has lost 160,000 Black residents since 1990, while metro San Francisco has lost 90,000."  Many people are migrating from homes in sunny California and wealthy New York to southern states, the article shows:  We don't yet know whether these new migrations will affect the way that blacks vote.  African-Americans are the most loyal group within the Democratic Party.  Will they start to stray and explore new ideas, as they're exploring new locations?  Confident predictions of only ten years ago that blacks, Hispanics and Asians would drive the Democratic Party to permanent dominance are being quietly taken back.

January 19, 2022       Permalink

THE DEM DEBACLE, SUPERBLY PRESENTED – OVERNIGHT:  The president's news conference did nothing to improve his situation except for assuring us that he could stand and speak for a couple of bad hours.  No one bout with reporters will change the fact that Biden and his party have struck out in the first innings of the presidential game.  Issues and Insights, which draws its staff from Investor's Business Daily, has done a fine job of explaining why the Democratic Party has "Titanic" printed on its headquarters. 

For the past year, Democrats up and down the leadership ladder have been on an endless campaign to portray Republicans as delusional out-of-touch anti-science hate-mongering conspiracy-peddling vote-suppressing anti-vaxxer insurrectionist racists.

The result has been a huge shift in party preference: away from Democrats and toward Republicans.

Have voters finally wised up to the left’s cravenness and radicalism? Will this newfound awareness last?

Gallup this week released its survey on party preference, which found what it describes as “a dramatic shift” over the course of 2021. The public went from favoring Democrats by a 9-point margin at the start of the year to favoring Republicans by a 5-point margin by year’s end – a stunning 14-point shift in preference.

Gallup says “Both the 9-point Democratic advantage in the first quarter and the 5-point Republican edge in the fourth quarter are among the largest Gallup has measured for each party in any quarter since it began regularly measuring party identification and leaning in 1991.”

This follows other polls that show a similarly wild swing in favor of Republicans. A CNBC poll, for example, found that Americans support Republicans over Democrats by a 10-point margin – a record, and “a significant swing that may produce a Republican landslide victory in the 2022 House and Senate midterms.”

RealClearPolitics’ average shows Republicans have been favored in a generic congressional ballot since November.

Then there are President Joe Biden’s approval ratings, which are now lower in some polls than Donald Trump’s were at the same point in his presidency. And keep in mind that Trump’s low poll ratings came amid 24-7 wall-to-wall attacks as the press drummed up the phony Russia scandal. In contrast, the press has been busy genuflecting before Biden, only reluctantly covering the multiplying crises that he’s brought about.

Even more embarrassing for Democrats is the fact that some polls now show Trump – whom the Dems have spent countless hours calling a deranged authoritarian bent on destroying democracy – leading in a rematch against Biden.

How did Democrats blow it so badly? We can think of three main reasons (none of which involve Biden’s obvious mental decline or the Omicron variant).

COMMENT:  Do read the rest, and the three reasons.  We're reminded that decisions in politics have consequences.  Some "news" outlets often try to sweep the bad decisions under the rug, to make those decisions disappear if made by the side they favor.  But the public, usually smarter than the politicians,  increasingly is demanding, through polls, that it wants the mess exposed.   Journalists might want to listen to the public, but they usually don't.  After all, what do those peasants know?

January 19, 2022       Permalink

JANUARY 18,  2022

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT: 

WHO NEEDS PARENTS?  FROM POWERLINE:  Glenn Youngkin won election as Governor of Virginia in considerable part because he championed the right of parents to be involved in their children’s education. His opponent, Terry McAuliffe, struck the opposite note when he told an interviewer that “I’m not going to let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decisions. I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”  This was widely viewed as a gaffe, but McAuliffe declined more than one subsequent opportunity to walk back or soften his comments. He meant what he said.  Why did McAuliffe stick to his anti-parent guns? Because what he said, is what the Democrat base believes. A large majority of Democrats, especially activist Democrats, really do think that parents should be excluded from a meaningful role in public education.  We saw evidence of this when Governor Youngkin addressed the Virginia legislature on Monday. He said that his administration would protect the rights of parents with regard to their children’s “education, upbringing and care.” This was greeted with a standing ovation from Republicans, and stony silence from Democrats.  See entry just below.  Another winning concept from the Democratic Party – running against America's parents.  Why didn't I think of that?

January 18, 2022       Permalink 

THE PHONY ISSUE – OVERNIGHT:  THE DEMS NEVER LEARN ANYTHING.  Despite their desperate position in the polls, they refuse to correct their ways.  They apparently get their inspiration from the Japanese Kamikaze.  It is good to die for the emperor.

So, the Dems still push the elimination of voter i.d., the most widely used protection against voter fraud, a practice used in almost all democratic nations.   The Dems says it's a gimmick used by whites to suppress the votes of blacks.  But, apparently, no one asked the black folks about that.  From Just the News: 

With drama and fury, President Joe Biden declared to the nation on Martin Luther King Jr. Day that state laws requiring voter ID or banning mass mailing of absentee ballots amounted to an "assault on our freedom to vote," especially for minority Americans.

Four days earlier, a poll in Michigan told a different story: Three-quarters of the battleground state voters supported ballot ID requirements, with black voters expressing the highest support at 79%.

Those findings have been confirmed in national polls as well, exposing a dilemma for Democrats in Washington who are making a last-ditch effort to pass legislation gutting many state and local controls of elections in favor of federal standards.

Those standards — like banning voter IDs, imposing no excuse absentee voting and making it harder to clean outdated voter rolls — are not what the majority of Americans are seeking.
"A recent national survey found that four key election reforms are supported by more than 80% of voters," pollster Scott Rasmussen recently wrote in an article highlighting the disconnect. "These include removing people who have died or moved from voter registration lists; requiring all voters to show photo ID before casting a ballot; wanting all ballots received by Election Day; and, having all voting machines made in the United States."

In Rasmussen's latest national poll on the issue, 78% of African-American voters supported voter ID.

Such public sentiments impose a harsh reality check on Biden's argument that state voter laws amount to "Jim Crow 2.0" and are disenfranchising poor and minority voters. Most voters don't see cleaning outdated names from voter roles or requiring IDs to cast ballots as "obstacles to the ballot box" like Biden argued in Monday’s speech.

The polling may also help to explain why several centrist Democrats like Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Jon Tester of Montana, and Kyrsten Sinema and Mark Kelly of Arizona are resisting efforts to change the Senate's filibuster rule so that Democratic voting legislation can pass with a simple majority and not the 60 votes currently required.

"Elections take place at the local level, in a decentralized way, because, number one, that is where you have transparency, that's where you have familiarity," former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell told Just the News. "That's where you where you have buy-in. And if you start to take it away from states and localities, you run the risk of the same clown car that has driven this constitutional republic to a disastrous edge."

COMMENT:  Some common sense.  Do you get the feeling that the Democrats are thoroughly out of touch with their own voters?  Or with anyone else's voters?   They're a party educated beyond their capacity, and maybe it's time for them to go out out of business and open up a chain of yoga clinics.  Or tofu restaurants. 

January 18,  2022     Permalink