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Some quick Drudge Flip Thoughts

Posted: December 16, 2019 by datechguy in Uncategorized

The Drudge’s Report’s apparent swing to NeverTrump and the subsequent drop in pageviews is generating a lot of pixels but it’s ignoring a couple of important points.

  1. If Drudge decided to flip on Trump that’s his business, people have the right to be wrong.
  2. If Drudge sold, that’s also his business. He’s been at it for 20+ years and if he wants to cash in and enjoy life, again it’s his business. He doesn’t owe me or anyone else anything.
  3. I’ve never met Drudge and have no idea what his actual ideological beliefs are. It could very well be that his promotion of conservatism/libertarianism was all about finding a market need and filling it, it’s also possible that he thought that turning on Trump and conservatives might have been a market based move where he guessed wrong. I simply don’t know and it’s likely neither do you.
  4. Even if Drudge loses half his readership 50% of an ungodly number is still an ungodly number. He or whoever now owns the site will make out fine.
  5. That being said you can never assume remaining on top. Remember when Drudge was starting out AOL & IE owned the internet.
  6. Now you understand why the left has been so adamant in preventing people of the right from buying money-losers like Newsweek. There is nothing like flipping a well known but unprofitable brand to make a splash and they are determined to do so.
  7. If there was ever proof that Glenn Reynolds plan of buying Women’s Magazines and staffing them with conservatives is a great idea, this is it.

Jeff Van Drew Solves the no win problem for Trump District Democrats on Impeachment

Posted: December 15, 2019 by datechguy in Always look at the bright side of Trump, elections, News/opinion, politics, primaries
Tags: , ,

When I started writing this post is was going to be with the following premise: While it is a wise political move to put pressure on swing state Trump district Democrats to suggest that voting for impeachment will be against their political health, the entire premise of that argument is wrong because they were in a no-win situation.

If they vote for impeachment of course they anger voters in their Trump supporting districts who think it’s a sham or might be enjoying their best economic situation in a decade and thus risk their seat in a general election but if they oppose impeachment and embarrass the Democrat party, they are sure to draw a successful primary challenge not only because a 1st term member of congress is as a rule vulnerable but the ANTIFA loving Trump hating fanatics are frankly the most motivated of Democrat voters and such folks would likely draw huge war chest to destroy them.

Moreover that vote would not endear you to the GOP who will simply argue that being part of Pelosi’s majority enabled the whole crooked impeachment business anyway.

So in my mind while you might make some hay out of such pressure I thought it wasn’t likely to work because there was no upside for a Democrat in such a situation so such Democrats might as well stand pat.

Well apparently there is a third option that frankly I hadn’t thought of but Democrat congress Jeff Van Drew did:

Impeachment is already backfiring on the Democrats even before the full House votes on two articles of impeachment. A Democratic member of Congress is preparing to switch parties, joining Republicans amid the Democrat-led impeachment effort that has put dozens of moderate Democrats in a tough position with their Trump-supporting constituents. 

Representative Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey has been in talks with top advisors for President Trump, according to The New York Times. Mr. Van Drew is concerned about losing his seat in the Democratic primary or in the 2020 general election. Van Drew’s district is a traditionally Republican district that voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. 

While there is a value in having a sitting Democrat vote against impeachment, there is a greater value for the GOP for a congressman to switch parties over the vote. It’s true that the Democrats would go all in to defeat him but given that activists would primary him and punish him for it anyway it a wise political move.

Suddenly instead of the GOP trying to beat him no matter how he votes and ad after add linking him to the squad, he suddenly becomes a rock star of the party. Money will pour in. The party in general and the White House in particular will go all in to protect and support him. I’d be shocked if Trump didn’t turn up himself to campaign for him in his district. Furthermore as very few new GOP congressmen were elected in the house last time around, if he wins re-election he’ll have two years seniority over any GOP candidate who wins a seat on the President’s coattails in 2020.

I must confess I didn’t anticipate this move. It will be a shock to the Democrat political system , and if others Democrats on the fence realize that this is likely their best chance on re-election Van Drew might not be alone.

Then it would become an earthquake!

Exit question: How much do you think the British Election results had on his decision.

More British Election Thoughts

Posted: December 14, 2019 by datechguy in elections
Tags:
Map Via The Telegraph, comments via me

Looking at the map of the Results of the British Election is a lot like looking at a Map of the US election of Donald Trump in that the left does better in the urban areas where the elites dwell and the right in the more rural areas where you know the food that the urbanites eat come from.

It worth also noting from the map that there are several nationalist movements going on. In Scotland the Scottish National party picked up 13 seats. Most of those SNP seats would have gone labor. I guess most of the conservative Scots were the ones who came here.

In Ireland the primary division remains the Democratic Unionists (conservatives) who want to stay in the UK and those who want out Sinn Fein (Socialists) who while winning seats in parliament refuse to attend or vote. 3 seats went to two minor parties 2 going to the Social Democrat & Labor party and one to the Alliance Party (Moderate liberals)

In Wales the Plaid Cynru or Welsh Nationalists (more socialists) have four seats but unlike Ireland and Scotland the vast majority of seats in the area remain divided between the two major parties with Labor having the advantage.

While Labor was clearly the biggest overall loser dropping a solid 20% of their seats (-42 from 245 to 203) including some districts that hadn’t voted conservative in over a century porportionally the liberal democrats did worse dropping from 21 to 11 seats losing nearly half including their party leader who lost in Scotland. The other big loser were minor or uncleared parties which held 50 seats in parliament before this election and now hold only 23 all but two being outside of England proper one being a seat held by the greens and the other being the current speaker of the house’s seat who by law must renounce his party and remain strictly non-partisan. All of the Change UK (a party of disaffected conservative and labor folks) PM failed to be re-elected.

It appears that the Brits figured it was time to actually choose sides.

What’s really significant was the shift in the overall popular vote. While the Conservatives share went up by went up to 43.3% a gain of just over 1 % Labor’s share plummeted by over 7.8% down to 32.2% with the Liberal Democrats picking up 4% in the popular vote while halfing their number of seats in Parliament. Apparently the California syndrome is alive and well in Britain.

It’s worth nothing that a “conservative” in England is a lot different than a conservative in the US. Boris Johnson would likely be at best a RINO or moderate Democrat in the US but he’s the best you can currently get in England at this time.

Or as Mark Steyn put it:

It would be nice to think that the Conservative Party might now think it safe to offer a bit of conservatism. But that would be too much to hope for…

Well, you have to start somewhere.

British Election Thoughts Under the Fedora

Posted: December 13, 2019 by datechguy in elections, politics
Tags:

As of this moment 12:47 AM the conservatives have 354 seats in parliament up 56 from yesterday and 26 more than they need for a majority without any help while labor is down 40. Yet I’m still hearing labor people in England say now that the conservatives have won they must move left. Socialists, they always sound the same in any country.

Two years ago we saw article after article about how Jeffrey Corbyn was the model for the American left to follow.

Now today leftists are angry when a MSNBC leftist notes after Labor’s crushing defeat that Corbyn ran as an unapologetic leftist.

I’m not an expert on British elections or politicts but I found it interesting that on LBC the channel that I was watching to see the results and on twitter we were seeing things like this:

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

I remember the same thing being said after 2010 insisting that the Democrats programs were actually popular and that the polling was more important than the actual votes to see what the people thought.

Simply amazing.

In addition to Corbyn the left is blaming Brexit for this result claiming that a lot of Labor votes went to the Brexit party. This may or may not be true as I’m not expert enough to say but I will say this.

Assuming this is correct should we not blame labor and the left for not following the will of the voters who had voted leave. If they had in fact let Brexit happen instead of trying to foil it would not , by their own argument , last night have been different?

Supposedly Boris Johnson is very very unpopular according to what I keep hearing but he is getting a Thatcher like win for the Conservatives and he is doing it, in my opinion, for one reason. He is leading from the front.

That is the common thread between Reagan, Thatcher, Johnson and Trump. They are leaders, who lead and people tend to be willing to follow when a person is willing to lead.

It been fun to watch the left on twitter melt down, similar to what happened when Trump won to wit:

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

This is exactly what we’re hearing from the American left and I suspect the whole “Vote for me you ignorant racist” campaign slogan will be as effective here as it was there, but of course now that the left has lost it will be insisted by all that it has no reflection on the US election.

I suspect that argument would be quite different if the result was different.

Finally as I said I watched LBC election coverage all night and noticed that while there were a lot of opinions that I disagreed with strongly (particularly the newly defeated left insisting that the newly elected conservatives must move to the left to retain their win) but at least everyone they didn’t sound insane.

This is a nice change from what we regularly see around here.

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