Archive for the ‘election 2024’ Category

There are two critical stories concerning the fitness of Joe Biden for the presidency that are both critical and being almost completely ignored.

The first is a question that some people like Dwayne Patterson are asking: Who was in charge during the Biden years?

I don’t frankly care if the Beltway media takes me seriously or not. I know what I know. I saw what I saw daily in Biden media appearances, seldom though they were. I heard what I heard. And I can safely say that after 30 years in this business, I have never experienced Beltway media as in the tank as they were. The Trump effect can be seen in trillions so far in foreign investments coming into the United States. The Trump effect also has caused a lot of reporters to throw objectivity out the window because they view Trump as an existential threat. 

My humble, but sincere advice for my friends in media, and I do have dozens of them that are friends, is it’s hard to take them seriously when they won’t admit their failings in coverage of the Biden regency. If you want to regain trust, go where the story goes, not where you want the story to go. And I’m telling you, the story is who was running the country the last four years, and why there was no accountability in government. Why did the 25th Amendment fail as a failsafe apparatus against an obviously incapacitated president? 

I suspect the answer is the government was for sale to the highest bidder and both the Biden family and members of the administration were able to run the Federal Government like Chicago, alternatively or concurrently people with agenda were able to advance them without all that pesky “explaining to voters” stuff.

However for my money while that first question is a critical one it’s the second question that I find most fascinating.

Why didn’t they just use to the 25th amendment at put Kamala Harris in the White House?

Any time after Jan 2023 she would have been eligible for two terms and if she became the first woman president the media would have had a collective organism. All the protection that was given to Biden would have been transferred to her and she would have had time to actually be ready to face Donald Trump, and would have had the power of incumbency and much more time to develop an actual team to run a campaign.

Yet they did not do this.

Why?

There are several possible things. Perhaps they were worried that Harris would want to actually be in charge, perhaps the Biden family threatened to talk about things, perhaps the people who were buying government wanted a freer hand to act, but all of these explanation don’t seem to fly as the media & party apparatus that was willing to prosecute Trump crossing multiple lines were unlikely not to be able to manipulate around such problems.

I think there is a more likely reason, one that nobody wants to admit that while I was writing this piece Ed Morrissey brought up ahead of me:

However, that wouldn’t be the real reason for that reluctance. The real reason is that Kamala Harris is every bit as incompetent as Joe Biden, only for reasons having nothing to do with dementia. [emphasis mine DTG] Harris could not be trusted with the presidency, as voters discovered in 2019 and again in 2024, when in both cycles she couldn’t even be trusted to handle the media, let alone the world. 

If the United States had had a competent Vice President, the Cabinet might have acted to replace a president whose aides and families had isolated for reasons of incompetence. Their lack of action in that crisis is unforgivably cowardly, but also a massive declaration of no confidence in Kamala Harris. And then they stood by while Harris attempted to win office anyway rather than publicly demand an open and democratic process to replace the party’s nominee, compounding their cowardice.

Or to put it simply if the final year of the Biden presidency was the first year of the Harris presidency the prospects for Democrats running for re-election and/or retaining power would be so bad that the actual results of 2024 would have been considered a best case scenario.

Much better to keep the lie up and hope that they could pass Biden off as functional, Democrat donors and media could be counted on playing along because the person who spilled the beans would be blamed for a Trump victory and NOBODY in the media/left would want to be the person responsible for Trump returning to the White House. And if the worst case scenario happened (as indeed it did) Harris could not only be considered separate Joe Biden’s failures but in a short campaign her incompetence could be hidden from the general public and panicked donors desperate to stop Trump would be so relieved that they would open up their wallets which indeed they did.

That is plausible and the most likely conclusion to me but think about that for a second.

If I’m right Kamala Harris is so incompetent that the Democrats and the media thought playing Weekend at Joeys with Biden was a safer option than having her in office running the show.

Simply amazing.

By John Ruberry

We are told, correctly, that it’s the local elections, not the glamorous races such as presidential contests, that effect voters the most.

That was so true in 2016 in Cook County, Illinois.

While Hillary Clinton comfortably won Illinois and Cook County–where I live– over Donald Trump, it was the state’s attorney race in Cook that had the biggest impact on the 5 million residents in Illinois’ largest county.

George Soros-funded Democratic candidate, Kim Foxx, resoundingly defeated her Republican opponent, Christopher E.K. Pfannkuche. Four years later it was much closer for Foxx, she gathered only 54 percent of the vote in heavily Democratic Cook County, over Republican Pat O’Brien and a Libertarian candidate.

Fortunately, unless you are a criminal, Foxx chose not to run for reelection this year.

Immediately after her swearing-in, Foxx raised the limit for felony theft from the state-mandated $300 to $1,000.00. Shoplifting prosecutions in Cook County dropped dramatically, as did narcotics prosecutions.

Murders soared in the last eight years.

While Foxx is best known for the Jussie Smollett debacle, other actions as state’s attorney will have a lasting, and acidic legacy.

If you want numbers, you’ll find some here, courtesy of the fantastic Illinois Policy Institute. But except for murders, they tell an incomplete story.

For instance, for much of Foxx’s misrule, my daughter, Little Marathon Pundit. worked at a nationally known department store in an affluent suburb. On average, once a day, a shoplifter ran out the door–some calmy walked out–with stolen merchandise. Not only were employees at this store told not to prevent the criminal from leaving, store managers never called the police. Not once. Why call the cops? Even if the perp is caught, Foxx’ office, unless the theft was a massive haul, wouldn’t prosecute it as a felony. Or he may not even bother prosecuting at all.

So those were unrecorded crimes. So crime numbers, outside of course of murders, can’t be trusted at all.

As I wrote on X last month, “the liberal media keeps telling us that crime is down. Six months ago when I last visited this Rosemont IL big box store the cosmetics section wasn’t roped off. Stop gaslighting us, ‘journalists.'”

Eileen O’Neill Burke, a Democrat, is the new state’s attorney in Cook County. She is already prosecuting accused thieves at the state-mandated $300 level for felony theft.

EOB is not perfect. She supports Governor JB Prtizker’s no-cash-bail SAFE-T Act.

But O’Neill Burke vows to call for more detainments of accused criminals who are charged with violent crimes.

Elections matter.

Including down-ballot races. Sometimes especially down-ballot races.

Sadly, the results of the last eight years of rampant criminality will wreak havoc for a very long time.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Sir Thomas More: But Richard, that’s a little bribe. At court they offer you all sorts of things, home, manors, manor houses, coats of arms. Why not be a teacher? You’d be a fine teacher; perhaps a great one.

Richard Rich: If I was, who would know it?

Sir Thomas More: You; your pupils; your friends; God. Not a bad public, that. Oh, and a quiet life.

A Man for all Seasons 1966

This weekend I binge watched Tulsa King (highly recommended) but because my wife didn’t start with me I had to backtrack so she could catch up so in between I popped onto Youtube and there was an election night reaction video of the Bulwark.

Now I had watched reaction videos of all the other networks but these people were supposedly the “true conservatives” who had left the party because of Trump and were now pushing things like abortion and embracing far leftist because that’s what true principled conservatives do if they don’t get the nominee of their choice.

Check out the reactions and the people there and you’d swear they were a parody. It’s as if they never met a normal working class person or left the presence of anyone outside of the beltway who was not of the donor class.

It was especially interesting to see these supposedly expert people scoffing at the idea that people were hurting from inflation and how horrible the electorate is. Oh and I can’t wait to see Jonathan Altar starting hiding illegal immigrants in his attic as he said he would do, we should check back in six months to see if it’s happening. For me the real moment was Mono Charen declaring how America was not special or extraordinary because we elected Donald Trump over a woman who could not win a primary to save her life and whose entry into the political world was made possible by servicing Willie Brown’s willie.

It was the classic SNL 2016 election skit only without Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock there to mock the cluelessness, but what it really was comparable to was watching a group of courtiers in say the 12th to 16th century who spend all their time around the King’s court hoping to curry favor. Go back and watch scenes from the classic movie A Man for all Seasons. You will recognize these folks as the ones rushing on and off the barge after Henry VIII or in the inquiry pressing Sir Thomas Moore to give an answer and you will especially recognize them as Richard Rich whose primary purpose was to gain a position, any position that was above the common people so that the world would recognize their position.

And if some had to give up conservatism that they once supposedly championed for years well that’s a small price to pay for being above the mere commoners.

Now in fairness the Bulwark is a business and their job is to earn, and since they can’t earn on the conservative side they’ll service the left to keep those envelopes coming. Now I can understand that, I don’t approve but I understand and perhaps in an honest moment they might see themselves that way, but I suspect not, that’s the real irony here.

Look at that video. Every single one of them think’s they are Sir Thomas Moore, standing up to the king risking all for the sake of righteousness. Not one of them perceives that they are in fact an Army of Richard Riches all hoping to get Wales for themselves.

Kinda sad actually.

Captain Kidd: Well Captain Barsiliano are you satisfied?

Captain BarsilianoI still put no trust in him.

Spitfire Stevens: Well I do and enough to give him my ship as soon as it’s re-rigged

Captain BarsilianoNo man is taking a ship out of here unless he has a rope around his neck like any known pirate. All right if he wants to sail let him sail on the Scorpion as my navigator, I have need of one and at once. When he comes back with blood on his hands he can hoist his own black flag, but not before.

Against All Flags 1952

One of the things that you learn quickly if you spend any time with Robert Stacy McCain is that this person is smart, and not just folksy country smart but book smart. He is extremely well read and when he decides to go after Marxists and feminists it’s because he had read more Marx than many Marxists and more Feminism than most Feminists, in fact it was his insistence on quoting feminists in their own words that made him one of the first conservative journalists banned from twitter years ago.

Why Elon Musk’s company has not reinstated him and his 80K+ followers as he has many others is still a large pet peeve for me and a matter of some mystery but I digress…

Well Stacy McCain has looked at the numbers from the last president election and notes a real oddity:

On Wednesday, November 6, the day after Election Day, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter was full of Democrats wondering about the “missing” votes — Kamala Harris’s vote totals were remarkably lower than the 81 million that Joe Biden supposedly got in 2020. This provoked all kinds of paranoid conspiracy theory comments among liberals, none of whom seemed to consider the obvious alternative: Maybe Joe really didn’t get 81 million votes. Maybe “ballot harvesting” and other Democrat shenanigans in 2020 really did amount to a stolen election. But only right-wing extremists could think such a thing.

According to the Associated Press, the 2024 numbers are:

Trump — 76,722,404 votes (50%)
Harris — 74,169,608 votes (48.3%)

According to Wikipedia, the 2020 numbers were:

Biden — 81,283,501 (51.3%)
Trump — 74,223,975 (46.8%)

It is not merely that Harris got some 7 million fewer votes than Biden, but rather than the total number of votes cast was lower by about 5 million. Who were those disappearing voters? Why would so many people not even bother to vote this year? Good luck coming up with an explanation for this that doesn’t include the possibiliity [sic] that what Democrats did in 2020 was to manufacture millions of fake votes for Joe Biden

Democrats being Democrats are floating other theories;

And John Sexton at hotair quotes a piece concerning Democrat voters that is significant to Stacy’s argument:

One final point about non-voters. We don’t know how many non-voters might have voted for Harris if they had voted, but Levitz suggests there’s no reason to think those voters who chose not to vote are an especially progressive group.

In truth, Americans who want the Democratic Party to be more uniformly progressive are, by and large, the most reliably Democratic voters in the country. 

Emphasis Mine

Now let’s go back to Stacy McCain’s argument:

Hmmm. Read the whole thing and you will find no attempt to explain why turnout was so much worse in these “heavily Democratic cities,” because this might lead to questions about why these “heavily Democratic cities” had such phenomenally high turnout in 2020. What happened in 2020 that did not happen in 2024? 

And let me remind you all that it was turnout in five heavily Democrat machine controlled counties in five different states that made the difference in 2020 and the real reason why Biden finally had to go:

And you will recall the big question that Kamala’s incompetent campaign raised: Steal or No Steal?

In short we are in a position where while the apparatus is in place in key states to steal and election you have a strong likely hood that it would fail because of

  • Increased vigilance
  • A larger margin to overcome
  • A candidate even less credible then LOL 81 million Joe

All of this puts us back to the same formula I postulated 8 years ago:

If 
(Number of votes you can get away stealing) > (Number of votes you might lose by)

Then

Go For it!

Else

Release your vote totals as is

Endif

You will not I have bolded the key phrase get away because we are at a point where it is not only likely that a steal might fail do to the volume of the vote, but the dissatisfaction of the electorate has, in my opinion, reached a point where officials held their noses and went along with the steal last time because they disliked Trump might decide against playing ball.

Furthermore if the steal DOES fail you will not only get a Trump administration with a Trump AG and a bunch of new Trump lawyers at Justice but you will get a Trump administration that has had an election stolen from them hell bent on getting those who did tried to do it to them again.

Stacy noted some of these reasons why the steal didn’t take place and added a key one of his own:

Why didn’t the same thing happen in 2024? Well, first of all, Republicans raised hell about election integrity and Democrats, realizing that they couldn’t get away with running the same game again, refrained from the most egregious practices that had tainted 2020. Also, however, Zuckerberg stopped pouring out money (or certainly did not spend as much as he did in 2020) for the Democrat ballot-harvesting gangs.

If you’re wondering why Zuckerberg lost his enthusiasm for helping Democrats steal elections, perhaps the date of October 7, 2023, might be viewed as the decisive factor. Why should a Jew spend his money to help elect Democrats, if Democrats are going to support murderous Jew-hating terrorists like Hamas and Hezbollah?

In short the steal wasn’t plausible and wasn’t funded, thieves like to be paid and Kamala spent her billon of celebs, Stacy saw all of this from numbers. I suggest you point to his piece (and maybe to this one) when some smug leftist asks why the GOP didn’t scream “fraud” this time around.