Archive for the ‘elections’ Category

Key Phrase: “Friendly Room”

Posted: October 14, 2019 by datechguy in elections, politics, primaries
Tags: ,

We’re already talked a bit about how Beto O’Rourke’s admission in front of TV camera concerning taxing churches has confirmed what we’ve all known for years concerning the left. Now comes the left with the “Beto as Strawman” argument claiming that he’s a nobody, a non-entity who doesn’t really matter:

Given his low and static polling, it’s hard to tell what, exactly, Beto O’Rourke hopes to accomplish by staying in the presidential race. But while his actual goal seems a bit elusive, he is increasingly playing a very specific role: the human straw man, the embodiment of every seemingly irrational conservative fear about what the left really wants.

That’s Jordan Weissman arguing in Slate that O’Rourke’s positions aren’t actually positions of the left and all he is doing his stoking conservative fears. This is only part of his attack on Robert Francis O’Rourke

This is not the first time O’Rourke—a politician, it should be noted, without a constituency: no district, almost no support in the polls—has promised to make conservatives’ worst nightmares come true. After adopting gun control as a marquee issue following the mass shooting in El Paso earlier this year, O’Rourke promised a mandatory gun buyback program for assault weapons, memorably telling a moderator, “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47.” Not long after, Trump and Republicans blamed his comments for making it harder to get a gun control deal done in Congress. (Yes, that’s a bit rich coming from the GOP, but I’ll come back to that).

These are not the only far-left positions Beto has staked out recently. He’s strongly pro reparations, for instance. But his comments about churches and guns are especially remarkable, in that he’s essentially adopting unpopular stances that Democratic politicians have spent years claiming are unfair caricatures of their actual beliefs. He is turning himself into a walking straw man, the non-fringe guy Republicans can reliably point to when they want to say: “See, the libs really do want to take your guns and shut down your churches.”

emphasis mine

There are two problems with this man’s point. The 1st is highlighted by the emphasized text. It’s rather comical to see this argument given that it was the same lefty media created him out of the whole cloth, extolling Mr. O’Rourke, promoting him as “Beto” as a counter to Ted Cruz authentic ethnicity and put him up and the sign that Texas is finally turning their way. They drew millions of dollars from liberal activists all over the country in his failed effort for senate seat and then floated him as a potential presidential candidate before they knew that the Democrat field would become large enough to field a shirts vs skins Basketball game with benches for both teams.

But it’s the second point that really give the lie to the entire piece and it comes from four simple words in the 1st sentence of the piece following the embedded video (again emphasis mine):

O’Rourke’s comments drew a warm round of applause in the friendly room, and riled conservatives, who have spent years worrying that Democrats might try to do such a thing.

That’s the key line, the room was full of Democrat activists, the people who give the money, who put the pressure on candidates and decide who can choose to make hell for any candidate who doesn’t toe the line.

  • Did those activists boo or cat call that line making it clear that this is not what Democrat believe?
  • Did they rush to defend the black church which had for so many years been the place, despite existing tax laws where Democrats openly campaigned organized and raised money?
  • Did they defend conservative Muslims who have increasingly become an important part of the Democrat coalition?
  • And most important of all did any Democrat candidate rush to clearly state that this is completely contrary to what the Democrat party in general or they in particular believe?

The answer to all of these questions is not just no but HELL NO and the reason for this is the same as why when Joe Biden they didn’t do any of these things when Joe Biden went all in on gay marriage in 2012 because he knew that this is what the people who matter in the party believe..

Beto is playing a similar gambit. He understands that the people who matter in the party along with the college students taught by their minions in school are already at this place. He furthermore is in a can’t lose proposition for him. At worst by forcing the issue he raises his profile and lasts longer int he primaries ensuring him face time for a while. At best he’s getting some chits in for next time around and assuring himself of good speaking fees for the next four years.

There are many descriptions that can be made of these moves that are apt, but “Strawman” is not one of them, in fact “Strawman” is best used to describe those on the left who are trying to pretend that Beto’s opinions are an outlier rather than someone saying aloud what everyone knows.

Update: added link and image plus this Atlantic link via Instapundit which touches on a cost that the left, in my opinion, simply doesn’t care about.

…and there’s more to that poll concerning the Black Vote than meets the eye.

Posted: October 10, 2019 by datechguy in Always look at the bright side of Trump, elections, politics
Tags: , , ,

Yesterday I linked to a an instapundit post that noted that the in a recent poll 32% of black men preferred the re-election of Trump to any democrat nominee. Yet let’s take a look at the opening lines of the story that contained this incredible information:

An overwhelming majority of black voters — 85 percent — said in a new Hill-HarrisX poll that they would choose any Democratic presidential candidate over President Trump in an election The survey, which was released on Monday, found this sentiment to be particularly true among black voters along partisan lines.

That story is from The Hill, and the headline says: “Poll: Overwhelming majority of black voters back any 2020 Democrat over Trump“. The only problem is when when you look at the actual poll vs the spin of the story it doesn’t look very good for the left. In addition to what Mr. Bernstein spotted there were two other data points that are pretty significant:

  1. The poll sampled more that two women for every man on presidential preference. That’s over 67% women on that pol! That’s quite a gender gap!
  2. Of the black men polled 3% were republican and 21% were independent. That means that if every single republican and independent man in the poll supported Trump then there would still be 8 percent of black Democrat men who want Trump to win in 2020.

That’s bad enough but there is something even funnier going on here: there seems to be two different pools of people being polled. The preference for president question has a sample size of 210, but the poll in general has a sample size of 1200.

Over 1000 missing people.

Oddly enough the story doesn’t note this discrepancy let alone explain it, nor does it touch on the skew in the presidential preference question 67% women , vs everyone in the poll 57%.

I’m sure there is a perfect innocent explanation for this that I’m completely missing that has absolutely nothing to do with the attempt to convince people that the president’s economy and policies might be leading to a historic realignment that could change the face of the American political scene for decades.

After all the media would not try to manipulate the public for political reasons would they?

What I saw during a side visit at CPAC 2018 to a Pinball Spot in Bethesda is finally showing in polling…

Posted: October 9, 2019 by datechguy in Always look at the bright side of Trump, economy, elections, politics, special events
Tags: , ,

In 2018 I was at CPAC with my sons when the younger seeing that I was, as usual, driving myself to a ridiculous point suggested doing something different, so we went on a little trip to a pinball place in Bethesda where I found what I thought was the most significant interview of the trip.

and wrote why this interview was so significant

Now a person like my self who has covered angry mobs last year, and is constantly bathed in the political fight, not to mention the media narrative of absolute Trump / GOP hatred and constantly in the company of activists both at home and at CPAC,  might expect a Democrat woman of color living in a blue state to give answers fitting the us vs them narrative, particularly if filmed and in the presence of her friends.
She did not.
She gave the President mixed marks, complemented him on keeping campaign promises that he made to his people, noted that as a Democrat she’d like to see some more moderate moves. Her answers had none of the rancor or the division that the media has pushed on us for the year or that I’ve seen from angry activists. They were completely reasonable answers that would not have been out of place several decades ago in a saner time when I remembered people could disagree and get along. In other words they reflected who she is, a normal American trying to get by whose primary focus is real life instead of manufactured outrage.

Remember this was 2018, Mueller was still out there, plenty of people thought there was lot of “there” there. Stormy Daniels was still out there as was the creepy porn lawyer. In fact we were still in the pre-Kavanaugh era. In other words the entire spectacle had not yet blown up on the left.

This interview, given in public on film in front of friends made me draw two conclusions, the second being the most significant

  1. Despite what our media friends are trying to sell us, Regular Democrats, even democrats in a blue place like Maryland are not wedded to the Peloxi/CNN/MSNBC line and are seeing this president for what he is rather than what they are being told he is.
  2. People like Lea are winnable and the media narrative is all about convincing us she is not.

When we got back to CPAC I couldn’t wait to upload the video and rushed to tell every person I ran into that this was incredibly important and tremendously significant. Nobody seemed to care, we were in the CPAC bubble which meant all eyes were on the pols and the activists there, not to mention the President’s upcoming speech. The idea that this might be a signal of an opening to the black community for the President and the opposition of blacks to the president might be softer than other think was something totally off everyone’s radar.

Not anymore:

From David Bernstein at Instapundit

BUT MUH NARRATIVE: 32% of African American men would vote for Donald Trump over a generic Democratic nominee.130

Well what do you know, I guess this info is out of the bubble now, and if it’s true then the danger to the Democrats goes well beyond this election.

But there is more to this poll story than meets the eye that doesn’t bode well for the left, but that’s a story for tomorrow’s post.

Notice the Pence Pivot on Impeachment?

Posted: October 6, 2019 by datechguy in elections, politics
Tags: , ,

We keep hearing from the left and NeverTrump that their only concern is to remove Trump because he is a corrupt, vulgar man doing unconstitutional things etc etc etc

However despite this public claim there has been a noticeable shift to Mike Pence in their attacks, particularly by the media/cultural left. There two likely reasons for this.

  1. Unlike POTUS it is not Pence’s nature to fight back in the same way as President Trump does. Trump is a street fighter who has no problem trolling and as his predecessor once said “hitting back twice as hard”. So instead of attacks or tweets that are absorbed by millions and can’t be ignored Pence’s counters if he gives any, are those of traditional pols which can be safely ignored, thus establishing a narrative.
  2. If this impeachment move against Trump works (which is highly dubious although there seem to be plenty of suckers on twitter etc who think it will, that would still leave Mike Pence in the Whitehouse ready to take his share of credit for the economy, the foreign successes and more than willing to put faithful Christians on the court.

Thus any attempted take down of Donald Trump is useless to them unless it also takes down Pence. So much for the whole “protecting the constitution” bit

Granted all of this is fantasy land but if you are going to go for it in the hopes of winning in 2020, this is what you have to do.

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