As I have said before in this space I would happily vote for either Donald Trump OR Ron DeSantis if either wins the GOP nomination for president in 2024 (although the other than a Ted Cruz presidency the ideal would be Trump for 4 more followed by 8 years of DeSantis) and the country would be well served by either.
Frankly DeSantis has been doing an excellent job of wooing me and I’ve not been big on the Trump attacks on him, but there is a question that I think those pushing his candidacy need to answer..
One of the arguments that we hear from the shadow DeSantis crowd is that Trump is “unelectable” (or more properly “un re-electable” ) They may or may not have a point as Trump derangement syndrome is a real thing and the left has demonstrated that disaster is better than , but I would like to ask those who would push DeSantis on those grounds these questions:
What makes you think that the same democrat counties in critical states that played with the vote count in 2020 would not do so again in 2024 if DeSantis is the nominee?
Donald Trump has already stated publicly that the GOP needs to ballot harvest in the Democrat fashion, What tactics will a DeSantis campaign do to counter Democrats in states that haven’t pushed the excellent election reforms that he put in place in Florida to counter Democrat dirty tricks?
We already know that Trump will fight back on any attempt to steal an election from him in 2024. As there is no reason to believe Democrats would not use the same tactics against DeSantis, what steps will he take to prevent and/or counter any Democrat attempt to steal the 2024 election from him?
Oh and any person who claims: “Democrats won’t try to steal the election if Trump isn’t on the ballot” is too stupid to work on any campaign.
Senator Warren has significantly higher unfavorable numbers than her fellow Democrats statewide and that seems to be creating an opening for Baker, who always enjoyed large amounts of cross-party appeal. Looking at the cross tabs, Republicans seem to coalesce behind Baker (79%) in a way that Democrats do not around Warren (56%), and Baker leads with independent/unenrolled voters 2-1 at 57-26%.
Warren’s favorability rating is 5 points above water, with 49 percent finding her favorable and 44 percent saying she is unfavorable, including 35 percent who find her “very unfavorable.” As Craney pointed out, her favorability rating indicates she is far less secure than some of her fellow prominent elected Democrat officials in the Bay State.
Now while it would be nice to have a Ted Cruz or a John Kennedy (of LA) win a US senate race in Massachusetts, with the current state of our state voting population there would be a better chance of the Red Sox signing me as a 60 year old pinch runner off the bench next week than an actual full blown conservative winning a statewide election for US Senate. Until and unless we educate and persuade the electorate Baker is likely the best we can realistically get and in terms of competence he would be a giant step forward for Massachusetts, plus it’s always useful to have a person with executive experience in the Senate.
This should send the fear of God into the left although there would be several bright sides for the left:
Baker would almost certainly be voting with Democrats 10-20% of the time
He would be the MSM’s “goto” republican on any social issues we attempt to advance
He could reliably be expected to attack a President Trump and make any opposition to him be by definition “bipartisan”
But that extra vote to give the gavel to McConnell and stop Biden judges in their tracks would outweigh those disadvantages.
However there is one question that needs to be asked before we break out the bubbly.
Has anyone asked Charlie Baker if he wants the job?
Right now Charlie Baker is president of the NCAA. I’m sure like all jobs it has ups and downs but I suspect it’s a job he enjoys and I don’t doubt for one moment that it’s a job he doing well because it rewards competence which Baker has by the bucketful.
So can someone explain to me why Baker would leave that job to enter a race where he’ll be targeted, attacked and get grief from an incredibly polarized electorate and even risk physical attack (and he’s a really big target, seriously that guy is tall).
Why would he abandon the sweet gig he has for all that grief? I don’t see him doing it and until someone convinces me otherwise I’m not going to get my knickers in an uproar.
Yesterday with DaWife working and both the Celtics and Redsox playing in Philly I decided to go to Longhorn’s Restaurant to watch the game and have some of their spicy chicken bites (if you haven’t had them try them, they are the best value in terms of taste and quantity of any appetizer offered in any restaurant out there.
There were five things that jumped out at me while I sat at the bar:
First of all while the neither the restaurant nor the bar was very crowded (likely due to the games and the pending Mother’s day next week) the takeout business was very brisk. I observed the young lady running the takeout, she was doing well in a busy job. The phone was cranking and the orders were flowing. Before COVID the amount of takeout a place like this would do was minimal but even with COVID finished many people have really taken to getting their restaurant food at home without the restaurant. It’s one of the subtle ways the COVID stuff has changed us.
Second of all I was watching the Celtics Philly game and noticed that, at least for the first half Philly was contesting the initial inbounds passes after scoring even before the Celtics started pulling away. You don’t see a lot of teams doing that and it proved to be, at least in my opinion effective in giving the Celtics some grief. I think more teams should do this in the NBA, while it doesn’t allow a set defense it does and can disrupt a set offense.
Third of all I was watching the Redsox , Phillies game with great interest both because of Chris Sale for for five of the six innings he pitched looked like the Sale of 2018 constantly throwing over 95 and getting ahead of hitters but living on the edge of the pitch clock. Under the new rules the pitcher has to be in his leg kick by the time the clock hits zero or a ball is automatically called and the number of pitches he got off within a second of what would be a violation was considerable. This had some effect in his bad inning when he would get angry at himself and vent and then have to rush a pitch to keep a penalty. I’m curious how many other pitchers in baseball are living on the edge of the clock?
Of course being at the bar I naturally kept an eye on BudLight Sales. Longhorn offers two beers at a slight discount for a smaller glass, Bud Light and Miller Lite. In the two hours I was there I did not see a single Bud Light poured but in fairness I didn’t see any Miller Lite being ordered either. In fact what little there was of beer orders were of the local IPA’s but be that as it may Bud wasn’t moving. Perhaps they can start offering it at Tuppence a glass?
Finally I was REALLY caught by surprise by a political ad by a superpac during the Red Sox game. It was a powerful ad about freedom but the climax of the ad was a mother and child putting a DeSantis for president sign in their yard and a person with a Trump 2016 bumper sticker on his pickup putting a DeSantis 2024 bumper sticker over it.
I’ve not been able to find the Ad to embed it but let me tell you if Donald Trump already had his hair on fire over DeSantis as a candidate this will send him over the edge.
Frankly I’m torn between the two of them. Either would make a fine President and each has different plusses and minus.
To become president, Trump must win a bunch of swing states. To win each state he needs more ballots in his pile than the other guy. It’s baked into the data — which we look at every day — that Trump is not going to win those swing states. None of them.
Unfortunately, the RNC is about raising dough and having elaborate meetings with mediocre minds. The Trump campaign thinks rallies, flags, and red hats can overcome the Left’s complete control of election apparatus.
It’s like France in 1939.
Trump is France.
If that is correct there will be trouble and if DeSantis believes the left won’t use these tactics against him in a general then he’s a fool.
Late in 2021, the father of Chicago Tribune City Hall reporter Gregory Pratt, died. Father and son shared the same name, but the younger Pratt hadn’t seen his dad since he was five. That is, until shortly before the passing of the older Pratt, which the reporter, in a behind-the-pay-wall column, movingly wrote about in the Tribune.
Last week, the Chicago City Wire, a newspaper often dismissed as “fake” and “pink slime” by liberals, noticed something in Pratt’s column, a link to a GoFundMe page organized by a cousin for the reporter, to defray the senior Pratt’s medical bills, That GoFundMe link should have immediately raised eyebrows. But it was the “fake” source that got the scoop.
The Chicago Tribune’s lead City Hall reporter Gregory Pratt solicited and received at least $1,790 in donations in a GoFundMe.com fundraiser benefiting his family from sources he covers– including elected officials, political consultants and lobbyists.
The donors included Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, who gave him $150, along with Evelyn Chinea-García, the wife of recent mayoral candidate, U.S. Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia ($500) and former Illinois Deputy Governor and State Attorney General candidate Jesse Ruiz ($100).
Three members of the Chicago City Council Pratt covers – Ald. Gil Villegas (36th), Ald. Samantha Nugent (39th) and Ald. Matt O’Shea (19th)– also contributed to Pratt, along with Metropolitan Water Reclamation District Commissioner and lobbyist Michael Alvarez ($250) and Chicago political operatives Rebecca Carroll, Eli Stone, Carolyn Grisko and Joanna Klonsky, who recently worked for Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot.
Chicago City Wire, and several other papers, are published by Local Government Information Services, which was founded by conservative activist and WIND-AM radio personality Dan Proft in 2016.
A Twitter fight between Proft and Pratt ensued, which led former Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass to respond in the comments thread, “When a news organization gives editorial control to billionaire Bolshevik like George Soros, that news organization has no credibility. Any comment @chicagotribune @CTGuild @royalpratt???
When a news organization gives editorial control to billionaire Bolshevik like George Soros, that news organization has no credibility. Any comment @chicagotribune@CTGuild@royalpratt ???
Kass’ referral to @CTGuild is in regard to the Chicago Tribune Guild, the union representing Trib reporters. It is the organization that fought with the longtime conservative columnist at the Tribune over a 2020 column highly critical of Kim Foxx–you know, Jussie Smollett’s protector–where Kass brings up how Foxx and other big city Democratic catch-and-release prosecutors are funded by leftist billionaire George Soros. The Guild, of which Kass was not a member, in a biased manner deemed that column as anti-Semitic. The Guild’s protest led to a de facto demotion for Kass.
Pratt, whose Twitter handle is @royalpratt, displays the Chicago Tribune Guild logo on his Twitter page.
As legendary baseball announcer Mel Allen used to say, “How about that?”
To be fair, for all I know, Kass and Pratt are best pals. Then again, probably not.
Proft and Kass’ objections to the GoFundMe linkage are fair. Could those donors who work in politics, and who Pratt is expected to cover without bias, expect more sympathetic coverage if he knows they contributed to his dad’s GoFundMe page?
I don’t know.
Here’s what the New York Times, on its ethics page, says about possible improprieties.
Personal relations with sources: Relationships with sources require the utmost in sound judgment and self discipline to prevent the fact or appearance of partiality. Cultivating sources is an essential skill, often practiced most effectively in informal settings outside of normal business hours. Yet staff members, especially those assigned to beats, must be sensitive that personal relationships with news sources can erode into favoritism, in fact or appearance. And conversely staff members must be aware that sources are eager to win our good will for reasons of their own.
Which brings me to beat reporting. Years ago, the Trib used to move around reporters in a seemingly bizarre fashion. For instance, Bruce Buursma went from the religion beat to covering the Chicago White Sox. Such transfers create more-rounded journalists –and since Chicago’s two baseball teams went nearly a century for one–and over a century for the other–between World Series titles, a faith reporter might have been just what baseball fans reading the Tribune needed at that time.
Sadly, for reporters coving elected officials, mostly but not exclusively on the left, politics is their religion. They are not journalists, they’re activists playing on the same team.
Here’s one more old story. Jay McMullen, who later married Chicago mayor Jane Byrne, was for over twenty years was the City Hall reporter for the Chicago Daily News and the Chicago Sun-Times. Eventually his bosses viewed McMullen as being too cozy with the pols he covered–so he was exiled to the real estate page. McMullen later worked for his wife during her single term in office.
Note: Two days ago, I emailed Gregory Pratt about my intention to write a blog post about the GoFundMe page controversy. I received an out-of-office reply that suggested I contact another person. As of the evening of April 30, I have not received a non-automated response from either of them.
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