Biden’s comment that he’d refuse to comply with a Congressional subpoena to testify in an impeachment trial…
…is upsetting even the left, because it highlights the lameness of their “obstructing Congress” charge against Trump.
If I were a Democrat, the possibility that Biden might be the nominee would fill me with anxiety. He keeps putting his foot in it, over and over.
Of course, if I were a Democrat, the entire field of 2020 candidates would fill me with anxiety. Most Democrats believe that Trump is so dreadful he’s almost infinitely beatable, and yet – and yet – no one has appeared on the horizon who seems to be a clear winner, or perhaps any sort of winner at all against him.
In my area, the increasingly annoying ads by bullhorn toting billionaire “the sky is falling” and “lets save the world together” Tom Steyer are starting to be as frequently seen as Mike Lindell’s equally annoying ads hawking his “My Pillow.”
Both have worn out their welcome.
Snow on Pine:
If you’re already sick of it, just you wait. We’ve only just begun.
I think the Democrats are suffering a hangover from trying so hard to rig the game for Hillary in 2016. There were only six major candidates who ran and three of them withdrew before the Iowa Caucuses. At least six and possibly eight or more of the Dems who ran this time around probably should have tried it four years ago.
If that had happened, it would have both cleared out some of the deadwood this time, giving some of these candidates a chance to breathe, and maybe one of two would be trying it again with a lot more experience and stature.
Mike
D in Democrat stands for Dreck.
This evening newsorgs (as well as P. Mirengoff at Powerline) are reporting that Biden says he would take a Republican running mate in 2020, but he just can’t think of any particular worthy offhand. Eeeeeefff. This guy is crackers. Fit to have a fit, perhaps, but not to clutter up a Presidential nomination race.
Pass the popcorn…
Biden’s being the frontrunner emphasizes what little Democrats have this time.
Biden and Warren.
With Hillary as UN Ambassador and Obama on the Supreme Court.
Snow on Pine
In my area, the increasingly annoying ads…
As I don’t watch TV, I am spared the ads. I am waiting with bated breath for the political campaigns’ robocalls. One more message to delete from my machine. It seemed to me that there were fewer political robocalls in 2016 compared to 2012.
I would have thought that Slow Joe, a.k.a. The Plagiarist, was deleted from the list of Presidential candidates by his 1988 campaign. On the other hand, Slow Joe is good for putting his foot in his mouth several times a week, so he adds to the entertainment.
That Slow Joe is in the lead is an indication of the low quality of the Democrat candidates. The Demo list must have been made up by a satirist. Liawatha? Honest Injun’? Commie Bernie, who told us that Cubans have “almost a religious affection” for Fearless Fidel- at least that’s what his translators reported to Bernie- or who told us that Fidel’s island represents a “revolution in human values.” Yes, the New Soviet Man has arisen in Cuba. Or so Bernie told us.
A satirist couldn’t have come up with a more absurd list of candidates. Yet the Demos could win.
Latest Zogby Poll: “Trump jumps to 50% approval, beating Biden, Sanders, Bloomberg, Warren”
Zogby Analytics reports; “Trump job approval among millennials 50%; 48% disapprove; A majority of voters want to support 2nd amendment when Hollywood demands gun control”
Neo–I really wonder if fielding a barrage of extremely annoying, endlessly repeated TV commercials and robo calls won’t, in the end, persuade a lot of those voters who are the targets of these assaults to deliberately not vote for whichever candidates these ads tout.
P.S.–the most effective political ad I’ve seen to date is the poster of a sitting President Trump pointing out at the viewer with the words,
“In reality they’re not coming for me, they’re coming for you. I’m just in the way.”
You’d think a Dem Governor or two would jump into such a weak field, or maybe not since they live much closer to reality than Congress critters and see what’s coming at them.
Slow Joe is not so slow. He and his son have acquired hundreds of millions from Ukraine, China,and who knows where. Success!
In this, and a lot of other ways, the Democratic Party has a coherency problem. The Republicans need to exploit that problem wisely.
External events, given the low quality of the Democrats’ opposition, may be the only thing that could endanger Trump’s reelection. A foreign conflict might enhance his standing, but an economic downturn or just a financial downturn could hurt. I think we’re going to get the latter of those, myself, although it is possible that its timing will not be destructive to his election chances next fall. Here are some thoughts from an investment manager highly regarded for his above-average performance, who is also a rare case of someone who can make interesting points with a minimum of jargon — Jeffrey Gundlach of Double Line Capital.
Short take on stock markets (3 mins): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFbocdNCWVc
Longer interview this month (45 minutes, first 30 esp interesting IMO): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QQf8JUC5qI
I’m so old I remember back in early 2016 when the d’s wanted President Trump to be the Republican nominee because “… he’s almost infinitely beatable.”
I’m also so old I can’t remember how well that worked out for them. 🙂
External events
Mike Doran, @doranimated: Qassem Solemani aims to provide just such “external events”.
There’s a parallel here to the situation in the South in the Sixties, when the Democrats alienated the voters of what had been the “Solid South”, then complained bitterly when the Republicans picked up those votes.
To win, they need moderate, sensible candidates; but moderate sensible candidates can’t win the support of the current Democratic Party.
The Dems have become prisoners of their own narrative. To win, they need the votes of the same people they’ve been demonizing for years. To do that, they need to face the fact that they’ve miscalculated – which the party leaders are incapable of doing (because if they did, they wouldn’t remain the party leaders).
As usual, the left plays its hand too early… (ergo revolution not evolution)
They just cant control themselves and once the gold is on the table, the factions each want to get the lions share claiming they did the most.
This was always the problem of the united fronts movements where they link up small groups of which none have weight into one mass that does… after which every one of the small masses want a seat at the collective table
right now, they are having a dog of a time claiming they are not socialists (in Florida) and trying to blame trump as a distraction to the Cuban, Venezuelan etc communities.
the BEST we can hope for is the common man gets up and destroys their base at the voting booths… a new kind of waking up, to what success brings… all these years of anemic growth, huge expenditures (redistributing wealth to other countries) and their taking advantage of their political positions to scheme to cash without legal issues either has to stop, or everyone can give up now…
if the US falls, all fall…
“if the US falls, all fall…”
There are factions of the current Democrat party for which that is a feature, not a bug.
It’s almost unbelievable to me than any Dems would admit to supporting Biden — but then I think of the alternatives.
Plus, Biden as Obama’s VP … tho Warren seems to be who Obama is rooting for, now.
Trump is already spending more than most Dems before 2008 even promised, so the Reps have made Dems promise even more, while Venezuela sinks into poverty thanks to Democratic Socialism. To normal conservatives, this increasing US National Debt is a real problem. I don’t like it.
But I like losing, less, and the elites have been indoctrinated from Dem colleges that any who oppose gov’t spending oppose the “good things” the politicians promise to spend the money on.
When the good thing is a tax cut, so the deficit increases because wealth creators keep more of the wealth created, they are often right. Better a tax cut, with increased investment and consumption by those who make the money. A deficit based on tax cuts at least comes closer to maximizing economic production and growth.
Paul Ryan DID succeed, with Trump, in getting big tax cuts, which are a huge part of the Trump boom.
Oh wait, this was about impeachment? Or evidence? I’m waiting waiting for years for guilty Dems to get indicted. Including Hillary, but especially McCabe & Comey & the crooked cops. No excitement without indictments.
while Venezuela sinks into poverty thanks to Democratic Socialism.
Venezuela hasn’t been democratic anything in 20 years. It’s been a political machine state that’s grown increasingly gangsterish over time.
You’d think a Dem Governor or two would jump into such a weak field, or maybe not since they live much closer to reality than Congress critters and see what’s coming at them.
A number of them did. The Democratic electorate wasn’t the least bit interested. I suppose it’s conceivable that Bloomberg or Yang might score a breakthrough. So far, their interest in executive experience has been limited to Bernie and Booty-gig. If I’m not mistaken, Bernie performed quite well as Mayor of Burlington. Booty-gig’s tenure in South Bend was notable for rising crime rates.
For Democrats the presidential template is JFK — handsome, witty, smart, charming, charismatic, youngish, in tune with the times and conveying a sense of destiny. Bill Clinton and Obama were decent heirs to JFK.
Neither Hillary in 2016 nor the current clown car come close to the JFK imprint. Democrats will vote for whomever over Trump, but their hearts won’t be going pitter-pat.
handsome, witty, smart, charming, charismatic, in tune with the times and conveying a sense of destiny. Bill Clinton and Obama were decent heirs to JFK.
None of these three were ‘charismatic’ except according to a debased use of the term. Obama is not handsome. Kennedy had and Obama has a degree of general intelligence you expect of someone of the professional-managerial stratum, Clinton somewhat more. What’s interesting is that any trace of it in their work life outside of electoral politics is difficult to discern. Kennedy undertook p/t and seasonal work, then had several years in the military, then landed a position as a wire service reporter (which he held for < a year), then ran for public office at age 29. He missed 1/3d of the roll-call votes during his first six years in Congress. Clinton put in three years on the faculty of the law school at the University of Arkansas. Obama's dilettantishness is well-known. A generation ago, Thomas Sowell remarked that the Anointed confound intelligence and expertise, then go on to confound articulateness and intelligence. Same deal here.
Art Deco: Oh, blah, blah, blah. I said for Democrats, not for Art Deco.
Biden is too damn dumb to be President. He was in the bottom 10% of his class at Syracuse Law and a “C” student in undergrad.
Regarding JFK :
Huxley is right, with the qualification that the Democrat’s “template” isn’t the historical JFK, who advocated tax cuts, boosted the military, supported Israel, and aggressively opposed Communism (and colluded in the overthrow of an allied government in S. Vietnam).
The template is the JFK created by the party’s spin doctors, who supported strong Civil Rights laws (which were actually passed by Johnson), and wanted to withdraw from Vietnam (which actually happened under Nixon).
Modern Democrats want to re-elect the fictional Kennedy; they’d hate the real one.
Hey! Guess who’s “The Resistance” now!
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-50945597
Time to reconstitute the “International Resistance”….
Art Deco on December 31, 2019 at 2:18 pm said:
…A generation ago, Thomas Sowell remarked that the Anointed confound intelligence and expertise, then go on to confound articulateness and intelligence. Same deal here.
* * *
Professor Sowell, sadly, did not become the public voice of either the Democrats or the Republicans, or even the black conservatives.
However, perhaps some of his wisdom has, over time, seeped into the populace’s subconscious via his writings and teaching.
I took a look at his Wikipedia entry, which is refreshingly positive for a conservative’s bio (he calls himself more of a libertarian), although the editing notes complain that its “neutrality is disputed.”
Some excerpts, which I think go a long way to explain his rational = realistic) approach to economics and society:
He actually had jobs in real life before becoming a cloistered academic.
I would support either amendments or statutes requiring that all faculty (after some consideration, not limited just to university; even elementary teachers are nuts these days) and elected officials must have a minimum of 5 years in non-academic non-governmental employment before hiring or election.
A conservative (or libertarian) is a liberal mugged by reality.
No change there.
Opponent of affirmative action then and now, for good reason; note that his admission to Harvard predated the institutionalization of AA.
But college admissions exams are so biased …..
Well, I can see why the Left didn’t like him (good thing his career predated Twitter mobbing, cancelling, and violent protests against speakers), but he should have been featured more prominently on the Right — I don’t remember even knowing about him prior to becoming a blog junkie in 2007, and I was a political science major with a macroeconomics specialty in the 1970s (admittedly at UT Austin; not a bastion of conservative thought, but not entirely one-sided at the time).