Tag Archives: kamala-harris

Here’s why Trump will win – it’s pretty simple

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Political pundits have too much data, and they overanalyze it. There’s a lot of data available, a lot of pundits to analyze it, and a lot of clicks to corral.

But the disengaged American middle doesn’t pay attention to nuances like last month’s job figures or the latest inflation report. They couldn’t find South America on a map even if you showed them where North America is.

To the American middle, abortions are something other people get – and they’re usually a different kind of people. Less than a quarter of Americans are biologically eligible for an abortion, and I’m guessing that more of them are trying to start a pregnancy than end one.

In any event, the votes of those people who are fixated on terminating pregnancies are not up for grabs. They’ll always vote for Democrats.

More important to the undecided American middle is the personality of the candidates. Many candidly admit this. They choose candidates based on whether they like them personally. That category of voters is the worst.

“Trump is not as nice as me,” they sniff self-satisfyingly to themselves. It’s like they’re voting for Homecoming Queen and the ballot reads something like:

  • __Donald J. Trump
  • __You

So, put aside the Nate Silvers of the world (though Nate is very good), their hard drives of mostly accurate data, their algorithms, and their punditry. Here are the basic reasons why Trump will win.

He’s not Joe Biden, and Kamala is

As the sitting Vice President, Kamala is tied to Joe Biden. (Don’t try to picture that.) She’s done nothing to untie herself, for fear of alienating her hard-left base who thought Biden was just swell – in his policies if not his persona.

The only time in modern history that a sitting Vice President ascended to the Presidency was when George H. W. Bush did it after the Presidency of Ronald Reagan.

Joe Biden is no Ronald Reagan, and Kamala Harris is no George H. W. Bush.

Reagan left office with an approval rating at 63%. Biden’s has been in the 30s. (In a final humiliation, it’s now crept up to 40% as people have decided to approve of him going away.)

Bush had been a naval aviator, war hero, Yale graduate, Ambassador to the United Nations, and Director of the then-respected Central Intelligence Agency. Kamala has been . . . not.

Trump is almost a Cool Kid

Trump is much more “popular” in comparison to his opponent than he was in both 2020 and 2016. He still won’t win that Homecoming Queen crown, and people who decided long ago that they hate him for his vulgarity, his hair, and his tendency to say things in public that Bill Clinton did in private, are not likely to change their minds. But the disengaged American middle is seeing a more likeable guy than before.

Surviving endless “lawfare” and two assassination attempts doesn’t hurt him either.  

The Border

The left almost succeeded in branding Americans who wanted American borders as “racist.”

But they didn’t quite succeed. The indefensible chaos at our undefended border spreading to our police-defunded cities defies common sense.

Indeed, it goes beyond nonsense. Americans – including and perhaps especially the disengaged middle – see this as pure insanity.

Blacks don’t see Kamala as Black

Let me preface the following discussion with stating that I discuss “Blackness” only because the leftists have demanded that we not be colorblind. So here goes.

Black America is uninspired by Kamala, and it shows in both the polls and in early voting. This is despite her promises to send them free money.

As for why she’s unable to buy the Black vote, a comparison is instructive.

Barack Obama was our first Black president (unless you count aforementioned Bill Clinton). Obama was actually born of a white woman, and his private school upbringing in Hawaii was not exactly life in the ghetto.

But he was married to a woman who was clearly Black and he himself looked pretty Black. He had hair that was both black and Black.

Kamala, too, was born of a mother who is not Black (she is Asian Indian) and grew up in a relatively privileged setting (both Kamala’s parents were professionals).

But unlike Obama, she doesn’t really look Black. Her skin tone is lighter than Obama’s. Her hair is black but not Black. She has not perfected the Black accent that flowed from Obama when he condescended to audiences that were Black.

And here’s Kamala’s biggest liability in being Black. She’s married to a lily-white corporate lawyer who had a fling with his nanny in his previous marriage.

From Detroit to Baltimore to Chicago to East St. Louis, they shrieked:

“Wait a minute! Who has a nanny ?!?!?”  

Sorry, Democrats. Blacks think black Kamala ain’t Black.

Prices are much higher

Prices are nearly a third higher than when Biden took office. People don’t need to wade through the dense detritus of Politico or RealClearPolitics to know that. They’re reminded of it several times a week when they go to the grocery store.

The fact that inflation has almost returned to normal levels around 2-3% a year does not resonate with many people. In fact, many disbelieve those figures because they erroneously believe that declining inflation must mean declining prices.

There you have it. I’m guessing the election will be called for Trump by Wednesday morning.

Bonus prediction: Republicans will pick up two to four seats to re-take the Senate. The eminent Justice Clarence Thomas will retire from the Supreme Court next year to enable Trump and the Republican Senate to replace him.

That won’t change the political composition of the Court much, since Justice Thomas is a conservative. But the follow-up departure of Justice Sonia Sotomayor will.

This has been corrected to make clear that the fling with the nanny was when Kamala’s husband was married to his first wife, not to Kamala.

Staffers quit and 200,000 subscribers cancel after WaPo says its role is to report the news

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Official slogan of The Washington Post

The venerable Washington Post may or may not have been a force for good, but it certainly was great.

They brought down Richard Nixon for crimes that were only modest by today’s inflated standards but serious at the time. They helped lose the Vietnam War – a war that was criminal, or just, depending on your view of history, but the losing of which was certainly a tragedy for the conquered South Vietnamese and most of the rest of the world.

They won the Pulitzer Prize 76 times, and many of those times were back when the Prize rewarded true excellence.

They were everywhere. Few newspapers today bear the expense of foreign bureaus; the Post still has a couple dozen.

For most of their century-and-a-half of existence, they tried to report the news, and they succeeded. It’s certainly true that toward the end of the 20th century they focused on news that made Democrats look good and Republicans look bad (such as the Watergate story) but, still, it was news. It was factual. It was true. It was important.

Given their mission to report facts, the Post generally refused to endorse particular political candidates. Individual opinion columnists of course expressed their support for candidates of their choosing, but the Board of Editors did not endorse those candidates, at least not explicitly.

Only relatively recently, in 1976, did they begin routine endorsements. At that time, they were at the height of their power and could afford whatever ill will their endorsements generated among some readers and staff.

Their endorsements were almost always of Democrats: Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, John Kerry, and so on. It was predictable.

There are several problems with predictable endorsements. The first is that they have no persuasive power. If the Post always endorses the Democrat, then who is going to be persuaded by their endorsement of the Democrat this time?

The second problem is that endorsements predictably favoring one political party risk the reputation of the newspaper as an objective source of news. Readers surmise that the people working at the newspaper are members of that political party. If everyone at the newspaper is of one political party, are they really able to see and report the news objectively?

The third problem – related to the second – is that being predictably in favor of one political party tends to forfeit readers who favor the other political party. This problem has become more acute lately, as the internet has fragmented consumers of news into political parties and interest groups. Consumers today tend to get their news from sites that spin it the way they like, and avoid getting their news from sites that don’t.

That’s a flaw in consumerism, but it’s the reality of human nature.

That means a newspaper like the Post forfeits much of its Republican readers by getting a reputation for being a Democrat newspaper.

Finally, in view of all those reasons, one-sided endorsements are at cross purposes with professional journalism. Real journalists (as opposed to opinion hacks like me) simply report; they don’t opine.

This year, the Post announced that it is “going back to its roots” (their phrase) by not making an endorsement in the presidential election. It’s not clear whether their news page, too, will become more balanced, but owner Jeff Bezos made noises in that direction.

Maybe Bezos is making his decision on the basis of money, not ethics. But I’ll still take it. The two are usually not at odds.

Meanwhile, many Post staffers have quit in protest (good luck to them in finding a newspaper job) and over 200,000 subscribers have canceled. That fact tells a lot about what those quitters and cancelers think a newspaper’s role should be.

They think a newspaper’s role should be to tell subscribers which political opinion is “right.” More specifically, the newspaper should tell people that the “right” opinion is the Democrat one.

What’s curious, however, is that subscribers who pay for the Post are nearly always Democrats already, because they like the Democrat spin that they see at the Post. Therefore, the Post endorsements have no effective purpose.

Moreover, the quitters and cancelers at the Post know that. They know that they’re preaching to the choir (though they certainly would not use that particular analogy).

So why do they do it? Why do the Post quitters and cancelers insist on converting hard-core Democrats into . . .  hard-core Democrats?  

The answer is that they aren’t truly trying to convert anyone. Rather, they’re just flying their Democrat flag. It’s their little virtue-signaling routine.

That’s nice. But it’s not journalism.

Whatever Bezos’ motives, let’s hope he, and the owner of the LA Times who similarly refused to make an endorsement this year, start a trend away from political activism and back to professional journalism.

In that effort, it wouldn’t hurt to hire a few Republicans for a change.

Democrat headlines suggest panic

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As Kamala continues her fall free-fall, the Democrats fear the worst. They fear that Kamala, like her predecessor and boss, has been found out. And the American people don’t like what they found out.

The people have found out that Kamala has always advocated an open border, is apparently ambivalent (at best) about Israel defending itself, wants taxpayer-funded “gender correction” surgery for male convicts so that women in female prisons can “enjoy” their company, and wants to double the capital gains tax.

In a nutshell, the Democrats fear that Kamala has been found out to be a hard-left socialist. Indeed, she has a voting record to the left of Bernie Sanders.

The last point bears repeating because it encapsulates everything else: Kamala has a voting record to the left of self-described, long-time socialist Bernie Sanders.

In view of these belated revelations, the Democrats have become increasingly shrill in their shrieks. Today’s example is, “We Have Every Right To Demand Our Men Vote For Kamala Harris,” by Michelle Obama.

Hmm, now we know who makes the demands in the Obama household. But I won’t go there.

Of more interest than the Obamas’ personal life is how mail-in voting has dramatically increased the coercive power of demanding people. That’s because mail-in ballots are not necessarily confidential.

In traditional voting, the voting booth is generally a one-person affair. Nobody else – nobody – knows how you voted, unless you tell them (and you could always fib, to preserve the peace). But with mail-in voting, the “demander” of a household can fill out the ballot, demand that the demandee sign it (or simply forge the demandee’s signature), and mail it in.

I won’t accuse Michelle of advocating that sort of fraud. But even short of telling Democrats to engage in fraud, she is certainly telling Democrats to “demand” that people sharing the same household, over whom a demanding Democrat has influence or even raw power, such as a battered spouse or an elderly parent, vote for the Democratic candidate.

If such actions involved a different political party, they could be characterized as a threat to democracy.

Speaking of demands, next up in the shrieks from the left is a left-wing British newspaper called The Guardian which announced in an editorial that “Americans who believe in democracy have no choice but to vote for Harris.” When your foreign guardians say you have “no choice” then I suppose you’d better do what they say.

Another recent headline from this same foreign newspaper informs us that “There’s Nothing Wrong With Foreign Volunteers Working for Harris.” (This one seems to have been buried by The Guardian, but the link can still be found at Real Clear Politics.)

It’s true that there’s nothing illegal about foreign “volunteers” working for the Kamala campaign, and there’s nothing illegal about a leftist foreign newspaper defending that practice. But whether it’s right or wrong is a matter of ethics and American politics. A foreign left-wing newspaper has no standing or moral authority on the subject.  

Back to the Democrats’ parade of horribles. Take a look at “Trump Is A Fascist And A ‘Clear And Present Danger’ To This Country,” by Hillary Clinton.

Ah yes, the allegation that Trump is a fascist, a Hitler, a Mussolini, a Stalin, a Pol Pot, a Mao, and a poo-poo breath. Let’s take those in order.

First, “fascism.” That word has lost its meaning, if it ever had one. Today, it’s simply the left engaging in name-calling against the right. One component of “fascism” that people generally agree on, however, is that it entails government control over the economy and censoring speech that is critical of the regime.

Compare the extent to which Joe Biden and Donald Trump, respectively, sought government control over the economy and over people’s free speech in their presidential administrations, and you will realize the extent to which Democrat allegations of Trump’s supposed “fascism” are pure projection.

On to Hitler. Lost or buried by history is that “Nazi” stood for National Socialist German Workers’ Party. It’s doubly ironic that socialist Democrats who want to eradicate the Jewish state of Israel (or let others do the dirty work of eradication) accuse Trump – a stout defender of Israel and a man with close Jewish relatives – of being something like the monster who sought to exterminate the Jews under the flag of . . . socialism.

Mussolini? A two-bit Hitler tag-along who died at the end of a rope wielded by his own people. To the extent he had any political principles, they were as a labor union leader – another leftist.

Stalin? Pol Pot? Mao? Weren’t they leftists?

We can’t leave Hillary’s rant without noting her warning that Trump is a “clear and present danger.” Hillary might not recall that this person she warns is a “clear and present danger” has already been the target of at least two assassination attempts by people who viewed him as . . . a clear and present danger. Or maybe she does recall that.

Poo-poo breath? That one, I made up. I’m tempted to admit that Trump is a poo-poo breath, but I’ve actually changed my opinion of him over the years. He seems happy. Moreover, his breath may or may not be good but he’s a breath of fresh air in the fetid fever swamps of Washington DC.

Trump these days seems truly interested in people. Working the frier for hours at McDonalds seemed to make him happy, fun and – dare I say it? – full of Joy.

Maybe the experience of surviving two assassination attempts gives a person that.

I can’t quite imagine Hitler or Pol Pot working the frier at McDonalds and joking around with the customers and staff. For that matter, I can’t imagine that from Kamala – whose similar portrayals are all staged with actors and whose only connection to McDonalds is that she apparently lied about working there.

Then we have Kamala’s putative, putrid boss mumbling “lock him up.” Perhaps on Joe’s mind is the probable prison term to which his son will be sentenced for criminal felonies. The only offense for which he wants to lock up Trump is apparently the “offense” of ousting the Democrats.

Trump has beaten every single one of the Democrat’s lawfare schemes. But the “offense” of ousting the Democrats is one to which he will gladly plead guilty.

The national nightmare of wokeism, DEI, censorship, incompetence, disguised and undisguised socialism, open borders, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris is nearly over. As Ronald Reagan proclaimed, it’s almost morning in America.

Is it too late in the game for the Democrats to replace their substitution?

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Poster on Philly streetcorner falsely suggesting that the Eagles have endorsed Kamala Harris

Ordinary people who don’t closely follow the game of politics never knew that Kamala Harris runs only to the left. As a Senator, she ran further to the left than Bernie Sanders, according to non-partisan statistics.

She wanted an unprotected border. She proposed taxpayer-funded “gender affirmation” surgery for male convicts so that they could play in women’s prisons. She favored abortions performed anytime, anywhere, and by anyone, up to at least birth. She rooted for the Philadelphia Eagles to win the World Series (OK, I make up that last one.)

There’s more, much more, but you get the drift. Until recently, most Americans knew none of Kamala’s playbook.

What they did know was her laugh, and they didn’t like it. Back in 2020, that annoying laugh sacked her from the Democratic primaries before making a single First Down or winning a single delegate.

That’s important. It was not Kamala’s left-of-Bernie policy positions that blitzed her out of 2020 campaign. Those left-of-Bernie policies were, and are, within the accepted playbook of today’s Democratic Party, and well within the accepted playbook of the rabid fans who comprise Democratic primary voters.

Indeed, it was Bernie himself who was favored to win those 2020 primaries until the owners of the Democratic Party decided he was un-coachable and unelectable. But that’s a column for another day.

If only the rabid Democratic primary fans in 2020 had gotten past Kamala’s annoying laugh, and witnessed her whacky left-of-Bernie circus catches (but mostly drops) they’d have loved her!

Fast forward to this year’s season. Kamala missed the preseason, and missed the regular season too, but here she is in the playoffs. The Finals even. It’s all courtesy of a second Democratic trick play that dumped the Democrat’s hard-left, but unplayable, starting quarterback out of the lineup, out of the stadium, and onto the street corner like an empty 81-year-old beer bottle.  

Note that in a classic case of psychological projection, or maybe just dishonest hypocrisy, it’s the Democrats who chant that Republicans are a “threat to democracy” even as the Democrats themselves disregard the preferences of their own Democratic fans in both 2020 and 2024.

Anyway, here we are with Kamala as the Democratic starter. She . . . could . . . go . . . all . . . the . . . wayyyy!

Not.

I have to admit that she’s a more attractive player after finally securing that fumbling laugh, mostly.

As for her policies that always ran to the left, she says she’s changed them – now that she has to appeal to a broader group of fans in the general election than the hard-left fans in Democratic primaries. She suggests that she runs up the middle now, sort of. She assures us, however, that she hasn’t changed her “values.”

She avoids specifying either the changed policies or the unchanged values. They’re well-kept secrets.

Like all secrets, however, they have a way of leaking out, or, in Kamala’s case, blurting out. Here’s an interview in a friendly forum:

Question: “Would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?”

Kamala: “There is not a thing that comes to mind.”

The rightwing media – all three of us – had a field day with that answer.

A few hours later, another friendly interviewer gave her a chance to improve on the words and substance of that botched play. The interviewer posed the same question about how her policies differed from Biden’s policies. She refused to backtrack from her answer earlier in the day, and this time refused to even take the ball. She instead said, “I’m not Joe Biden,” followed by a word salad of platitudes.

Even the liberal media saw it as a dodge.  

Granted, there was some shiftiness in saying, “I’m not Joe Biden.” Kamala’s game has amounted to shouting “I’M NOT TRUMP” but also whispering “I’m not Biden either.” It goes something like this:

I’M NOT TRUMP!

I’m not Biden, either.

I’M NOT TRUMP!

I’m not Biden either.

You get the idea.

OK, the people knew she was not Trump. Who is? And they knew she was not Biden. (I’ve seen the two of them together. It’s not a pretty sight.)

What the people didn’t know, for sure, was whether her policies – her plays – are any different from Biden’s. In her second interview on the subject, she never answered that question when it was put directly to her a second time; she simply ran out the clock.

Of course, it’s a bit difficult for her to say credibly that her plays are different than Biden’s, given that they played together for three and a half years and she boasts that she was the last person on the field with him on each major play. (Maybe not that away game in Afghanistan, or the one in Gaza. Or the one in Ukraine. Or the one at the Mexican border.)

Moreover, she’s reluctant to alienate her hard-left fans by stating that her policies differ from those of her hard-left teammate and boss.

To summarize: Kamala’s plays as a Senator ran left-of-Bernie. In an interview last week, she said no differences come to mind between her plays and Biden’s hard-left plays. And in a subsequent interview, she refused to give a single example of any such differences. Her favorite play is Student Body Left, every single time.

The American people have seen those hard-left Biden/Kamala/Bernie plays. They’ve seen them fail. They want new a new playbook, new play-calling, and a new play-maker.

Kamala knows this, and that’s why she has refused to open her playbook – it’s the same as Biden’s failed playbook. Now, at last, the American people know it too. And so, Kamala is falling faster than a third-string quarterback in the sights of Ray Lewis.

To the extent he comprehends what is happening, that dethroned, deposed, disposed of, soon-to-be-departed Joe Biden must be smiling in his box seat. Or his beach lounger.  

Kamala is not Biden and she’s not Trump, but she’s still probably Harris

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I predicted Trump would win the 2016 election. On the day of the election, the betting odds on that were 12%. Had I been a betting man, I’d have made YUGE money.  

In 2020, I again predicted Trump would win. On the day of that election, the odds of that happening were 35%.

Trump lost that time, but, given the odds, I would not have lost nearly as much as I would have made four years earlier in 2016. I’d still be way ahead.

My point is that even though I missed the call in 2020, nailing the near-impossible call back in 2016 makes me a frigging prophet.

So, listen to me. Trump will win this year.

Kamala’s campaign had a strategy from the outset. Before talking about it, bear in mind that the “outset” for her was not in 2022 or even 2023 when other Democratic candidates were slogging through the snows of Iowa to visit rural coffee shops and giving interviews to local radio schmucks in New Hampshire and North Carolina.

No, the “outset” for Kamala was a couple of weeks before the Democratic convention last summer when nameless party poohbahs snatched her out of the obscurity of a failed Vice Presidency in the service of a frail, failed Presidency.

They installed her as the Democratic candidate, even though she has never won a single primary delegate, despite – or because of – her best efforts. (By the way, one might wonder exactly what’s in it for the poohbahs.)

Anyway, here’s their strategy. It’s to rest on the fact that (1) Kamala is not that frail, failed President and (2) she’s not Trump either.

That has been almost enough. But not quite.

Although they’ve succeeded in convincing voters that Kamala is not Biden and not Trump, they’ve failed to convince them that she’s not Harris.

They did try. Kamala disavowed her earlier open border policy, sort of. She retracted her position that guns owned by people not named Kamala should be confiscated, kind of. She no longer favors defunding the police, apparently. She seems not to think Joe Biden is sharp as a tack, anymore. She has not advocated taxpayer funding for “gender affirmation” surgery for rapists so they can move into women’s prisons, lately. She doesn’t advocate men competing in women’s sports, for now.

It’s a little hard to state Kamala’s current position on these things definitively. That’s because she herself does not state her position on these things definitively.

She reminds me of the lawyer who is asked “What is two plus two?” The lawyer answers “What do you want it to be?”

Kamala is more shrewd than that lawyer, however. She simply refuses to take the question. She refused all summer to sit for interviews or stand for press conferences after the previous two years when she had no campaign appearances at all because she ostensibly was not campaigning.

Once she did start campaigning in the wake of the poohbah coup, years after everyone else started, she campaigned not with press conferences or position papers or interviews – even with friendly interviewers – and pretended not to hear questions shouted to her. She instead campaigned on “Joy.”

There’s something disconcerting about anonymous poohbahs pulling a behind-the-scenes palace coup, installing a figurehead of their choosing, and instructing her not to give interviews but instead to campaign on “Joy.”

To the poohbahs’ credit, Kamala is definite about a few things. For example, she’s definite that she favors peace in the Mideast.

To their discredit, however, she’s not very definite about how to achieve it. Defeating the bad guys is evidently not on the table. In fact, identifying them is not even on the table.

All this joyous indefiniteness worked for a while. Despite Kamala’s absence at interviews and press conferences and her missing position papers, voters still believed she was definitely not Biden and definitely not Trump.

But as noted, they came to believe she might still be Harris.

As Kamala’s polling numbers have slipped, the poohbahs have evidently finally decided in desperation to put her in front of the media to state definitively that she’s not only not Biden and not only not Trump, but also not Harris.

The voters are saying, “OK, maybe. But then just exactly who are you?”