If there was a winner last night, it was the Democratic party’s absolute thirst for blood. This will, no doubt, have been the most anticipated and watched debate of the election season, and viewers got exactly what they wanted in terms of cheap shots, wild haymakers, and deeply-satisfying knockout punches. Every candidate leaves the contest bruised, if not mortally wounded, throwing open the prospect that the next five months will be a grueling slog through an unavoidable process that exposes party disfunction, voter hostilities and glaring candidate weaknesses. Through no accomplishment of his own, President Trump now finds himself in a position better suited to defend his incumbency as the Democratic primary enters a new phase of the campaign, one characterized by open hostilities, shady backroom dealings and psychological warfare used to confuse and manipulate their own voters. …
This week marks the beginning, of sorts, for the 2020 Democratic nomination as former New York City mayor, Michael Bloomberg — the candidate that nobody knew they were waiting for — formally entered the race by meeting the nation’s first filing deadline in Alabama. Strategists and odds makers speculate that the billionaire will be difficult to beat as he combines the big money entitlement of Tom Steyer with the New York arrogance of mayor Bill di Blasio.
On a more serious note, nobody knows what this is about, though party insiders assure me it is every bit as stupid as it appears. Bloomberg, himself, has not laid out a plausible path for the nomination, nor has he made a case for why such an intrusion has suddenly become necessary, saying only that he’s putting all of his money on Super Tuesday and that he doesn’t think the field is adequately situated to take on Trump. …
Cataloguing and ranking the insane, ahistorical and racist statements issued by Republican politicians in defense of the President is normally an arduous task that demands several hours of my time to determine which is the mathematical worst. …
In June, I wrote a story that examined the odds of an electoral tie in the 2020 general election. My central argument was that a wide probability gap exists between scenarios where a Democrat takes back the states of Pennsylvania and Michigan and scenarios where he or she fails to clinch the presidency by winning a third state. Inside that probability gap (between likely pickups Michigan and Pennsylvania and tossups like Wisconsin and Arizona) sits the lone vote of Maine’s 2nd district — a district that went for Trump by 10 points in 2016, but seems to be trending with the rest of the northeast towards low presidential job approval numbers and an enthusiasm deficit for reelecting President Trump. …
Today, we commemorate the anniversary of one of the darkest moments in our nation’s history. On the morning of —
2,977 Americans lost their lives that morning, in what can only be des—
Please stand for the presentation of the colors as the sergeant at arms —
On behalf of a grieving nation —
Thanks for coming, everybody. This is all totally normal.
Joe Biden was in a lot of trouble after the first debate. He looked old, tired, uncomfortable and way too passive to be the favorite to win the nomination. By all accounts (even their own, now), Biden’s performance in June caused a lot of worry within his campaign as the electability argument making up the core of his appeal began to disintegrate and what remained was a frail 76 year-old man who just didn’t have it anymore. “How could he be the one strong enough to stand up to Donald Trump when he can’t even handle Kamala Harris?” …
Responding to rhetoric from Freshman Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s comparing CBP processing facilities to Nazi concentration camps, US Vice President Mike Pence visited the McAllen Border Patrol Station Friday for a first-hand account of the humanitarian crisis happening on our southern border. The stark scene of abysmal living conditions inside halls filled with overcrowded cells is said to have made a profound impression on the Vice President, who abbreviated his tour of the facility because it smelled really, really bad. But nevertheless, he would like to pass on to the American people that the description by Rep. …
Conventional wisdom says that the debates are the first real shakeup of a presidential primary: someone in the margins is bound to break out, someone will say something stupid and get ridiculed for months, the frontrunner with the soft lead will start to see his support crumble as other (more appealing) candidates gain name recognition and get a little traction, the issues will come front and center and voters will finally get to see what this election is really about.
In a field this large, I wonder if any of that is true.
This week’s two-night, twenty-candidate debate has been much anticipated in the political media and pollsters are foaming at the mouth to sort out who will have landed damaging blows on which opponent and who, among the bottom tier of candidates, is ready to have their “breakout moment” and rise from obscurity. But is Joe Biden really that vulnerable to left-wing attacks when the most important thing on the minds of his supporters is who measures up best against Trump? Is it even possible to have a moment when every person on the stage is desperately trying to have a moment? …
It’s probably too early in the election cycle to be doing this sort of thing, but I don’t think I’ve seen anyone in the political media point out how shockingly close we are to an electoral tie in the 2020 election. Some variables are likely to change when the Democrats nominate a candidate, of course, but if the map remains the same and President Trump loses electoral votes in the three places he is most likely to lose, it would lead to a perfect 269–269 split in the electoral college. …
Those looking to honor and celebrate the brave men who stormed the beaches of Normandy to free Europe from Nazi occupation on June 6th 1944 found themselves honoring and celebrating a day early this year as an impromptu ceremony to commemorate the event fit nicely into President Trump’s trip to Great Britain, sandwiched somewhere between the 3AM Twitter roast of a tired old lounge singer and whatever despicable thing he is going to do next.
D-Day, or Operation Overlord, of course, was the American-led offensive that gave the Allies a foothold on the European continent and marked the beginning of the end for Nazism as a state-sponsored political ideology. Planners of the invasion knew the price of assaulting heavily fortified terrain, largely without heavy armor and with minimal air and naval support, would be high. Over two million soldiers took part in the operation and casualty rates among several divisions reached as high as 75%. Because of the heroism these men showed at the Battle of Normandy, D-Day is remembered as a critical moment in the history of liberalism in which 209,000 Allied soldiers laid down their lives so that free people will never again have to surrender their liberty to the vain pursuits of oppressive leaders and power hungry tyrants. …
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