If Biden does end up president, thankfully there’s a limit on how much damage he can do
And the winner of the 2020 election is…. (drumroll)… Amy Coney Barrett.
With such a pronouncement, I’m guessing there are a lot of quizzical looks in response. Barrett, who was sworn-in to the Supreme Court just weeks ago, did not appear on any ballot on Tuesday. But if you listened to the pollsters and establishment media pundits recently, Amy’s nomination and confirmation alone was supposed to supply the impetus for Democrats to sweep away several Republican senate incumbents, take over control of the upper chamber and usher in a completely new era of liberal dominance under the guiding influence of “President” Joe Biden and his trusty cackling sidekick, Kamala Harris.
Only it didn’t happen that way this week. Although the respective authorities are still counting ballots in certain states (at least in Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania), the presidential race looks to be leaning blue (by fraud, but that’s another story). The news isn’t all good in Democrat-land, however, as the senate should stay red. And if there isn’t a color change in the world’s oldest deliberative body (a nickname for the dysfunctional senate, which doesn’t really work any longer), Biden, crusty and nasty Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the rest of their merry band of leftist non-conformists won’t be carving up the Constitution like they’d anticipated.
Which makes Amy Coney Barrett a clear winner this week, since her calm confidence, sterling intellect and steely determination certainly contributed to the GOP’s success in senate races. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who himself convincingly won his own Kentucky reelection battle, gambled that Barrett would help party candidates. And he was right.
Now what, Joe? In a piece titled, “Biden looks screwed even if he wins,” Ryan Lizza wrote at Politico, “Biden lost ground with Black voters and Latinos, though he gained some ground with white voters. Realignments are generally built around concrete ideas and specific policy platforms. But this campaign was always a referendum on Trump, rather than an affirmative endorsement of Biden and his agenda. That dynamic already cut against Biden claiming a strong positive mandate. He needed a crushing rejection of Trump to strengthen his case.
“He also needed the Senate.
“But Democrats may fail to realize widespread predictions of re-taking the chamber. That would mean whoever prevails in the presidential race, Mitch McConnell might remain in charge of the upper chamber, retaining his role as arguably the most consequential politician in Washington. In that case Biden would be the first president in 32 years to come into office without control of Congress, another dynamic that would weaken claims of a mandate.”
Mandate? What mandate? We don’t need no stinking mandate!
Well, Joe, yes, you do need some sort of a mandate -- and, as Lizza pointed out, a semblance of congressional backup for your governing schemes. I’ve spent months arguing that Biden had no such agenda and even his media friends (like Lizza and Politico) admit that the election was all about Trump. But it’s a bit more than that even. The election was about congressional control as well, and yes, Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination. ACB as she’s more commonly referred to these days, solidified a conservative, originalist hold on the Supreme Court for the first time in forever.
It’s something that can’t be taken away by shady vote shenanigans in the upper Midwest. I hope Democrats see Barrett’s attractive face in their nightmares, because their scare tactics didn’t work. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP, or Wuhan, if you prefer) virus-fostered Democrat-tsunami didn’t materialize. If anything, the national Democrat effort was more like a ripple on a mill pond than a huge swell. Didn’t everyone hate Trump after all?
Voters liked Barrett and seemingly rewarded Republicans for going ahead with her nomination. Who could forget bitter loser Minority Leader “Chucky” Schumer forecasting that McConnell and Republicans would pay for acting on their congressional duty so close to a national election? It didn’t happen. And if anything, the fact that millions of votes (a good majority of which likely went to Biden) were mailed-in prior to ACB’s confirmation hearings might have cost Trump critical support. It’s more than plausible, isn’t it?
At the outset here, I am in no way conceding the presidential race. President Trump has a caravan full of pretty smart people who swear that the mail-in balloting aspect of the race has produced a lot of questionable outcomes, and the matter will be addressed by the powers-that-be on both sides. But if history is a precedent, Trump’s got an uphill climb to secure the necessary 270 Electoral Votes, meaning the nation might have just elected itself its oldest president ever when he takes office in January.
Joe Biden isn’t a young 78-year-old either. I wouldn’t put it past Democrats to commission a search party down in Florida to dredge up the legend of Ponce de León and the Fountain of Youth, hoping there’s something in the spring to rejuvenate the man’s rapidly slipping intellect. But then again, the residents of Florida weren’t wild about Biden the candidate, so who’s to say they’d even permit the nude swimming dolt to wander into the water to take a dip?
Biden has never held an executive position in his life. True, he was vice president for eight years, but does anyone seriously believe the “Big O” gave real responsibilities to the man who had described him as a “clean and articulate African-American”? Heck no. Obama deployed Biden as a prop to attract white blue-collar support (now safely in Trump’s orbit) so he could win the presidency. Hillary Clinton called them “deplorables,” but Obama used them as chumps.
Therefore, Biden won’t have a clue what he’s doing and there’s no one on Capitol Hill waiting to rescue him. Can’t you picture someone having to guide the idiot around the White House, with the new president saying stupid things like, “Did Jack Kennedy really sleep in that bed?” “Where’s the movie theater?” “Do you have a record player handy?” “What time is lunch?”
Reality will hit home soon enough. And all of Biden’s accumulated senate experience won’t mean squat with Mitch McConnell watching his every move. Let the fool try to slip the Green New Deal and a permanent ban on fossil fuel exploration past the unfriendly senate majority. And what about investigations into the corrupt Biden family? They can run but they can’t hide, especially when Hunter Biden’s laptop is the world’s greatest evidentiary prop.
Maybe Lizza is right -- even if Biden wins the vote count, he’s screwed.
Trump and McConnell made the right call to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg with ACB
Political scientists and pundits will debate for a long time whether Amy Coney Barrett’s late-in-the-season appointment had an influence on the 2020 senate races, but here’s thinking it did. ACB definitely helped South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham overcome a hundred million bucks’ worth of opposition to his reelection. And Iowa Senator Joni Ernst would seemingly have gained strength from backing Trump on the Supreme Court fight as well.
The Republican incumbents who lost on Tuesday -- Colorado Senator Cory Gardner and two-time appointee Arizona Senator Martha McSally -- both enthusiastically backed Barrett’s appointment. Would either have done better in their respective states by heeding “Chucky” Schumer’s snobbish admonition and having refrained from invoking cloture on Barrett’s nomination? Hardly.
Maine Senator Susan Collins, who was the only Republican to vote no on Barrett’s nomination, won reelection because she’s established a reputation for being “independent” (translation: a squishy, wishy-washy “moderate”) and was no doubt granted prior approval from McConnell to vote against Amy because it would help her cause in blue-ish Maine.
Gardner was almost certainly going down to defeat in gutless Colorado in a presidential election year. Going up against a popular former governor, John Hickenlooper, the Republican would’ve had his hands full regardless of how he voted on any issue. Add the fact Cory was swimming against the furious tide of enviro-hacks, pot smoking losers and abortion-loving liberals in the Rocky Mountain State, and the result was baked-in. Barrett had no impact on Gardner whatsoever.
McSally might’ve possibly drawn a bit of additional support by throwing in with the Democrats on the Barrett question, but enough to win? Arizona has been moving steadily left in recent times. At least after Barry Goldwater, the state doesn’t exactly have a reputation for trusting conservatives. How else would a “maverick” Trump-busting loser like John McCain have been reelected so many times? McSally hadn’t won an election, either (she was appointed to the seat by Gov. Doug Ducey). In essence, McSally now has the dishonor of having been rejected by the voters twice within the span of two years.
Instead of appearing spineless and weak, Republican senate candidates were strengthened by acting on the Barrett nomination and supporting their president. Taking advice from Schumer or any Democrat on their reelection prospects is just plain stupid. Americans want politicians who keep their promises, and the GOP increased its majority in 2018 because conservatives wanted confirmed judges, not “bipartisan” moves to make “Chucky” happy.
More Democrats in the senate would mean more sideshow-type spectacles like the Brett Kavanaugh hearings. Did people like Lindsey Graham’s “speech” in the Judiciary Committee or did they prefer Kamala Harris’s condescending arrogance and Senator Cory Booker’s “I am Spartacus” delaying tactics? What about NeverTrumper Jeff Flake? Don’t forget, he was from Arizona too. The political chips fell where they did and Republicans did the right thing.
Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court will ensure that any legislation enacted in a potential Biden administration must pass constitutional muster. Chief Justice John Roberts can’t fix the case results any longer by himself. We’re all better off for it.
2020 election spells the beginning of the end of identity politics?
Among the many substories stemming from this year’s fascinating election is the possibility that President Trump and the Republican Party might be making inroads with minority voters. Everyone knows Democrats rely heavily on votes from African-Americans, Hispanics and Asians to maintain their electoral margins. Losing a few percentage points here and there could spell disaster for the liberal party.
The Editors of The Washington Examiner wrote, “According to exit polls, Trump improved his national performance among black voters from 8% of the total to 12%. Among Hispanic voters, he increased his share from 28% to 32%. Among Asian American voters, he increased his share from 27% to 31%.
“Overall, on a net basis, the gap between Biden and Trump among nonwhite voters was 7 points narrower than in 2016. To be sure, viewed in isolation, these are not impressive numbers, as black and Hispanic voters still overwhelmingly went for Biden. But consider the expectations…
“The media in the United States made an enormous investment in racial fearmongering, and it came to naught. This is no surprise at all. It should serve as a lesson. Most people in the U.S. do not view America as a racist country. Most of them do not leap to characterize its foreign policy, its regulatory regime, or its tax policy as inherently racist, even if all of them have flaws. The important thing is to recognize that the U.S. is the most generous and most prosperous large nation in the history of the world.”
While it’s obvious that the Democrats’ all-race-all-the-time message pushed some minority voters towards the GOP, it’s also plain that their drive to bolster turnout in these communities also bore fruit. Mail-in balloting had its desired effect for Democrats -- apparently expanding early voting to two months in many places and using the CCP virus as an excuse for letting the post office handle ballots had its desired outcome.
The large Trump campaign rally crowds and impressive grassroots parades and demonstrations might not have been enough to counteract the ease of simplified voting. Even then, Trump still won big states and came darn close in all of the “blue wall” locations.
We’ll need to wait several days before the election is sorted out and the lawyers go at it over improper ballots. It smells bad that a few states appeared to buck the trend of same-day in-person voting to allow Joe Biden to come from behind. If Biden does end up the winner, he’ll have a heck of a time pushing through his liberal aims. At least there’s one thing to be thankful for.
2020 Election
Mike Pence
Kamala Harris
Donald Trump
Joe Biden
COVID-19
media, polls
Trump parades
rallies