As Florida recounts go…
…I guess this one was pretty quick.
I want to hear that fat lady singing, though. Not sure I hear her yet, but she’s certainly practicing her scales.
I keep thinking of the title of a book by Hugh Hewitt, written in 2004 and titled If It’s Not Close, They Can’t Cheat: Crushing the Democrats in Every Election and Why Your Life Depends on It
Actually, I hadn’t remembered the subtitle. Only the “if it’s not close, they can’t cheat” part had stuck in my mind.
Whether the Broward County vote-tallying in 2018 merely featured rank incompetence, or whether outright and intentional fraud was executed or at least planned, I don’t know. But it was one or the other, or perhaps both, and none of this would matter all that much if the election hadn’t been very tight in the first place.
The GOP certainly hasn’t come close to “crushing” the Democrats in the years since 2004, have they? For every state like Utah, which is consistently red, there are several that used to be that way but are threatening to turn blue or have already done so, and this includes some of the biggest states (and other very big states are already completely bule).
Why has this happened, when the right sees the left as increasingly bankrupt of ideas and/or increasingly far left? I’ve written many posts trying to explain, as have commenters here (as well as many other bloggers).
So at the moment, I’m not going to go into a lengthy discussion here of the “why” or the “how.” I’ll just say that, although some people saw Trump’s election as a possible turning point towards the right (particularly if he could improve the economy and successfully tackle other issues in ways that people could easily perceive as helping them), his abrasive personality and the 24/7 drumbeat of the press and “resistance” have made it very difficult to see Trump as starting a more permanent shift to the right. The election of 2018 certainly wasn’t a hopeful sign, although it could have been worse, particularly in the Senate. But the loss of Arizona and Montana, and the near-loss of Florida, is very troubling.
I am very willing to be convinced otherwise, but I’m inclined to believe that the leftward drift is permanent. Too many reasons to go into here, but, very broadly, it seems to me that younger people are definitely trending that way. Some will change their minds as they mature, of course, but from what I can see at this point they are likely to be a minority. And those of us who still believe in the basic constitutional scheme are aging and dying off. I hope I’m wrong.
I was thinking about all this while outside raking leaves. What’s so discouraging is the fragmentation of society which the “liberals” are pushing. The Democratic Party was always the party of slavery, and then of segregation. It still favors segregation, in the sense that it treats people as members of groups entitled to special concessions. The success of this approach owes a lot to the deterioration of education.
“he election of 2018 certainly wasn’t a hopeful sign, . . . the loss of Arizona and Montana, and the near-loss of Florida, is very troubling.” [Neo]
“. . . younger people are definitely trending that way. Some will change their minds as they mature, of course, but from what I can see at this point they are likely to be a minority.” [Mac @6:53 pm]
If so, then we are headed for an eventual economic and cultural implosion (Thatcher’s “other people’s money” and Occasio-Cortez’s lack of comprehension regarding how to pay for socialist schemes).
Don’t forget, though, that like the Gramscian march, this will be a long war. The right will win some battles and lose some battles. The 2018 wins in Florida were important and the senate pickups in Indiana and and Missouri were, too; Tennessee was also important because Blackburn was running against a popular former Dem Governor. Going back a ways, the 2000 win for the White House was also an important win. Try to imagine where we would now be having lived through 9/11 with a Gore presidency. Also the Republican senate long-game regarding the judiciary has hardly had a chance to reach cruising altitude.
We are looking at undoing a century of leftist Progressivism. If it happens, it will hardly be an overnight phenomenon. There are many reasons to keep the faith, motivation, and impetus that has mostly just begun.
And Nevada.
Montana is something of a special case, as Hollywood millionaires and similar types moved in a long time ago. All the rest of it, so true. Orange County, CA lost it’s last GOP representative.
Was it Arizona this cycle where they were “curing” ballots, but only in Dem leaning areas. They contacted the voters to check on what they really intended. Does anyone really believe that this is some innocent or ethical effort?
In Florida, the news claimed that they had to scrutinize all undervotes and overvotes. Undervotes? When someone declines to pick a candidate for a certain office, somehow that’s a problem ballot? Better check with the voter to see what their real intent is! Why do we put up with this garbage?
Permanent? Remember it looked permanent before Reagan.
I think absentee voting is a significant factor. In Arizona, where I live, 80% of the voters use absentee. The ballots were mailed several weeks ahead and were supposed to be returned about a week before the election. The Democrat registrar in Maricopa County (Phoenix) opened “emergency polling places where absentee ballots could be turned in the weekend before the election. The McSally campaign was well ahead on election day and after “99% of ballots had been counted,” Then the late absentee ballots rolled in.
I think the Democrats have perfected a way to identify Democrat voters and make sure their absentee ballots are completed and turned in. It’s not exactly voter fraud but the fact that voters can complete the ballot at home, or have some one complete it for them, is a significant factor.
I was a volunteer for the GOP candidate in CD 2 in Arizona and made calls to registered GOP voters. Almost all I reached the week before the election had already returned their ballots.
I think the absentee ballot is allowing for fraud or at least manipulation of the voting. It will be far worse in 2020. I think a lot of this was a dry run for 2020
If the military had to have sexual harassment and every other non-essential trainings and stand downs regularly (to the detriment of their mission, no less), then why can’t these worker just undergo training for their job? Oh, it is a feature and not a flaw to the democrats.
Fire them all.
Those unworthy of a republic will not retain it because in their heart of hearts they are unwilling to pay the price required to retain it. This is the great secret at the heart of why tyranny cannot be stamped out. To paraphrase Yeats; too many of the well meaning lack conviction, while too many of the worst are filled with a “passionate intensity”. This is so I surmise because the well meaning accept that they may be mistaken, the lodestone of doubt. While the worst only know that no matter how much money or power or control they possess, it is not enough to satiate their hunger.
The founders knew that our republic must rest upon a “religious and moral people” and that is why the Marxist Left has unrelentingly attacked the academic, philosophical, moral, cultural and political foundations of our country. Continuing to treat them as anything less than the seditious traitors that they in fact are… is effectively, surrender. Continuing to allow the duped to continue to enable those who seek our country’s “fundamental transformation” is to acquiesce to collaboration with the banality of evil.
After Trump, the only question is whether we will have a Cromwell or a Maduro. One is perhaps much more likely than the other.
Legal Insurrection commenters and some riffs thereon:
Gremlin1974 | November 17, 2018 at 1:01 pm
“Well if it was indeed poor ballot design then the Dems only have themselves and their minions to blame, since Dems designed the ballots in those 2 major counties.”
There’s an old Peanuts cartoon where Charlie Brown complains about always having PBJ sandwiches for lunch. Linus tells him to ask his mom to make something different. CB: “I can’t. I make my own lunch.”
* * *
JBourque | November 17, 2018 at 1:59 pm
“My counter to that would be: if the system was so bad, why did Nelson put so much effort into suing to have the standards used by the board overturned? If the standards had been overturned, and officials would have been free to assume every voter voting for Democrats for governor or congressperson meant the voter must have meant to vote for Nelson too, then thousands of votes might well have been generated.”
In Arizona, it is known that many voters marked the Governor; MikeK pointed it out here.
https://www.thenewneo.com/2018/11/13/why-mcsally-lost-and-sinema-won-in-arizona/#comment-2411630
“I am still interested in why Ducey, in his race for governor got 1,241,028 votes and McSally got 1, 059, 124 votes. That’s almost 200,000 votes more for the GOP governor than for the GOP Senator. Some may well be crossover Democrat votes but I wonder how many Republicans voted for Ducey but not McSally?”
* * *
puhiawa | November 17, 2018 at 1:05 pm
“The fact that there were thousands of overvotes in four counties, all Democratic strongholds, favoring a straight Democratic ticked 2-1, means a third level of fraud was discovered by the machine count. Overvotes occur when the vote machine records votes for which the physical ballot does not exist. It is created by running a single ballot through many times. I suggest each of these counties had a voting machine in the backroom for a couple hours.
This reminds one of the odd incident in the Florida 2000 election when a Democratic Party official was stopped for a routine traffic ticket when the police officer found and confiscated a vote counting machine in the front seat of his car.
Given the illegals voting as alleged, the evidence for manufactured votes via the absentee and provisional ballots, the coordination between these Democratic counties, I speculate that there may be hundreds of thousands of illegal votes. And the only reason this operation was shut down, was so it could go in operation in 2020.”
No comment needed.
Speculation registered for further consideration.
“Some people” failed to notice that Trump’s election wasn’t by winning a majority of the nation’s popular vote. “Some people” also failed to notice that members of Congress, unlike Trump, would not benefit from an elitist Electoral College that could drag them over the finish line despite failing to win a majority of the vote.
Trumpists spent the past two years taking Trump’s 2016 voters for granted, alienating many of them, and failing to work to increase their numbers. The rebuke Trumpists received from the voters in 2018 wasn’t a big shocking surprise. Trumpists have been frantically casting about for someone besides themselves to blame for their setback in this election. They’re in denial. Yuuge denial.
The 2020 election will be an even more uphill struggle for Trumpists than this year was. Democrats and their sympathizers tend to turn out most strongly in Presidential election years. A lot could happen between now and the fall of 2020. Democrats might fracture their field with a multitude of candidates, none able to garner broad enthusiasm from the Democrat base. Democrats might run out-of-touch oldsters Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton. (Each would be making their third grab for the White House.) Still we must recall that at this time in the 2008 and 2016 cycles very few people took Obama or Trump respectively as credible contenders and nobody could predict the timing of the Wall Street banking implosion precipitated by the home mortgage bubble.
The scenario I judge likeliest is that Trump declares his Presidency a success, says he’s done what he ran to do, then announces he’s one term and done. Trump is a showman and “Always leave ’em wanting more” is a showman’s rule.
Rubio’s tweet is what saved Scott’s and DeSantis’ wins. With eyes watching them closely, Broward and Palm Beach County had to stop creating new ballots on Friday after the election. They almost succeeded.
In a nutshell: demographics is destiny.
GOP is doomed. In a couple of decades, it’ll be done. Democrats will stay in power for decades, like the ANC in South-Africa. Once parties start to represent ethnic groups, the party that represents the biggest ethnic group stays in power permanently. Democrat Party will become a clone from the Mexican PRM and US… well, US had a nice couple of centuries. Most countries can’t say the same 🙂
So enjoy while it lasts. Trump will be one the very last Republican presidents in US. Perhaps, the very last one.
“Why has this happened, when the right sees the left as increasingly bankrupt of ideas and/or increasingly far left? ”
My thought is that while conservatives correctly sees the Left this way, the majority of independents don’t. They’re more focused on their everyday lives than on national politics. When election time comes they vote based on what they think they know about what’s going on. The problem is that “what they think they know” is shaped heavily by the mainstream news media, which has a liberal slant to it.
They hear about the people who were broken by health-care bills, and think “there but for the grace of God –“, and so they think that universal government-paid health care is a good idea. They never hear the largely-abstract arguments that show single-payer will never work, that it will cost too much and deliver too little, swiftly leading to rationed health care and a situation even worse than what we have today.
They hear about the mass shootings, but not about the thousands of defensive uses of guns that occur every day.
They hear about the DREAMers who face deportation through no fault of their own, but not about the illegals who routinely break numerous laws – and not minor laws.
Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
And when Election Day comes, the independents break for the Democrats – unless someone can sway them the other way. Someone like Reagan or Trump, who shared one thing in common: they were strong and dynamic communicators who could convince people to follow them. Even people who didn’t like them personally very much. But leaders of that sort are few and far between in politics.
How do you fight against that?
Is it possible that there’s a change–for the worse–in people taking responsibility for their actions? That predictable catastrophes are, despite having been eminently predictable and warned against, are always somebody else’s fault?
That could certainly be the case after the fact.
But prior to the action eminently likely to lead to something nobody wants, is the individual’s feeling that it won’t be his fault anyway likely to allow for being an idiot? Has this changed?
I’m with T @ 7:35 pm on this.
We are looking at undoing a century of leftist Progressivism. If it happens, it will hardly be an overnight phenomenon. There are many reasons to keep the faith, motivation, and impetus that has mostly just begun. –T
There are many great points already made in the comments so far; Kate’s view that the deterioration of education has helped stupidity rise through the ranks is also mine. Once our public education system worked wonders, but it kept getting dumbed down and dumbed down, and now it seems the young know nothing. Of course, every generation says this as they age.
The financial cycle is what enabled a lot of this, too. Prosperity allows for all sorts of things, the broadest of all playing fields. It also produces a huge amount of envy. Those can combine in pernicious ways. Certainly this is why O’Casio calls for socialism — heck, we are prosperous like mad, we can pay for anything, anything; why hold back? Our recent prosperity — the last half of the Reagan cycle, call it, the years from 2000 until today — has seen two of the three great peaks in stock market uptrends. I posted a chart of this once before; I am posting it again at the end of this. Please study that chart carefully, it is not just another piece of meaningless gobbledygook from Wall Street.
Whether we have started down the other side of that mountain, or whether there is one more little hillock remaining, the history of the prior two peaks is of severe loss of value. And that means a challenging set of circumstances must lie ahead.
With towns, counties, and states mostly way under water on their financial obligations, none of which have been improved during these last 20 years of rising prices (2008-09 notwithstanding), a loss of prosperity is the most obvious probable outcome. And it is the blue government model which got those jurisdictions into their vulnerability — Chicago, Philadelphia, and so on. How will the Democrats avoid being tarred by their own brush?
They can’t. Independent voters will get it even though hardcore Democrats will blame anyone and anything else. Only a major increase in taxation, a downsizing in pension payouts, and further restrictions to health-care funding will get us through the financial squeeze that appears unavoidable mathematically, demographically.
Extreme leftism could still become the outlet valve under the worst of conditions, as it did in Russia a century ago. But the world already knows what Marxism-Leninism did to people. Like T, I think we are still moving toward liberation from that orthodoxy. It will just happen under more trying conditions than these last 36 years — a remarkable period in which we got a double-feature of what the country had in the Roaring ’20s.
Chart as mentioned (credit to Hussman Funds, to which I have no connection):
https://www.hussmanfunds.com/wp-content/uploads/comment/mc180904c.png
That’s what Leftist philosophy (such as it is) is built on, isn’t it? Big government intrudes only because of the vacuum created by our vacating of our personal responsibility.
But if the Jordan Peterson phenomenon/juggernaut is any indication, there may be hope for us yet.
In the mid 80’s, after crushing defeats at the hand of Reagan, Dems decided to import a new demographic who could be kept separate, scared, poor and dependent. They have succeeded. I remember one comment after the Romney defeat: he would have won in a landslide with the demographic of 1980.
I also remember a story about a leaked e-mail from some higher ups in the British Labor party bluntly discussing the same strategy; getting a new demographic to replace the one with whom they could not win.
Don’t forget, though, that like the Gramscian march, this will be a long war
Gramsci knew and wrote that, for the Marxists to win, it was necessary to change education and culture. That began in the 1960s with the Baby Boomers who inherited a prosperous world and one that should have been at peace if not for Lyndon Johnson and his war. Jack Kennedy actually lost that war just before he was assassinated. He was seduced by Maxwell Taylor who convinced him that we knew how to fight an insurgency, Also he became convinced that Diem was an obstacle.
The Vietnam War drove a lot of leftist students into graduate school to avoid the draft, The only graduate students who ever got drafted were doctors. The others stayed with their deferments and became the leftist faculty over the next 30 years.
The women’s movement changed elementary school and high school teaching. Bright young women in the 1950s, when I was in college, majored in elementary education and worked at teaching until their husbands’ careers got going. As more careers opened up for women, they went to law school and medical school or into business. Elementary school ed students are now the bottom quintile of college students. Their faculties are part of the leftist trend in college professors. Ed school professors want to publish “research” and they get into fads like Common Core Math and they are bored by Phonics, which taught generations of kids to read. They hate Multiplication Tables as old fashioned and “learning by rote memorization.”
History and Geography became “Social Studies.”
Howard Zinn’s history book is now the textbook for AP high school History classes.
“A wonderful, splendid book–a book that should be ready by every American, student or otherwise, who wants to understand his country, its true history, and its hope for the future.” –Howard Fast
With a new introduction by Anthony Arnove, this edition of the classic national bestseller chronicles American history from the bottom up, throwing out the official narrative taught in schools—with its emphasis on great men in high places—to focus on the street, the home and the workplace.
The Amazon blurb. And so it goes.
I thought Montana was a tossup/leans Democrat state, so wasn’t surprised. One forgets the historical influence of mining and unions in the state politics, it isn’t all independent ranchers scratching out a living. Nevada has trended purple for some time. Arizona was a disappointment.
I think Florida will be in play in 2020. Utah is also not as red as it was. When I arrived here in the 70’s, it was a Democrat state. The turning point came with McGovern and was, AFAICT, driven by patriotism as much as domestic policy.
MikeK is exactly right in his analysis of what’s going on but I’d like to add one more thing.
There are only two things that are more addictive than opiod drugs. Those things are immaturity and dependence.
It is common knowledge that the best way to destroy the whole lives of people is to keep them from becoming mature adults responsible for their actions. The surest way to do this is to do everything for them and give them everything they want. This destroys their incentive to better themselves and gives them an entitlement attitude.
This destruction of incentive at home takes care of any maturing influence there and the takeover of the education establishment by the left prevents any maturing influence at school and establishes the entitlement attitude. Add to those the takeover of the media by the left which makes sure that no outside maturing influences get through to them during the rest of their waking hours.
It’s not the fault of the young that they are bring kept in adolescence through all their learning years. Unfortunately, if you destroy those years you destroy the rest of their lives.
I hate being such a pessimist. It goes against my nature. Unfortunately it appears that the light at the end of the tunnel is just the oncoming train of government dependent, self-absorbed adolescents slowly, and then quickly, destroying the greatest experiment in human freedom and self-determination ever conceived.
Probably the most outstanding summary I have ever read on our current situation and the circumstances that have led to the conundrum we face: “Our Revolution’s Logic” – Angelo Codevilla
Irv on November 18, 2018 at 12:41 pm at 12:41 pm said:
MikeK is exactly right in his analysis of what’s going on but I’d like to add one more thing.
There are only two things that are more addictive than opiod drugs. Those things are immaturity and dependence.
It is common knowledge that the best way to destroy the whole lives of people is to keep them from becoming mature adults responsible for their actions. The surest way to do this is to do everything for them and give them everything they want. This destroys their incentive to better themselves and gives them an entitlement attitude.
* * *
We should call this the “dirty laundry” syndrome, analogous to “broken windows” for crime. Uff isn’t the only “old skul” parent commenting at this blog.
Uffdaphil on November 18, 2018 at 8:59 am at 8:59 am said:
“I was so slow ironing my shirts just so in high school – full length back pleats and cardboard strength starch. Maybe 20 minutes per shirt. Mom charged me a quarter every time I used the iron.
An earlier “no free lunch” lesson was the nickel she charged for supplying the sugar for our Kool-Aid stands. But having to darn holes in my socks finally motivated me to get a paper route and buy new socks.”
The Montana result doesn’t have a lot to do with in-state millionaires, I don’t think. The liberal vote comes from the cities, the universities and the Indian Reservations as well as a pocket in the northeast and along the highline that has been fairly liberal since the depression days of banks foreclosing on farms. When you combine universities and cities as in Missoula and Bozeman, the liberal effect is amplified. This year, I think the Libertarian vote had as much to do with it as anything. In past years it has been a Tester specialty to fund the libertarians for just that reason. He won by, I think, five points and the Libertarian vote was 3 points. More and more as elsewhere in the country, the growing and compact population in the cities is outvoting the sparse population in the country
MikeK’s analysis is correct. I’m profoundly pessimistic about the future of the USA.
The women’s movement changed elementary school and high school teaching. Bright young women in the 1950s, when I was in college, majored in elementary education and worked at teaching until their husbands’ careers got going.
Some period data from the 1995 Digest of Education Statistics. Bachelor’s degrees. The year of the degree awards is in parentheses. These are the subjects they were tracking prior to 1960.
1. English (1950); 17,000 degrees awarded, 52% to women
2. Biological sciences (1952): 11,000 degrees awarded, 25% to women
3. Business (1956): 42,000 degrees awarded, 10% to women
4. Education (1950): 61,000 degrees awarded, 49% to women
5. Modern foreign languages (1950); 4,000 degrees awarded, 62% to women
6. Mathematics (1950): 6,400 degrees awarded, 22% to women
7. Physical sciences (1960): 16,000 degrees awarded, 12% to women
8. Psychology (1950): 9,500 degrees awarded, 37% to women
9. Engineering (1950): 52,000 degrees awarded, 0.3% to women.
In 1950, about 432,000 bachelor’s degrees were awarded, of which about 24% (103,000) were awarded to women. Teacher training programs were important, but most women were studying other things and those studying for teaching certificates were as often as not men.
but most women were studying other things and those studying for teaching certificates were as often as not men.
I was referring to my own experience. I suspect that many women getting English Literature degrees were planning teaching, at least for some time.
I knew quite a few girls who got degrees in dental hygiene. Most nurses in those days did not get bachelors’ degrees but there were quite a few hospital based nursing schools that turned out nurses with good experience. The LA County nursing school provided a great free education plus housing.
The professional nursing societies insisted on closing those “diploma schools” that turned out better trained nurses, expecting that nursing would become a frequent college major. Instead, most nurses that I dealt with over 40 years had AA degrees from community colleges and far less experience the the hospital trained nurses had.
I am surprised at the number of men getting education degrees at that time.
Most women I knew in college planned to get married and work for only a few years. My high school girlfriend went to Purdue and got a BS in Chemical Engineering but she worked only until she had her children and then went back to work after they were in school. She married a guy I knew in high school and who was her classmate at Purdue.
Times were quite a bit different. I think the Normal Schools and teachers’ colleges, like the one Lyndon Johnson attended, did a better job at far less expense for teachers.
In 2015, 54,000 associate’s degrees in nursing were awarded, while 124,000 bachelor’s degrees were awarded. I thought associate’s degrees were for LPN’s, but the line in the manual says ‘registered’. It looks like practical nursing has almost disappeared.
Most women I knew in college planned to get married and work for only a few years.
About 1/3 of the workforce in 1957 was female. Lots of women working from impecunious wage earning families. The Statistical Abstract has figures from the 1920s on higher education. Teacher’s colleges and nursing schools were listed separately. Colleges and universities at that time had large populations of women – over 40% of those in undergraduate study and just shy of 40% of those in miscellaneous graduate programs. However, professional schools were completely male dominated, with 89% of those attending being male and (IIRC) about 95% of the degrees awarded. IIRC, the Statistical Abstract in 1928 was not tracking business or engineering schools specifically. ‘Professional schools’ referred to schools of divinity, medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, and law. You can also see from the data above that GI Bill benefits had rendered higher education more of a masculine environment in 1952 than it had been a quarter century earlier. Still in all, the ratios in re business schools and [!] engineering schools are a surprise. I think as late as 1960, ~4% of those admitted to the bar were female, and lady lawyers set up their own practice solo or in small partnerships. (Fun fact: Geraldine Ferraro contended that a job offer to work in the New York County DA’s office in 1960 had been withdrawn due to a marriage bar; a partisan of Gary Hart pointed out that the real estate firm her father-in-law and his brother operated had been slapped with a 103 count indictment the previous year).
Lots of women working from impecunious wage earning families.
Yes, my experience was with college students, most of whom were from upper middle class families as SC was a private university although far cheaper in 1956 than it is now.
‘Professional schools’ referred to schools of divinity, medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, and law.
Yes, nursing and teaching were largely outside the four year college world.
Geraldine Ferraro contended that a job offer to work in the New York County DA’s office in 1960 had been withdrawn due to a marriage bar
She had Mob relatives. Her husband and, I think, a brother.
Please do not tell me that illegal aliens cannot and/or do not vote at least in Oregon and Washington state.
And La Raza drives this vote.
I think absentee voting is a significant factor. In Arizona, where I live, 80% of the voters use absentee.
If you tally up servicemen and their spouses, U.S. Government employees posted abroad (and their spouses), shut-ins, college students from out of state, and in-state students living in institutional housing, it amounts to just shy of 4% of the population. In Arizona, just shy of 4% of the population live in Census block groups with a population density < 10 persons per square mile. Less than 8% of the population should be voting by post.
Dennis “The Montana result doesn’t have a lot to do with in-state millionaires, I don’t think. The liberal vote comes from the cities, the universities and the Indian Reservations. . . “
The cities and universities I expect, but that the Indians (excuse me, Siberian-Americans) would vote Democrat is really ironic, since the Department of the Interior cheated the Indians out of as much as $3.3 Billion in oil and other mineral royalties, and after class-action lawsuits lasting over ten years, only had to pay back $462 Million.
She had Mob relatives. Her husband and, I think, a brother.
No. All of her siblings died in infancy and early childhood. She was the first and only survivor. Her father was a civilian front man for La Cosa Nostra, and ran a nightclub for them which apparently incorporated illegal numbers games. Her husband rented property to gangsters and acted as a buyer’s and seller’s broker for known mobsters, but was not a mobster himself. His father and uncle also had dealings with La Cosa Nostra and the uncle (IIRC) was rubbed out by the mob in 1957 or thereabouts (I may have confounded his uncle with a close family associate). During the period running from 1944 to 1961, Geraldine Ferraro was on short rations. The State of New York shut down his business and put him and her mother under indictment, after which he died. The indictment of P. Zaccaro & Co nearly destroyed the business. Once her husband had taken control of the enterprise and stabilized its finances, they lived a comfortable life. A critic offered that her actual story was one she was disinclined to tell: of a woman who married well within a certain circle. Wayne Barrett of The Village Voice said he’d never covered a politician who had so many shady characters in her social circle. Ferraro and her husband weren’t the Clintons. Their business was legitimate. It’s just that they were at home making deals with characters that most people run away from (some of them donors to Ferraro’s campaigns, like Wm. Pellegrino Masselli (aka ‘Billy the Butcher’).
I never knew about Ferraro’s mob connections, but I did remember her being Mondale’s pick for VP candidate in 1984.
I do remember Sarah Palin in 2008 giving her credit in her nomination speech:
“I think — I think as well today of two other women who came before me in national elections.
I can’t begin this great effort without honoring the achievements of Geraldine Ferraro in 1984…” (the second was Hillary, back when she was still a credible even though losing candidate).
Most distinctly, I remember Ferraro’s almost shocked response: “Nobody ever thanked me before.”
Didn’t keep her from working for Democrats, but they apparently had an amicable relationship thereafter.
I just read the Ken Starr book, “Contempt.” It is pretty interesting. I sent a copy (Kindle) to my daughter who is an FBI agent. She is a Democrat but told me in September 2016 the she would NOT vote for Hillary, She is a natural Hillary voter, 50 and single, but the fact that she told me that suggested that the FBI agents knew enough about Hillary to threaten a revolt if Comey whitewashed her. I thought she would like the detail about how one investigates financial crimes.
It’s the MSM and the schools. And I don’t really know what can be done about it.
What we’re up against really hit home to me after a couple of conversations with a dear, dear friend last week. She’s a retired pilot for a major airline and is used to having the lives of hundreds of people a day in her hands. Proud of her skills and safety record. A very practical and down to earth woman. A ‘real jock’ as my sister calls her. So the conversation turns to the shooting in TO, because I once lived near there. ‘I think they should ban all these assault weapons.’ she says. I point out that the term ‘assault weapon’ is inaccurate and why. And that there were six off duty police officers present, only unarmed and unable to stop the shooter- most likely due to departmental regulations. And remind her of the 2nd Amendment. ‘Well, I just wish guns had never been invented!’
Our next conversation got around to the recent breakthroughs on unsolved killings with to DNA testing. When we got to how the police followed the Golden State Killer to obtain a sample of his DNA she remarked that she felt the police should just be able to demand a sample from a suspect. I said; ‘No you don’t, that would be a violation of your 4th Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure.’ Crickets. Honestly, I don’t think she’s thought of the 4th Amendment since high school civics.
She gets all her news from CNN and considers herself a moderate.
I have a lot of wonderful people in my life like this. They are educated and accomplished. The only place I can see to get a wedge in is the illegal immigration issue – everyone I grew up with in California wants it stopped.
But we are up against a wall of propaganda.
And they don’t teach high schools civics anymore.
Richard. Many, if not most, think themselves in the victim class and they see the Democrats as being willing to trade goodies for votes for one of the minority battalions.
Snipes resigns.
(Can we stop the snipe hunting now….)
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/11/its-over-in-florida.php
PL’s week in pictures has several good hits on the election mess in Florida.
Another insane election (and it’s not even at the recount stage…):
https://www.dailywire.com/news/38477/rep-mia-love-leads-dem-opponent-419-votes-latest-frank-camp
(Though I suppose one could say that hey, it’s only two weeks after election day, so what’s the problem?!!….)
File under: Go Mia!!
She gets all her news from CNN and considers herself a moderate.
I have a lot of wonderful people in my life like this.
I would strongly encourage anyone with an interest to watch this video of a Tucker Carlson speech to a group in San Francisco.
I am not into watching You Tube videos but I watched this one the whole hour. He is talking to a group of conservatives in San Francisco, where he grew up, and this is as good an explanation for Trump as I’ve seen.
His punch line is “If your wife ran off with an overweight mailman, wouldn’t you wonder why ? Whether it was something you did ? Trump is that mailman.”
The early absentee ballot system is rife for tampering if your people are in charge of the collection and counting of those ballots. By counting these ballots early, you can assess if you are behind and then have time to “manufacture” the votes to make up the deficit by filling out absentee ballots that would have been otherwise uncast.
“But we are up against a wall of propaganda” [Molly Brown @ 11:22 pm]
See Victor Davis Hanson:
https://amgreatness.com/2018/11/18/the-progressive-synopticon/
It is significant that Hanson was an early Trump supporter, That’s a good interview. Levin, along with Michael Medved, was an early NeverTrumper. He has obviously come around since but I don’t listen to his radio show as his voice is irritating to me.
The story about George Conway and his new anti-Trump group is interesting. Dinner table conversation in that family would be something to overhear. His wife, of course, is Kelly Ann Conway, a principle Trump advisor.
Most distinctly, I remember Ferraro’s almost shocked response: “Nobody ever thanked me before.”
It’s a reasonable inference that Mondale was toast from day one. However, the controversy over the Zaccaro finances was a distraction that broke Mondale’s stride and made an unappealing situation marginally worse. Per published reports (citing anonymous sources, I know), some of Mondale’s aides were in a slow burn at her because they thought she had shuffled about frustrating a proper review of their balance sheets and interests, all of which blew up in the Democrats’ faces when The Wall Street Journal went hunting for truffles. (Something the media still did back in ’84, even if they did prefer the Democrats). The Democratic voter I knew best at the time blamed John Zaccaro. She said he should have taken his wife aside and told her in plain language, “we can’t submit to an audit”. They couldn’t hang anything on her husband but one offense for which he was clocked in 1986, but there was quite a mass of embarrassments there. (He’d wildly overstated his net worth to grease a real estate deal; the deal in question had fallen through and no one had been injured by what he’d done, but it was dishonest). My Democratic voter also offered the opinion that John Zaccaro put his wife down as a minority shareholder and corporate officer on the scores of shell companies he’d set up without telling her. “[my husband] would have done the same to me”.
Here’s a hypothesis. Sidney Blumenthal was in his reporting telling the truth. Mondale’s camarilla didn’t thank Ferraro because they were pissed at her.
The story about George Conway and his new anti-Trump group is interesting. Dinner table conversation in that family would be something to overhear. His wife, of course, is Kelly Ann Conway, a principle Trump advisor.
Were you waiting with bated breath to hear what George Conway had to say about anything? Would it make a blessed bit of difference to anyone if his wife hadn’t had an association with Trump? Guy’s a major heel. (Sarah Huckabee Sanders has in-laws she’s at odds with politically; they’re not trying to embarrass her publicly).
It’s academia. The history of failed and destructive socialism and the victories of capitalism are no longer taught in grades 1 thru 12. In their place, social justice that lends itself as an endorsement of socialism. So the young and susceptible are primed and ready for the university.
Meanwhile, I have begun listening (on UT) to an audiobook that I read well over 50 years ago, and had not planned on ever reading again: to wit, Orwell’s 1984. About 40 minutes into it, and at this point what strikes me about it most is the claustrophobic, nightmare quality of the writing.
The Cold War was definitely on in the ’60s, and I was already strongly anti-Communist anyway. At that point I wasn’t reading it for the power of the writing, but out of morbid fascination with the horror man can inflict on his fellow man, if allowed to do so … and I certainly took it as an anti-Communist cautionary tale.
I wonder whether a bunch of junior-high or high-school kids today would even get the point — take it seriously, I mean. If they are learning neither history nor civics, perhaps it would just strike them as overwrought fantasy. ….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYYVZIuuReo
By the way, the reader is very good.
> Her father was a civilian front man for La Cosa Nostra
I had a friend whose father ran, IIRC, slot machines in NY. Then he got cancer and died. He didn’t have life insurance (unexpectedly) and told his family they would be on their own and it was a hard life after that.
The GOP’s problem is structural, and internal, it’s been clearly visible to those willing to see it for 30 years.
The elite class of the GOP is the business wing. They are socially liberal, and either economically libertarian or pro-corporate, internationalist, free-traders and support maximalist immigration policies to keep wages down and import customers. This group includes most of the major donors. But the voting strength of the GOP tend to be socially conservative, fiscally moderate, sympathetic to worker/labor interests, and nationalist. Their goals are not just different, they are increasingly _opposite_.
For 30 years now, the GOP wins national elections, when they do, because of revulsion among the GOP voters at the Dem social and cultural agenda. But when they win those elections, they try to _govern_ as a pro-corporate business party, and immediately their voters being to peel away again, because that’s not what they were voting for. This cycle has played out repeatedly for three decades.
The Koch brothers, Paul Ryan and their ilk represent an agenda that is nearly 180 degrees out of synch with the GOP voting majority, and it has been for years. When the GOP establishment congealed behind McCain, and Romney, they were handing the elections to the Dems. In 2016, the desperate effort to force Jeb Bush down the throats of the rank and file opened the door for Trump, who they found they could not knock down because he reached out to the GOP voters and their interests in ways the GOP business elites refused to do.
The reason they wanted Jeb so badly was the same as the reason they wanted Romney, and before him McCain. Someone who would go along with the business agenda. The three failed spectacularly because the Republican voters so intensely _did not want_ that same agenda.
That’s the structural problem. The voters want an agenda the donors refuse to fund and the politicians dislike. The political/money elite of the party wants an agenda the GOP voters refuse to vote for.