More and more and more: an election roundup
So many things of interest! It’s a happy day.
(1) Konstantin Kisin understands. If you’re not familiar with his podcast Triggernometry, you should take a look sometimes.
(2) Harris has called Trump to concede. Yay!:
Harris discussed the importance of a peaceful transfer of power and being a president for all Americans, according to a senior Harris aide. Harris was expected to address supporters later Wednesday afternoon.
(3) Biden also called Trump. I bet Biden was secretly a bit happy, unlike Harris.
(4) Jack Smith will be throwing in the towel on his anti-Trump cases, at least for now. What a destructive charade he put on. Obviously, the goal was to hurt Trump’s changes of re-election. Ironically, he may have helped. In addition, Trump probably could have pardoned himself for the two federal cases in which Smith is prosecutor. What of the more local cases? What of Judge Merchan, for example?:
Should Merchan proceed with the sentencing as scheduled, he’ll face the unprecedented task of deciding whether to impose a prison sentence of up to four years on a defendant who is set to occupy the White House come January. If he does order Trump to prison, Trump almost certainly won’t be required to serve that sentence until after he leaves office in 2029.
Left out is the fact that the case was almost certainly doomed anyway in appeals court, because it was another complete travesty.
(5) This is well worth watching:
(6) It looks like the GOP will keep the House, although the margin will remain small. However, it’s still very very important to maintain control for a host of reasons. Then there’s also the question of who will replace McConnell in the Senate. Pleasant prospects to contemplate.
Kamala’s pandering to the Muslims in Dearborn and other places in the Detroit area didn’t work. Trump stuck to his guns and got support there. Trump wins Dearborn amid anger over Gaza and Lebanon; Jill Stein receives 18% of vote. In 2020, Biden won Dearborn by 38.9%; Kamala Harris lost Dearborn by 12.5%. Guess that Kamala’s double-faced statements on Gaza and Lebanon didn’t fool many in Dearborn. “I’ll say anything to get elected” didn’t work. Like running very different ads in Dearborn compared to ads in Jewish areas. Oh well…
Harris has some gall warning Trump to be a president for all Americans, considering the contempt she displayed for the now more than half of us who voted against her.
Neo’s fifth item is a video of Bill Whittle musing, happily, about the election. I first became aware of Whittle from his October 27, 2008 piece at National Review Online, “Shame, Cubed”: https://www.nationalreview.com/2008/10/shame-cubed-bill-whittle/
It’s still very much worth reading, being about Obama’s fundamental disdain for the American system as revealed in a then-just-unearthed Chicago radio interview from 2001, when he was a state senator.
From the interview transcript:
You know, if you look at the victories and failures of the civil-rights movement, and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to vest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples. So that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit at a lunch counter and order and as long as I could pay for it, I’d be okay, but the Supreme Court never entered into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society.
And uh, to that extent, as radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution — at least as it’s been interpreted, and Warren Court interpreted it in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties: [It] says what the states can’t do to you, says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf.
Whittle is a powerful writer, and — again — the whole piece must be read. But here’s a snippet from what he wrote:
There is no room for wiggle or misunderstanding here. This is not edited copy. There is nothing out of context; for the entire thing is context — the context of what Barack Obama believes. You and I do not have to guess at what he believes or try to interpret what he believes. He says what he believes.
Sixteen years later, our whole country is still living amid the detritus that The Little Prince ginned up for us.
It was very good nationally but man was it awful for us here in the lost state of Washington.
I’m less optimistic about the house.
Neo write, “I bet Biden was secretly a bit happy, unlike Harris.”
I think so too. I wondered whether Biden meant to sabotage Harris with his “gaffes” like the garbage comment — but I stopped wondering when I saw the red pantsuit Jill Biden wore when she voted. Political women dress intentionally for that kind of thing. It could not possibly have been a coincidence. Nice outfit, too!
Donald Trump flips Texas border county red for first time in more than 100 years.
Note the advance that Trump scored in 8 years in Starr County. Demo Presidential vote went from 79% in 2016 to 52% in 2020 to 42% in 2024 (or in 8 years, Trump votes increased from 19% to 57% .).
Hidalgo County , the most populous TX county outside the Texas Triangle(Houston,Dallas, San Antonio), saw its vote for Trump change from 28% in 2016 to 41% in 2020 to 51% in 2024. Back in the pre-Cambrian era, I worked on some wells in Hidalgo County.
El Paso County voted for Harris. It is the only Texas county sharing a border with Mexico that voted for Harris.
Gringo, but did they reelect Dems to the House?
Another maybe important benefit of Trump winning is he will be president in 2026, the 250th anniversary of America, which I suspect will be made into a very big pro America event highlighting the great things about this country which is so needed among the younger generations.
SHIREHOME
Gringo, but did they reelect Dems to the House?
Six of one, half a dozen of the other. Hidalgo County is split between the 15th and 34th Congressional Districts.
Republican Monica De La Cruz won re-election in the 15th, with a 57-43 margin (53-45 in 2022).
Democrat Vicente Gonzalez won re-election in the 34th with a 51-49 margin (53-44 in 2022).
(From the map, it appears that Hidalgo County is a greater proportion of the 15th than of the 34th, as it is the county with the largest population in either district, and the 15th is a lot narrower than the 34th)
In the Senate race, Colin Allred (D) beat Ted Cruz (R) 52-45 in Hidalgo county.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/11/05/us/elections/results-texas.html
Gringo, you scared me – but I think you got Cruz and Allred reversed. Sources I saw say Cruz won.
Gringo, you scared me – but I think you got Cruz and Allred reversed. Sources I saw say Cruz won.
Please read carefully what I wrote.
Cruz beat Allred in Texas, BUT NOT IN HIDALGO COUNTY.
I stand by what I wrote.
Got it Gringo, I read too quickly. Thanks for pointing that out.
As usual, Whittle moves me. His historical timeline of big events in the U.S. is interesting. I’m not weeping with joy, but I sure don’t blame anyone who is. We have to enjoy the moment, because this is not the end. It’s the beginning of a new chapter, and there’s work ahead, and we need to do our part.
Paul Nachman, thanks for the link to Whittle’s National Review article, and your quotes from parts of it. I was not aware of this information. I have always believed that Obama was a race hustler of the worst kind. This confirms it. I knew he viewed the Constitution as a limit on what government could do, and knew he would love to scrap it and use government power for his social justice ideas. I’ve bookmarked the article for future reference.
One of the most gratifying of the many gratifying things about this day is to think of how Obama must be weeping and gnashing his teeth. So many years of work to destroy this country, so much undone in one day.
McConnell has lots (lots!) of faults, but he did, thankfully, prevent the country from having to refer to “The Honorable Merrick Garland, Associate Justice, The United States Supreme Court.”
roy in nipomo
Yes, indeed. Merrick’s performance in the Biden Administration showed him to be a partisan hack, with an intellect not worthy of even the Mayors Daley of Chicago. The country dodged a bullet when he didn’t ascend to the Supreme Court.
McConnell has lots (lots!) of faults, but he did, thankfully, prevent the country from having to refer to “The Honorable Merrick Garland, Associate Justice, The United States Supreme Court.”
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That required he do precisely nothing, except bear up under George Will’s fury in the Bezos Birdcage Liner
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It has been pointed out by Mollie Hemingway that Democratic floor leaders actually promote legislation favored by committed Democrats. McConnell is a corporate bag man, full stop. It says something unhappy about Republican senators that he was left in place for 18 years.
Garland would have been a leftist rubber stamp on the court. No more trouble than any other leftist on the court. He is a real bastard though as AG.
Congratulations to huxley for confidently predicting a Trump landslide!
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I, too, am grateful that enough voters had enough sense to say “Enough, already!”
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“With malice toward none with charity for all…” I agree with the spirit of this, *but* there should be righteous anger and justice served to the 21st century John Wilkes Booths and their enablers!
@ Kate > “Harris has some gall warning Trump to be a president for all Americans,”
He’s already way ahead of her — see Gringo’s comment just above yours.
And we all know about the other demographics that contributed votes to his total.
Konstantin Kisin’s outstanding list of things Brits & Europeans don’t understand about America could just as easily apply to our own jetset elites, who seem to be much more attuned to European views of America than they are to those that are actually American.
Interesting that Neo chose an NPR post about the fate of the Federal cases against Trump.
Their explanation of why Special counsel Smith would have to fold his tents and slink away was pretty good, and I thought maybe they were going to trim their sails because there was now a new boss in town who might be ill disposed to keeping the money spigot open for them (and I hope Musk makes a high priority of shutting it), but then they ended with a wildly spun description of the Georgia case, clearly hoping that it would continue to go forward.
https://www.npr.org/2024/11/06/g-s1-33021/trump-trials-jack-smith-election-2024
Otherwise known as perfectly normal skirmishing by defense attorneys in ANY case they handle.
If you want to know what the NPR writers probably wanted to write, see the Politico post that Neo quoted about Judge Merchan.
They are very unhappy that Orange Man will not have to wear a matching jumpsuit any time soon, or at all.
Bill Whittle’s video was very moving.
I don’t know why Democrats always claim that conservatives don’t have emotions and feelings.
We just don’t let them over-rule our logic and reason.
“The process worked — I cry when things are beautiful.” — BW
Listen to the whole thing, especially the analogy at the end to rebuilding a derelict WW2 plane into an even better one, just like America after every crisis.
He came prepared, he said, to talk about being good losers, but spoke a lot about being good winners.
“With malice toward none, with charity toward all.”
Or as one commenter added, quoting Churchill:
@morridx
In War: Resolution,
In Defeat: Defiance,
In Victory: Magnanimity
In Peace: Good Will.
https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/proceedings/the-ties-that-bind/
I will add another quote from that paper that is so appropriate for this election (RTWT for other powerful & topical observations):
@ Paul Nachman > “I first became aware of Whittle from his October 27, 2008 piece at National Review Online, “Shame, Cubed” …It’s still very much worth reading, being about Obama’s fundamental disdain for the American system as revealed in a then-just-unearthed Chicago radio interview from 2001, when he was a state senator.”
Absolutely worth reading.
Whittle put together, in 2008, several of the situations that made me and others wary of an Obama presidency.
The First Circle of Shame relates to the content of the interview Paul quoted. I vaguely remember reading about it, although not in Whittle’s post, and wondering how any conservatives leaning toward voting for him, because “it was time we had a black president,” and reading that manifesto could continue to advocate for his election — but some of them did.
Whittle:
Part of the problem is that a lot of people never saw that interview, or read about its portents as Whittle explained them.
The Second Circle of Shame is for the journalists who chose not to report on this old interview during Obama’s campaign — it was found by one person, acting alone, with no more resources than any of us have; not by the press, who instead concentrated their time and money on “investigating” Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber.
One could say that Bill warned us about the “fake news” establishment 8 years before Trump did.
Whittle:
Some of Bill’s emotion in the video Neo linked is due, perhaps, to the length of time it has taken for the press to get even a small down payment on that bill.
The Third Circle of Shame was partly a failed prediction and partly a prophetic lament:
Whittle:
The interview’s revelations, because they were ignored by what we know now as the Regime Media, didn’t hurt Obama at all, other than to put up a warning sign for alert readers who found it at NR or some other way.
I don’t know what happened to Bill’s friend who broke that particular story, but we know all too well what happened, with increasing fury over the succeeding 16 years, to other people with similar temerity.
The Fourth Circle of Shame, which I take the liberty to append to Bill’s essay, is that we had a president well on the way to redeeming us from the first three, and half of the country turned back to those Circles without a qualm.
We (speaking collectively and not personally) may have a reprieve from any Fifth Circle, if we don’t waste the opportunity again.
A good, but rambling, post by Jim Geraghty.
https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/democrats-get-a-wake-up-call-about-how-unpopular-their-agenda-really-is/
He is one of the few NR writers who didn’t completely fall to TDS in 2016 or later.
IMO their “Never Trump” issue in 2016 only gave more grist to the Democrat mill, and their “principled rejection” only made it harder for Trump to get more Republicans to help him achieve the goals that NR always claimed to champion.
I will try to follow Whittle’s request to be a “good winner” but it’s harder with the people “on your own side” than with the opposition.
Here’s an example of the kind of NR writer who is as clueless & TDS-ridden as the Democrats.
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/why-didnt-the-democrats-steal-it-this-time/
“Why Didn’t the Democrats Steal It This Time?”
Does he read anything other than the NYT and WaPo?
Anyone here can answer his question.
Miranda Devine is entitled to her cheering in this post, but she is not entirely correct in some of her conclusions.
https://nypost.com/2024/11/06/opinion/voters-saw-through-the-lies-and-elected-donald-trump-as-the-47th-president-of-the-united-states/
“But the beautiful thing about Election 2024 is that most Americans woke up and saw through the lies.”
No, only enough of them did.
Harris still got 48% of the votes.
That’s still too many.
In a paid-only post from Racket News, Matt Taibbi reviews the reactions of the leftists, whom he calls a “cult of mass political psychosis” in an article titled, “Giant Electoral Asteroid Strikes America’s Intellectual Class, Which Fails To Notice.”
They’re still sure the majority of voters are racists and sexists, and fail to understand the reasons the majority had for rejecting Obama/Biden/Harris.
I hope to goodness that J Merchan goes ahead with sentencing in the NY criminal case, so that Trump can appeal. Right now the case is stuck — Trump isn’t, actually, a “convicted felon” yet, as there is no final judgment of conviction. I don’t want to see that case pardoned or dismissed or whatever. I want an appellate court to get its hands on it and write down, clearly, for publication, what was wrong with it — not just to clear Trump’s name but also to rehabilitate the court itself. I was pessimistic before about whether the First Department, Appellate Division could be trusted to do that but was encouraged by the common-sense, skeptical questions asked by that Court’s judges in oral argument in the fraud case.
Trump won’t go to jail during his appeal, and wouldn’t have even if he’d lost the election. It’s ordinary practice in white-collar crime cases for the defendant’s sentence to be suspended pending appeal.
I heard theories floated that Biden might pardon Trump, along with Hunter, as a final F-U to the party that knifed him in the back. I hope he doesn’t.
ref (5) MAGA MANBABY BLUBBERS LIKE A SISSY – !?!
Geez…humble me has seen poor progressive women (and women in general) ridiculed here ‘n elsewhere—by REP men for “voting with their emotions.”
Anyway, I knew the Election topic was very ‘Touchy’ as the election grew closer, but did not realize that many of you may have been suffering from the Bill Whittle’s ‘Touchy-Feely’ syndrome… 😉
Karmi, this may not apply to all men, but I noticed as I past the age of 65 I became more emotional in my response to feel good stories of heroism, generosity, and friendship. For no really valid reason, compared to my younger self, I would tear up. I had noticed a similar response from my father at a similar age.
I have not researched this but surmise that it reflects another hormonal change in life, analagous to the various episodes we experience at puberty, etc. However, it may not occur in everyone’s life, or to such a noticable degree.
The link provided by Molly on November 7, 2024 at 12:36 am, in the next thread:
Here is a nice clip to celebrate by: https://x.com/KTHopkins/status/1854090142274740657
This is an example where I almost teared up at the end, very glad to see a women in the UK lauding our system and results in a strongly positive (and allied) way. Given the decline in free speech in the UK right now, I wonder if she is at some legal risk doing so.
I probably would not have reacted that way when younger.