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.