Tag: Bernie Sanders

Democrats stunned in Florida upset

The primaries took a turn for the worst for the establishment DNC on Tuesday when front runner Gwen Graham lost to progressive socialist Andrew Gillum in Florida.  The Florida governor primary race results came as a shock.  Gillum, the 39 year old mayor of Tallahassee, was outspent and barely known until Bernie Sanders came down to campaign for him.  Gillum is from the Ocasio-Cortez wing of the Democrat party and is also currently under an FBI investigation for illegal real estate deals.  He is promising a $15 minimum wage and Medicare for all, despite the massive job losses caused by such a drastically high wage floor in other states and no way to pay for Universal Healthcare.

On the Republican side of the aisle, Ron DeSantis won easily after a Trump endorsement gave him statewide notoriety.  He was already a very popular congressman in the Northeast part of the state.  DeSantis is also a member of the House “Freedom Caucus” made up of more libertarian leaning Republicans.  This sets up a stark contrast for November.

History will play on both sides of the race.  Gillum would be the first black governor of Florida if elected.  On the other side, Florida continues to do incredibly well under Republican governors.  Economic growth in Florida has skyrocketed under outgoing Governor Rick Scott.  Gillum meanwhile presides over a city known for high crime and falling behind other Florida cities.  In the end though, the race may simply turn into a Bernie Sanders versus Donald Trump cult of personality referendum.

Establishment Democrats lose Florida primary to Ocasio-Cortez style 39 year old mayor

Narrative alert: for the second day in a row the mainstream media hit Trump for making a claim “without citing evidence”.  The first was Trump’s claim that Google searches for his name were directing people to left leaning news organizations.  Trump did not cite the article in his tweet, but was referring to a PJ Media report. 

Yesterday the Daily Caller reported that China had hacked Hillary’s email account and set up code that was sending a courtesy duplicate of every email she sent to a Chinese run company in DC.  The Daily Caller did not name their sources, but after the CNN/Lanny Davis screwup, the MSM can hardly complain about that.

Trump isn’t citing stories without evidence.  He simply isn’t linking to the articles he is reading.  Mainstream media outlets likely don’t read news that conflicts with their narrative, and that may be why they missed these two stories.  I wonder where the “without evidence” narrative disappeared to when Florida’s Bill Nelson claimed the Russians had hacked our voting machines?

The “without evidence” narrative is back in the Mainstream Media

White House counsel Don McGhan may be moving on.  That’s the rumors coming from left-leaning Axios.  But the tone of the headline doesn’t match the story.  This isn’t the first time that’s been the case with a McGhan story either.  After McGhan spent 30 hours with Mueller representing the President, media outlets speculated that he had flipped on Trump.  That turned out not to be true.  The new rumors also do not indicate a split between Trump and McGhan.  In fact, the story demonstrates the value he has shown to the administration and why he may be moving on.  McGhan could be replaced by Emmet Flood.  Flood has represented Clinton and Bush against Congressional investigations and is known for fighting against investigator overreach.

Don McGhan’s work may be done

Both parties have one thing in common: they are running against Nancy Pelosi

Even if Democrats win the House in November, Nancy Pelosi is unlikely to be the next Speaker of the House.  The much anticipated Blue Wave set to hand Democrats control in November has had it’s share of roadbumps.  While Democrats cheer close races in red districts and claim moral victories when they lose, the Blue Wave theory definitely has it’s skeptics.  One reason for the skepticism might be how fast Democrats are running away from themselves.

Democrats breathed a sigh of relief as every candidate Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez endorsed last Tuesday lost.  Saturday saw another Democratic Socialist loss as Hawaii chose a so called “fiscal conservative” Democrat Ed Case over rabidly anti-Trump Democratic Socialist Doug Chin.  The battle to beat back the Democratic Socialists in the DNC seems on track.

But Democrats are also running against Nancy Pelosi.  In fact 49% of Democrats want Pelosi out of Democrat leadership.  79% of independents don’t want Pelosi running the party.  Many Democrat candidates for the House have also promised to replace Pelosi.

The Democrat blue wave relies on history and political theory.  History says the President usually loses the House in his first midterm.  Political theory says congressional elections are all local.  In other words, people care less about party than they do the individuals who are actually running.  At the same time, the Democrat party is struggling.  Their “abolish ICE” movement exposed their activist wing as idiotic.  But Pelosi has also failed to produce anything other than extreme hatred for Trump as a platform.  The best thing they’ve come up with is how important it is to raise taxes again.

There is no plan B.  Joe Crowley was destined to be Pelosi’s replacement, until he lost to an upstart Democratic Socialist in New York.  For the blue wave to work, Democrats will need to continue to keep it quiet that a Democrat House will be led by Nancy Pelosi or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

8/9/18: Socialism falters, Chris Collins in trouble

Some Democrats are cheering the fall of Democratic Socialism.  In Tuesday’s primary, the candidates endorsed and supported by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dropped like flies.  Democrat voters went for the more middle of the left side of the road liberals who don’t openly talk about doubling taxes.  But while Democrats #walkaway from their energetic rising stars, that still leaves them with a November election platform of raising taxes and obstructing Trump.  We’ll see if that ends up being a winning combination.  The candidates on the left with the most success were ones backed by none other than Hillary Clinton.

Down goes Socialism, establishment Democrat party is back on top

Republican Chris Collins is in trouble for insider trading.  The New York representative called family members after the failure of a new drug being developed by a company where he served on the board.  The insider trading saved his son and others about $768,000 in losses.  Collins has vowed to fight.  Congress had passed strong anti-insider trading laws in 2012, but those were walked back the following year and quietly repealed by Obama.

Chris Collins hit for insider trading making his seat a target in November

Speaking of the midterms, Democrats are in trouble in the Senate.  But to take the House, they believe there are only 15 competitive races they have to win.  Of the 23 seats Dems need to retake the House for the first time since 2010, they believe they have 8 in the bag already.  Democrats are not running on much, except for independence from other Democrats and hatred for Trump.  In fact, it’s almost hard to tell who 2018 Democrat candidates despise more, Nancy Pelosi or Donald Trump.  The American people meanwhile have to decide if they believe them.  Democrats have worked in lock step to obstruct any sort of government movement, so it is kind of weird for them to pretend to be independent now when an election rolls around.  The great economy and success of Trump’s agenda doesn’t help either.

Democrats confident in their strategy of having no agenda and opposing themselves

No Haunting for James Hodgkinson

For 8 years the media waited, seemingly hoping and praying that their charge of violent domestic Conservative terrorism would be proven true.  Every time there was a mass shooting, the media had what seemed to be pre-written stories about the TEA Party bogeyman ready to go.  When James Holmes, a radicalized leftist, walked into a movie theater and shot it up, the media had a 52 year old TEA Party member named Jim Holmes up on the screen within hours.

Now we finally have that guy.  Hodgkinson was a frequent protester who was politically active, hated the President, planned out an assault, carefully picked his targets, and did it with clear mainstream partisan political motives.  He wasn’t a fringe character acting on conspiracy theories.  He wasn’t living in a cabin in the woods with a scraggly beard talking to the trees.  He wasn’t even a religious extremist.  James Hodgkinson was a campaign volunteer who in posts and letters clearly articulated the views of his party.

He was everything the media was hoping for. The only problem is Obama is no longer the President. Hodgkinson wasn’t a TEA Party protester carrying his 2nd amendment and anti-big government views to their final conclusion. He was a 99%er fed on the left’s rhetoric about Trump being a traitor and the rich seeking to harm the poor. When the left says Republicans want dirty air and dirty water, when they have commercials where Republicans rob Grandma or push her off a cliff, when they argue that Republican policies will result in the deaths of women and children or destroy our planet, apparently their followers listen.

Bernie Sanders just four days before the shooting was in Chicago calling for political revolution against Trump. He accused Trump of engineering policies that would kill women and children. He called Trump a liar. He announced that Trump would not be allowed to get away with it. Four days later, Hodgkinson walked onto a softball field with a rifle and a handgun and carried out “justice” and “resistance” against GOP congressmen.

As of this post, the shooting has happened three days ago.  Surely James Hodgkinson is still in the news cycle being analyzed and discussed at length, right?  Wouldn’t his ghost haunt the headlines for at least a week? A politically motivated shooting by a mainstream protester. Surely this is as newsworthy now as it would have been for the last 8 years, right?

CNN.Com has plenty of space for headlines.  Hodgkinson isn’t there. Of the entire front page, there is a story about Rand Paul on the baseball field and a story about one of the Capitol police officers throwing out the first pitch. Headlines that are more important than discovering what made Hodgkinson tick?  “Watch Newt Gingrich Contradict Himself”. “How NBC Botched the Megyn Kelly Rollout”. “State Budget Puts Powerball in Jeopardy”.

NBCNews does a little better, including a link to a US News report that the “Baseball Practice Gunman Had List of GOP Lawmaker’s Names”.  One other headline says “Guns Recovered in Virginia Shooting Appear Legally Bought”.  I would assume that’s about Hodgkinson.  The Washington Post offered a biography of Hodgkinson after the shooting suggesting that he had no idea who was on the practice field, despite eye witness accounts that he verified it was the GOP practice team before opening fire and had a list of targets.

Don’t hold your breath.  Will we find out if Hodgkinson was in the audience earlier this week when Sanders called for revolution? Will we find out what his duties were with the Sanders campaign? Is it possible Hodgkinson was ever paid by the DNC to show up at a Trump rally? Don’t expect the same sort of media curiosity you might have seen if Obama was President and James Hodgkinson was a TEA Party activist.