Tag: politics

The question of Stealth Sessions vs Snoozy Sessions has, apparently, been settled:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions resigned under pressure Wednesday after more than a year of public criticism from his boss, President Donald Trump.

Trump’s press secretary Sarah Sanders said the White House received a resignation letter from Sessions, 71, earlier Wednesday and Trump accepted it.

Sessions, a former senator from Alabama, departs after the president repeatedly hammered him about his decision last year to recuse himself from the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin.

Sessions’s public performance as Trump’s AG has been disappointing, especially given his early championing of the God-Emperor. Time will tell if there was anything to his performance out of the public eye or not, but his resignation now tends to indicate that there wasn’t much there.

This also casts some doubt on the veracity of Q. Trust Sessions… to do what? Resign?

So, I called the House for the Republicans at 8:43 PM Eastern time. CNN was nearly in tears, Nate Silver had lowered the odds of Republicans holding the House from 1 in 15 to 1 in 2, and there had been an eight-point turnaround from the pre-election polls favoring the Democratic candidate for Florida governor. Of the two key early House races involving vulnerable Republican incumbents, the one in Virginia went Democrat, the one in Kentucky held.

Game over. Right? It looked like my scenario of the Republicans losing a few seats, but not their House majority had proven correct. So, I called it and turned in.

Then I wake up this morning to reports of +34 Democrats in the House, +3 Republicans in the Senate.

WHAT. THE. HELL?

Now, I don’t mind being wrong, which I obviously was, but I do like to know why. And this combination of being correct about a few things while getting the larger element wrong is puzzling. How could most of the early metrics I’d chosen as indicators favor the Republicans and still produce end results like this? My first stab at explaining the dichotomy:

1. Trump turned the most dangerous areas with his campaigning. Where did he campaign the most heavily? Indiana and Florida. Where did Republicans seriously outperform the polls from the day before, by as much as eight percent in the case of the Florida governer’s race? Indiana and Florida. I should have known to discount the Trump effect elsewhere.
2. The non-incumbency factor. 40 Republican incumbents retired and Democrats took 34 seats. Due to the nature of American politics, it’s always easier for an incumbent to hold his seat than for a newcomer to claim it, even in a favorable district. The numbers don’t match up perfectly, as some of the flipped seats were weakly held where new incumbents swept in on Trump’s 2016 coattails, but I doubt that synchronicity is entirely coincidental.

Discuss amongst yourselves, and feel free to report significant developments as they come in.

The Kentucky 6th District and the Virginia 10th District are supposed to be the first indicators.

I’m watching CNN because I have a cruel streak. Is it just me or are the anchors starting to look just a little perturbed only 29 minutes after the first polls have closed?

DRUDGE: EXIT POLLS SHOW DEM WAVE BUILDING

I suspect he’s just screwing with them, to be honest.

I’ll be starting a Darkstream a few minutes after 7 PM Eastern to discuss the midterm results as they come in.

8:43 PM Eastern: I call KY-06 for Barr. This means Republicans have held the House! All hail the God-Emperor! As anticipated, the much-ballyhooed Blue Wave talked up by the mainstream media did not appear.

“There will be no ‘blue wave’”
– Vox Day, May 31, 2017

They both cannot be correct:

The blue wave is going to hit with a vengeance in Tuesday’s midterm elections, according to pollsters who say Democrats should easily capture the 23 seats they need to regain control of the House. But an upbeat President Trump predicted victory in the Senate — where pollsters say the GOP has a good chance to maintain or widen its majority — and even the House.

“There is a great electricity in the air like we haven’t seen, in my opinion, since the ’16 election,” Trump told reporters before leaving for a rally in Cleveland.

“So, something’s happening . . . I think we’re going to do very well in the House. I have never seen the energy that we have, the energy that this whole party has now, it’s really incredible.”

Whatever the outcome, Trump made it clear these midterm elections are about him.

“In a sense, I am on the ticket,” he said at the rally.

Earlier, in a telephone town hall, the president urged supporters to get out and vote because “the press is very much considering it a referendum on me and us as a movement.”

Every major poll said Trump is wrong about the Republicans maintaining control of the House.

The political website ­FiveThirtyEight calculated that Democrats had an 87.5 percent chance of winning it back.

Similarly, The Cook Political Report said Republicans had a tougher road to maintaining their majority. “We rate 75 races as competitive, including 70 GOP-held seats and just five held by Democrats. A ‘Red Exodus’ is contributing to the potential ‘Blue Wave.’ Of Republicans’ 41 open seats, 15 are rated as toss-ups or worse, and another five only lean Republican,” according to the website.

Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a website run by University of Virginia Center for Politics Director Larry Sabato, predicted that Democrats would easily pick up the necessary 23 seats. But it also cautioned that anything was possible with the country so deeply divided and memories of Trump’s upset win in 2016 still fresh in mind.

Most polls predicted similar results, with a CNN generic ballot survey showing Democrats ahead of Republicans by 55 percent to 42 percent, and the RealClearPolitics average of generic polls showing Democrats leading with 49.7 percent compared with 42.4 percent for Republicans.

If, as I anticipate, Republicans remain in control of the House, this election is going to destroy the rest of the mainstream media’s remaining credibility.

Nate Silver is desperately attempting to remain credible. It’s not working:

FiveThirtyEight’s election forecaster Nate Silver said Sunday that the House could end up in Democratic or Republican hands in Tuesday’s election, though polling predicts that Democrats will flip the chamber.

“So in the House we have Democrats with about a 4 in 5 chance of winning,” Silver told ABC’s “This Week.”

However, he noted that “polls aren’t always right.”

“The range of outcomes in the House is really wide,” he explained. “Our range, which covers 80 percent of outcomes goes from, on the low end, about 15 Democratic pickups, all the way to low to mid 50s, 52 or 53. Most of those are under 23, which is how many seats they would need to win to take the House,” he said.”

“But no one should be surprised if they only win 19 seats and no one should be surprised if they win 51 seats,” Silver added. “Those are both extremely possible, based on how accurate polls are in the real world.”

The low end is 15+ Democrat. Duly noted.

Haunted by memories of 2016, liberals around the country are riven with anxiety in the campaign’s homestretch. They’re suspicious of favorable polls and making election night contingency plans in case their worst fears come true. Some report literal nightmares about a Democratic wipeout.

“We’re kind of just in the bed-wetting phase now,” said Democratic pollster John Anzalone, a Hillary Clinton campaign alumnus who spent election night 2016 in Clinton’s Manhattan war room.

Two years later, even thinking about the prospect of a repeat of that night’s letdown is still too much for many Democrats to bear.

This should be amusing.

Rasmussen Reports is noticing a pattern concerning how Republican voters don’t tend to show their hand:

Just as in 2016, Democrats are more outspoken about how they’re going to vote in the upcoming elections than Republicans and unaffiliated voters are.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 60{01f02ff5c3cf9d4a85478ebd476d665649f9a1508a833d70ddca2c7e9b315fd2} of Likely Democratic Voters say they are more likely to let others know how they intend to vote this year compared to previous congressional elections. This compares to 49{01f02ff5c3cf9d4a85478ebd476d665649f9a1508a833d70ddca2c7e9b315fd2} of Republicans and 40{01f02ff5c3cf9d4a85478ebd476d665649f9a1508a833d70ddca2c7e9b315fd2} of voters not affiliated with either major political party.

In August 2016, 52{01f02ff5c3cf9d4a85478ebd476d665649f9a1508a833d70ddca2c7e9b315fd2} of Democrats were more likely to let others know how they intended to vote in the upcoming presidential election, compared to 46{01f02ff5c3cf9d4a85478ebd476d665649f9a1508a833d70ddca2c7e9b315fd2} of Republicans and 34{01f02ff5c3cf9d4a85478ebd476d665649f9a1508a833d70ddca2c7e9b315fd2} of unaffiliated voters. Some analysts before and after Donald Trump’s upset victory suggested that most pollsters missed his hidden support among voters fearful of criticism who were unwilling to say where they stood.

Similarly when asked now about family, friends and co-workers, 60{01f02ff5c3cf9d4a85478ebd476d665649f9a1508a833d70ddca2c7e9b315fd2} of Democrats say they are also more likely to tell others how they intend to vote, but only 46{01f02ff5c3cf9d4a85478ebd476d665649f9a1508a833d70ddca2c7e9b315fd2} of Republicans and 45{01f02ff5c3cf9d4a85478ebd476d665649f9a1508a833d70ddca2c7e9b315fd2} of unaffiliated voters agree.

Of course Democrats are talk more. They can’t distinguish the narrative from reality. They are magical thinkers who believe that casting a narrative spell creates the reality. In any event, it’s interesting to see how the pollsters are in quiet retreat from their previous narrative now that the actual voting is imminent.

NBC News reported that more people showed up to early voting, outpacing the 2014 midterms by leaps and bounds with a whopping 24,024,621 million ballots having already been counted. For comparison, 2014 only had 12,938,596 counted by this time, putting 2018 at nearly double.

To precisely no one’s surprise, another accuser of Supreme Court Associate Justice Kavanaugh has admitted that her accusations were Fake News:

One of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh’s accusers admitted this week that she made up her lurid tale of a backseat car rape, saying it “was a tactic” to try to derail the judge’s confirmation to the Supreme Court.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Judiciary Committee revealed the fraud in a letter to the FBI and Justice Department Friday, asking them to prosecute Judy Munro-Leighton for lying to and obstructing Congress. Mr. Grassley said Ms. Munro-Leighton is a left-wing activist who hijacked another “Jane Doe” anonymous report about a backseat rape and claimed it as her own story, calling it a “vicious assault.”

“I am Jane Doe from Oceanside CA — Kavanaugh raped me,” Ms. Munro-Leighton wrote in an Oct. 3 email claiming to have been a victim of the judge.

Republicans had better prosecute these false accusers and prosecute them hard, because this has become a standard tactic for Democrats attempting to derail Republican appointees. Ms Munro-Leighton really would have done much better to describe her false accusation of backseat car rape as a “thought experiment” rather than a political tactic.

A bold prediction by Fleporblog flies directly in the face of the Blue Wave-predicting pollsters:

Florida is looking better and better by the day for Republicans! Nearly 3.75 million people have voted early. The margin for the Republicans continues to increase each day (currently +63,537). Democrats had a lead of 96,450 at the end of Early Voting in 2016. The difference at this point is +159,987 for Republicans. We have an excellent chance of flipping FL-D7 and a good chance of flipping FL-D13.

We will not lose a single Republican House Seat.

Nevada has been a night and day difference when comparing 2018 to 2016. The RNC went all in with door-to-door knocking starting 6 months ago. It is really paying off BIGLY! We will hold the Senate Seat (Heller) and the Governor’s Seat. We have a fantastic chance of flipping NV-D3 and a good chance of flipping NV-D4.

We will not lose a single Republican House Seat.

If this guy gets it right with a call that virtually no one else is making, he’ll definitely be one site to watch in the 2020 Presidential election.

It’s important to put the pollsters on the record. Democrats are doubling down on the Blue Wave:

A political analyst updated his outlook for the House just days before midterm elections, giving the Democrats an even greater edge over Republicans hoping to maintain power. Dave Wasserman, who is House editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, tweeted Wednesday that their forecast was being updated, predicting that Democrats gain 30-40 seats, up from 25-35 seats. Wasserman added that this prediction could change before the Nov. 6 midterm elections.

The forecast suggests a so-called “blue wave” is more becoming more likely. Democrats need to flip 23 seats to take control of the lower chamber. In the Senate, which the GOP also controls, 24 Democrats and two independents who caucus with Democrats, are up for re-election. Nine Republicans are up for re-election. Only one seat, Sen. Heidi Heitkamp’s, D-N.D., is rated anything below “toss-up” at “lean-R,” according to Cook Political Report.

RealClearPolitics gives Democrats a smaller edge in the House than Cook, factoring in a number of toss ups. Their latest House elections map shows Democrats taking 203 seats versus 198 for Republicans. Thirty-four races are listed in the “toss ups” category.

So, we’re expected to believe that the President’s approval ratings are rising to the highest level of his presidency at the same time that the mid-term elections are going strongly against him? It does not add up. And while Wasserman is waffling only five days out, I will stick to my prediction from May 31, 2017, there will be no “blue wave”.

Nate Silver presently predicts an 84.9 percent chance of Democrats taking the House.