Tag: politics

How is this sort of overt coordination and interference in the U.S. Federal elections even remotely legal?

Representatives from a host of the biggest US tech companies, including Facebook and Twitter, have scheduled a private meeting for Friday to share their tactics in preparation for the 2018 midterm elections.

Last week, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, invited employees from a dozen companies, including Google, Microsoft, and Snapchat, to gather at Twitter’s headquarters in downtown San Francisco, according to an email obtained by BuzzFeed News.

“As I’ve mentioned to several of you over the last few weeks, we have been looking to schedule a follow-on discussion to our industry conversation about information operations, election protection, and the work we are all doing to tackle these challenges,” Gleicher wrote.

The meeting, the Facebook official wrote, will have a three-part agenda: each company will present the work they’ve been doing to counter information operations; there will be a discussion period for problems each company faces; and a talk about whether such a meeting should become a regular occurrence.

My father was investigated by the Federal Election Commission for YEARS after he published a single state election guide that was entirely impartial and was praised widely by both the DFL and IR candidates for its detail, quality, and objectivity. The ABC affiliate TV news repeatedly tried ambushes at both his home and office, until eventually, the FEC simply dropped the whole thing without a word of explanation or apology.

And today the social media giants are permitted to publicly coordinating their tactics to influence the Federal elections?

I have nothing good to say about the late Senator, so I will simply note that an Arizona Senate seat is now available:

Sen. John McCain, independent voice of the GOP establishment, dies at 81

The wishful thinking by the enemies of the people notwithstanding, the professional pollsters are not betting on it:

Salvanto’s polling currently indicates that few House seats will change hands in November — and that the GOP could very well hold its majority in the House. “In this era, a district’s voting patterns from the past tend to stay that way,” Salvanto said. “Not as many partisans today are willing to cross party lines.” Of the nation’s 435 House districts, fully 85 percent will almost certainly stick with its current party affiliation come November, Salvanto projects….

“Right now I think this election looks like a toss-up,” Salvanto said. “We see a Democrat pickup in the House of Representatives in the 20-odd seat range, but Republicans could certainly hold on to the House.” The GOP holds a slim 43-seat House majority, with six vacancies.

“Even though Republicans have not fared well in special elections so far this cycle, it does look like they will be turning out for the midterms,” Salvanto said. “So far we do not see a large number of Republicans saying they will flip and vote for a Democrat.”

GOP voters in the past have been much more likely than Democrats to turn up and cast ballots in midterm elections, regardless of each party’s enthusiasm level ahead of Election Day.

So Democrats are literally betting the House on their ability to capture large numbers of voters who don’t normally vote in midterm elections.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the Republicans only lose single-digit seats. To be honest, I wouldn’t even be shocked if the GOP wound up picking up seats if the God-Emperor delivers another positive surprise or two before November.

The 2018 midterms are when the Democrats begin to understand that the 2020 Trumpslide is coming. Call the shot, sport the shirt, and demoralize them now.

Nate Silver and company are even more certain that Democrats will take the House of Representatives than they were that Hillary Clinton would be elected President (72{8359bd26b913e24a7303d212a23546aa4fafa0cfcdec25c849ef881c8a4ae759}):

3 in 4 Chance Democrats win control (74.6{8359bd26b913e24a7303d212a23546aa4fafa0cfcdec25c849ef881c8a4ae759})
1 in 4 Chance Republicans keep control (25.4{8359bd26b913e24a7303d212a23546aa4fafa0cfcdec25c849ef881c8a4ae759})

They are so certain of victory that they are desperately appealing to Republicans to vote for Democratic Congressional candidates:

In November, many Republican leaners and independents will face a difficult decision. The national Democratic Party under Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer doesn’t share their views or values. But Trump is a rolling disaster of mendacity, corruption and prejudice. What should they do?

They should vote Democratic in their House race, no matter who the Democrats put forward. And they should vote Republican in Senate races with mainstream candidates (unlike, say, Corey Stewart in Virginia).

Why vote strategically in this case? Because American politics is in the midst of an emergency.

If Democrats gain control of the House but not the Senate, they will be a check on the president without becoming a threat to his best policies (from a Republican perspective) or able to enact their worst policies. The tax cut will stand. The Senate will still approve conservative judges. But the House will conduct real oversight hearings and expose both Russian influence and administration corruption. Under Republican control, important committees — such as chairman Devin Nunes’ Intelligence Committee — have become scraping, sniveling, panting, pathetic tools of the executive branch. Only Democratic control can drain this particular swamp.

Alternatively: If Republicans retain control of the House in November, Trump will (correctly) claim victory and vindication. He will have beaten the political performances of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama in their first midterms. He will have proven the electoral value of racial and ethnic stereotyping. He will have demonstrated the effectiveness of circuslike distraction. He will have shown the political power of bold, constant, uncorrected lies. And he will gain many more enablers and imitators.

Perhaps worst of all, a victorious Trump will complete his takeover of the Republican Party (which is already far along). Even murmured dissent will be silenced. The GOP will be fully committed to a 2020 presidential campaign conducted in the spirit of George Wallace — a campaign of racial division, of rural/urban division, of religious division, of party division that metastasizes into mutual contempt.

This would leave many Americans entirely abandoned in American politics: Catholics who are both pro-life and pro-immigrant. Evangelicals who are conservative but think that character matters, that compassion counts, that racial healing is a Christian calling. Traditional Republicans who miss a time — not so long ago — when leaders such as Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush modeled grace and led the West in defending freedom.

In a democracy, a vote is usually not a matter of good and evil. It is a matter of weighing competing goods and choosing lesser evils. The possible outcomes this November come down to this: Trump contained, or Trump triumphant.

Democrats, I suspect, will make a victory harder than it should be. A significant number seem to view Trump’s vulnerability as an opportunity to ideologically purify their party. They are actively undermining the job of containing the president by alienating centrist voters they need to turn the House.

But this does not change the political and ethical reality. The only way to save the GOP is to defeat it in the House. In this case, a Republican vote for a Democratic representative will be an act of conscience.

The media simply does not understand, they simply will not accept, that it is the God-Emperor who is increasingly popular with the people, not the useless Republican cucks and cons in Congress. They also don’t understand that the higher turnout in Democratic primaries isn’t just a useful sign of party enthusiasm, it’s also an indicator that the Democratic candidates nominated are going to be further to the left than they were in 2016. Which, in genuinely competitive districts, is usually going to render them less electable in November.

People lose security clearances for various reasons all the time. Why does it concern so many people that a retired CIA Director lost his clearance, and why would a Navy admiral care so much that he demands his own security clearance be revoked too? An admiral tied to Hillary Clinton, no less….

Navy Admiral William McRaven, a man whose name was once floated as a possible vice-presidential pick for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, issued a direct challenge to President Donald Trump on Thursday: “Revoke my security clearance too, Mr. President.” He made the demand in response to President Trump’s decision to revoke the clearance of former CIA Director John Brennan on Wednesday.

I suspect there are more than a few skeletons rattling around inside Mr. McRaven’s closet.

Minnesota functionally elects the first-ever Somali bigamist to Congress:

MINNEAPOLIS — The nation’s first Somali-American state legislator is poised to set the same historic mark in Congress after winning a crowded Democratic primary in Minnesota to replace Rep. Keith Ellison.

State Rep. Ilhan Omar captured the Democratic nomination for Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District on Tuesday, defeating a former Minnesota House Speaker and longtime state senator. It puts another notch in the meteoric political rise of a woman who spent her childhood in a Kenyan refugee camp and immigrated to the United States at age 12 before winning her seat in the state House in 2016.

A Republican has not won the heavily liberal Minneapolis-area congressional seat in many decades, making Tuesday’s primary the de facto election. The seat opened when Ellison launched a last-minute bid for attorney general, leaving the seat after six terms.

Well, it’s not like all those nice Scandinavians ever grasped the essence of any of those English concepts of the Common Law and limited government anyhow. Perhaps a perjury-prone Somali will do better?

On the plus side, a Trumpist candidate defeated useless cuckservative Tim Pawlenty for the Republican nomination for governor:

Jeff Johnson shocked the Minnesota political world Tuesday with a commanding victory in the Republican primary for governor, while U.S. Rep. Tim Walz won a three-way race in the DFL primary, setting up a clash of starkly different visions for the state’s future. Johnson, a Hennepin County commissioner, derailed former Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s bid to win back his old job. Pawlenty had been widely seen as the front-runner thanks to much higher name recognition from his two previous terms in office, and Johnson overcame a vast fundraising disadvantage with a message of change and by courting supporters of President Donald Trump.