The electorate tunes Biden out—and why it matters for November
By • The Washington Free Beacon
The 2022 election grows more mysterious by the day. Republicans enter this cycle with the wind at their backs: President Biden is unpopular, voters say we are in a recession, Democratic majorities are razor-thin, and midterms favor the opposition party. The issue set—inflation, border security, crime, and the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan—is well-suited for Republican candidates. Many Democrats are retiring. GOP voters are enthusiastic. And did I mention the president is unpopular?
Yet Democrats are increasingly bullish about their electoral prospects. They have closed the gap with Republicans on the congressional generic ballot and lead the GOP for the first time this year. They are even or tied with Republicans in (admittedly spotty) polling averages of seven marquee Senate races. Since June 24, when the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade and restored abortion law to the political sphere, Democrats have outperformed their expected margins in special elections. The reversal of Roe has mobilized an important Democratic constituency: voters, especially women, with high levels of educational attainment. On August 2, Kansans dealt pro-life forces a setback by defeating a referendum that would have forbidden state judges from reading abortion rights into the state constitution. On August 23, Democrat Pat Ryan defeated Republican Marc Molinaro in a closely watched congressional special election in New York. Ryan staked his campaign on preserving abortion rights. Molinaro focused on inflation. Voters had a clear-cut choice between the two parties’ messages. Abortion won.
Suddenly, the political class is revising its expectations for the fall. “Red Wave Looks More Like a Ripple,” says the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter. “Democrats sense a shift in the winds, but it may not be enough,” says the New York Times. “Democrats’ Outlook for Midterm Elections Brightens After New York Win,” says the Wall Street Journal. The Journal‘s op-ed page says the GOP has an abortion problem. The problem? Republicans have no idea what to say about abortion. Some are reticent, some are all over the place, and others support restrictions that go against public opinion. The Democrats are free to define the landscape and press the attack that Republicans will take away women’s rights. It’s a replay of past Democratic accusations that the GOP will cut entitlements such as Medicare or Social Security—except this entitlement is sexual, personal, and not a question of dollars and cents. This summer, Democrats have spent tens of millions of dollars on pro-choice television ads targeting Republicans. Why? Because it works.
There may be more behind the changing dynamics of this election than falling gas prices and abortion rights. Typically, midterm results depend on a president’s approval rating. If that were the case this year, Democrats would be running behind expectations. As it stands, Democrats are running ahead of Biden’s approval rating in the congressional generic ballot, in Senate polling, and in special elections. Voters are not translating their disapproval of Biden into disgust with Democrats in general. They are not factoring Biden into their down-ballot calculations. They have tuned him out.
Jeff Bell, the late Republican consultant, wrote an essay 22 years ago that resonates today. Called “The Politics of Bifurcation,” Bell’s article tried to explain why primary voters in both the Democratic and Republican parties during the 2000 election cycle were more interested in a candidate’s character than in political ideology. The reason, Bell argued, was that voters held a “bifurcated” view of the Clinton presidency: They disapproved of Clinton’s personal conduct but applauded his job performance. Hence, they elevated candidates who displayed honor and integrity over candidates who proposed major policy changes.
That helped figures like John McCain, George W. Bush, and Bill Bradley, and hurt the politician with the closest ties to Clinton the man: Vice President Al Gore. “Without the bifurcation,” Bell wrote in the March 13, 2000, issue of The Weekly Standard, “the Republicans would have far less chance than they do of retaking the White House, given the positive economic and social trends over which Bill Clinton and Al Gore preside.” The split decision on Clinton put Bush in the Oval Office—with an assist from the Supreme Court.
A generation ago, voters differentiated between their views of the president’s personality and of his job performance. The Democrats picked up five House seats one month before the Republican-controlled House of Representatives impeached Clinton. Might it be that voters now distinguish between their views of Biden the president and of down-ballot Democrats? In the new politics of bifurcation, voters separate their attitudes toward Biden, whom they see as a lost cause, from their feelings toward the Democratic Party. They might not be happy with either their president or the economy. But unlike last year, they see today’s Republicans as more frightening than the alternative. The upshot: a Democratic revival.
The new politics of bifurcation explains why 18 percent of voters disapprove of Biden but say they will vote for Democrats in the fall. It explains why a recent Pew survey found that Biden’s job approval is a pathetic 37 percent, but voters who disapprove “not so strongly” of Biden favor Democratic candidates by double digits. The not-so-strong disapprovers are a mix of voters who probably were never enthusiastic about Biden to begin with but accepted him as the best way to remove his predecessor from the White House. The economic mismanagement, border insecurity, breakdown of law and order, persistence of viral threats, and chaotic international scene of the past year and a half remind them of Biden’s many flaws. Still, they are not ready to embrace Republican candidates who hold marginal positions on abortion and long for a Trump restoration.
Bifurcation works in paradoxical ways. The last two Democratic presidents had terrible midterms but rebounded in time for reelection. That might not happen with Biden. The electorate views him so poorly that it may be difficult for him to recover—and his job will be more difficult still if surprising Democratic strength in November deprives him of Republican foils in Congress. CNN’s July poll found that 75 percent of Democrats want someone other than Biden to run for president in 2024. The most important number in the Pew poll was 35 percent. It’s the percentage of voters who say Biden is “mentally sharp.” He’s not getting sharper.
The safe bet is that undecided voters will swing toward the opposition party in the closing days of the campaign. In this likely scenario, Biden’s dismal approval rating will bring down the Democratic congressional majorities. That, after all, is how the world works. And yet the world hasn’t been working as expected for the last six years. The most unpopular candidate in the history of the Gallup poll became the first U.S. president with no experience in government or the military. That president became the first chief executive to lose reelection in 28 years. We have had a once-in-a-century pandemic, the largest single-year jump in violent crime ever recorded, the breakdown of the southern border, the worst inflation in 40 years, the first cross-border invasion in Europe since 1945, and a Supreme Court decision that reversed a half-century-old precedent. Things are weird. And if I am right about the new politics of bifurcation, things are about to get weirder.
By • RealClear Policy
As the federal government under President Biden continues its attempts to undermine the authority of the states to regulate their own elections — unconstitutional and unprecedented federal actions — states are reasserting their power by passing reforms that will protect the integrity of the electoral process. Louisiana is a national leader on this and should continue its work of making it easy to vote and hard to cheat.
Election integrity is vital to a healthy democracy because Americans need to have confidence that their votes are protected. A breakdown in any part of ballot protection can weaken this confidence, lead to questions regarding the legitimacy of election outcomes, and create a deeper distrust of government and the men and women who serve in it.
Protecting the vote includes ensuring that ballots are cast securely, privately, and legally. It means making sure that every legally cast ballot is counted — and counted only once. It also means providing for the transparent and timely reporting of election results as well as a meaningful post-election audit system to ferret out any irregularities.
Election officials across the country work diligently behind the scenes to administer free and fair elections with these goals in mind. However, some election integrity measures are in full view of the public, and those measures are vital to public confidence in elections. One such measure is the use of voter ID, an issue Louisiana has addressed head on, requiring voters to prove their identity when casting a ballot.
I spent much of my adult life in Louisiana. There were many instances, because of work or being out of state on Election Day, that I had to vote by mail because I refused to let my vote go uncounted and my voice unheard.
Each time I requested and filled out a mail-in ballot, I had to enter a code from my Louisiana driver’s license to verify my identity to the Secretary of State and the Clerk of Courts. Having to write down that four-digit audit code wasn’t inconvenient or an undue burden on me. It was easy, and it gave me confidence that my ballot was secure.
Activists — both within the federal government and outside it — will try to convince you otherwise. They’ll tell you all kinds of lies about voter ID laws. But here are the facts: Voter ID does not reduce turnout, nor does it have an impact on election outcomes.
Louisiana voters are happy with this requirement. In a recent survey of likely voters in Louisiana conducted by the Center for Excellence in Polling, we found that 68 percent of Louisianans support requiring voters to prove their identity when voting by mail. Our results are consistent with previous nationwide surveys that found increasing support for photo ID requirements for voters.
Now, here’s the kicker that the Left doesn’t want you to know: Support for voter ID crosses party lines. In our survey, we found that 80 percent of Republicans and 70 percent of Independents support requiring voters to prove their identity on a mail-in ballot. But voter ID is not a partisan issue. A majority (52 percent) of Louisiana Democratic voters also support voter ID requirements on mail-in ballots.
As our country attempts to move forward, the Left will continue to use the unique circumstances of the 2020 election as an excuse to push their radical, Washington-focused, top-down election policies on the states. But the states should continue to push back against the federal intrusion into their sovereign responsibility. As Chief Justice Charles Hughes once wrote, this is “necessary in order to enforce the fundamental right” to vote.
Louisiana has long been a leader in making it easy to vote and hard to cheat. It’s a legacy the Pelican State should be proud of, and one the legislature would be wise to continue. Nothing less than our democracy depends on it.
By • National Review
A New York State Supreme Court justice has ruled that a new law allowing 800,000 noncitizens to vote in local elections in New York City was unconstitutional. The case will be appealed to the Court of Appeals, the state’s highest judicial body, but it’s a promising start.
Justice Ralph Porzio noted that the state’s constitution explicitly says only eligible citizens can vote. That can be changed, but only by a vote of the people in a referendum, a move the hyper “woke” city council didn’t dare to embrace when it passed the law allowing green-card holders and work-visa holders the vote last year. They knew noncitizen voting is unpopular — even radical San Francisco voters gave the idea only 54 percent approval in 2016.
There are few limits on how far the woke Left will go to change the rules of voting. In 2019, a majority of House Democrats voted to lower the federal voting age to 16 years, from 18.
The very notion of noncitizen voting is fraught with peril, especially in a big city such as New York. Few experts believe that, in a place where noncitizen voting is allowed, there would be effective enforcement of laws still barring illegal aliens from voting.
In 2016, New York Board of Elections commissioner Alan Schulkin, a Democrat, was videotaped at a party by Project Veritas confirming the existence of voter fraud and decrying the city’s failure to require voter ID. “Certain neighborhoods in particular, they bus people around to vote,” Schulkin said on the tape. “They put them in a bus and go poll site to poll site.” Schulkin was promptly forced to resign for speaking his mind by then-mayor Bill de Blasio.
Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, himself the son of Cuban immigrants, has introduced a bill to prohibit federal funding to states and localities that allow foreigners to vote. “It’s ridiculous that states are allowing foreign citizens to vote,” Rubio says. “However, if states and localities do let those who are not U.S. citizens to vote in elections, they shouldn’t get U.S. citizen taxpayer money.”
I am in favor of having people legally living in this country establish ties to the community and have a say in their governance. As Howard Husock, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, says, “the right way to bring noncitizens into the electoral process at the federal, state, and local levels is old-fashioned: encourage them to become citizens.” It’s not hard for legal residents to go that route — they must have been in the U.S. for five years, pay some fees, and pass a test, given in English, on U.S. institutions.
What is so unfair about the system we have now? The answer is that it doesn’t suit the blatantly political imperatives of the woke Left, and that is a key reason noncitizen voting must be rejected.
By • Newsweek
There are a lot of folks who like to watch the NFL on TV. Maybe not as many as there were before the whole kneeling thing started, but it’s still a big number. And many of those probably find it irritating to no end when one of the commentators says something like—and it’s almost inevitable that they will—”It’s all going to come down to which team can put the most points on the board.”
For the people who, like me, make a living writing about politics and elections, the onset of primary season produces for us the same kind of annoyance. It’s maddening when someone who is presented as an expert on the ins and outs of the electoral process says, as you can safely bet someone eventually will, that “it’s all going to come down to turnout.”
There are times when there is a real urge to smack some of these analysts in the face. This is what comes from eliminating high school civics programs and news organizations deciding that those who at one time or another covered local government are now well-suited to explain how and why politicians get elected.
The 2016 presidential election is a perfect example of this phenomenon in practice. Many of the nation’s top political reporters, as well as those in the middle and many of the bottom-feeders, missed what was going on. They bought into the spin that Hillary Clinton‘s election was inevitable. As such, they regarded the October 2016 leak of an audiotape in which Donald Trump could, to put it gently, be heard speaking unflatteringly about women, as a death blow.
Admittedly, in many races and almost any other year, it probably would have been. But the choice between Clinton and Trump was unlike any presented to the voters in some time.
It takes experience in the electoral process to generate the level of sophistication regarding the many nuances in American politics. It takes more than subject-matter expertise to get it right. So many of my colleagues missed it so totally that I—who saw Trump’s chances of getting to the White House growing while Clinton’s were contracting, even after the release of the infamous audiotape—was either onto something or had simply become a cheerleader for whichever candidate the GOP chose to nominate.
The reason I bring this all up is that I now see it happening again. The dominant political media’s obsession with Trump, the candidates he’s endorsed and whether or not they’re winning contested GOP primaries is only a small part of the 2022 midterm election story.
It’s a popular subject because it’s easy to cover and people seem interested in it. It doesn’t, however, tell us much about where the GOP is headed or what’s now happening among the Democrats. The next election, as much as the mainstream media won’t like it, isn’t going to be a referendum on Trump. It’s going to be about President Joe Biden and how the Democrats have run the country for the last two years, even though—and this is something else that’s been overlooked—the GOP is in charge of more states now than at almost any time in history.
The Biden presidency is failing. At least that’s the perception people have. His approval rating, which started in the low- to mid-60s when he took office, has now sunk below 40. That’s not good for him, and it’s not good for his party. Democrats are getting the blame for things that are happening as a result of policies Biden has put in place, as well as for things harmful to the interests of the United States over which he has no direct control. That’s created a positive political environment for the GOP, which has amassed a nearly double-digit lead on the crucial polling question of which party voters want to control Congress after the next election.
How people feel, and why, is what ties all this together. The environment drives turnout and, right now, GOP voters are energized and engaged. A Rasmussen Reports national survey released May 26 found that of the 79% of likely voters who are excited to vote in the midterm election, Republicans led Democrats by an eight-point margin. Among those who said they were “very excited” (49 percent) to vote this fall, the GOP lead grows to 16 points. “These findings are consistent with the generic congressional ballot,” the polling firm said, “where Republicans held a nine-point lead last week.”
The challenge for those writing about elections is to figure out why that is. To be blunt, they need to set aside their personal biases—left and right—long enough to get in touch with what the American voter is thinking, while also abandoning their propensity to judge whether those thoughts are “right” or “wrong.” Only then will they be able to report competently on the contest for control of Congress this fall.
By • Daily Caller
The left loves to hate on those who speak truths they’d rather not hear. Elon Musk was once their darling until he came out for free speech. Extremists also hate Tucker Carlson, the popular news and opinion host at Fox News, because he has been particularly effective in pointing out the hypocrisy, inconsistency and outright insanity of the far left. They want his show cancelled and him silenced. They’ve even staged protests at Tucker’s home in hopes of intimidating his family. That is how the left works — notice the recent protests at the homes of Supreme Court justices.
Despite all the hate from the left, Tucker Carlson and the ideas he advocates had a very good night this past week in Ohio. One doesn’t have to agree with every opinion expressed by Tucker — he’s expressed literally thousands and thousands of opinions, so it would be normal to have some differences with even like-minded people. But no one can deny that Ohio’s primaries showed that Tucker is on to something big and that conservative, America-first ideas are popular.
Ohio is broadly seen as a bellwether because the state has historically been representative of the nation’s voting patterns in several ways. So what do the Ohio GOP primaries tell us? Twenty-two out of 22 candidates who represented a conservative, America-first political approach won in the primaries. Additionally, GOP voters outnumbered the opposition by 2 to 1 in the US Senate primary. Simply stated, the Make America Great Again (MAGA) approach batted a perfect one thousand and energized voters, proving that the MAGA agenda is far more supported than the Left is willing to admit.
Tucker was also the first major supporter of J.D. Vance’s Senate candidacy — a political newcomer who easily won the GOP primary. While Vance garnered other endorsements, including Trump’s, most came at the last minute, and Tucker’s early support helped build Vance’s support and credibility. Tucker’s endorsement of Vance not only hit back at the left but also dealt the more establishment, anti-MAGA Republicans in the state who had endorsed more moderate candidates a stinging defeat.
The left continues to contend that a conservative, America first economic and foreign policy doesn’t represent what most Americans think and that while Donald Trump may have been the president from 2017 to 2021, he only won because of the so-called Russian collusion. And as a result, he wasn’t that popular and his MAGA agenda was illegitimate. But Ohio’s GOP recent primary proves the lie of the left’s absurd propaganda.
While President Trump on occasion alienated voters with his brusk no-nonsense manner of speaking, his policies were actually widely supported. The economy was strong, wages were growing, America and its friends were safer and less threatened by totalitarianism and terrorism.
And while some voters may have assumed that the economic boom and safer international climate were just good fortune before the COVID pandemic struck, the last 15 months have provided a sharp contrast to the good times that the MAGA agenda brought. The evidence has been mounting that while Trump may have offended some, his policies benefitted everyone and made the country freer, more prosperous and more secure. Ohio’s primary results — with record turn out and a strong and consistent showing for MAGA oriented candidates — prove that Americans have woken up to the destructive mischief caused by the left.
Virtually every night, Tucker Carlson is exposing the left and showing that they seem more interested in expanding their power and prestige than in helping make America stronger, freer and more prosperous. So we should expect the attacks on MAGA candidates and Tucker to become ever more shrill and intolerant. The extremists on the left are losing the political debate — being beaten on the airwaves and at the ballot box.
These are very difficult times for the extreme left. Tucker Carlson will continue to draw their ire as one of the most articulate proponents of America First principles. Anyone who effectively advocates for American values can expect to be the target of increasingly shrill attacks and demands that these “dangerous people” with “dangerous ideas” must be silenced.
The extreme left sees time-tested truths and basic facts as dangerous to their political aims. And since they cannot win the debate, they hope to silence their opponents. If you disagree with Tucker or with an America First agenda, that’s your right. But it isn’t your right to silence those with whom you disagree.
Those who seek to silence others are admitting the inferiority of their own ideas and their ability to advocate for them. Those the left seeks to silence are typically the most effective and fact-based advocates of conservative principles. So watch who the extremists on the left attack most vociferously and seek to silence, and you will know who is advocating most effectively for making and keeping America strong, prosperous and free. I suspect that Tucker will continue to be one of those at the top of their list.
By • Newsweek
The American political system is far from perfect but is generally considered to be better than most all others. Its openness, transparency and level of citizen involvement may be unequaled anywhere else in the world.
Still, some look upon the way America elects its officials as a fundamentally flawed, anti-democratic process prone to cheating. The proponents of major change, once considered to be on the fringes of politics, have moved a lot closer to the center of power in both major parties in the last few years.
There are lots of ideas for reform on the table. One that continues to gather steam originated in the aftermath of the election of 2000, when the country had to wait weeks before it knew which candidate—former vice president Al Gore or then-Texas governor George W. Bush—carried Florida and, with it, a majority in the electoral college.
Everyone knows how it finally turned out. A group of disappointed Democrats, however, believing Gore had been denied victory not by the voters but by Supreme Court Justices loyal to the GOP, began considering ways to ensure it never happened again. They proposed a method for choosing presidential electors based on the results of the national popular vote for president.
The idea is now drawing support from some Republicans as well because, they say, presidential campaigns currently rely so much on the critical “swing states” that each state where the outcome is more or less is predictable is neglected. As a result, millions of potential GOP voters stay home because, as far as choosing a president is concerned, their votes don’t matter much at all.
Every American should believe their vote counts. Under the terms of the proposed National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC), the candidate who receives the most votes nationwide would win all the electors from states that are members of the compact. This mechanism, its proponents say, would incentivize both major parties to compete for every vote in every state.
Critics of the idea have called it unconstitutional, arguing it changes the process for choosing a president without a constitutional amendment or congressional approval. Supporters say that’s not so—the compact leaves the Electoral College intact but changes the way states party to it choose their electors. That’s a privilege the Constitution reserves for the state legislatures. Currently, 15 states and the District of Columbia, covering nearly 200 electors combined, have enacted legislation bringing them into the NPVIC, which only goes into effect when enough states with enough electors to determine the outcome of an election—270—sign on.
Regardless of what people say about it, it’s an idea that may someday come to pass. Many Republicans resist the idea because they believe it will give Democrats the opportunity to steal an election through fraud in cities in big states like Illinois, New York and Pennsylvania. Those concerns are blocking the compact from advancing further because the majority of state legislative chambers are currently controlled by the GOP.
That’s not going to last forever. Such things can turn on a dime, like in 1974 when the GOP lost hundreds of seats nationwide thanks to Richard Nixon’s misdeeds. It looks increasingly likely Joe Biden‘s mismanagement of the presidency will produce similarly tremendous losses up and down the ballot for the Democrats this November.
The smart move for anyone who cares about election integrity would be to take up the issue of fraud and potential fraud now. As much as some people seem to believe voter identification laws will do the trick, it’s the issue of the voter rolls and their accuracy that should occupy their time.
The best protection against future fraud, say some election law experts, would be changing the way voter rolls are maintained to keep them clean. States should henceforth require that deceased voters be removed from the rolls no more than 30 days after a certificate of death is registered.
The relevant officials in each state should also have to review county tax rolls to see if the addresses listed on the voter rolls given by people when they register are indeed residential or other permissible addresses as required by state law. Similarly, court clerks should be required to send weekly or monthly reports to election officials identifying people to whom jury summons are undeliverable so they may be struck from the lists.
Finally, we might all be better served if we treated voter registration like we do drivers’ licenses by putting an expiration date on it. Voters, especially those who are put on the rolls automatically because of the federal Motor Voter law, should be required to renew their registration every few years to help maintain the accuracy of the lists.
These reforms are common sense and, if enacted, would do much to reassure a nation rocked now and again by charges of fraud. Elections are too important for their vital elements not to be maintained with the highest degree of scrutiny.
By • American Liberty
There’s an old joke almost everybody in politics has heard involving former Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley, the “big boss” of Chicago at a time when that meant something.
Daley ruled the city for many years with an iron hand. As he was dying, the story goes, he used his final breath to extract a promise from his closest associates that after he died, they’d have him buried on the city’s South Side “so he could stay active in politics.”
People have talked about fraud in American politics for years. Movies have been made about it – some serious, some not. Books have been written about it. It’s axiomatic among the political class that there are places where elections are routinely stolen by political machines that owe their allegiance to a party, a boss, or a cause and that “the dead” do sometimes make political contributions and vote.
In the abstract, it can be funny; when it happens, it’s no joke. Maryland Republican Ellen Sauerbrey narrowly lost the 1994 gubernatorial race because of it, as did Louisiana GOP St. Rep. Woody Jenkins, who said his less than 6,000 vote loss in a 1996 race for U.S. Senate was the result of last-minute fraudulent votes coming out of New Orleans.
In both cases, the courts disagreed, but that didn’t mean the fraud didn’t happen. Sauerbrey and Jenkins couldn’t prove it to the satisfaction of those in a position to make a difference in the result. Even many Democrats now acknowledge that some votes cast for JFK in the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon presidential contest – at its time the closest in U.S. history – were fraudulent even if (or especially because) they wouldn’t have changed the outcome.
Former President Donald J. Trump will likely go to his grave believing the 2020 election was stolen from him. He can’t prove it – and is voluble in his criticism of GOP leaders and elected officials who don’t want to spend time trying. Before casting too much shade in their direction, however, consider the issue here may be a practical one rather than a matter of principle.
Fraud is hard to prove. The people who are good at it know how to do it so that most times it is at best undetectable. At the very least, they do a lot to ensure what they do is unprovable to a legal certainty, thereby gaining an edge with state and federal judges who typically insert themselves into electoral outcomes with the greatest reluctance. But just because it can’t be proven doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
Getting back to Trump, some of the more outrageous charges made on his behalf – like the idea that machine vote counts were manipulated on servers located outside the United States before they were reported – lack credibility on their face and take attention away from the systemic changes in the voting process made before the election that activists working against the former president could have exploited to alter vote totals.
An examination of those issues, says one researcher, shows patterns worth looking into further.
Statistician John R. Lott Jr. examined the results from six swing states and found voter turnout on behalf of the GOP improved between the 2016 and 2020 elections while support for the Democrats dropped “except in places where voter fraud was claimed,” The Washington Times reported Monday.
His review of data from the 2020 election showed Joe Biden getting what Lott called hundreds of thousands of “excess” votes in Democratic-controlled areas in the 2020 election, the paper reported.
“More heavily Democratic counties actually had a slightly lower turnout in 2020, except for counties where vote fraud was alleged. In those counties, you had a huge increase in turnout,” Lott told The Washington Times in an interview.
In some of those swing states, you had counties where vote fraud was alleged. In some of those swing states, you had counties where vote fraud wasn’t alleged. And yet you only had huge increases in turnout where vote fraud was alleged,” he said.
Crucially, Lott’s examination of the data revealed that while in-person voting numbers were consistent with overall trends in both parties, the “absentee or mailed balloting tilted toward Democrats in the Democratic precincts” for what the paper described as “no clear reason.”
“Time after time, the news media keeps on saying there’s no evidence of vote fraud there. I think it’s at least a little bit harder for them to go and claim that” Lott told reporter Stephen Dinan.
The results of Lott’s number-crunching are not conclusive. It is not evidence that will stand up alone in a court of law as proof that fraud occurred. They are, however, provocative – especially when considered in conjunction with the proliferation of drop boxes – which destroy any idea of an intact chain of custody of ballots – and the lack of an audit trail to determine what happened to non-request vote by mail ballots that were sent to voters who no longer lived at the addresses attached to their registration. No one can discount the possibility that highly motivated partisans might, for reasons of their own, run the risk of breaking the law to help drive Trump from office.
It could be done. That doesn’t mean it was. It is nonetheless an argument for tightening up the system to make sure the obvious flaws are addressed. No more unattended drop boxes. No more opportunities for people to drop off more than one ballot at a time. No more “no request” vote by mail ballots. The opportunities to make mischief with any or all of these are too high.
You would think these would be reasonable positions to take, motivated by a bipartisan desire for free, fair, and clean elections. Instead, they’re controversial, which suggests one side sees them as an electoral advantage while the other sees them as a way to cheat. That alone ought to be enough to bring them under greater scrutiny – but it won’t. Because of all the insurrection, Jan. 6, overthrowing an election nonsense the politicians of one party and their allies in the mainstream media are peddling. There are even some who have gone so far as to suggest any Member of Congress who voted against the counting of the ballots from any state be kicked off the federal ballot in November 2022 for violating the 14th Amendment.
So far, none of those efforts have led to anything more than excitable news coverage. But they have been a useful distraction to help drown out any reasonable calls for election process reform. Are American elections honest? Can we trust the results? The winners will almost invariably say “Yes,” at least in public. The losers, not so much – especially if they think they can get mileage out of complaining. Either way, that doesn’t mean in any way that the process cannot be improved and that we must be serious about the safeguards we put in place to discourage fraud. It’s time for a real debate about where we go – which means moving on from where we’ve already been. Stop fighting the last battle and get ready for the next one.
When will the corrupt media begin reporting on this biggest political scandal of the last century?
By • The Federalist
Since Friday, several developments have exposed more of the behind-the-scenes details of the special counsel investigation into Spygate, including the public release of the deposition of Tech Executive-1, Rodney Joffe. Joffe’s deposition, coupled with other details previously known, reveals several significant facts while highlighting the many questions that remain unanswered.
Here’s what we learned and what investigative trails require further probing.
Earlier this month, the Russian-connected Alfa Bank filed a motion in a Florida state court seeking an extension of time to serve the numerous “John Doe” defendants it had sued there in June 2020. Alfa Bank had sued “John Doe, et al.” as stand-ins for the defendants it claimed were responsible for executing “a highly sophisticated cyberattacking scheme to fabricate apparent communications between [Alfa Bank] and the Trump Organization” in the months leading up to the 2016 presidential election.
After filing suit, Alfa Bank began discovery in an attempt to learn the identity of the individuals responsible for what the large, privately owned Russian bank alleged was the creation of a fake computer trail connecting it to the Trump Organization. Among others Alfa Bank sought information from was Joffe, the man identified as Tech Executive-1 in Special Counsel John Durham’s indictment against former Hillary Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann.
Joffe’s attempts to quash Alfa Bank’s subpoena failed. On February 11, 2022, the tech executive alleged by Durham to have exploited sensitive data from an executive branch office of the federal government to mine for derogatory information on Trump sat for his deposition. On Friday, an internet sleuth discovered the public filing of Joffe’s deposition, which revealed that Joffe had finally been deposed by Alfa Bank.
In addition to revealing that Joffe’s deposition had taken place, the transcript from the deposition established that Durham had asked to interview Joffe more than a year earlier, but Joffe refused to speak with Durham’s team. After Joffe refused to submit to a voluntary interview, the special counsel’s office subpoenaed him to testify before a grand jury.
Joffe told Alfa Bank lawyers that he refused to answer questions before the grand jury, exercising his Fifth Amendment rights. The former Neustar tech executive likewise asserted his Fifth Amendment rights in response to a subpoena for documents served by the special counsel’s office.
Friday also saw Joffe’s attorneys, Steven Tyrrell and Eileen Citron, file notices of appearances for Joffe as a proposed “intervenor” in the special counsel’s criminal case against Sussmann. Joffe could seek to intervene in the case to challenge a subpoena, to seek a protective order—maybe because of purported attorney-client communications Joffe had with Sussmann or to prevent Durham from discussing his alleged role in public filings—or to otherwise protect a legal right or interest.
We should know more shortly, when Joffe’s attorney files the related motion to intervene. That motion is likely to come within the next week or so, given that on Friday, the court in United States v. Sussmann scheduled a hearing for March 7, 2022, to address potential conflicts of interests between Sussmann and his current attorneys, and Joffe is likely interested in ensuring Durham’s team does not further implicate him in the matter.
The transcript of Joffe’s deposition testimony discovered on Friday consisted mainly of the former tech executive refusing to answer questions because of the special counsel’s pending investigation, with Joffe responding to Alfa Bank’s inquiries by pleading the Fifth. However, several times Joffe responded to questions about specific individuals by saying he had not heard of the person or organization.
One such exchange proved intriguing and seemingly contradictory to an email obtained pursuant to a Right-to-Know request served on Georgia Tech, the university where two of the researchers who allegedly mined data for Joffe worked.
“Just a few questions more,” Alfa Bank’s attorney began, before asking, “Mr. Joffe, are you a member of the so-called Union of Concerned Nerds as described by L. Jean Camp?” “Basically, she’s used it as a description to describe a group of computer researchers who search for malware and other malicious content and actors on the internet,” the attorney for the Russian bank continued.
Joffe responded that he “can’t remember having heard that term,” before adding: “And I don’t belong to any organization.” However, when asked whether he was “a member of a group of individuals who sought to investigate potential foreign interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election” or compiled supposed evidence of the Alfa Bank server connecting to the Trump campaign, Joffe pled the Fifth.
In posing these questions, Alfa Bank sought to connect Joffe to the reports of the supposed secret communication channel between it and the Trump administration and specifically to Slate’s reporting from October 31, 2016, headlined: “Was a Trump Server Communicating With Russia?”
Author Franklin Foer opened the article by highlighting “a small, tightly knit community of computer scientists . . . some at cybersecurity firms, some in academia, some with close ties to three-letter federal agencies,” who claimed to have discovered the Alfa Bank-Trump server connections. Foer then quoted Indiana University computer scientist L. Jean Camp’s “wry formulation” of the group: “We’re the Union of Concerned Nerds.”
Apparently, Joffe was not in on Camp’s joke, even if he was in on the research, as Durham’s indictment of Sussmann suggests.
But what about Joffe’s second claim that “I don’t belong to any organization?” As I reported last week, a random email included in a trove of documents provided by Georgia Tech in response to a Right-to-Know Request showed Joffe forwarding an email sent to [email protected] to university researcher Manos Antonakakis. That Joffe had received the ops-trust.net email and then forwarded it to Antonakakis proves important because Ops-Trust matches many of the details included in the Slate article (and later two New Yorker articles) discussing the researchers behind the Alfa Bank claims.
For instance, “Ops-Trust is a self-described ‘highly vetted community of security professionals,” which includes, among other experts, DNS administrators, DNS registrars, and law enforcement officials. Membership in Ops-Trust is extremely limited, with new candidates accepted only if nominated and vouched for by their peers.
Unfortunately, Alfa Bank’s attorney did not quiz Joffe on Ops-Trust, but his denial of belonging to any organization raises several questions. What was his connection to Ops-Trust? Did Joffe use that connection to obtain non-public information to mine for data to destroy Trump? Is he no longer connected to Ops-Trust, and is that why he claimed not to be a member of any organization?
Requests last week to Joffe’s attorney and other individuals connected to Ops-Trust seeking information concerning Joffe’s continued involvement with Ops-Trust went unanswered. A request to Camp on whether she was a member of Ops-Trust in 2016 and whether she knew Joffe or the Georgia Tech researchers through that organization also went unanswered.
In the special counsel’s criminal case against Sussmann, Durham’s team revealed that Sussmann had provided the “evidence” of the Alfa Bank-Trump covert communication channel to the FBI on September 19, 2016 and shared an updated version of the Alfa Bank allegations with the CIA on February 9, 2017. According to the special counsel’s office, Sussmann also provided the CIA data that purported to show traffic at Trump-related locations connecting to the “internet protocol” or “IP addresses” of a supposedly rare Russian mobile phone provider.
The questioning of Joffe by Alfa Bank’s attorney now suggests Sussmann may have also provided that same data to the Senate Armed Services Committee.
It has been known for some time that after Americans elected Trump, Democrats regrouped and continued to push the Russia collusion hoax, including the Alfa Bank angle. The New Yorker, in a 2018 article rehashing the Alfa Bank claims and referring to Joffe with the pseudonym “Max,” wrote that after Trump’s inauguration two Democrat senators “had reviewed the data assembled by Max’s group.”
One of the “Democratic senators approached a former Senate staffer named Daniel Jones and asked him to give the data a closer look,” The New Yorker article continued. Jones then spent a year researching the Alfa Bank allegations and writing a report for the Senate.
According to The New Yorker’s coverage, then, the senators had the data and provided it to Jones. Jones confirmed that sequence when a former Sen. Dianne Feinstein staffer and founder of the left-wing The Democracy Integrity Project sued Alfa Bank seeking to keep confidential his deposition testimony and documents provided to the Russian bank.
In his complaint, Jones stated in court filings that in early-to-mid 2017, the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee asked him to research the alleged connections between Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization. Specifically, the Senate committee “requested that Mr. Jones evaluate information it had received about DNS look-ups between Alfa Bank servers and Trump Organization servers.”
Significantly, Jones stated that the Senate Committee informed him “that the source of the DNS records had a history of providing accurate information, a lengthy history of reliably assisting the U.S. law enforcement and intelligence communities and was an individual or entity with sensitive contracts with the U.S. government.” Jones added that he met with a representative for the source of the DNS records at the committee’s request.
While Jones does not identify that source or the source’s representative with whom he met, in Joffe’s deposition, Alfa Bank lawyers stated that Jones had testified he had “liaised with Mr. Joffe on various issues related to the server allegations.” The “sensitive contracts” language from Jones’ filing also seems eerily like Durham’s charge that Joffe had exploited internet data, including some accessed under sensitive government contracts.
Alfa Bank’s questioning of Joffe also seems to suggest a similar theory: “Were you aware that Mr. Sussmann provided documents including white papers and data files to Congress?” Alfa Bank’s counsel asked, clarifying that she meant not just the actual senators or representatives but also their staff. And “did you direct Mr. Sussmann to provide such documents to Congress?” the Russian bank attorney continued.
While Joffe refused to answer the questions, again pleading the fifth, Joffe admitted in his deposition that he knew Kirk McConnell. McConnell worked as a staffer for Sen. Jack Reed and in that role McConnell served as a contact for Jones related to the Alfa Bank research.
If Sussmann had provided the Alfa Bank data to the two Democrat senators on behalf of Joffe, as appears possible from these details, that would represent the fourth time Sussmann had served as an intermediary for Joffe with federal officials: In addition to the FBI and CIA, we know from Durham’s filings that Sussmann also provided the DOJ’s inspector general information purporting to show that Joffe “had observed that a specific OIG employee’s computer was ‘seen publicly’ in ‘Internet traffic’ and was connecting to a Virtual Private Network in a foreign country.”
While at this point there is no evidence that Joffe’s tip to the DOJ’s inspector general connects to the other efforts undertaken by Joffe and his lawyer to push a Trump-Russia conspiracy theory within the Deep State, questions remain that are only heightened by the possibility that the Joffe-Sussmann team also fed senators on the Armed Services Committee their “intel.”
How exactly did Joffe “see” this internet connection? Did he exploit any government or private data? Was he specifically watching computer traffic at the DOJ? Where else was he monitoring internet connections? And why?
Of course, the more global question remains as well: When will the corrupt media begin reporting on the biggest political scandal of the last century?
To corrupt media, Democrats, and Big Tech, anyone who protested the 2020 election is no different than the fools who stormed the U.S. Capitol.
By • The Federalist
n the one-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, the corporate media is working overtime to convince the American public that Republicans as a whole stormed the nation’s beacon of democracy at the beginning of 2021 and have waged a war on all that is good and decent. While lunatics and fools did invade the Capitol last January, tens of thousands of Americans peacefully assembled to demand answers from the government about what they believed to be the sloppiest election in which they’ve ever voted.
Political violence should always be condemned, but a majority of the people present in Washington, D.C., and on the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6 weren’t violent. Yes, hundreds of people stormed the U.S. Capitol in a riot, but tens of thousands of people of all ages, races, backgrounds, and lifestyles gathered together that day at the Save America Rally to protest the Democrats’ sleazy election manipulation and hear from President Donald Trump.
Crowds began to form early at the White House Ellipse where Trump was scheduled to speak beginning at noon. After hours of waiting in the cold, Trump supporters finally heard from the president, who encouraged them to head to Capitol grounds and “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” Following Trump’s urgings, tens of thousands of people slowly and peacefully marched to the Capitol grounds to rally at multiple planned events, all of which were permitted through the proper, official channels. Many of the peaceful protesters were unaware until the end of the day of the vandalizing and looting that had occurred inside the Capitol.
As multiple reports suggest, violence was not even considered by the vast majority of the rally attendees who simply wanted answers about what they saw as the messiest election in their lifetimes. Multiple states had used COVID-19 as an excuse to loosen absentee voting protocols, opening up a window for bad actors to push their preferred candidates to the top.
In Pennsylvania, the Democrat Party circumvented the state legislature and instead used the leftist courts to make six changes to the state’s Election Code ahead of the 2020 election. These changes included expanding mail-in voting and drop-boxes and relaxing verification standards for absentee ballots. Some key states and counties even accepted money from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg through shady election-manipulating organizations designed to increase Democratic voter turnout.
These voters became even angrier when they realized how corporate media and Big Tech worked together to suppress stories that should have tarnished Joe Biden’s reputation and therefore his chances in the election. Whether the Democrats and their media cronies agree, these voters had every right to be upset and express their frustration peacefully at the feet of the government, legislators, and the system that they felt had betrayed them.
The idea that everyone who was at the Capitol grounds that day is an insurrectionist is patently and deliberately false. Yet the same corporate media outlets, Big Tech oligarchs, and Democrats who defended the arson, looting, and crime associated with the political riots after George Floyd’s death as “fiery but mostly peaceful” branded nearly everyone within a 10-mile radius of the Capitol an insurrectionist. These institutions gladly overlooked the numerous accounts of peaceful assembly, to wrongly conflate the rioters with protesters. Anyone who protested the election was no different than the horned-hat guy and the other fools willing to vandalize the U.S. Capitol.
The mischaracterizations didn’t stop in January of last year. For urging their state legislatures to listen to and take action regarding their grievances, Republicans as a whole are still being smeared by The New York Times for engaging in a so-called “bloodless, legalized form” of the Capitol riot. Just because of how they vote, Republicans are shunned for using the legal, rightful means presented before them to enact change that ensures safe and secure elections.
It is a familiar tactic often employed by the anti-Trump crowd, who use everything in their power, including political censorship, to disparage and tear down the reputations of conservatives and the former president. They think that by tarring all Republicans as Jan. 6 insurrectionists, they can prevent future GOP victories, and therefore prevent Republicans from taking action to ensure that the sloppiness of 2020 is never repeated.
Bill would restore voting rights to felons, require states to provide mail-in voting
By • The Washington Free Beacon
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) on Monday threatened to scrap the upper chamber’s filibuster to pass Democrats’ controversial election reform bill.
Schumer said the Senate will “debate and consider changes” to Senate procedures by Jan. 17 to overcome the filibuster’s 60-vote threshold, saying Republicans have exploited the rule to “embarrass the will of majority” and block Democrats’ so-called voting rights legislation.
“In June, August, October, and once more in November, Republicans weaponized arcane Senate rules to prevent even a simple debate on how to protect our democracy,” Schumer wrote in a “Dear Colleague” letter. “We must adapt. The Senate must evolve, like it has many times before.”
Schumer’s letter comes as the Freedom to Vote Act languishes in the Senate amid staunch Republican opposition. Without a change to Senate rules, Democrats would need 10 Republicans to back their legislation—a number they have thus far failed to reach.
Sens. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema’s (D., Ariz.) opposition to eliminating the filibuster has stymied previous efforts to alter Senate voting procedures. A group of Democratic senators, however, have in recent weeks tried to persuade the two lawmakers to back reforms that would weaken the vote threshold, according to Politico.
The Democrats’ election reform bill would restore voting rights to convicted felons, require states to offer mail-in voting, and mandate two weeks of early voting, among other measures. Republicans have long opposed the legislation, calling it a partisan power grab.
“This is clearly an effort by one party to rewrite the rules of the political system,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said in March 2021.
By • American Action News
Virginia Republicans anxious to see the party’s takeover of the state House of Delegates in the November election affirmed got what they wanted Friday after election officials in the southeastern part of the commonwealth determined Republican Karen Greenhalgh had won the crucial 51st seat.
Greenleigh led Delegate Alex Askew by 127 votes on Nov. 2 but, as the difference between the two was less than 0.5 percent, the incumbent Democrat availed himself of the option of having the votes recounted at public expense.
He still lost, election officials determined, but by just 115 votes out of more than 28,000 cast, The Washington Post reported.
“House Republicans are excited to begin working for the people of Virginia,” Del. Todd Gilbert (R-Shenandoah), who has been elected by the GOP caucus to serve as Speaker of the House once the General Assembly session gets underway on Jan. 12, said in a statement. “Now that the majority is official, we can move forward with a timely transition as to be prepared to work on day one.”
Gilbert is expected to work closely with GOP Gov-elect Glenn Youngkin to move the incoming chief executive’s priorities including a repeal of the sales taxes on groceries through the legislature despite the Democrats having a one-vote majority in the Virginia Senate.
“While this is not the outcome we hoped for, I continue to be filled with optimism for the future of our Commonwealth and of the city of Virginia Beach,” Askew said in a release issued shortly after election officials announced the results. A recount in a second race occurs next week in Hampton, Va., where Republican A.C. Cordoza is ahead of incumbent Democratic Del. Martha M. Mugler by 94 votes out of 27,836 votes cast. If Cordoza is declared the winner, the Republicans will control the House of Delegates, 52-48.
By winning all three statewide constitutional offices in Virginia on Nov. 2 as well as retaking control of the House of Delegates, Virginia Republicans positioned themselves at the forefront of a “Red Wave” that some election observers say foreshadows a rout of Democrats running just about anywhere in America in 2002, leaving the GOP in a position to retake the White House in November 2024.
Glenn Youngkin's victory and the Republican future
By • The Washington Free Beacon
Consensus forms quickly. Within hours of winning the Virginia governor’s race, Glenn Youngkin was identified as a model for GOP candidates. The argument ran as follows: The former businessman and political newbie figured out how to hold Donald Trump’s hand—as one Republican senator put it, under the table and in the dark—and still win big in a blue state. He ran on kitchen-table issues: rising prices, schools, crime. He tailored his message to his locality and avoided national debates. None of his television advertisements featured President Biden and none mentioned illegal immigration. He defined himself as a basketball-playing, dog-loving dad from the suburbs before his opponent was able to portray him as Trump in fleece. He built coalitions with parents, veterans, and minority groups. Republicans who follow his path might enjoy similar success in 2022 and beyond.
In truth, Youngkin might not be as replicable as he appears. The reason is candidate quality. For a political rookie, Youngkin has mad skills. He has a preternatural ability to stay on message. He is positive and optimistic without coming across as treacly or sentimental. I have yet to see him frown. He has what Reagan adviser John Sears called “negative ability”—the power to deflect, repel, and ignore personal attacks. Nothing seems to get under his skin. Politicians who have this quality drive the opposition nuts. You could sense the Democrats’ frustration when Biden told a Virginia audience that extremism can come “in a smile and a fleece vest.” Maybe that’s right, but the average Virginian doesn’t look at Glenn Youngkin and see a neo-Nazi or a Proud Boy. The average Virginian sees an approachable and energetic father of four with commonsensical plans to improve the quality of life in his home state. That’s the type of profile any candidate, Republican or Democrat, ought to aim for. But it’s easier said than done.
Both his opponent and the national environment helped Youngkin. Terry McAuliffe learned how difficult it is to win nonconsecutive terms—something that may be of interest to the ruler of Mar-a-Lago. And McAuliffe clearly believed that demographics are destiny and that Virginia was irrevocably blue. He ran on airy evocations of a pleasant past and fiery denunciations of Youngkin as a Trump-like threat to institutional stability and social peace. McAuliffe’s inability to find a galvanizing issue led him to run an idea-free campaign based on mobilizing Democratic interest groups. His accusations of racism and nuttery turned out many Democrats to the polls. Just not enough to win.
The general deterioration of Biden’s presidency hurt McAuliffe. The inflation, incompetence, and cultural radicalism dragging down Biden’s job approval rating are taking other Democrats with him. The red shift in Virginia, New Jersey, and elsewhere on election night hints at bad things to come for the incumbent party. Republican leader Kevin McCarthy speculates that another 2010, when the GOP picked up 63 House seats, may be in the making. For that to happen, McCarthy has to find plenty of candidates who aspire to be Glenn Youngkin, match them against clueless incumbents, and pray that Biden’s approval rating next November is the same as or lower than it is today. This is a possible scenario, and perhaps even the most likely one. But this is also the Republican Party we are talking about. Things can always end in disaster.
It’s less as a candidate than as a governor that Youngkin can be a model for the Republican Party. He’s been given the opportunity to govern, and to govern well. His coattails brought in a Republican lieutenant governor, a Republican state attorney general, and a Republican House of Delegates. The Democrats control the state senate by two seats—but this narrow margin is pliable and open to compromise. Youngkin is in a unique position. He’s the first high-profile Republican chief executive elected in the Biden era. He has the chance to demonstrate that Republicans can address parental revolt, public safety, and economic insecurity in responsible and effective ways. He has the chance to define that agenda in the coming year, and even to broaden it, so that Republicans in 2022 have an example to point to and a lodestar to follow.
This agenda starts with education. Parents became the centerpiece of Youngkin’s campaign, the lynchpin of his victory, after McAuliffe’s career-ending gaffe of September 28, when the former governor said that parents shouldn’t be telling teachers what to teach. In a post-election interview with Hugh Hewitt, Youngkin mentioned charter schools, high curricular standards, and more spending on teachers and on special education. On the trail he pledged to ban “Critical Race Theory,” or “CRT,” from public school instruction—though he has to find a way to do so without revising or omitting the history of slavery, segregation, and the civil rights movement. My American Enterprise Institute colleagues Brad Wilcox and Max Eden suggest that Youngkin promote “academic transparency” by requiring parental review and opt-in for hot-button curricula, prioritize educational savings accounts, and align school-board elections with the national political cycle.
Youngkin also has said that he will place public safety officers in schools. This initiative should become the basis for a more wide-ranging effort to bolster state and local police forces, with an eye toward community policing and the reassuring presence of cops on the beat. Youngkin’s “game plan” includes firing the state parole board to discourage early release of violent offenders. He wants to reform the state mental health system. He might also want to combat drug trafficking and opioid abuse—with the understanding that it is better to do several things well than many things poorly.
As Henry Olsen observed in October, Youngkin’s economic agenda fits well with the emerging Republican coalition of non-college-educated voters. Rather than cut marginal tax rates, Youngkin would double the state standard deduction, eliminate the grocery tax, and suspend the gas tax, easing the burden on lower- and middle-income taxpayers suffering from a rising cost of living. He says he’d like to encourage innovation and job creation throughout the state. One way might be to take the lead in “strategic decoupling” from China and incentivize manufacturers of critically important goods to reshore facilities in the commonwealth. Over a decade ago, I accompanied then-senator George Allen (R.) on a tour of a Virginia-based semiconductor plant. Let’s make room for more of them.
The danger for the governor-elect is that he will entangle himself in national debates over vaccine and mask mandates. I expect the next state attorney general to join the legal challenges to President Biden’s vaccine mandate on private-sector employers, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the incoming state government attempts to end public school masking requirements. In general, however, Youngkin ought to be wary of intruding on local control and private-sector decision-making, even if it might win him fans among certain parts of the right. It ought to be remembered that Youngkin’s populism was actually popular and commonsensical—unlike some of the anti-elitism and suspicion of expert opinion that one encounters in politics these days.
It would be a missed opportunity if the governor-elect frittered away his resounding victory on cultural squabbles that generate headlines and score likes but do not improve life for Virginians in the real, not virtual, world. Still, I have a feeling—maybe it’s just a hope—that Youngkin will be a serious governor in demanding times who shows his fellow Republicans not just how to win, but how to govern. All with a smile and a fleece.
Who will speak for ordinary Americans?
By • The Washington Free Beacon
In 1959 the British novelist C.P. Snow delivered a lecture at the University of Cambridge entitled “The Two Cultures.” Snow’s topic was the gradual separation of scientific knowledge from humanistic knowledge, and the dangers of educational specialization and technical illiteracy. Snow was not a disinterested observer. Trained as a chemist, he had a foot in both scientific and literary culture. He argued that educated citizens once understood reality through shared vocabulary, symbols, and concepts, but the common culture of the past had diverged into competing intellectual tribes. The separation harmed not only the individual intelligence, but also our collective ability to survive the nuclear age. His talk, later published as a book, became the standard text in debates over the relation between science and literature, and between technology and morality.
Snow sought unity. Scientific and literary culture shared a common ancestor—what might be called the “Ur-culture” of Western civilization. This unstable mixture of Jerusalem and Athens produced modernity, with all its benefits and costs. Not long after Snow described the “two cultures,” however, the very idea of culture itself came under attack from artists, intellectuals, activists, and students for whom democratic capitalism was spiritually unsatisfying and politically and economically unjust. These various challengers and dropouts thought of themselves as a “counterculture,” a self-conscious movement against the premises and values of Snow’s two cultures, as well as those of the original “Ur-culture” of the West. Free love, rock ‘n’ roll, the Hippies, the Yippies, druggies, various communards, the student revolt, the soixante-huitards—another name for the counterculture is “the Sixties.”
“Countercultural challenges to orthodoxy take different forms at different times,” wrote Irving Kristol in 1994, “but a common substratum of attitudes and belief is discernible.” Counterculturalists feel alienated from their societies. They are estranged from, suspicious of, and antagonistic toward the ideals of their civilization. They experience outrage and indignation at the institutions that perpetuate corrupt values and social injustice. They fixate on sex—how it is regulated, who defines normality and abnormality, where children are raised and schooled. They succumb to enthusiasm and fanaticism, to crankery and conspiracy. “When in the grip of a countercultural passion,” Kristol explained, “one can easily lose or repress the ability to distinguish the nutty from the sensible.”
The Sixties, of course, are long gone. The various parts of that decade’s counterculture have either disappeared or, following Kristol’s terminology, been incorporated into the “orthodoxy” of liberal democracy. The most radical experiments burned themselves out. Countercultural theorists feathered their academic nests. Hippie attitudes and aesthetics proved compatible with consumer society. Crime, welfare dependency, and divorce receded. This integration of “bohemian” and “bourgeois” reached its apogee in 2015, when the U.S. Supreme Court established a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.
The year is worth noting. Just as it looked like one set of problems were solved, other crises appeared on the horizon. The Black Lives Matter movement grew during the protests in Baltimore over Freddy Gray’s death in police custody in the spring of 2015. Caitlyn Jenner appeared on the cover of the July 2015 Vanity Fair, heralding the next debate over sexual identity and mores. That autumn, high-profile incidents on the campuses of Yale and the University of Missouri marked the arrival of “cancel culture.” And Donald Trump crisscrossed the land on his circuitous route to the White House.
Suddenly, the modified orthodoxy of liberal, “Bobo” democracy—what’s come to be known in some quarters as “neoliberalism”—faced a countercultural challenge of its own. Liberal principles of free markets, internationalism, democratic government, individual rights, and the rule of law trembled under pressure. What made this latest countercultural rebellion unique was its pincer attack. There used to be one counterculture. Now there are two.
The left counterculture—what critic Wesley Yang calls the “successor ideology“—sees the United States as fundamentally corrupt and irredeemable, a zone of grotesque violence against racial and sexual minorities, a systemically racist polity desperately in need of censorship, reeducation, and massive government intervention to rectify centuries of brutality and oppression. The left counterculture’s alienation from mainstream society is expressed in its polemics and jeremiads. Its indignation was manifest in the riots over the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020. Its revisionist attitude toward sexual codes is evident in the Black Lives Matter platform’s (now revised) call to “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure,” and in the centrality of transgenderism to its worldview. The left counterculture proves time and again George Orwell’s dictum that there are some ideas so foolish that only intellectuals will believe them.
The right counterculture, meanwhile, sees America as on the verge of collapse, on the brink of secession and civil war, a frightening place ruled by a bureaucratic-woke-medical-corporate “regime” not unlike the former Communist states of Central and Eastern Europe. The alienation of the right counterculture from modern America is apparent whenever its spokesmen demean and defame their fellow countrymen, say their country is lost or not worth saving, and look to foreign strongmen for guidance and succor. “Indignation” cannot begin to describe the right counterculture’s outrage at the direction of society, at the limits and frustrations of politics, at the bewildering tempo and fevered temper of current events. This rage at modernity, along with corrupt leadership and social media conspiracy theories, produced the riot in the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. The right counterculture’s uneasy conscience over the events of that day is visible in its attempts at historical revisionism and blame-shifting. It too is focused on the family, peppering its discourse with references to the baby bust, lack of male marriage prospects, and threats to childhood innocence and traditional religious values.
Our two countercultures, separately and together, correctly identify weaknesses and flaws in twenty-first century liberal democracy. But they mistakenly view these problematic conditions not as discrete challenges but as totalistic indictments. They marry disinterest in empirical reality with utopian expectations from politics. They collapse the distinction between private and public that guarantees political, economic, and religious freedom. As they consolidate control over their respective institutions, they silence dissent and promote victimhood, hopelessness, paranoia, and fear.
Ordinary men and women are caught in the crossfire of this three-front war between the left counterculture, the right counterculture, and the rest of America. Facing the curse of inflation for the first time in decades, the American who fills up the tank or buys groceries must experience something like despair as he watches the attempts to cancel Dave Chappelle, remove statues of Thomas Jefferson, promote quackery about the coronavirus, and pledge allegiance to a flag carried in the battle of Capitol Hill. Who will speak for normal people, for Americans who love their country, who desire nothing more than ordered liberty and the opportunity to better their conditions and raise their families in stable environments? Who can triangulate between the countercultures of left and right and the real silent majority of Americans, who would like nothing more than the extremes to go away?
“The delicate task that faces our civilization today is not to reform the secular rationalist orthodoxy, which has passed beyond the point of redemption,” Kristol wrote in his essay on the Sixties. “Rather, it is to breathe new life into the older, now largely comatose, religious orthodoxies—while resisting the counterculture as best we can, adapting to it and reshaping it where we cannot simply resist.” The contemporary task is somewhat different.
As religious affiliation declines, and as some orthodoxies enter into concordats with nationalists hostile to democratic capitalism, the priority must be the vigorous and nonsectarian promotion of what were once called “middle-class values”—moderation, civility, empiricism, prudence, humility, restraint, and reverence for the law—and the families that transmit these values to the next generation. Only a sober and reflective defense of the constitutional order and sustained attention to the priorities and aspirations of everyday, nonideological men and women will allow us to resist the two countercultures. Before they bring America down with them.
By • The Federalist
Virginia Democrat gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe said in 2019 that implementing a “diversity” and “inclusion” curriculum is “just as important as your math class [and] your English class.”
“We’ve got to do a better job in our education system. … Early on, we’ve got to start teaching, talking about these issues, much earlier than we’ve done it before. We don’t do a good job in our education system talking about diversity, inclusion, openness and so forth. We don’t,” McAuliffe said in a 2019 interview on C-SPAN’s “After Words.” “We got our textbooks, but you know there has to be a big part of ‘how do you fit in into the social work of our nation and our fabric?’ How is it that we deal with one another is to me as important as your math class, your English class and so forth.”
McAuliffe joined the show to promote his book “Beyond Charlottesville: Taking a Stand Against White Nationalism” and demand change to combat the “racism” that he claimed was plaguing the nation.
“Elected officials need to lean in on these issues because racism is prevalent today in this country,” McAuliffe said.
McAuliffe has repeatedly denied that critical race theory is taught in the state even though, while he was governor from 2014-2018, the Virginia Department of Education explicitly pushed public schools to “embrace critical race theory” and “engage in race-conscious teaching and learning.”
More recently, communications obtained by Judicial Watch indicate that Loudoun County Public Schools made a long, coordinated effort to ensure that critical race theory was institutionalized despite public opposition. In one email, LCPS Superintendent Scott Ziegler tried to calm concerns from parents about racist teachings by claiming that the “Rumors Concerning LCPS Equity Work” are confusing critical race theory and culturally responsive teaching. When Ziegler tried to distinguish between the two, he merely affirmed that the district was asking “employees to examine their own personal biases and how they might affect student instruction and interactions with the community.”
“Concepts such as white supremacy and systemic racism are discussed during professional development,” he wrote. “LCPS has not adopted Critical Race Theory as a framework for staff to adhere to.”
By • National Review
Two new independent polls on California’s September 14 recall election have a startling explanation for why Governor Gavin Newsom is in trouble. His support among minority communities is crumbling as issues such as crime, COVID restrictions, and a huge unemployment-benefits scandal dominate the race.
The Emerson College poll found that among likely voters, 48 percent favored keeping Newsom in office versus 46 percent who want him gone — a slim two-point margin. In a new poll by SurveyUSA taken for three media outlets, the recall leads 51 percent to 40 percent.
In 2018, Newsom won in a landslide based on his support among Hispanics (64 percent voted for him) and African Americans (86 percent voted for him).
Today, Hispanics in the Emerson poll support recalling the governor by 54 percent to 41 percent. In the SurveyUSA poll, the recall wins among Hispanics by six points. Among blacks and Asians in both polls, Newsom, leads but he’s down significantly from his 2018 showing.All Our Opinion in Your Inbox
Overall, nearly a quarter of Democrats in both the Emerson poll and the SurveyUSA poll now back ousting their own party’s governor. In 2018, Republican nominee John Cox won only 6 percent of the Democratic vote.
Many minority voters who routinely vote Democratic have found it impossible to secure a place in the middle class. The Reverend Samuel Rodriguez, head of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, says the walls against economic advancement are causing a political reassessment. “Our values are faith, family, and free enterprise. We’re entrepreneurs. We want to thrive; we don’t want to survive,” he told The Atlantic magazine.
What’s happening in California can be found in other states such as Texas and Florida. Christopher Hahn, a former Democratic consultant who hosts the Aggressive Progressive podcast, says Hispanic and Asian voters were routinely taken for granted by the Joe Biden campaign last year. “I believe they did (that) in 2020, and it almost cost him the election,” Hahn says.
Democrats don’t seem to be listening to what their most loyal voters are now saying as the 2022 midterm elections loom.