Hillary Clinton on Civility

Hillary Clinton on the Kavanaugh Nomination to the Supreme Court

When Hillary Clinton was speaking before the American Federation of Teachers conference in Pittsburgh, she intimated that President Trump's nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court is an indication that Republicans want to bring back slavery.

Aside from the irony that the GOP was historically the party that ended slavery thru President Lincoln's  Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and passage of the 13th  Amendment in 1865, Hillary's hair on fire rhetoric is remarkable.

Instead of Mrs. Clinton continuing her loser tour around liberal circles which offered various excuses why she was beaten by Donald Trump in the 2016 election, she is focusing her wrath more firmly towards the rhetoric of "The Resistance".  Whether or not a old pol who profited off of insider deals, questionable charities and the aura of being an Elite can convince surging Democrat Socialists to support her is another story.

This is not the first time which Democrat operatives have sought to invoke slavery to advance their own campaign.  During the 2012 cycle, ex Vice President Joe Biden proclaimed "They want to put y'all back in chains" during a rally in Danville, Virginia (which was the last capital of the Confederacy).

It is uncertain in the era #WalkAway and record low black unemployment will work to get minorities to the polls in the midterms. 

On Roseanne and The Great Revolt

Coastal Elites are still trying to reconcile in their minds how Donald John Trump became the 45th President of the United States.  They were convicted that First Lady Senator Obama Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton would break the glass ceiling and be ushered into the Oval Office.  After all, she was pitted against a boorish Manhattan mogul who was a political novice and was alienated from key segments of his current political party. 

That unshakable arrogance makes the HBO excerpts  of Obama Administration point player Ben Rhodes on Election Night 2016 all the more delightful to those who chant "Drain the Swamp". In the aftermath of the election upset, Democrats pushed a Russian collusion conceit which managed to have a Special Counsel named but who garnered up scant evidence of a Russian nexus to Trump's campaign.

The mainstream media which became progressive provocateurs broadcast a bevy of anti-Trump material, gorgonizing anyone who supported President Trump as being a racist, sexist homophobic xenophobe instead of investigating how Mr. Trump was able to break the supposed Blue Wall for Democrats in the Upper Midwest. 

Salena Zito and Brad Todd's recent bestseller "The Great Revolt" (2018) examined seven groups of unlikely voters for a populist titularly Republican candidate.  Many of those groups, like "Red Blooded and Blue Collar", "Rough Rebounders" and "Perotistas" were either born and bred Democrats or previously unreliable voters.  During the promotional campaign for "The Great Revolt", Ms. Zito pointed to the resurgence of the Roseanne Show to illustrate how "The Forgotten Man" was gaining prominence in the body politic despite the barrage of anti-Trump sentiment on the airways.

When the Rosanne show was revived as a mid season replacement, it garnered 22 million viewers, in part because it portrayed Trump supporters as having reasons for their sentiments rather than a knee jerk condemnation of their politically incorrect heresy. 

Recently, Rosanne Barr tweeted a crude crack against Obama confidant Valerie Jarrett.  Despite Roseanne Barr offering a quick social media apology, the Roseanne Show was cancelled by by ABC Entertainment and the eleven seasons of reruns were pulled off Hulu and TVLand.  

Some Trump supporters saw nothing wrong with the controversial comparison, noting that Rosanne Barr has a history of making questionable quips. Conservatives have pointed out the numerous cases of hypocrisy that progressives say untoward things against their enemies and there are no consequences.  

MSNBC's Chris Hayes may have unwittingly revealed the progressive playbook by too overtly suggesting that Roseanne reflected the reputation of Trump voters as being racist, sexist, homophobic xenophobes.  But it was Todd Starnes who noted that ABC can't stomach Trump supporters. 

It is dubious that ABC will suffer from an acute boycott by incensed Rosanne viewers.  But their parent company Disney's stock sunk  2.3% on the news of the cancellation.  It may well be that the Rosanne Show is picked up by another outlet, as Fox Television is bringing back  back the ratings winning Tim Allen comedy  "Last Man Standing" which appeals to a conservative audience.  


There are other indications that the steamrolling of "Fly Over Country" values does not always work.  Despite the onslaught of publicity for Black Lives Matter and the Take The Knee campaigns, the NFL instituted a new policy that prohibits player protests on the field during the National Anthem.  Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones claims that Donald Trump told him "You can't win... this one lifts me" on the Take the Knee controversy.  That leads you to believe that Trump's popularity triumphs, rather than understanding that patriotic, non-politically correct American values are the crux of the ratings decline. 

Democrats and elites have positioned themselves to be progressive polemicists, thinking that their political prescriptions are inevitable in its ascent. Seeing the collapse in CNN's ratings and the incredible erosion of Democrat favorability in generic congressional polling ought to shake them of their smugness. 

Hillary Clinton on Politics

Senator Warren Deserves to Don a Civics Dunce Cap

During her recent remarks before the Cap Ideas Conference, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) cited Hillary Clinton's loss in the 2016 Presidential race as a negative indication that America has a healthy democracy. 






It is astounding that a sitting Senator is either so ignorant to not know that the USA is a constitutional Republic with democratic suffrage and an Electoral College or that she is such a demagouge who will blur such distinctions for political advantage. 

Some deride Senator Warren as being Fauxcahontas for her questionable genealogical claims of being a Native American.  A more apt sobriquet may well be Sitting Bull.  

Nevertheless, for Senator Warren's democrat demogougery, the former Harvard Law professor deserves to don a Civics Dunce Cap.

Appraising "The Great Revolt" by Salena Zito and Brad Todd

After Richard Nixon won the 1972 Presidential election in a 49 state landslide, New Yorker film critic was flummoxed at how this could happen as none of her Manhattanite friends would vote for him.  This possibly apocryphal episode illustrated how seaboard elites can be so out of touch with Middle America (sometimes flippantly labeled as  “Fly Over Country”).

A similar cognitive dissonance has occurred at the election of President Donald Trump in 2016. Heading into election night, the 538 blog polling guru Nate Silver predicted that Hillary Clinton had a 72% chance of winning.  Yet when election results were confirmed at 2:30 AM November 9th, Donald J. Trump gave a victory speech.  While Mr. Trump won a huge 304 to 227 (with five disloyal electors), the margins of victory in five Rust Belt states were close.  Had 56,000 voters not voted for Mr. Trump, then Bill Clinton would have returned to the White House as First Gentleman (sic).

To delve into how Donald Trump was able to confound conventional wisdom and assembled a new coalition which led him to the White House, Salena Zito and Brad Todd wrote “The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics” (2018 Crown Forum 309 pages).  Salena Zito is a reporter from Pittsburgh but made made her mark during the campaign for the New York Post by traveling to these Midwest battleground states and interviewing prospective Trump voters to understand their attraction and enthusiasm for this first time populist candidate. 

These oral histories are backed up by data from Brad Todd’s On Message Inc. polling unit. The metrics were particularly instructive in seeing how sentiments shifted in swing counties between 2008 and 2016.

The Great Revolt featured 21 interviews with voters from two key counties in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa. These interviews felt like an extended coffee talk at a diner with a trusted confidant.  The Great Revolt broke down these voters into seven archetypes: 1) Red Blooded and Blue Collar 2) Perotistas 3) Rough Rebounders 4) Girl Gun Power 5) Rotary Reliables 6) King Cyrus Christians 7) Silent Suburban Moms.  While they all chose to support Trump, their pathways were not straight and narrow and deserve careful consideration. 

Over the past several elections, Democrats seemed to abandon salt of the earth blue collar erstwhile Democrats to favor demographically up and coming minority majorities and those new voters who might be culled from immigration.  During the 2008 Democrat primaries, candidate Barack Obama derisively referred to rural Rust Belt voters as “bitter clingers to their guns and their Bibles”.  Ironically, Ms. Clinton was trying to win their support for her first failed presidential run.   

Yet in 2016, these same segment of voters were ignored by the Hillary! campaign as she declared that half of Trump supporters were a “Basket of Deplorables” which might serve as a caricature of this segment of voters which would be more sympathetically described as The Forgotten Man.  

Hillary Clinton chose to ignore Wisconsin during the 2016 General Election campaign and made only a couple of trips to large population centers in Michigan, figuring that she had those votes already in the bag.  Donald Trump campaigned hard in Rust Belt states in rural precincts and scraped together enough support to win the Wolverine State by about 8,000 votes (0.23%) and the Badger State by about 22,000 votes (0.77%).  

Pundits have pontificated that Republicans face a demographic problem whereas Democrats have a geographic problem, as they continue to lose support in vast swaths of middle America.  In 2016, Mrs. Clinton only won 526 counties compared to the over 1500 counties that her husband President Clinton won in 1992.  What became obvious after election night 2016, racking up large victories in the popular vote does not necessarily win the White House.  Both parties would learn from contemplating the shared psyches of these Trump voters  if The Great Revolt was a one time populist phenomenon, if it can transfer unto other populist politicians and if it can be sustained after 2016.

A couple of these Great Revolt subgroups, such as Rotary Reliables and NRA inspired Girl Gun Power types  are likely to continue to actively oppose progressive politics as it directly impacts their intrinsic interests.   It is more dubious for other groups.  In 2016, evangelical voters made a pragmatic decision to back Mr. Trump, who has a messy personal life and whose blithe brashness is an antithetical attitude, because they were concerned about the Supreme Court and pushing back against abortion.  The outlook for Perotistas is unclear as their support seemed personality driven and may not be transferrable.  The three women interviewed as Perotistas were superannuated, so one can surmise that their support will age out.

As much as the iconoclastic mainstream billionaire turned celebrity politician appealed to some segments of The Great Revolt voters, what became quite clear is how his opponent and the nature of the race also impacted the election.  In some of the vignettes, the anti-Hillary! sentiment jumped off the page. 

 Many of the interviewees came from union families or those who served in the military would have been quite at ease in John F. Kennedy’s Democrat Party but who are red headed stepchildren in today’s Democrat Party.  That being said, they probably would not have participated in politics or been motivated to vote GOP had Donald Trump not reached out and appealed to their sensibilities.   They may not always agree with Mr. Trump and may recoil at some of his Tweets or stances but as Salena Zito nailed during the campaign, they know to take Trump seriously but not always literally (unlike the anti-Trump pack press).

Most of the coalition in The Great Revolt worried about their economic security and loss of their rural way of life, it did not seem like there was strong linkage to “Build the Wall” or immigration.  While one union activist was strongly against NAFTA, much of the blue collar sentiments revolved around being forgotten by their erstwhile allies, the Democrats.   

While the interviews in The Great Revolt were vivid, it would have been desirable if there was a bit more uniformity when describing the interlocutors.  Not all of the portraits had demographic details or made it easy to discern the interviewees profession.  There also seemed to be a disconnect between the prefatory analysis with the dialogues of the Trump voters.  The authors rightly proposed that Mr. Trump’s social media instincts allowed him to circumvent curating by the mainstream media and directly reach his coalitions.  Yet many of the interviewees contained in The Great Revolt wished that President Trump would tweet less. 

That being said, surely Salena Zito and Brad Todd appreciated President Trump’s pre-publication post which extolled the virtues of The Great Revolt.

The case histories in The Great Revolt offer insightful context for the unexpected coalition which elected Donald Trump to the White House in 2016.  But the archetypes portrayed in The Great Revolt may point to traits that could appear in other voter segments.   Democrats have opted to appeal to progressive identity politics and rely on the brown wave of new voters in lieu of  “The Forgotten Man” (rural, blue collar, union white males).   A flaw with that strategy is that it relies upon banked voters, which since 1964 have been the bulk of black voters.  The Great Revolt chronicles how slim segments of voters who feel neglected and come to the epiphany that their traditional party no longer represents their values can impact an election.

Recently, Kanye West said some favorable things towards President Trump. Perhaps that was a publicity stunt or an African American celebrity "talking out of turn" as Rep Maxine Waters (D-CA 43rd) claimed. But afterwards polling showed a doubling of his support among African Americans.  Mr. Trump has been making explicit appeals for those voters.  

It is conceivable that an upsurge in black labor participation and showing up to make the case may shift some attitudes, or mollify some of the bile against him. Conservative Black video bloggers Diamond and Silk have shown that elements of the Trump Administration agenda may have some appeal to fed up African American voters.  Black represent about 13% of voters and in recent elections have voted about 95% for Democrats.  If there is a 5% shift in that segment of reliable votes, Democrats’ election strategy may be in trouble. 

Rudy Giuliani on "The Clinton Treatment"

Is Comey Just a Retrograde or a Crackpot Narcissist?

In promotion of ex FBI Director James Comey's new book  Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership (2018), he gave a five hour interview with former Clinton press flak George Stephanopolis.  Instead of revealing new information about his untimely exit from the helm of the FBI after the Clinton Email scandal and the allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, Comey's tome seemed to be a self justifying exercise to  settle scores, particularly against President Trump.

Clinton loyalists like Lannie Davis still think that Mr. Comey cost Hillary Clinton the 2016 election, and label his self righteous antics as being a retrograde narcissist.  While those on the right look his stated philosophy about investigations and contrast it to how he wrote an exoneration for Hillary Clinton weeks before interviewing the principal witness, concluding that he was a dirty cop.  

Either way, Mr. Comey sure enjoys the limelights as he blames others for the messes which he is embroiled.  Perhaps surrealist artist Claude Martin conveyed could convey Comey's persona best.

Narcissus (2014) by Claude Martin

Rep. Jim Jordan on the Uranium One Scandal

Joe Di Genova on Feeding the FBI False Information

Trey Gowdy on the Steele Dossier

Nikki Haley on the Grammys

Rep. Jim Jordan on Attorneys General

Judge Jeanine Pirro on Hillary Clinton Skirting the Law

'Tis the Season for Resistmas

Women to Look Up To, a London based company, is producing some eye catching tree toppers in an effort to give tree toppers a feminist makeover.  Among the choices of real women their voters deemed "worthy of wings" for their 3D printed ornaments is Hillary Clinton. 

As a puckish political animal living in the District of Calamity whose W.C. is a Political Room adored with cheeky tchochtki, a Hillary tree topper might be welcomed for the Federal Christmas Tree.  However, this tree topper costs eighty quid, which can tot up to $120.    If I were inclined to air grievances between the beltways, it would be more economical to erect an aluminum pole for Festivus.

Mark Steyn on Fishing with Democrats

Tulsi Gabbard on the DNC Scandal

Debbie Wasserman Schultz on Rigging Elections

Hillary Clinton about her Walk in the Woods

In promotion of her book about the 2016 election "What Happened", ex First Lady, Senator and failed Democrat Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton (D-NY) conducted a softball interview with the Daily Show's Trevor Noah. During the short hit, Hillary lambasted President Trump's reaction to the NYC Halloween Truck terror attack for not being empathetic enough as well as trying to dismantle Obama's agenda.


   

 Hillary insisted that: "I'm back". It is worth noting that she makes that declaration on Comedy Central, but we can suppose that she is more serious than her jocular trick or treat costume proposal.  However, with the Uranium One Clinton scandal, the looming Clinton emails and ex DNC Chair Donna Brazile's book which documents how Mrs. Clinton's campaign rigged the 2016 Democrat primaries and may have conducted rackateering, it is questionable if the Democrat base wants her to return from the woods. Politically speaking, the Clintons may just be the walking dead. But then again, Democrats seem to go for zombies. 

It seems that Slick Willy and Crooked Hillary have not discerned that politically speaking that they are The Walking Dead.

Hillary Clinton Fantasizes About Her Halloween Costume

It's surprising that Mrs. Clinton did not say Wonder Woman.