More Of The Same?

It really didn’t make a lot of headlines. Oh, the fact that there was some competition did, but in case you missed it, Ronna McDaniel was reelected as the Chair of the Republican National Committee this past week. McDaniel beat out former Trump advisor, Harmeet Dhillon, and pillow sales guy, Mike Lindell. I don’t think many people took him seriously. The vote was 111 for McDaniel, and just 51 for Dhillon.

Now, it’s safe to say that with a former Trump advisor running against the establishment, and Florida Governor, Ron DeSantis saying just before the election, “We’ve had 3 substandard election cycles in a row, ‘18, ‘20, and ‘22, and I would say of all of those ‘22 was probably the worst. Given, the political environment of a very unpopular President Biden, huge majorities of the people think the country’s going in the wrong direction.”

You gotta admit, he DOES make some good points.

Here we have a nation that basically hates the guy in the White House, especially the GOP, and we lost ground in 2018 in the midterm (which is normal). We then lost the presidency, and the House with a tied Senate in 2020, and in 2022, we won a squeaker of a majority in the House, and outright lost the Senate. And though we have debated why the Senate was lost in the past, the basic reason falls on two people…Donald Trump for picking weak candidates, and Ronna McDaniel, for backing the way it was done.

McDaniel is good at raising money, but she got her rear end handed to her in 2022. Here in the desert, the GOP candidate for Senate, Blake Masters, had to rely on his boss, Peter Thiel to give him millions to run against incumbent Mark Kelly. The GOP was outspent seven to one by the Democrats. Kelly spent all summer running ads, and no one in the Grand Canyon State heard anything from Masters until close to Labor Day. You’re not going to win elections that way.

By reelecting McDaniel, the GOP is sitting in the same boat they’ve been in for the past six years. And they’ll sit in it again heading into 2024. But with three election cycle losses to her credit in her three terms at the helm, McDaniel is in the unenviable position of having to win both the White House, AND the Senate, as well as keep and expand the lead in the House. If she isn’t able to do that, she most likely won’t be around for her fifth term, which by the way, is unprecedented in GOP politics!

The question becomes, is Ronna McDaniel the problem? Or is it something else? Actually, I think the problem is deeper than just one person. There has been a rift in the GOP that was a lot deeper than originally thought. It happened when Donald Trump came down the escalator at Trump Tower. That candidacy split the party in two and it’s never really gotten back together. Now you’ve got more than two factions that have very little to do with each other. You’ve got the Trump base, you’ve got those that don’t want Trump back at any cost, you’ve got the “freedom caucus conservatives” that tried to stop Kevin McCarthy’s bid to be Speaker, and you’ve got the mainstream Republicans like McCarthy.

And it’s going to be McDaniel’s job to pull everyone together and fight as one team, rather than spend time and effort fighting each other. If you’re going to be the head of a political party, you’ve got to be able to rally the troops around the people that are running and get them across the finish line one way or another. That’s basically, in a nutshell, her whole job description. If she can’t do it this time around, it’s time to find someone who can, and no…I’m not looking in Mike Lindell’s direction. He only got four votes!

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

I Am Embarrassed Because Of This

I know I’m late getting this out to you, but I have to apologize on behalf of the 7.15 million people of the great state of Arizona. We caused a terrible embarrassment this past Monday and I am man enough to admit when we made a mistake.

That mistake was US Senator Mark Kelly.

In case you missed it at the Rose Bowl last week, former Congresswoman, Gabby Giffords was the Grand Marshall of the Rose Bowl Parade. As such, she was at midfield for the coin toss in the game between Penn State and Utah. Now, Giffords is married to US Senator Mark Kelly. And Kelly was standing behind his wife during the coin toss, dressed in what can only be described as a flight jacket (he was in the Navy and is a former astronaut).

The funny part of the embarrassment is that the head official, Michael Vandervelde introduced Giffords, and then called Kelly, “Senator Mark Lewis”. You have to laugh at that. Mark Lewis is actually a Welsh actor that looks nothing like Kelly. But the embarrassment came when Kelly, who could have attended this affair with dignity and class as a sitting Senator, decided to be high school about it. He had his cell phone out and was videotaping the whole coin toss. It looked like something out of a bad joke. In fact, it was a bad joke. And it showed what I think most Arizonans have known all along. Mark Kelly (Lewis), has no class.

So, on behalf of the millions of folks from the Grand Canyon state, I can only cringe, hide my face in embarrassment, and humbly beg your forgiveness on behalf of my state. Mark Kelly is a buffoon. He could have worn a GoPro camera or something, or been classy and just attended the affair. He didn’t have to be low-brow about it. But that’s Kelly. He IS low-brow.

I moved here almost 12 years ago from a place I thought had become low-brow, Toledo, Ohio. I thought I was moving up in class by coming out here to the desert. I mean, at the time, the most famous person in Arizona was Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was called “America’s Sheriff”. He was constantly making national news because of his no-nonsense attitude toward crime and criminals. He’s the guy that made them wear pink underwear. When the jails became overcrowded, he built an encampment in the desert, circled it with razor wire and barbed wire and 15 foot high fencing. His prisoners had to live in tents. That was a true American hero!

Now? Now we have Katie Hobbs as Governor, who is all for open borders. Now we have a Senator in Mark Kelly that goes around wearing black t-shirts and actually wears them in his campaign ads. We have a Republican loser to Hobbs, Kari Lake that refuses to accept the fact she was a terribly weak candidate for the office, with no political experience, and wants to be “Stacey Abrams of the west”. She’ll go wherever anyone will listen, and cry out that she’s “not through with those bastards, because now they’ve pissed off this bitch.” Yeah, that’s how I want MY Governor to talk!

But Mark Kelly has been an embarrassment to the state for decades. And at least it’s nice to see he’s consistent. He doesn’t understand that in some situations, you go, you stand quietly and support your wife. You don’t make an internet spectacle of yourself. You don’t always get to be the “hero”. Sometimes you are there as the loving husband. It’s too bad Mark Kelly is such a dork! But that’s what the citizens elected. And that’s what we’re stuck with for six years.

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

The FINAL Post Mortem On Midterms

With Raphael Warnock’s win over Herschel Walker in the Georgia Senate Runoff election this past Tuesday, the elections, for the most part are complete. There is one House race left to officially be decided. In the Colorado 3rd District, Lauren Boebert leads Adam Frisch by about 550 votes meaning that they are involved in a recount. He has already conceded to her, and she is expected to keep her House seat. But all of the remaining House and Senate seats have been decided. So, it’s time for a final post-mortem on the election.

First off, there was no red wave. There was, however, a red ripple. like dropping a very small pebble into the middle of a pond. The House of Representatives will change hands and the Republicans will be in charge next year. That’s regardless how Lauren Boebert ends up doing in the recount. Expect the GOP to have a four-seat majority. For Republicans, that’s the good news. But there’s plenty of bad news if you’re Republican.

First and foremost, there were four major Senate races that Republicans were hoping to win in order to shake up Congress entirely. Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, and Arizona were all in play. Some will include New Hampshire in that one, and only a few others would say Colorado’s seat held by Michael Bennett was possibly up for grabs. Neither turned out to be the case. But out of the four that the GOP had hoped to flip, they all stayed with the Democrats. Except of course Pennsylvania. That seat flipped from Republican to Democrat. That’s what gave the Democrats a 51-49 majority.

So, the question is why? What was the big lead up that this was going to be an historical election that would change the course of politics forever? We were told for months that the GOP would take over the House, and that it would certainly be by a lot more than four seats. We were told the Senate would most likely go to the Republicans as well, as this was a referendum on Joe Biden’s presidency. So what went wrong?

Well, I think there were three major issues at play in this year’s elections, and with apologies to Kari Lake, none of them involved voter fraud.

The first problem was that the quality of the candidates the Republicans chose to run in the primaries were not the best. Now, I’m not taking all of the races into account, just the four to six Senate seats that we discussed earlier. Let’s face it. Mehmet Oz, Herschel Walker, and Blake Masters were not good candidates at all. Neither were Joe O’Dea in Colorado or Don Bolduc in New Hampshire. Only Adam Laxalt was what I would call a quality candidate that could of won. So, when you start out with less quality than the opposition, unless you’re going to throw a ton of money at the race, you’re not going to win. And I have to blame Donald Trump for most of that. All of the people mentioned were Trump supported candidates. Only Laxalt had any political experience. And when you’re looking at unseating someone at the second highest level in government, next only to the president, you better have someone that knows how to play the political game. And let’s face it, Trump only chose candidates that went along with his theory that he had the 2020 election stolen from him.

The second problem was that the Democrats came loaded for bear in those four states. They spent oodles of money in each of them. I live in Arizona, and I was seeing ads for Mark Kelly long before I even knew who Blake Masters was. Let’s take a quick look at the amounts raised by the candidates according to Open Secrets.com. Mark Kelly raised $79.3 million to Blake Masters’ $12.0 million in Arizona. In Pennsylvania, John Fetterman outspent Mehmet Oz $56.6 million to $40.3 million and that included $5 million of Oz’ own money. In Georgia, Raphael Warnock raised $150.5 million. Herschel Walker got $58.3 million, and in Nevada, Catherine Cortez Masto raised $52.8 million to Adam Laxalt’s $15.5 million. Is it any wonder the Democrats defended their seats and took Pennsylvania? They outspent the Republicans by a 3-1 margin!

The final problem, and it’s being billed as one of the largest reasons the vote turned out the way it did, which I disagree with, was the Supreme Court ruling on abortion. I’ll say that it probably didn’t help the Republicans at all, but I’m not so sure it was the biggest reason the Dems did so well. I’d call it a distant third over all. After all, everyone knew what was coming back in April, when it was leaked.

The Republicans did gain the House, and that’s a good thing, but they have a big task at hand. Whomever gets elected Speaker in January needs to rule with an iron fist to keep this group together. It would also help if they focused on the problems We The People face, not what They The Politicians feel is important. They have a terrible record at determining what is important!

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

Did Trump’s Endorsement Help?

That’s going to depend on who you ask. But when I look at the numbers I’d have to say it helped a little bit… but not a whole lot.

Donald Trump endorsed 495 candidates for the midterm elections. 241 of those were primary endorsements. Of the 241 candidates that he endorsed, 219 actually won for a success rate of 91%. That’s pretty good in pretty much anybody’s book. He went on and endorsed 254 candidates for the general election. Of that, 178 won (or are winning). That would be basically a 70% success rate.

But looking at the US Senate races, which were really what I would call the cherry on top of the sundae, he fared slightly better. Trump hit on 18 of 25 Senate races that he endorsed. He lost 4, and as I write this, there were three that were still being counted (though in those three, Herschel Walker is heading for a run off next month, Adam Laxalt is leading Catherine Cortez Masto by a couple points and should win, and Blake Masters looks to be losing Arizona pretty badly. The four that he lost? He had Gerald Malloy winning his seat in Vermont, Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, Don Bolduc in New Hampshire, and Leora Levy in Connecticutt. Now, really, only Oz had a shot at winning in PA, and that was a rather long shot considering he was down double digits back in August.

So, the question remains, did a Trump endorsement help? I think he helped in some of the closer races. Now, Trump will say his endorsement was the sole reason these people won, which I don’t believe for a minute. A lot of the people he backed were incumbents. And incumbents, when you get to the level of the House or Senate, are tough to beat, so it’s rather a safe bet. But there were a few places where people taking part in exit-poling said that a Trump endorsement caused them to vote against the candidate. Whether or not it was enough to cause them to lose, who knows?

There is a question going forward that we will just have to wait to find out. Trump is due to announce his candidacy for president on the 15th (next Tuesday). But after Ron DeSantis’ incredible landslide reelection in Florida, including Miami-Dade County and Palm Beach County, I can’t be the least bit surprised if DeSantis decides he can indeed take on Trump and beat him. If he were to do that, and win, there isn’t a Democrat alive that can beat DeSantis in the general election in 2024. And don’t forget, Trump could be facing indictments up the road. That will indeed tarnish his luster.

I can tell you that Blake Masters probably doesn’t believe that Donald Trump’s endorsement did that much for him. He probably would have loved to have had some of that Trump money so he could have run a few more ads in the state. As it was, he was outspent big time by Mark Kelly and his PAC’s. The smear campaign on Masters was incredible! And the fact that Peter Thiel’s money helped him get across the primary finish line, but was noticeably absent in the general election also played a big part.

And I guess you could say Kari Lake didn’t really think that Trump’s endorsement helped her a lot. She was leading in the polls by a fairly good margin, but didn’t finish strong and had a few Democrat PAC’s putting up some negative ads on her, Secretary of State candidate, Mark Finchem, and Attorney General candidate Abe Hamadeh. Lake was being viewed as a potential Vice Presidential candidate in 2024 had she won.

Is Trump all he thinks of himself to be? No. That part is obvious. He wasn’t able to pull Oz or Masters across the line, and either would have pretty much given the GOP the Senate. We’re still waiting, and the path is still there (at least as I write this) for Laxalt, Johnson, and Walker to give the GOP the upper chamber…but once again, we’re going to have to wait for a Georgia run-off for that to happen!

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

It’s Official: Dems Control Senate

It was mentioned at about 6:15pm last evening (PST) that Catherine Cortez Masto had enough votes to defeat Adam Laxalt in the race for Nevada’s Senate seat, thus giving Democrats at least 50 seats and control of the US Senate.

The Republicans have 49 seats to date, and are hoping for at best, a tie, which is what they had heading into the midterm elections. That will be determined after the December 6th runoff between Georgia incumbent Senator, Raphael Warnock, and Republican challenger, Herschel Walker.

Earlier this week, Mark Kelly extended his lead over challenger Blake Masters in the Arizona race, and was projected to be the winner.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, this is what happens when you have people running for high offices (and as I write this, the Arizona Governor’s race is still too close to call with 266,000 ballots left to be counted), have no political experience. It’s tough enough to unseat an incumbent senator, even if you are an experienced politician. If you’re a neophyte in politics, it’s almost impossible. Oh, it happens, but as we say with Masters, Oz, could see with Walker, the odds of winning are very small.

And really there is only one person to blame for this. Well, there are several. First you have to blame any Republican that didn’t get out in Nevada and vote for Laxalt. He was leading until they started getting deep into the Clark County numbers, and that’s where he fell apart. So, yes, it’s basically Republicans who didn’t vote that cost him, and us. Second, you have to blame Donald Trump. He’s the one that had to endorse hundreds of candidates. And while most of his endorsements, some 70% won in the general election, the toss up states, like Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Nevada, all saw the Trump candidates for Senate lose. The one spot that really hasn’t yet is Walker in Georgia, but he was behind Warnock on Election Day.

The reason for that is simple. Trump didn’t look much past whether or not these candidates agreed with him that the election in 2020 was stolen from him. Every single one of those four Senate candidates said it was. I don’t think that the GOP could have done any worse had you or I run for office in those four states.

And, as you’ll hear me say time and time again, I’m going to pin the GOP losing a golden opportunity to handedly take over the House, and edge themselves to take over the Senate, solely on Donald Trump’s shoulders. It should be clear to pretty much everybody that Trump’s political career is following the same path as Stacey Abrams. It’s pretty much over. In fact, if you look at the bettors and who they think will win the presidency in 2024 (I know…they’re at it already!), it’s now Ron DeSantis. Trump slipped to a distant third behind Joe Biden.

There were a lot of “never Trumpers” out there that probably are happy about that, and it’s still two years away, so anything can happen, but when you look at politics at the national level, running for president especially, if you come away a loser more than once (and Trump is on a three election cycle losing streak losing in 2018, 2020, and 2022), you’re pretty much toast. Somehow, I don’t think, unless there is a 1969 NY Mets type of miracle out there, Trump has much of a chance at rebounding.

And I’m OK with that as long as the GOP can field someone that is competent, has enough political chops to get the job done, and aligns pretty closely with Trump’s policies. Those policies were, after all, what led to a very solid economy up until the time COVID threw a monkey-wrench into the works. Seems to me that we’ve already got that candidate in the current Florida Governor. DeSantis was the big winner in the midterms, not Trump.

So, while we are not going to be able to stop Joe Biden from making wildly socialistic nominees for federal positions and yes, the Supreme Court, we do need to realize that by taking the House, should that happen, it will basically cause gridlock for the next two years. What is scary is that the Republicans, as I write this still need seven seats in order to secure leadership in the House. Do you want to take a guess how bad it would be if Democrats actually kept control of both houses of Congress???

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

My One Big Fear This November

Here we are, just a few days away from what could be a monumental election result. Most of the country is turning red and are planning on (or already have) voting for Republicans. It’s a foregone conclusion that the House of Representatives will be in Republican hands come next January. And it looks like the Senate is slipping away from the Democrats as we speak. As I write this, here in the desert, the Libertarian candidate for US Senate has bowed out of the race, and has endorsed Blake Masters over the bald incumbent, Mark Kelly.

So why do I have a fear?

It’s because Republicans are great at following, but having been a political junkie for decades, I’ve noticed they aren’t that good when it comes to leading when they rule Congress. In fact, with rare exceptions they suck at it. Now, that’s not to say that they’re going to be as bad or worse than the group of slack-jawed idiots running Capitol Hill now. Nothing could be farther from the truth. But lets look at history.

Only 12 times since 1960 has the House, the Senate, and the Presidency all gone to one party. Eight times the Democrats held the power of all three, the GOP has held it four times. Democrats are the only party to hold sway for more than two consecutive terms having led all three governmental posts throughout the 1960’s (1961 to January 1969 when Nixon took over in the White House).

My point is simple. Whenever the GOP has managed to take over even just Congress, they haven’t had much success at running things. Oh, they did for a good while back in 1994 when Newt Gingrich was able to run on the Contract With America. Until Kevin McCarthy unveiled his Commitment To America, it hadn’t been tried since. But once in power, the GOP seems to waste time and effort on meaningless things.

Remember 2010? The House became Republican, and even though the Democrats controlled the Senate, the one thing that couldn’t get passed was getting rid of Obamacare, which was the reason Republicans won the House. They would have another chance to do it again in 2017. It passed the House, but John McCain’s holdout vote in the Senate caused the whole thing to come crashing down.

And there’s the rub.

What we are seeing this term with Democrats is the way Republicans typically have led in Congress. There are the factions that fight among themselves, much like the progress/socialist wing of the party is fighting with the mainstream wing of the Democrats today. What the Republicans need to do, is control Congress and force Joe Biden to do THEIR bidding, not the other way around. Why is it so important that the GOP takes control of the Senate? If all we get is the House back, then it becomes 2010 all over again and nothing will change.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, having gridlock in Congress is a great thing. Nothing gets passed in Congress usually means good things for America. But you also don’t tear down all the garbage that the Dems have forced upon us when they were in charge. And, don’t forget, Biden is supposedly in charge for another two years. That means in the event of someone leaving the Supreme Court, or filling the federal bench, Biden gets to nominate someone. And that person most assuredly will be very liberal. If the Republicans hold sway in the Senate, they control whether a nominee gets appointed or not. That is very important going forward!

If Republicans get good at legislating and leading, winning both sides of Congress will be an awesome advantage and cause Biden to move to the right to get things done, especially with a conservative Supreme Court. If they are going to fight among themselves as they’ve been historically apt to do, at the very best, we’ve created gridlock. But it sure beats what I’ve been watching for two years!

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

Can We Do Something About Misleading Campaign Ads?

They are all over the place. If you happen to live in a state where you don’t have a Senate candidate running for reelection, get down on your knees and thank God Almighty that you are spared the nonsense that some of us have to go through. And the problem is, at the present time, there is nothing we can do about it.

I’m talking about the lies and distortion of political advertising.

I’ll give you several examples about what I see here in the desert where we have a close race between incumbent Mark Kelly (D), and newcomer Blake Masters (R).

Kelly has come out and said that Masters wants to do away with Social Security and Medicare. That’s not true at all. What Masters has said is that it may be time to actually privatize Social Security. And he’s right. The left is making this sound like it’s some big deal, when every person working today (unless you’re extremely lucky to still be getting a pension when you retire) is invested privately in the stock market through your 401k. And the GOP wishes to privatize Social Security doesn’t have a thing to do with anyone currently on it. It’s a lie that Kelly loves to tell.

You’re hearing a ton of ads (mostly through PAC’s) that Republicans want to ban all abortions. That’s nowhere near the truth. Republicans have offered a few alternatives to a complete ban, such as Mitch McConnell’s 15 week limit for abortions, but it’s a states’ rights issue, not the federal government. I know it pisses off the left to hear that each state has the right to decide the future for themselves, but that’s the Constitution. The Supreme Court ruled correctly on this one.

And we get the over-blown resume-padding from incumbents that say they’ve done much more than they’ve actually done. Kelly has ads saying that “He passed a bill to improve Arizona’s infrastructure.” No…HE didn’t pass it. His party passed it. It’s not like he was sitting in the Oval Office, pen in hand ready to sign the bill when it arrived. He was told by Chuckles Schumer to vote yea on it, and he did. That’s not him “passing” anything. And he’s said this on a lot of different accounts.

Then there is the name calling. Here in Arizona, we’re in the midst of not only a Senate race, but also for the Governor’s mansion. Kari Lake (R), a former newscaster for 27 years is running against Katie Hobbs (D) the current Secretary of State. Lake has been leading by 3 points for quite some time now. It hasn’t changed. But leave it to the PAC’s to call her names like “Kari Fake” and say that she’s doing all sorts of nasty stuff. We really don’t hear much about this on the other side, though it does exist.

I’m just getting sick and tired of the lies and half-truths that are being told in political advertising. The sad thing is there isn’t anything you can do. Radio and TV stations are obliged to run the commercials they are given, regardless if they are true or not. And they can’t edit or change them in any way. When I was working in Ohio back in 1984, there was a guy running for President in the Ohio primaries that used the word “BS” (but said the actual word) in his campaign commercials. We couldn’t do a damn thing! We had to air it as we got it. So, if these politicians want to lie or twist the truth or mislabel something, they can do it without fear of retribution.

That needs to change. It would be nice to get back to the point where these ads actually told me WHY I should vote for a candidate, not how the other person should be in prison!

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

Here’s What America Thinks Midterms Are About…

I’ve spouted off pretty regularly now about how the GOP isn’t getting their message across, and how the Dems are trying to make this about abortion and taking away Social Security. Well, that’s nice that the parties are trying to define the election, but in essence, that’s not what matters. It matters what the PEOPLE think the midterms are all about. And it’s a pretty interesting comment.

It’s a referendum on Joe Biden.

At least that’s what 46% of the respondents to a survey taken by Rasmussen say. 40% say it’s about candidates and local issues, and 14% aren’t sure (still on summer break?).

A solid 50% of the 1,000 people surveyed said that if the Republicans win the House or Senate, that Joe Biden should temper his politics and become much more moderate.

So, what does that all mean? If a plurality of voters think that it’s all about Biden this time around, this should be a massive red wave, even with the meager Biden wins that he’s had in the last few weeks. And it raises a very interesting point. One of the major comments I keep getting from people is that Democrats don’t want to debate. We’re seeing it here in AZ, and you see it with the Fetterman/Oz battle in PA. It’s happening in a lot of other places as well.

When one side doesn’t want to debate it’s usually a sign that they are so far ahead in the polls that they can’t possibly do anything but fall if they debate. Usually it’s only the people trailing in the polls that want to debate because they feel they have something that will damage the leader. But in this case, it’s entirely different. The Democrats know they are going to have to distance themselves from Biden, and defend him because he’s in their party. That isn’t sitting well. So, they decide that they just don’t want to go through the hassle of prepping for a debate.

However, there are exceptions to that rule, and I can point to Fetterman/Oz, and here in AZ, the Governor’s race between Kari Lake and Katie Hobbs as an example. In both situations, the Republican candidates are extremely well versed in television. Oz had the “Dr. Oz” show on TV for years, and Kari Lake was one of Arizona’s most prominent newscasters for decades. Fetterman, having just suffered a stroke earlier this year is having problems speaking (Sorry John, I’m not making fun of you, I’m just stating a fact), and Hobbs is a career politician, not someone well-versed in television.

While Hobbs hasn’t chosen to debate Lake at all, Mark Kelly, himself on the hook for several lies in his political ads, has agreed to debate Blake Masters for the US Senate seat. But that’s simply because the race has tightened immensely in the past two weeks. Kelly had a 15 point lead a couple of weeks ago. Today it’s down to four. And Masters hadn’t run many ads throughout the summer months, but he’s starting to buy up TV time left and right, even though Kelly is outspending him 10-1.

The real focus on the midterms seems to be Joe Biden. If that’s the case, screaming that MAGA Republicans are a disaster for the democracy isn’t going to bode well for the Dems, even though there are several in Congress that echo Biden’s sentiments.

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

Dem’s SECRET Plan To Win In November

I will hand it to the Democrats. They are very good at coming up with playbook pieces that seem to work. You can go back to the 1992 presidential election and understand what I’m talking about. Do you remember James Carville’s famous quote, “It’s the economy, stupid”? Democrats won that election because they hammered home what they felt was important. It was the economy. Actually, not so much with Bush 43, but it worked. Later, Clinton was able to add to that playbook item. If you tell a lie enough times, people start to believe it. That’s what got him reelected.

Well, this year, the Democrats have a play that is well underway. We’re seeing it every single day.

Joe Biden has been on the campaign trail for the last month not necessarily campaigning for Democrats because there are tons of Dems’ that don’t want to be seen with him. But he’s been out there, typically in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where he hopes he can flip two US Senate seats. And he hasn’t necessarily been campaigning with the Senate candidates. He’s been bashing Republicans. Oh, he says it’s just the MAGA Republicans, which have been called “half-fascists”, and a “threat to our democracy”. And while the right screams that he’s breaking a campaign promise of “unifying the country”, which he never really wanted to do, he IS accomplishing the task at hand.

He is controlling the message.

Think about it. Every day that goes by that the media are talking about how he’s using non-campaign events to bash Republicans, what isn’t being done? We aren’t hearing about the economy, the inflation rate, the southern border crisis, the high crime rate, the botched withdrawal in Afghanistan, the possibility of an Iranian Nuclear Deal, and Ukraine’s war with Russia and the hundreds of billions we are spending on that. We aren’t hearing about the supply chain issues that still plague the country either.

And people like Raphael Warnock in Georgia, Mark Kelly here in Arizona, and Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada are able to scream about abortion, and say that Republicans want to take away Social Security and Medicare (they don’t…they want to privatize them). People are starting to believe the lies.

Yes, the races are tightening in the Senate contests. Kelly is only about 4 points ahead of Blake Masters. Herschel Walker has bumped ahead of Warnock in Georgia in a couple of polls, and in Colorado, Joe O’Dea has pulled to within five points of Michael Bennett! Still, you’re hearing how confident the Dems are becoming. And it’s because they know if they keep talking about Donald Trump, MAGA Republicans, and Mar-a-Lago, that Republicans aren’t able to talk about the real issues that matter most to people.

In order to win this election, the GOP needs to control the message. They need to get back on top. Trump isn’t helping because frankly, this election isn’t about Trump. This election is about stopping Biden. We have two years to worry about Trump. He needs to go away for a while and stop complaining about the FBI and how poorly he’s been treated.

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

So, Why Continue?

I don’t know what the advertising for the midterms is like where you live. Here in the AZ, we’re getting besieged by ads and most of them at this early stage are Democrat ads and liberal PAC’s.

There is something funny going on though. Rather than watching ads dealing with the issues that concern Arizonans, and Americans the most, things like inflation, the economy and the recession, and border issues, we’re seeing a totally different type of ad.

The two big ads that are being pumped right now showcase abortion, and privatizing Social Security. Neither of those two things are in touch with what America feels are really strong campaign issues. We also are seeing stuff about the January 6th committee’s hearings. Who the hell cares?

Andy Barr (R-KY) was on Meet The Press this past weekend, and here’s what he said regarding the 2020 election and the January 6th Committee hearings:

“These congressional seats do not belong to politicians in Washington,” Barr said. “These seats belong to the American people, and there is a massive, massive disconnect between the priorities of politicians in Washington and the concerns of the American people.”

“Not once have any of my constituents–Republican or Democrat–talked about the 2020 election, January 6th, the committee in Washington, or any of these issues. They’re talking about not being able to afford putting food on the table, putting gas in their trucks, and not being able to see their grandson again because he died of a fentanyl overdose.”

I think Representative Barr is on to something here. In Arizona, there is a fight for the Senate seat currently being held by Mark Kelly. His ads against Republican challenger, Blake Masters focus on Masters’ stance on abortion (he’s against it), and for privatizing Social Security. The abortion ads are going to appeal to about 9% of the Democrat base and few others. As for privatizing Social Security, isn’t it about time?

Think about this. How do people usually get rich in this country? They invest in the stock market, right? So, what in heck is bad about that? Most every American that’s working these days invests in the stock market through their 401k at work. What do you think mutual funds are? The stock market actually IS a better way to save Social Security! If you make Social Security private and individualized accounts, the government can’t raid it like they’ve done to get us into this mess.

As for the January 6th Committee, I think there would be more acceptance from them if they were actually bi-partisan, and if they were investigating ALL of the riots that were occurring over the past two or three years. Why not include the BLM riots? That caused billions more in damage to federal property in places like Seattle, Portland, Chicago and New York! But it appears to about 73% of Americans that this is nothing more than a political witch hunt…and the people sitting on that committee know it.

If you want to run for reelection, as Mark Kelly is trying to do, I get it that you need something to talk about. His ads are basically lies about how he is trying to bring down the cost of gasoline, while he’s actually voting to raise it. There needs to be a truth in politics law somewhere. Not sure how it would work, but smart minds can craft this and get it together quickly. The problem is passing it with Democrats in power.

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!