Commentary: 2024 Is Going to Be Close

If the November midterms proved one thing, it’s that Republicans have a less-than-breezy path to a majority in Washington, D.C.

Most of the attention on the 2024 election will center around the race for president. But don’t forget to watch the down ballot congressional races because the control of Congress really matters.

Both chambers are narrowly divided and control for both is up for grabs.

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POLL: Most Democrats Do Not Want Biden to Run in 2024

A majority of registered Democrats would like someone other than President Joe Biden to be their party’s nominee in 2024, according to a poll released Monday.

Nearly two-thirds of Democrats responded that they would rather somebody else at the top of the ticket, with respondents citing the economy, inflation and President Biden’s age as major determinants for their opposition to his leading the party in 2024, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll. Biden fared particularly poorly with younger voters; 94% of Democrats under the age of 30 said they would prefer a different presidential nominee.

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Commentary: Seven Major Failures of the Biden Presidency

Joe Biden

With President Joe Biden set to deliver his first State of the Union address on Tuesday night, it’s a good time to ask: How has Biden done as president and what is the actual state of our union?

According to the American people, things aren’t going great.

A CNN poll in early February asked Americans what they thought of Biden’s presidency and what he’s done right since entering office Jan. 20, 2021.

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Biden Says ‘Willing to Lose’ Presidency over Decisions Including Pandemic, Afghanistan, Middle Class

President Biden this past weekend suggested he would be willing to lose his presidency over his decisions on several key issues including his widely criticized withdrawal from Afghanistan.

In a CBS “Sunday Morning” interview in which he was asked whether he was discouraged by the criticism over his handling of the pandemic and other first-year challenges, Biden answered “No.”

“But look,” he continued. “One of the things we did decide, and I mean this, my word as a Biden, I know what I’m willing to lose over. If we walk away from the middle class, if we walk away from trying to unify people, if we start to engage in the same kind of politics that the last four years has done? I’m willing to lose over that.”

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Commentary: The Biden No-Go Zones

Joe Biden

In American journalism, there are supposed to be some clear, nonnegotiable third-rails. 

One is zero tolerance for overtly racist language and comportment among our movers and shakers. Reporters, for example, for four years damned Donald Trump for his neutralizing summation that there were both “fine people” and extremists mingled among the hordes of protestors during their occasionally violent encounters in Charlottesville, Virginia. 

It mattered little to the media that Trump added qualifiers of “many” and “both” sides of the protests: 

We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence, on many sides . . . And I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally—but you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, OK? . . . Now, in the other group also, you had some fine people, but you also had troublemakers and you see them come with the black outfits and with the helmets and with the baseball bats—you had a lot of bad people in the other group, too.

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Poland’s Populist President Duda Edges Euro-Centric Challenger Trzaskowski, Earns Second Term

Polish President Andrzej Duda declared victory Monday in a runoff election in which he narrowly won a second five-year term, acknowledging the campaign he ran was often too harsh as he appealed for unity and forgiveness.

The close race followed a bitter campaign between Duda and Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski that was dominated by cultural issues. The government, state media and the influential Roman Catholic Church all mobilized in support of Duda and sought to stoke anti-Semitism, homophobia and xenophobia in order to shore up conservative support.

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Commentary: President Trump’s ‘Historically’ Unpopular Numbers Don’t Add Up

by George S. Bardmesser   It’s been nearly a month since I wrote about the media-fabricated mirage of Trump’s alleged unpopularity. Yet Fox News, apparently, still hasn’t received the memo. My conclusion, after looking at a set of polls administered between September 1 and January 24, was that Trump’s approval numbers are quite healthy (trending upwards slowly, and around 47 percent and rising), and, if anything, better than Obama’s were at this point in his presidency: This chart showed data for the polls excluding Rasmussen (a pollster that I consider more reliable than most, but one which others view as having an in-house Republican effect). Rasmussen’s numbers (again, deliberately not included in the chart above) tend to be in the roughly 48-49, percent range in the last few months. As of this writing, we have three additional weeks of data, and the same chart looks as follows: Note the outlier at 54 percent on January 29 – this is that Gallup poll that showed a historically high 49 percent approval among the category “all adults” – which, according to the approach taken in my earlier piece, was adjusted to “likely voters” by adding five points to it. Gallup’s 49 percent figure made headlines at…

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Commentary: Leftists’ Efforts to Ruin the Electoral College Gains Steam as 181 Votes Now Go to the Popular Winner of Presidential Elections

by Jarrett Stepman   Colorado is joining a list of states attempting to overturn the way Americans have selected their presidents for over two centuries. The Colorado Legislature recently passed a bill to join an interstate effort called the “interstate compact,” to attempt to sidestep the Electoral College system defined by the Constitution. Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, called the Electoral College an “undemocratic relic” and vowed to sign the bill into law. So far, 12 states representing 172 Electoral College votes have passed the initiative into law. With the addition of Colorado (which has nine votes), that number will rise to 181. They need 270 for the compact to go into effect. It would then undoubtedly be challenged in the courts. Some major voices on the left were gleeful about the potential change. Time to make Electoral College a vestige of the past. It’s undemocratic, forces candidates to ignore majority of the voters and campaign in a small number of states. The presidency is our one national office and should be decided – directly – by the voters https://t.co/OyRbXOiBpz — Eric Holder (@EricHolder) February 26, 2019 While the Constitution, intentionally, gives wide latitude to states to create their own electoral…

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Big Donors Staying on Sidelines in Early Days of 2020 Primary

The presidential primary is jolting to life without a traditional mainstay: the big money donor class. More specifically, their contribution checks. With as many as two dozen Democrats potentially running for the White House and no immediate front-runner, the money race in the early days of the primary is largely frozen, according to fundraisers. Though some donors have a preferred candidate, others who are spending are spreading their money across the field to hedge their bets. More often, donors are staying on the sidelines until the contours of the primary take shape. “I’m not aware of anyone who is giving now,” said Andy Spahn, a Los Angeles-based fundraiser and conduit to Hollywood wealth who has been courted by multiple contenders. “People first want to know who will actually be in the race.” The slow flow of campaign cash from the big money donor class coincides with a seismic shift in Democratic fundraising. Driven by a restive base that turned opposition to President Donald Trump into an unprecedented flood of small-dollar online contributions, some now question whether big money donors will continue to hold the same sway. Take California Sen. Kamala Harris, who announced her presidential candidacy last week. In just…

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President George H.W. Bush Has Died

George H.W. Bush, the 41st president of the United States, a man born of patrician pedigree, but with a sense of honor, duty and service to his country that played out over the last 60 years of the 20th century, died Friday at age 94. In a life on the world stage and at the highest levels of the American political scene, Bush lost and won elections before becoming the American leader in 1989, and then, with a declining U.S. economy and unemployment rising, was turned out of office after four years in the White House, losing his re-election bid in 1992. He marked the start of his presidency with a sweeping inaugural declaration that “a new breeze is blowing, and a world refreshed by freedom seems reborn; for in man’s heart, if not in fact, the day of the dictator is over. The totalitarian era is passing, its old ideas blown away like leaves from an ancient, lifeless tree.” His pronouncement soon proved prophetic, with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union occurring early in his presidency. Bush met with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, their…

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Commentary: The Ticking Fiscal Time Bomb Set in 1937 Could Tip America Into Despotism by 2030

US Flag

by Robert Osburn   Celebrated this past July 4, America’s founding story of freedom is truly remarkable: unity, courage, integrity, and national integration (incorporating people from around the world). In most other places, the freedom story is bloody, exclusive, and, ultimately, tyrannical. Take Nicaragua, for one example: In 1979, the Sandinistas overthrew dictator Anastasio Somoza.  Nearly four decades later, hundreds are dying because the very people who led the Sandinista revolution (Daniel Ortega and friends, now in power) are behaving exactly like Somoza.  It’s déjà vu all over again for our Central American neighbors. In an age when democracy is clearly retreating, will America eventually succumb to autocracy while waving sayonara to democracy?    It’s a question that National Review’s JonahGoldberg once very handily dismissed. He now admits that American totalitarianism is a real possibility. Utilizing a scenario-building skill that I learned during my doctoral studies, let me offer what I consider a very plausible scenario that takes America down the rathole of tyranny: Sometime between 2028 and 2034, America’s president will use executive or emergency powers to solve the nation’s Social Security trust fund crisis. As Americans celebrate that presidential act of courage, we will begin the long road to tyranny because we cannot rule ourselves.  Does this remind anyone of the books of Judges and I Samuel when, because everyone did what was right…

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Commentary: President Trump Might Be the Most Conservative President in Our Lifetime

By Robert Romano   On Feb. 23, President Donald Trump spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) for the second year in a row as president, after not attending in 2016 during the campaign. At the time, he was still busy building his constituency in the Republican primary and for the general election, where he would ultimately prevail on a very conservative platform of putting America and the American people first in governing. Now, Trump is the leader of the conservative, center-right party in the U.S. and of the executive branch. After one year in office, he has a record he has delivered on: lower taxes, fewer regulations and an opening the doors for economic expansion. ANWR has been opened for drilling. The Keystone XL pipeline is being built. The Obamacare individual mandate has been repealed. Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord. He ended the so-called Clean Power Plan. He withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and is looking to revamp NAFTA or else pull out of that one, too. Trump ran on fair and reciprocal trade, and that’s what he’s delivering. At CPAC, Trump declared, “the era of economic surrender is over.” By enforcing trade agreements…

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Possible Democratic 2020 Contender Fundraises Off Vegas Slaughter

Sen Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), one of the leading gun control advocates in Congress and a potential 2020 presidential candidate, wasted no time trying to leverage financial support from this week’s mass shooting in Las Vegas. Murphy’s re-election campaign blasted out an email to supporters asking for contributions to three gun control groups, according to the Connecticut…

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