November 12, 2022 — Steven Hayward

The Week in Pictures: Pink Ripple Edition

Featured image The problem with big waves is that sometimes they hit a sandbar or a rip tide. Or election day falls between sets. But cheer up: John Fetterman is now the face of the Democratic Party, and could there be any more fun prospect that an Oval Office meeting between Bobba Fetterx and Slow Joe Biden? And just think how awesome the photo ops with The Squad are going to be. Headlines »
November 12, 2022 — Steven Hayward

Reader Poll: Looking Ahead to 2024

Featured imageA disproportionate number of the comments on our recent posts critical of Trump’s role in the mid-term election, and his responses in the last few days, have disagreed sharply with us. So I think it is time to hear from a wider cross-section of our readership—from the 99 percent of our readers who seldom or never comment here, on the question. Not a long poll—just two short questions. (Be sure »
November 11, 2022 — Steven Hayward

The Daily Chart: Euro-Recession Under Way?

Featured imageLast week we noted that European inflation is running higher than U.S. inflation, and today news out of London that the British economy is officially in recession. It also appears that recession is already under way in continental Europe, at least in their all-important manufacturing sector, which is swooning toward 2009 and COVID shutdown levels. This may be more on account of the insane energy policies and incipient shortages, but »
November 12, 2022 — Steven Hayward

Podcast: The 3WHH on the McRib Election

Featured imageSome smart aleck wag at the Daily Caller has decided this midterm was the “McRib” election, saying “Democracy is like the McRib: It comes and goes mysteriously every two years or so and it is confusing.  And, like politicians, once the McRib is reintroduced with a big ad campaign, you remember months later why you didn’t like it in the first place.” Needless to say, with lingering threats by McDonald’s »
November 11, 2022 — Scott Johnson

Unquiet flows the Don

Featured imageI’m not sure what President Trump is thinking with his latest salvo, this one against Glenn Younkin. Youngkin is of course another recently elected and appealing Republican governor. This is what I’m thinking. It’s more or less the same thing I was thinking when he held his rally and watched ensuing events at his leisure on January 6. He doesn’t have any family, friends, or worthy advisers whom he listens »
November 11, 2022 — Scott Johnson

What’s the matter with Arizona?

Featured imageI developed a healthy respect for attorney John A. “Jack” Clifford many years ago when we represented adverse parties in an intellectual property dispute. Jack is of counsel with Merchant & Gould. P.C. He sends us this first-hand report under the heading WHAT IS WRONG WITH MARICOPA COUNTY? PLENTY AND IT’S COMPLICATED. The AP’s latest story on the doings in Arizona is here. Jack writes: I hope you are well. »
November 11, 2022 — Scott Johnson

Thoughts from the ammo line

Featured imageAmmo Grrrll has a few thoughts ABOUT LAST TUESDAY…She writes: Good night, everybody. John Fetterman has won in Pennsylvania. And the voting machines and ballot printers did not “work” in Arizona, although I think they worked exactly the way they were intended. A judge ruled against allowing the polls to be open for three more hours or for hand-counting the ballots. Awesome. And the person responsible for the mess was »
November 10, 2022 — Steven Hayward

The Daily Chart: DeSantis’s Breadth

Featured imageA couple days ago I posted this chart showing the partisan split by education, which liberals like to talk about—see, Republicans are stupid and Democrats are smart, because we went to kollege!  Especially people with advanced degrees in gender studies and such: Well have a look at the NBC News exit poll from Florida, which shows Ron DeSantis got a majority of advanced-degree holders: Chaser, from Michael Barone: DeSantis carried »
November 10, 2022 — Scott Johnson

A Nevada update

Featured imageI have been following Jon Ralston’s postelection Twitter updates on the outstanding votes and related results in Nevada’s Senate race. In my morning-after comments on the midterms, I assumed that Blake Masters would lose in Arizona and hoped that Adam Laxalt would pull it out in Nevada. Ralston is hostile to Laxalt and pulling for incumbent Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto, but he is an expert on Nevada politics. Take his »
November 10, 2022 — Scott Johnson

Slow Joe takes a victory lap

Featured imageFollowing up on Tuesday’s midterm elections President Biden held a press conference yesterday. Speaking in the style to which we have become accustomed in his dotage, he took a victory lap. The White House has posted the transcript here. The transcript reflects the usual lies, absurdities, and approximation (“obsessant,” “Biden is being apop- — apoc- –acop- — Biden is being extremist”). He’s going to keep on keeping on. One of »
November 9, 2022 — John Hinderaker

Goodbye, Donald

Featured imageA consensus is emerging among Republicans that it is time for Donald Trump to get off the stage and stop damaging his party and his country. It is reflected in tomorrow’s New York Post cover: In the same paper, John Podhoretz, never a Trump fan, writes: “Here’s how Donald Trump sabotaged the Republican midterms.” Trump’s record is bleak. Liberal fundraisers actually put money behind Trump-endorsed candidates in GOP primaries all »
November 11, 2022 — Scott Johnson

Dink’s Song

Featured imageBefore founding the Byrds with Gene Clark and David Crosby, Roger McGuinn was a folk nut. He returned to his first love in music with Roger McGuinn’s Folk Den, where he posts new recordings of old songs monthly. McGuinn celebrated the 27th anniversary of his Folk Den here this month. He did the honors with “Shady Grove.” No one told me arithmetic would be required, but I believe that means »
November 10, 2022 — John Hinderaker

Dementia Don

Featured imageEarlier this afternoon, Donald Trump sent out this email to his supporters: NewsCorp, which is Fox, the Wall Street Journal, and the no longer great New York Post (bring back Col!), is all in for Governor Ron DeSanctimonious, an average REPUBLICAN Governor with great Public Relations, who didn’t have to close up his State, but did, unlike other Republican Governors, whose overall numbers for a Republican, were just average—middle of »
November 10, 2022 — Steven Hayward

Thought for the Day: Joel Kotkin on the Midterm

Featured imageGlad to see Joel Kotkin—a former progressive—thinks as I do about the longer-term effect of the mid-term, writing at UnHerd: For all their cautious optimism yesterday, a mild Midterms victory may prove the last thing the Democrats need. If they had performed as predicted, the Democrats and their media adjuncts would now be busily dissecting their defeat. But what has to be considered a lost Republican opportunity — gaining little »
November 10, 2022 — Scott Johnson

Fetterman for president

Featured imageIn a perfect coda to the midterm elections, MSNBC is touting Senator-elect John Fetterman — his doctor said he was better, man — to run for president. It is an ingenious attempt to build a seamless transition from President Biden to the Democratic future. Fetterman should indeed be the face of the Democratic Party, or at least its neck. The future beckons. The possibilities are limitless. Unfortunately, we have plenty »
November 10, 2022 — Scott Johnson

There’s a Hole In the Future

Featured imageI have rethought this brief series in light of the downbeat events of this week. Rather than cancel it, I thought I might try to keep it in tune with the times. The first song that came to mind was Phil Ochs’s “No More Songs” from his bitter, ironically titled Greatest Hits (1970). It is the concluding track on the last studio album released before he ended his life in »
November 9, 2022 — John Hinderaker

A Ray of Hope [Updated]

Featured imageYesterday’s election results were bad across the U.S., and in Minnesota they were horrific. But there was one positive: the performance of conservative school board candidates. The teachers’ union, Education Minnesota, has largely run our state for decades. Among other things, in most school districts the union has more or less appointed members of the school board *against* whom the union negotiates teachers’ contracts, a corrupt arrangement. My organization has »