February 20, 2020 — Steven Hayward
Bernie Sanders’s weakest moment last night is hard to single out, but one leading example would have to be his lame answer that some of the bad behavior of Bernie Bros are Russian false flag operations. Whereupon Keith Ellison came to the defense of Bernie Bros. Which set up Rep. Steve Scalise for what we can declare, even though it is only February, to be Tweet of the Year hands
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February 19, 2020 — Steven Hayward
• So it appears the Democratic Party has decided to self-identify as unelectable. • Elizabeth “I Have a Plan for That” Warren says her simple solution to every problem is to “put power back in the hands of the people.” But somehow all of her plans involve putting more power in the hands of people in Washington. I wonder if that has something to do with her “more selective appeal,” as
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February 19, 2020 — Steven Hayward
It’s still early, but the Democratic Party nomination process reminds me of Yogi Berra’s line about center field at Yankee stadium: “It gets late early out there.” It’s already late for the Democrats, and it is becoming clear that the Democrats are doomed this year. At the debate tomorrow night, Bloomberg is going to be the big target because he’s got the means to challenge everybody. The big beneficiary will
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February 18, 2020 — Steven Hayward
Yeah—I’ll bet that’s a headline you never expected to see on Power Line! It is prompted by this news story in today’s Washington Post: Conservative intellectuals launch a new group to challenge free-market ‘fundamentalism’ on the right Oren Cass believes conservatives have blundered by outsourcing GOP economic policymaking to libertarian “fundamentalists” who see the free market as an end unto itself, rather than as a means for improving quality of
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February 17, 2020 — Steven Hayward
The pathetic, slow-motion collapse of Joe Biden is sad to watch, even if, like me, you can’t stand the guy and think he is one of the most duplicitous and mediocre politicians of our age. Is it time to start the pool on the day he finally yields to reality? The Democrats’ delegate selection process actually gives him lots of reasons to stay in, as he might pick up enough
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February 16, 2020 — Steven Hayward
The most obvious velleities of the major mainstream media today are, first, a hatred of Fox News, and second, a primal scream at the fact that over the last 25 years old fashioned print and broadcast media have shrunk more than coal mining. Nicholas Lemann, dean of Columbia University’s famed journalism school, took to the pages of the New York Review of Books in a recent issue to lament the
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February 15, 2020 — Steven Hayward
This week we violate the legendary first rule of Fight Club with Tevi Troy, author of the wonderfully gossipy new book Fight House: Rivalries in the White House from Truman to Trump. Troy, a veteran of the George W. Bush White House and author of several previous books about overlooked aspects of the presidency, takes us on a tour of some of the legendary feuds and personality and power clashes
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February 15, 2020 — Steven Hayward
To paraphrase Will Rogers, it’s no trouble being a humorist when you have Joe Biden working for you. “Lying dog-faced pony soldier”??? This is going to go down in the annals of all-time political gaffes. It’s the verbal equivalent of Michael Dukakis riding in a tank, or Gary Hartpence sailing on the “Monkey Business,” or George Romney admitting he had been “brainwashed” over Vietnam. (Funny how that problem seems to
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February 14, 2020 — Steven Hayward
I got up this morning wondering about the plausible scenario that no Democratic candidate will have a majority of delegates going into the convention in Milwaukee this summer, thus producing a contested/brokered convention, which we haven’t seen since 1952. Here’s part of the email I sent to some friends (some of them known to Power Line readers) with whom I kick around the state of things several times a week:
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February 14, 2020 — Steven Hayward
I didn’t get in on the observances here of Lincoln’s birthday earlier in the week, though Scott had the beat well covered. But perhaps one last glance back. From time to time people ask me what I regard as the best Lincoln biography, and without hesitation I still always pick Lord Charnwood’s 1917 biography (though Allan Guelzo’s various books on Lincoln are equivalent in their quality). In fact I have
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February 14, 2020 — Steven Hayward
You can be forgiven for thinking the left’s fetish over “intersectionality”—the deliberate attempt to keep all designated victim groups in good standing with one another through a unified matrix of oppression—resembles a Bingo game run amok because no one ever actually wins a round. The best example right now are the identitarians attacking Pete Buttigieg because . . . he’s not gay enough, or something. The New Yorker this week
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February 14, 2020 — Steven Hayward
We know that Seattle has been doing its level best to keep up with San Francisco in the Bad Progressive Governance Sweepstakes, and it is very hard to keep up with a district attorney who wants to incentivize property crime, let alone match the poop and needle piles of Baghdad-by-the-Bay. But Seattle is stepping up its game! Take in this recent public comment period of the Seattle City Council, where
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February 13, 2020 — Steven Hayward
The New York Times reports today that the Bloomberg campaign is going big with a social media campaign run by Jerry Media. I got to thinking that the name sounded familiar, and then I remembered: Jerry Media is the social media marketing company, big with so-called self-appointed online “influencers,” behind the disastrous Fyre Festival. (If you haven’t seen the Netflix documentary about Fyre, settle in with some good adult beverages;
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February 13, 2020 — Steven Hayward
Recent surveys show Americans to be more optimistic than they have been in years, and it is not hard to understand when you take in some of the good news stories out today. Starting with the bankruptcy filing of the McClatchy newspaper chain. Aside from CNN and the New York Times, it is hard to think of a media organization that deserves flushing down the sewer more than McClatchy, whose
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February 12, 2020 — Steven Hayward
I was in class again last night—how rude of Democrats to have their primaries on the one night a week I teach class, so I can’t drunk-blog the thing live and watch the media make fools of themselves—so I’m late to the after party. Rest assured that like Jane Fonda, I wore recycled sustainable clothing and jewels to the after party, to fight climate change. Of course by mid-morning today,
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February 11, 2020 — Steven Hayward
It was jarring to the ears to hear Democrats piously invoking the words and “original intent” of the Founders during the impeachment farce, because as everyone knows liberals would re-write the Constitution wholesale if they had the power to do so. The list of things they despise in our Constitution is quite long, i.e. get rid of the electoral college, abolish the Senate, etc. I’ve seen lists with as many
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February 11, 2020 — Steven Hayward
While we await the vote count to come in from New Hampshire this evening (if it comes in—what are the odds of another vote count mystery?), a few items to keep you busy and out of trouble. • I’ve seen a report on Twitter this morning that Joe Biden has left New Hampshire for South Carolina, which means that he knows he is going to do so poorly that he
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