2016 Election
December 30, 2016 — Steven Hayward
A lot of folks are saying that 2016 was something like the worst years ever, because Trump. Or something. Anyway, the good folks at the Washington Free Beacon have put together this delicious highlight reel of MSNBC’s greatest hits from the year. (Just three minutes long.)
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December 29, 2016 — Scott Johnson
The Claremont Institute has sent out a year-end message highlighting “the best of 2016” from the Claremont Review of Books. I thought readers who missed these pieces the first time around might enjoy them as we turn the corner to the new year. I am going back to these pieces with the benefit of hindsight as I bide my time in the penalty box. The CRB has also separately compiled
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December 28, 2016 — Paul Mirengoff
Donald Trump is an inveterate trash talker, and I’m old-fashioned enough to consider this a bad thing in a president-elect. But even assuming that Trump keeps talking trash as president (a fair assumption, I think), he will not bear primary responsibility for this latest manifestation of civic decline. Primary responsibility for “normalizing” trash talk from the White House falls instead on President Obama. Obama’s latest display consists of his claim
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December 28, 2016 — Scott Johnson
In a post dated July 12, 2013, Bloomberg View columnist Megan McArdle looked ahead to the elections of 2016. She foresaw a high likelihood of Republicans controlling the White House, the Senate and the House. Over at the New Republic Nate Cohn disputed McArdle’s reasoning. McArdle posted this at the site promoting her book The Up Side of Down. Among other things, McArdle followed this up with the 2015 column
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December 21, 2016 — Paul Mirengoff
Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post names Hillary Clinton the worst political candidate of 2016. It’s an easy selection, I think. Clinton underperformed to a significant degree against Bernie Sanders and then against Donald Trump. She had some good moments — several of the debates against Sanders and the first debate against Trump — but her body of work during the campaigns was consistent with her results. As runners-up, Cillizza
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December 15, 2016 — Scott Johnson
Donald Trump narrowly lost to Hillary Clinton in the contest at the top of the ticket in Minnesota this year, but in other respects Republicans had an astoundingly good year. They amplified their majority in the Minnesota House to an unprecedented number in a presidential election cycle, when the turnout advantage usually accrues to Democrats, and took the majority in the Minnesota Senate. Republicans haven’t held a majority in the
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December 14, 2016 — Steven Hayward
About 90 percent of the time that you hear about a “hate crime” on a college campus, it is later discovered to have been a hoax. And the other 10 percent of the time the culprit is not some vagabond Klan member or genuine Nazi, but a psychologically troubled kid seeking attention. As David Burge (“Iowahawk”) observed on Twitter, it’s odd that so many expressions of “hate speech” are showing
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December 14, 2016 — Steven Hayward
The Hill offers us this unintentionally illuminating article a couple days ago: America Is Held Hostage by Flyover States By Duane Townsend The predominant narrative coming out of the 2016 presidential post-election analysis is: The flyover states have spoken. A flyover state is the huge region between the coasts. As opposed to the eastern seaboard, northern post-industrial states and Pacific Ocean states. They’re overwhelmingly Republican, stanchly conservative, regressive right wing,
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December 14, 2016 — Steven Hayward
If you want to know why Hillary lost—and deserved to lose—go back to Philip Bump’s October 22 story in the Washington Post about how the Clinton campaign considered 84 (eighty-four) different campaign slogans before settling on “Stronger Together.” I missed this story when it first appeared, but it has returned to currency as people continue to pick over the wreckage of the Clintons’ political machine. Some of these you have
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December 2, 2016 — Steven Hayward
Heavily overscheduled road trip this week, hence the scarcity of posts the last couple of days. Collecting lots of scraps of gossip in DC about the Trump transition, most of it wrong, I suspect. At least I was able to sneak in a fine bottle of Bordeaux at an undisclosed location last night. Some items from the spindle: • What’s the old line about stepping out of the way when
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November 28, 2016 — Scott Johnson
I wrote about the remarkable results in Minnesota legislative races in “What happened in Minnesota.” The results were most remarkable in Minnesota state House races. In a presidential election year, when turnout traditionally favors Democrats, the GOP amplified its majority in the House, winning 77 seats to the Democrats’ 57. Remember, this is Minnesota we’re talking about. House Speaker Kurt Daudt will return as such in the upcoming session. Much
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November 26, 2016 — Steven Hayward
For our DC area readers, I’ll be back in Washington Tuesday afternoon participating in a conference about the election and its aftermath at the National Press Club, sponsored by my host organization at Berkeley, the Institute of Governmental Studies. Here’s the link with the complete rundown of people on the panels, and the EventBrite link to RSVP if you want to attend this free event. I’m pretty sure there will
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November 25, 2016 — Scott Johnson
Although Donald Trump narrowly lost the state of Minnesota to Hillary Clinton, Minnesota Republicans achieved remarkable results in legislative races. Republicans amplified their majority to an unprecedented number for a presidential-year election in the state House of Representatives and captured a one-vote majority in the state Senate (again, in a presidential election year when the turnout advantage usually accrues to Democrats). The results in the state Senate were striking as
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November 22, 2016 — Steven Hayward
Before the election I was saying that one interesting thing to watch, especially if Trump lost as most of the polls forecast, is whether we’d see a return to split-ticket voting of the kind we used to see in the 1970s and 1980s. Several Republican Senate candidates distanced themselves from Trump with mixed results (like Toomey in PA and Ayotte in NH), while some House candidates in swingier districts campaigned
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November 20, 2016 — Steven Hayward
“Politics is downstream from culture,” Andrew Breitbart liked to argue, and given the near-monopoly of the left on America’s cultural scene (Hamilton hecklers anyone?), the ballot box is the only place where the American people get to fight back. So it is worth taking in instances when the cultural world seems to get it, like this sketch on Saturday Night Live last night about the liberal “bubble.” Just 2:20 long
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November 20, 2016 — Steven Hayward
Yes, I know, for liberals to have any second thoughts requires that they had some first thoughts. (Rim shot!) There are a few liberal thought leaders, like Mark Lilla and Damon Linker, who are honestly confronting the destructive dead-end of the identity politics that is now the core desideratum of the Democratic Party. But there is a déjà vu all over again quality to some of these ruminations. Take, for
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November 13, 2016 — John Hinderaker
Here in Minnesota, the GOP had a very good, and nearly a great, election. Hillary Clinton carried the state by a mere 1.5%, lending credence to the view that Minnesota will go Republican in 2020. Two Republican Congressional challengers fell short by heartbreakingly small margins, in the 1st and 8th districts, and in District 7, old-time DFLer Collin Peterson could muster only 53% of the vote against an unknown challenger.
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