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On Monday night's episode of Laura Ingraham's Fox News show, Spectator editor-at-large Ben Domenech warned that "millennial girlboss-energy types" are taking over the Democratic Party. Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCRc4OAAdnc Naturally, AOC was less than pleased and clapped back on Twitter: https://twitter.
Live analysis as the results come in from your favorite Spectator editors, staffers, columnists and contributors (and some you don’t like, for good measure).
In the clusters of billboards at intersections in Phoenix, positioned to grab the attention of drivers waiting for the lights to change, one candidate’s signs stand out. In a familiar red-white-and-blue collage of names, stars and stripes, the crisp bold-type white lettering on a black background reads: “BLAKE MASTERS FOR SENATE.” The monochrome placards are one of many conspicuous displays of disruption by Masters, the thirty-six-year-old Peter Thiel acolyte hoping to topple Arizona Democrat Mark Kelly. The video with which he launched his campaign last summer was starkly shot and melancholic: the Sonora desert at dawn and a synth-y soundtrack, not the in-your-face, truck commercial aesthetic that is par for the course on the right these days.
Atlanta, Georgia “Ms. Abrams, public opinion polls in our state show support for the right to abortion, Medicaid expansion and banning assault weapons. You are on the side of public opinion on each of these issues, yet you are behind in almost every poll. Why?” Conservatives snorted at veteran Georgia newsman Chuck Williams when, in his decidedly Appalachian tones, he asked that as his opening question during Stacey Abrams’s first debate with Brian Kemp. Many on Twitter considered it the ultimate softball: why don’t voters like you as much as us journalists, Ms. Abrams? You’re so great! I didn’t see it that way — Williams’s question could be read as a damning indictment of Abrams’s fortunes in the years since she first stood for the Georgia governorship.
Shortly before Tuesday’s midterm elections, the FBI warned multiple US state political parties of possible foreign election interference, sources tell The Spectator. Two state Republican Party officials told The Spectator that their headquarters recently received communications from the FBI. The FBI explained that they had intelligence indicating that an unnamed foreign state actor may be trying to meddle in this year’s election and that party officials should be on the lookout for attempts to access their websites or data. Otherwise, the FBI warnings were vague. They did not tell party officials what specifically to look out for or what the intentions of the state actor might be.
Donald Trump is expected to announce that he is running for president again next week on November 14, according to multiple reports and chatter near the Trump Organization. The only question is whether he does it even earlier — listening to allies like Matt Gaetz who think he should announce as soon as tonight to take credit for what Republicans anticipate will be a clear red wave. This seems like an uncharacteristic mistake on Trump's part. The announcement, whether it comes this week or next, is premature. It's unlikely to forestall any significant potential competitors — and might actually serve to embolden some. The most powerful tool Trump has is the ability to jump in as a former president overwhelmingly popular with Republican voters and instantly clear the field.
Is democracy on the ballot? Joe Biden has chosen to make his final pitch to voters all about democracy. That was the subject of his speech in Washington last week. The hastily scheduled event bore all the signs of being the president’s own idea. He returned to the democracy theme on the campaign trail this weekend, including at a big rally in Philadelphia with Barack Obama on Saturday. “Democracy is on the ballot,” Biden said on Thursday. In California yesterday, he said “you can’t call yourself a democracy or supporting democratic principles if you say, ‘the only election that is fair is the one I win.’” There’s a lot not to like about Biden’s democracy rhetoric.
Though many pundits may not be able to see past Tuesday’s midterm elections, as soon as the voters decide which party will hold the reins of Congress, the country will witness its first reminder that elections have consequences. The 2022 contests will have a near-instant effect on US fiscal policy. At some point between mid-December and January, the United States will hit its credit limit and need to either increase it or risk defaulting on its financial obligations. Since the Barack Obama years, Republicans in Congress have turned what used to be a pro-forma vote on the debt ceiling into a political cudgel.
Democrats across the country should be grateful for what Republicans are about to do: rid them of a nagging disease known as Betoism. Beto O'Rourke, the erstwhile congressman from El Paso, Texas, who has far more glossy national magazine profiles than winning campaigns, is about to go down to defeat in his attempt to unseat centrist conservative Governor Greg Abbott. Abbott is a popular governor and quite capable in his own right of popping wheelies over most Democrats. But Beto has approached his run with all of his usual nationally tested talking points recycled from his idiotic presidential crusade, designed to go viral on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and via the T-shirt worn by your daughter's boyfriend who is still trying to find himself after sophomore year.
It’s not often that a senator launches a brutal, frontal assault on a president from his own party. It’s even rarer when he does it just before a national election. But that is exactly what West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin just did to Joe Biden. At issue was Biden’s recent speech attacking coal, a bedrock of the West Virginia economy. Manchin was furious over Biden's promise to shut down all of America’s coal-fired power plants. That view might be red meat for Biden’s audience of green-power advocates and rich California donors, but it is poison in West Virginia. And it is those West Virginians who elected Manchin, the only Democrat still standing in a state that is now deep red. Manchin didn’t just criticize Biden.
Republican House minority leader Kevin McCarthy doesn't like Nancy Pelosi. In this, he's hardly alone — the list of those who don't like Nancy Pelosi is long and includes Republicans, Democrats, moderates, progressives, intelligence officials, hair stylists, health nuts, probably a few farm animals and single-cell organisms. America's speaker of the House is polarizing in the same way that a rocket booster might be said to be noisy. Yet in McCarthy's case, he has good reason not to like Pelosi: she doesn't much like him either. After McCarthy last year criticized a mask mandate in the House of Representatives, Pelosi called him a "moron.
The gubernatorial showdown in Michigan has quickly become one of the most exciting races heading into the 2022 midterm elections. Just a few months ago, it seemed that incumbent Governor Gretchen Whitmer would easily secure re-election. Now, she is neck-and-neck with Republican Tudor Dixon. Things looked good for Whitmer early on, at least partially because the Republican primary was a mess. More than a dozen candidates threw their hat into the ring for the scandal-spoiled race. One of those candidates was arrested for his role in the January 6 riot at the Capitol building, while multiple others were disqualified as part of a signature forgery scheme.
The crime elections The District of Columbia’s City Council might seem a strange place to start a political newsletter a few days out from the midterms. As Democrats will never miss an opportunity to remind you, voters in Washington, DC will not get a say in a race that will help decide control of Congress. But a meeting of city leaders this week is an instructive part a national story that will be central to next week’s vote. On Tuesday, the DC Council voted 12-0 to support a rewriting of the capital’s criminal code. Reforms include reduced mandatory minimum sentences, the expansion of the right to jury trials for most misdemeanors, a broadening of the opportunities for early release and the elimination of accomplice liability in felony murder cases.
My friend here in rural Pennsylvania is the director of our local anti-hunger program. It’s orchestrated through the YMCA and has been ongoing for years, mostly providing supplemental food for rural children. But the program started running at full throttle when Covid hit in March 2020, and now, more than two years later, my friend tells me they’re doing about 25 food distributions a month — more than they were doing at the height of Covid. What’s more, he’s seeing twice the number of people lining up for free food, and 85 percent of those people have jobs. “When people think of hunger, they think of poverty,” my friend says.
In the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election, the national media and the Hillary Clinton campaign devised a plan to elevate Donald Trump and so-called “lunacy” over a field of up-and-coming Republican politicians. According to New York Times journalist Amy Chozick, who was embedded with Hillary Clinton’s campaign from inception to death, campaign manager Robby Mook called a meeting with an agenda of specifically asking “How do we maximize Donald Trump?” Chozick also noted how Mook “salivated when a debate came on, and Trump would start to speak. ‘Shhhhh,’ Robby said, practically pressing his nose up to the TV. ‘I’ve gahtz to get me some Trump.’” We all know how that worked out.
It is midterm election season, an important period on our political calendar as it marks that there's only two years to go until the next presidential election. And while something called the "blue wave" supposedly took hold last summer, the latest polling shows that Democrats are in trouble. How much trouble? You do hate to wish ill on a party running a campaign based on third-trimester abortion access and an imagined threat from brownshirts. But given the choice, here are eight Democrats we wouldn't mind seeing ousted this year. 8. Representative Jerry Nadler Nadler presided over both impeachments of Donald Trump and is a fairly reliable progressive. The New York rep is not the most inept Dem out there — but then he did almost dislocate his nose trying to remove a Covid mask.
You know the Democrats are grasping at straws when you see the White House Twitter account praising President Biden for this year’s increased Social Security checks. Particularly, Cockburn is at pains to point out, as the increase in Social Security is indirectly indexed to inflation. "Seniors are getting the biggest increase in their Social Security checks in ten years through President Biden's leadership," the White House bragged on Tuesday. Even Twitter's in-house moderators were taken aback, deigning to slap a "context" label on the post. After helpful users added the missing context on Wednesday, the White House's tweet mysteriously disappeared. How curious!
What Biden’s midterm meandering reveals On Tuesday night, Joe Biden characterized next week’s midterms as “a choice between two vastly different visions for America.” It is just one of the ways in which Biden has painted the vote as a high-stakes contest. Earlier in the year, the focus was on “ultra-MAGA” Republicans with the November contest framed as a “battle for the soul of America.” Now he has fallen back on a tried-and-tested Democratic strategy of fear-mongering over Republican designs on Medicare and Social Security. Hardly an indicator that the president and his party think things are going well. But as striking as Biden’s closing message is, where he is delivering it really drives the message home.
Less than a week out from the 2022 midterm elections, the White House announced that President Joe Biden would be delivering a speech warning of alleged "threats" to democracy. The backdrop for the address tonight that will almost assuredly accuse his fellow countrymen of being extremists and traitors? Washington, DC's Union Station. In many ways, Union Station is the ideal backdrop for a speech by the leader of the Democrat Party. It is the perfect embodiment of what the left's foolish and deranged policies have done to our nation: reduced a once thriving and majestic place into a crime-infested trash heap. Just seven years ago, I interned down the street from Union Station.
San Francisco mayor London Breed held a press conference on October 5 concerning her city’s most deadly problem: the open air drug market in the Tenderloin neighborhood. The speakers included the police chief and two newly appointed allies of the mayor: the district attorney, Brooke Jenkins, and the supervisor for the district adjacent to the Tenderloin, Matt Dorsey. The message from each of them was clear: the police and the district attorney would no longer ignore open drug dealing and public drug use, which has become endemic in downtown San Francisco. “Let’s be clear: selling drugs is not legal,” the mayor said. “Using drugs out in the open is completely unacceptable.” The city could be forgiven for needing the reminder.
