Politics

What would happen if Americans voted on different days? Suppose Republicans voted on Tuesday and Democrats voted on Wednesday. Would this be better than everyone voting on the same day? Would it be more fair and less confusing? Like hell it would! One reasonable complaint Republicans had about the 2000 presidential elections — famously decided, in the end, at the Supreme Court — was that some television networks called the State of Florida for Al Gore before polls had closed in the westernmost Florida Panhandle, which lay in the Central Time Zone, an hour behind the rest of the state in the Eastern Time Zone. Declaring a winner prematurely amounted to telling Panhandle voters not to bother casting their ballots.

‘Oh the hypocrisy!’ cried the Democrats after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he would bring President Trump’s new Supreme Court nominee to the floor for confirmation hearings and a vote ahead of the election. The screeching continued as swing vote after swing vote — Sens. Lindsey Graham, Chuck Grassley and Mitt Romney, for example — said they also supported taking a vote. Republicans are indeed treating the vacancy left by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who passed away on Friday night, far differently than they did the one left by Antonin Scalia in 2016. The GOP had control of the Senate then, too, but refused to advance President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland, citing the proximity of the presidential election.

I believe it was John Fremont who once exclaimed in astonishment that one could ride a horse at full gallop in the Forests of the Sierras in California. Well, one can do that again now — not among the towering conifers, but over the ashes.Right now I'm seeing the mountains I grew up in — where I went to school, where I hung out, camped, backpacked, boated, cheated death and generally formed the foundation of my character — burning down. It makes me sad and angry.  This didn't have to happen. Once upon a time, forests in California were logged, grazed, and competently managed. It wasn't always perfect, but generally it worked.Fires, which are a natural part of that ecosystem, were generally small — not just benign but beneficial.

Dear America,Two-hundred-and-forty-four years ago, the resolve, courage, and wisdom of your Founding Fathers forever changed the course of history. For the first time, with the ratification of your Declaration of Independence, mankind was offered an unmatched societal ideal. Human beings were recognized for what we truly are by nature: all created free and equal, endowed with unalienable rights derive from our Creator. With your Constitution, your Founders sealed these God given rights, and protected them by instituting a limited form of self-government along with a robust justice system.This, America, is what makes your nation exceptional. It is why you have stood as a beacon of democracy and hope for all subjugated peoples over the past two centuries.

When you have power in Washington DC, use it. That saying is true for both parties. There has been much distress on social media in the past few hours, with people declaring that a Supreme Court vacancy prior to this election will tear the country apart, putting unimaginable stress on the Republic as it attempts to hold together in the face of Trumpism. TikTok users are screaming into their phones while driving. CNN personalities are threatening to ‘burn the entire thing down’ if Mitch McConnell attempts to push through a nominee. Writer Laura Bassett proclaimed that ‘if McConnell jams someone through, which he will, there will be riots.’ That seems a threat more than a prediction.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away at the age of 87 on Friday due to complications from metastatic pancreatic cancer. Ginsburg was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Bill Clinton in 1993 and was the second woman to ever serve on the court after Sandra Day O'Connor. Her work for gender equality, such as launching the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Women's Rights Project, and her sharp dissents earned her the nickname the 'Notorious RBG'. A movie about her life, On the Basis of Sex was released in 2018 and earned over $30 million at the box office. Ginsburg's death will set up an intense political fight, having occurred less than two months out from the 2020 presidential election on November 3.

The toughest moment of Joe Biden’s year arrived in May. It was harder than seeing off Bernie Sanders, harder even than picking a VP. Here was the moment that truly tested Biden’s campaigning skills, built up over so many years in public life. He was trying to address the Asian American and Pacific Islanders Victory Fund when the great test arrived. Loud noises interrupted his Zoom speech. From the green shadows of the Delaware garden behind him: violent quacks, tuneless whines, squalls, bawls and fearsome honks. What was this? A protest? Didn’t they know he’d been a lifeguard at an inner city pool back in 1962?!Biden continued with his speech… Trump… honk!… was… honk!... hateful, I mean, Orange Man… HONK!...

There’s been lots of speculation, even in The Spectator, about the direction of the Republican party after Trump. But less attention has been paid to the other big question: what happens to the Democratic party if Joe Biden loses? The consequences could be very ugly. ​A good blueprint for the Democrats blowing everything up would be the fallout of the GOP after the 2012 election defeat. Biden himself is a Romney-esque type candidate — the guy whose turn in line it was, hoping to put across a message of good character and soul of the nation. Romney, like Biden, ran on a message of optimism in divided times. More so than Romney, Biden is today desperately attempting to hold off the radical barbarians at the gate of his party.

In 2016, I was one of the very few people who publicly stated the night before the election that, despite the polling data, Trump was going to win 280 to 258. I made that prediction because what I was seeing and hearing across Ohio didn’t match what the polling said would happen. I put out a detailed electoral map showing which states he’d win. I got every state right except Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, which I called for Clinton, I thought New Hampshire would go for Trump. I let history overinfluence my call on Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, as no Republican had won Wisconsin since 1984 and Pennsylvania since 1988. Right now, my gut is telling me something just isn’t right again between the polling and the facts on the ground.

Suburban women are understood to be one of the most crucial demographic groups in the presidential election on November 3. Many pollsters currently predict that President Donald Trump will lose due to his unpopularity with that category of voters. But have the Democrats really reclaimed the suburbs? Or are there more likely Republican voters than the polls suggest? The Spectator tracked down a series of so-called 'closet Trump' voters, women from the suburbs who would never publicly voice their support for the President for fear of recrimination in their social circles. These are their stories. Northern VirginiaI have always thought of myself as someone who is honest with others.

From late September through to mid-October, Americans will get to watch Donald Trump and Joe Biden debate three times. Mike Pence and Kamala Harris will face off once. The debates may not matter, but if one candidate is going to commit a significant gaffe, it likely would occur in one of televisual spectacles. Brace yourselves. Both parties already are trying to shape expectations before the debates begin. On that front, Trump and his allies have made a major mistake. For months Americans have been inundated with claims from Trump, his son and countless media allies that Biden suffers from some type of mental deficiency such as dementia. Biden’s countless gaffes and resistance to doing unscripted interviews have fed into this belief.

President Trump announced Wednesday afternoon that he was adding 20 new names to his previous list of potential Supreme Court nominees in the event of a vacancy. The new list included three very familiar political names: Sens. Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, and Josh Hawley. Those names alone indicated that the president is bucking his 2016 method of allowing the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group, to dictate his judicial choices. After a string of Supreme Court rulings that went against conservatives, who felt spurned that they could not get the outcomes they wanted even with a stacked court, the President is perhaps signaling to his base that he will nominate an avowed social conservative, rather than just a textualist or originalist.

‘While it is true I was abusive to my ex-girlfriend,’ writes Aaron Coleman, the improbable candidate for a seat in the Kansas State House, ‘I do not agree with the characterization being made about our experience in the hot tub the day after Christmas.’ This is such a morbidly evocative sentence. Abusive. Hot tub. Day after Christmas. It is a novel in 30 words.Coleman, who is 19, first came to prominence when he was found, in the aftermath of an underdog triumph in a Kansas primary, to have committed acts of bullying and ‘revenge porn’ five years previous. ‘He got one of my nudes and blackmailed me with it,’ said a victim:‘And told me if I didn’t send him more he would [send] it to all of my friends and family...