Democratic party

In victory or defeat, the progressives are consistently hurting the Democratic party. Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri, who lay on the stairs of the US Capitol in a sleeping bag to protest the end of the eviction moratorium, is a perfect case study. Both she and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hammed it up for the cameras this week. Ocasio-Cortez was even cynical enough to throw her mask back on when she realized press photos of their heroic protest were being taken. She wouldn’t want the Twitter trolls to turn on her for going maskless outdoors — the horror! Luckily for Bush and AOC, the protest worked! President Biden, true to form, caved to their demands. The miserable whiners outside the Capitol managed to crack a smile for a few minutes.

Last week, Texas Democrats fled the state on a chartered plane to Washington DC, maskless with a case of Miller Lite in tow, to a chorus of whoops and cheers of our national media. As Texas attempts to pass new election integrity legislation, or to Democrats and our media writ large, ‘voting restrictions’, Texas Democrats decided to object to the Senate filibuster, by participating in a filibuster. They were doing the rounds on CNN and MSNBC, appearing on morning shows or being celebrated on them (The View). The irony of celebrating a minority party as ‘brave’ few for mucking up the legislative process was apparently completely lost on our journalistic elite.

Off to Washington DC on Monday they flew, maskless with Miller Lites in hand — three-score Democratic members of the Texas legislature, breaking the quorum required for any vote, abandoning their duties at a called special session. Washington DC, where the real power-brokers live and the Vice President of the United States. On from there to a PR opportunity with the President himself. What a telling commentary on the state of American politics, where the story gets around that there’s only one side — the progressive side — worthy of attention on account of its self-trumpeted devotion to the people’s rights. Kamala Harris called the stunt ‘as American as apple pie’ — and sadly she’s not altogether wrong.

Longtime Biden congressional ally Rep. Jackie Speier of California claimed 'a criminal sits in the Oval Office' on her official House website until today, The Spectator has discovered. Speier's comments are about then-president Donald Trump shortly after special prosecutor Robert Mueller released his infamous report on allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election. However, the front webpage on current 'Issues I'm Working On' showed Speier's statement had not been updated to reflect the new administration inaugurated over six months ago. 'A criminal sits in the Oval Office, and it falls to Congress to hold him accountable for his wrongdoing,' the statement read. 'Congresswoman Speier encourages all Americans to read the Mueller Report.

January 6 is normally a rather uneventful day in American politics. It’s usually a day when Congress convenes to quietly certify the slate of presidential electors sent to them by all 50 states, and finalize the winner of that year’s presidential election. On January 6, 2021, this formality was interrupted by a group of rioters who ransacked the Capitol in an attempt to delay the certification of now-president Joe Biden’s victory on November 3, 2020. Before January 6, numerous Republicans in the House and Senate made clear that they would object to the certification over concerns about voter irregularities in the 2020 election and demanded a debate in Congress on election integrity.

Conservatives view Joe Manchin as an untrustworthy flip-flopper. Liberals see him as a roadblock on their path to Woketopia. But for President Joe Biden, Manchin might be something else — a much-needed excuse. Every party needs a pooper, right? Well, Manchin might be the buzzkill the Democrats’ out-of-control shindig needs. Unlike 'Lunch Bucket' Joe, who has killed thousands of Keystone XL Pipeline jobs and proposed trillions of dollars in spending, Manchin is in-tune with the average American. That isn’t saying much. Joe Biden has spent more time conversing with the members of the Squad and answering questions from YouTube influencers than he has spent reaching out to Republicans. In 2021, it is easier for a politician to fall fully in-line with their respective party.

President Joe Biden just proposed the largest budget (as a percentage of America’s economy) since the country was fighting Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan and Fascist Italy. He’s doing it when there is no emergency, only an overweening desire to pass progressive programs quickly, before they lose their legislative majority. The best historical analogue to his proposed budget increase is Lyndon Johnson’s cradle-to-grave Great Society Program. It has the same flaws. In fact, Biden’s program is best understood as the next step in a long political arc, extending from Franklin Roosevelt to LBJ to Obamacare. All of them proposed centralized government solutions to almost every social problem, particularly endemic problems among the poor.

The truly multiracial coalition in the US these days isn’t the Democratic party. It’s the anti-Semitic mass movement that takes to the streets of blue-state cities every time Israel defends itself against terrorism. Israel will no doubt survive the latest barrage of disapproval from people with a bottomless supply of personal pronouns and malicious memes. But this is a problem for American Jews today — and it will be all of America’s problem tomorrow, because the overrunning of the public square by anti-Jewish cranks and conspiracy theorists is a perennial warning sign of social breakdown. Spend a few minutes in the open sewer that is social media, and you are left in no doubt. The Democratic left has become thoroughly ‘Corbynized’, overtaken by the hard left.

Vice President Kamala Harris is not historically very popular. Her approval rating rarely topped 40 percent during her campaign in the Democratic presidential primary. Her poll numbers sagged in her home state of California. It wasn't until Biden chose her as his running mate that Harris enjoyed consistently higher approval ratings, but even as of April of this year, her unfavorability ratings were just about as high. Despite being pretty unlikable (and as that nervous laugh suggests, awfully inauthentic), Harris has managed to maneuver herself into arguably the most powerful position in the country. If she does eventually run for president, who would be her base? Who actually likes Kamala Harris?

Walter Mondale, who has died aged 93, is destined to be a trivia question: 'which die-hard liberal did Reagan beat by a landslide in 1984?’ That’s unfair. He had brains, looks and a presidential temperament. He was just out of time. Here’s my Mondale anecdote. I interviewed him for my PhD in 2005 at his office in Minneapolis. He offered me a coffee; I said yes, and was then stunned when he got up from his desk and made it himself. This is unheard of in US politics. 'I can’t wait to tell the folks back home that a vice president of the United States made me coffee,’ I said. Mondale sighed. 'Nowadays,’ he replied, 'it’s nice just to have something to do.’ He had a great sense of humor; the problem was it was deadpan and it paled in comparison to Reagan’s.

Washington, DC The Democratic party is dying. That may be hard to believe since Democrats control both houses of Congress and won the last presidential election with a record 81 million votes. But the exiguous margins of their hold on the House and Senate, with fewer than 51 per cent of the seats in either chamber, tell another story, as does the desperation of their struggle to abolish the filibuster and federalise election law. Those policy aims are of a piece with dreams of ‘packing’ the Supreme Court with left-liberal justices — and packing the Senate too, by turning tiny Democratic bastions into new states. The left wing of the party even assails the constitutional principle behind the Senate itself, the idea of equal representation of the states.

The Biden campaign is far from confident heading into Tuesday's election and their behavior proves it. It's not uncommon for campaigns to blitz multiple states with television ads and rally appearances in the final few days before the election; Trump, for example, has been holding multiple rallies per day in key swing states. However, Biden's last minute rush to turn out the vote stands in stark contrast to his months-long strategy of sitting back and letting Trump talk his way out of victory. Clearly the campaign is feeling some serious unease with the latest polls and is second guessing keeping Joe in the basement for so long.

I should clear up one thing straight away. I do not believe that Joe Biden is guilty of magical thinking. Magical thinking, though specious, is a form of thinking. It is a truth universally acknowledged that Joe Biden is not guilty of thinking of any kind, ergo, Joe Biden is not guilty of magical thinking. Quod erat demonstrandum. But Biden’s supporters? Well, that is another matter altogether. There you see a wild efflorescence of magical thinking. What is magical thinking? It is the irrational belief, rampant among primitive peoples and those exposed to too many woke college seminars, that our thoughts influence or ‘constitute’ reality.

The compulsive and self-righteous bellicosity of the Democratic leaders in Congress over the Supreme Court vacancy has opened an opportunity for President Trump to strike decisively. It is admittedly controversial for a president to fill a high court vacancy starting six weeks before a presidential election, but it is entirely constitutional. What’s more, it has applicable precedents, including most conspicuously the elevation of Chief Justice John Marshall by President John Adams after he had been defeated in the 1800 election. This is not a provocation to justify the extreme belligerency of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

‘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.

After months of trying to spin the nationwide unrest as 'mostly peaceful' or ignoring it entirely, Democrats have discovered some fresh messaging: the riots are violent and they're Trump's fault. Joe Biden seized on this new storyline during a campaign speech in Pittsburgh on Monday, telling voters that Trump is 'stoking violence in our cities.' 'This president long ago forfeited any moral leadership in this country. He can’t stop the violence — because for years he has fomented it,' Biden asserted. This is one of the most dastardly and dishonest schemes the Democrats have ever cooked up.

Joe Biden's selection of Kamala Harris as his running mate is a classic good news/bad news scenario for President Trump's re-election campaign. First, the good news: as is the case with the top of ticket, you can employ the old horseshoe strategy against the senator from California. Hit 'em from the left, hit 'em from the right. Harris is simultaneously too liberal in her policy preferences for much of the country and too insincere in the brand of progressivism she adopted as it became in vogue in the Democratic party. When it was fashionable even in California for Democrats to lock ’em up, she did so, few questions asked. When the way to get ahead was playing footsie with defund the police, she quickly adapted to that new reality too.