In today’s news & Poll of the day.

Keep in mind if you should chose to read this “opinion” this is the man that has done more to put our democracy in danger then any other politician.  He stopped a sitting President, from the other party,  from putting a Justice on the Supreme Court,  He stoned walled this President from putting judges in the courts.  And then turned around and did exactly the opposite when the President was from his party.

I imagine that when history is written about this time in our country he will fare worse then that idiot trump for the damage he has done.

“Opinion: Mitch McConnell: Democrats, leave the Supreme Court alone”

The Supreme Court in Washington on Oct. 22. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
By Mitch McConnell
Today at 1:29 p.m. 

“We find ourselves in a moment of democratic reckoning.” That’s what Secretary of State Antony Blinken told a Latin American audience in October. His remarks specifically named “undermining the independence of the courts” and “packing courts” as warning signs that a nation’s institutions are in danger.

Coming from President Biden’s top diplomat, this suggested a surreal lack of self-awareness. Just a few days earlier, here at home, the Biden administration had taken another step to erode the independence of our own Supreme Court. It had published a first draft of radical findings from the pseudo-academic commission that the president created to flirt with the radical concept of court-packing.

The president’s decision in April to stand up this commission was no isolated event. Naked attempts to bully judges have become a core priority for today’s Democratic Party.

Early last year, my Democratic counterpart, Sen. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), joined activists on the steps of the Supreme Court and threatened two justices by name should they disappoint liberals with a particular ruling.
A few months before that, as The Post reported, sitting Senate Democrats, including the now-chairman of the Judiciary Committee, sent the court an outrageous amicus brief that read like a ransom note from junior-varsity mafiosos. “The Supreme Court is not well,” they threatened, “and the people know it. Perhaps the Court can heal itself before the public demands it be ‘restructured. …’”

In other words: Nice independent judiciary you’ve got there. Sure would be a shame if something happened to it.

For decades, Americans across the political spectrum agreed that President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s attempt at court-packing in 1937 was an embarrassment. In 2019, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg affirmed that “nine seems to be a good number.” Justice Stephen G. Breyer has echoed that view and warned that court-packing would erode public trust. But in the most recent Democratic presidential primary, multiple candidates, including our current vice president, expressed openness to packing the court. This year, both House and Senate Democrats have introduced actual legislation to do it.

Biden may have wanted to appear that he was sidestepping the issue by merely setting up a commission to study it. Don’t be misled. This was radical and unacceptable presidential behavior, part of a larger campaign to make independent judges feel as though they are on probation. This attack on the separation of powers comes from the same liberals who became hysterical whenever Attorney General William P. Barr made a routine decision on a mundane subject.

The Biden commission’s draft report was another attempt to appear moderate while doing radical things. The commission criticized the crudest form of court-packing — the simple addition of seats — but pivoted to an approving discussion of another idea that is barely less radical: canceling justices’ life tenure.
Do not be fooled. Even as the political left tries to spin the cancellation of life tenure as a half-step back from an even crazier opening bid, term limits would still be institutional vandalism. If a Republican administration came anywhere near flirting with such a proposal, the outrage from liberals would have been deafening.

Judicial independence is as fragile as it is important. The Framers of our Constitution took great pains to protect it. One of the most important safeguards is the fact that federal judges serve for life. Alexander Hamilton laid it out in Federalist 78: Since the judiciary is “in continual jeopardy of being overpowered, awed, or influenced by its coordinate branches . . . nothing can contribute so much to its firmness and independence as permanency in office.” Hamilton concluded, and his fellow founders agreed, that life tenure was “indispensable.”
Every single American deserves every possible guarantee that they will receive impartial justice. It would be beyond reckless for Democrats to smash this centuries-old safeguard in a fit of partisan pique. The judges who decide citizens’ fates and defend their liberties should not be looking to the exits — not daydreaming about seats on corporate boards, not giving performances to tee up next acts in media or partisan politics.

Even if Democrats fail at structurally changing the court, they could still succeed at applying improper pressure. The left wants to prey on justices’ instincts to protect their institution by having “court reform” hang over them like a sword of Damocles. The left hopes that a manufactured cloud of fake concerns about the court’s legitimacy may be enough to change which cases the court decides to hear, how it hears them and what rulings it hands down.

But if the justices fell into Democrats’ trap and let political threats change legal outcomes, they would not be shoring up their institution, but undermining it. It would poison the actual source of the court’s legitimacy — its impartiality. Moreover, appeasement would not even end the threats and reckless tactics. It would guarantee more. Hostage-takers will not settle for half a loaf.
The Senate exists to defeat shortsighted proposals and protect our institutions from structural vandalism. That is our job. The American people need their judges to do theirs: follow the law wherever it may lead, independent and unafraid.

Biden campaigned on unity and moderation. He won a close victory with an evenly split Senate and negative coattails in the House.

As this month’s elections confirmed, Americans did not hand Democrats any mandate to let radicals transform the country. And they certainly have no mandate to permanently damage the rule of law.”

If I remember correctly he called them “headaches”.

Statement by Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States of America

11/11/21

“The great people of Serbia and Kosovo have overcome tremendous obstacles in their pursuit of economic normalization. The agreements my administration brokered are historic and should not be abandoned, many lives are at stake. The region is too important and the people have waited too long for this work to be cast aside. Today, my Envoy Ambassador Ric Grenell visited the Kosovo-Serbia border to highlight this important agreement. Just like we proved in the Middle East with the Abraham Accords, peace and economic normalization is possible, but it takes a sincere effort and unwavering leadership. Peace is possible, don’t give up—long term prosperity for those two nations is at stake!”


So dumpster don has an “envoy”.  He sure is full of himself and he is very good at insulating himself from people who would tell him that to his face.  

I saw it and it’s bullshit.  We are not talking about National Security information but a sitting President who is now a former President trying to overthrow a legal election.  Those documents should not fall under executive protection for a former President. 









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I think this will be the topic for a new poll…

It’s been a mystery to me why people, specifically white working class, continue to vote for a political party that has no interest in governing, offers those who vote for them nothing in return for their vote, and who lies, spread conspiracy theories & throw out red herrings for them to get outraged over.

I’ve said the Democrats should not let the Republicans control the narrative when it comes to issues and the Democratic platform.  

But Paul Waldman is offering another strategy that he claims President Obama used against Mitt Romney in 2012.  I bolded it.

If this is the strategy the Democrats have to use to win elections, I can’t help but think how low this country has fallen.  And I don’t necessarily disagree with what he is saying.


“Opinion: The missing piece in Democrats’ approach to the White working class”

By Paul Waldman
Columnist
Today at 3:46 p.m. EST


One thing you can say about Democrats: When they have a problem with a certain sector of the electorate, they are not going to ignore it. Republicans won’t waste a moment’s thought on nonreligious Americans or urban voters or anybody else disinclined to vote for the GOP. But even after an election victory, Democrats will launch a thousand polls and articles and seminars to figure out how they can win back the affections of voters who have spurned them.

So it has been the case for a while with White working-class voters, who have increasingly been giving their votes to the party whose most passionate and immutable commitment is to low taxes for the wealthy.

Yet in the various essays and analyses you can find from very smart Democrats, almost none of them focus on the one thing that would help their party the most, and which has proven to work: Not convincing those working-class voters to love Democrats, but convincing them to hate Republicans. It may not be the most high-minded strategy in the world, but it accounts for how people actually make voting decisions. And it’s perfectly honest.

If you were following this debate, you might think that there are really only two paths Democrats can follow: Should they work harder to convince White working-class voters of how they’ll be helped by Democratic policies, or should they turn their guns on their own left flank? Ron Brownstein of CNN rounds up this debate well, including a discussion of the “Sister Souljah” strategy that some are now recommending:

In Republican-leaning states and districts, “Democratic candidates have to forcibly separate themselves from the Democratic brand” on cultural questions, says Andrew Levison, a contributing editor at The Democratic Strategist, a website that debates the party’s choices. He argues that “a reckoning does have to be done with certain elements of the progressive wing of the party” and that [President] Biden should directly renounce some left-leaning ideas on race the way Bill Clinton did in 1992, when he criticized the rapper Sister Souljah. “Standing up for certain traditional cultural principles against the left might help Biden establish his own bona fides” for 2024, says Levison. “He can’t really ride on 'Amtrak Joe.’ ”

During the 1992 campaign, Clinton made a point of criticizing provocative comments about the L.A. riots by Sister Souljah, whom only a tiny proportion of the American electorate had heard of before then. The assumption ever since has been that this was a shrewd if cynical strategy that won Clinton the support of White moderates, who warmed to him after they saw how he was willing to attack a Black person.

But there’s no actual evidence that Clinton’s remarks moved any significant number of votes. In terms of his overall strategy, it was a minor blip. His campaign focused on George H.W. Bush’s handling of the economy and how out-of-touch Bush was with struggling Americans trying to recover from a recession.

So the idea that White voters will flock to Joe Biden if he attacks some Black activists is not particularly persuasive. The fact is that the Democratic Party is the party of minorities, and of people who live in cities, and of young people, and of liberals. It has been struggling with the White working class since the 1960s, when battles over civil rights reorganized party loyalties and Richard Nixon established the “Southern strategy” that has formed the foundation of Republican success ever since.

And every time Democrats have garnered enough support from the White working class to pull them over the line to victory, they did it with attacks on Republicans.

There’s probably no better example than Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign. As a matter of identity, Obama was everything Democrats love and Republicans loathe. So his campaign absolutely pummeled Mitt Romney as a vulture capitalist who laid waste to factories and towns while lining his own extremely deep pockets.

It was extremely negative, and it worked. Obama didn’t have to convince White working-class voters he was one of them, because he convinced them — or at least enough of them — that Romney was their enemy.

The lesson for today is that you can suggest that Democrats “do a better job” of explaining all the ways their policies will help working-class people, but if they don’t focus on Republican opposition and what it says about who those Republicans are, they’re only telling half the story — and it’s the less persuasive half.

The degree to which Democrats seem to have forgotten this lately, even if they halfheartedly repeat “Republicans just want to cut taxes for the rich,” is remarkable. Only seldom do they take that policy argument and make it personal.

They barely even tried with Donald Trump (though in fairness, he was appalling in so many ways it could be hard to choose what to focus on). That enabled Trump to present himself as a champion of the little guy. It was so preposterous as to be almost obscene, but it persuaded even many of those who were not cheering his racism and xenophobia — and who are therefore open to being 
Democratic policies are almost always the far more popular ones; the reason Republicans stay competitive is that they find ways to make voters get angry and hate Democrats. The answer to that problem is never going to be “Please, won’t you read our 10-point plan?” and it won’t be found in turning liberal activists into scapegoats. Democrats already know what works; they just have to remind themselves.”

11-12-2021

For those who like to do comparisons between presidents, see if you can find a former president to compare this to.

From Axios…

“Former President Trump — in a taped interview with Jonathan Karl of ABC News that was shared with Axios — defended, quite extensively, supporters who threatened to "hang" former Vice President Mike Pence.

Why it matters: Well, it is unprecedented for a former president to openly say it was OK to threaten the life of his vice president.

Oh, the two men are on track to run against each other for the GOP nomination in 2024.

Zoom out: This is a slice of a 90-minute interview — conducted at Mar-a-Lago on March 18 — for Karl's book, "Betrayal," out on Tuesday.

More news-breaking audio from the interview will air Sunday on ABC's "This Week."

Go deeper: We will let the Q&A tell the story.

Jonathan Karl: "Were you worried about him during that siege? Were you worried about his safety?"

Trump: "No, I thought he was well-protected, and I had heard that he was in good shape. No. Because I had heard he was in very good shape. But, but, no, I think — "

Karl: "Because you heard those chants — that was terrible. I mean — "

Trump: "He could have — well, the people were very angry."
Karl: "They were saying 'hang Mike Pence.'"

Trump: "Because it's common sense, Jon. It's common sense that you're supposed to protect. How can you — if you know a vote is fraudulent, right? — how can you pass on a fraudulent vote to Congress? How can you do that? And I'm telling you: 50/50, it's right down the middle for the top constitutional scholars when I speak to them. Anybody I spoke to — almost all of them at least pretty much agree, and some very much agree with me —(here we go with those people who live only in his head) because he's passing on a vote that he knows is fraudulent. How can you pass a vote that you know is fraudulent? Now, when I spoke to him, I really talked about all of the fraudulent things that happened during the election. I didn't talk about the main point, which is the legislatures did not approve — five states. The legislatures did not approve all of those changes that made the difference between a very easy win for me in the states, or a loss that was very close, because the losses were all very close."

Said the man who is firmly in the pocket of oil & gas companies and is fine with it.  Translation:  His vote can be and is being bought.

From The Hill

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said Friday that he opposes President Biden's nominee for Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioner, Robert Califf, arguing he is not strong enough in fighting the opioid epidemic given his ties to the pharmaceutical industry.

"Dr. Califf’s nomination and his significant ties to the pharmaceutical industry take us backwards not forward," Manchin said in a statement. "His nomination is an insult to the many families and individuals who have had their lives changed forever as a result of addiction."