Bet This Won't Last Long

The Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell issued the following statement this afternoon:

“Due to the historic obstruction by Senate Democrats of the president’s nominees, and the goal of passing appropriations bills prior to the end of the fiscal year, the August recess has been canceled.  Senators should expect to remain in session in August to pass legislation, including appropriations bills, and to make additional progress on the president’s nominees.”

Finally, McConnell called the Democrats' bluff on their obstruction of the work of the Senate.

Most likely, this working through the August recess will not last for more than a week.  Democrats are not going to want to give up their vacations and their time campaigning back in the home state so that they can stay to delay the approval of the confirmation of some nominee for Assistant Secretary of Commerce or the general counsel of the Department of the Interior or even a judge for the District Court in the District of Montana.  They are also not going to want to stay in DC to fight passage of the budget for the Department of Labor and the like.  Most likely we will see some big compromise move in which all pending nominees are passed by a voice vote in ten minutes, two or three appropriations measures will get passed and the Senate will then recess for the rest of August.

It will be fun in the meantime to watch the Democrats squirm.

With The Left, It"s Always The Messaging and Never The Message

Right after Hillary Clinton lost in 2016, the most common excuse put forward by Democrats and their media allies as the reason for her loss was that she didn't get her message out to the public well.  The reality was that Hillary's campaign spent multiples of what the Republicans spent, but the Democrats still faulted the lack of messaging.  They just couldn't bring themselves to fault the message.  Soon thereafter, the focus shifted to the phony story of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.

The 2016 blame for messaging was not the first time that the Democrats lamented their failure in that regard.  During the Obama years, we kept hearing that one agenda item or another was failing due to poor messaging.  Just Google "Obama Poor Messaging" and you'll surely see a whole host of articles on point.  It was the go to excuse.  Obama's policies were never poor or misguided.  It was always the lack of complete or effective messaging.  For those seeking an excuse, the messaging was the medium. 

Now they are back at it.  David Corn is about as strident a Democrat leftist as there is.  He writes at ultra-left Mother Jones.  He's out today with an article explaining that President Trump is "winning the media war" regarding the Russia Trump collusion story.  That's not big news; anyone observing the polling, seeing the news reports and understanding events gets that the whole Russia Trump collusion story has collapsed.  What is worth discussing, however, is Corn's announced reasoning for the Trump success.  According to Corn, Trump is pushing a simple, albeit phony story about the Russia Trump collusion.  Trump calls it a witch hunt, a hoax, a sham, and a generally dishonest and disreputable move by the Democrats and their soldiers in the special prosecutor's office.  According to Corn, the "truth" is too detailed for the public to grasp fully, and the Democrats and media have done a poor job with explaining that truth.  Once again, the Democrat blames the messaging and not the message.

There are certain truths about Russia Trump that remain clear.  First, there is no evidence of any collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.  There are conspiracy theory type bits of information that the media and Democrats get excited about, but no real evidence.  For example, we know that there was a meeting between the President's son and a Russian lawyer in 2016.  We also know now that the lawyer was involved with Fusion GPS which was spearheading the Democrats' creation of the phony Trump dossier.  It's a pretty good indication that the meeting was a set up put in place by the Democrats.  Still, we know that the meeting while promised to be about "dirt" the Kremlin had on Hillary was actually about adoption of Russian children by Americans.  It's not a smoking gun showing collusion.  It has nothing to do with collusion.  It's the message that fails, not how it is conveyed.

Still, it is important to look at this latest "blame the messaging" moment for what it really is.  David Corn is demonstrating that even the most strident Democrats realize that Russia Trump is over as a real issue.  He's out there trying to explain to the base how they lost, even though he's still assuring them that they were correct.  You see, were the base of the party to determine that their leaders pretty much lied to them and led them on a two year wild goose chase, that base might stay home in 2018 or even switch to a different party.  Certainly, the base would be in favor of replacing the leadership.  So, it's back to the old standby:  the messaging was poor.

Some day people in the Democrat base will ask the key question:  why is it that our leaders are so poor at messaging?  When that day comes, there will be a true reckoning for the feckless heads of the party.

An Echo of the Past

Remember in 2016 when the Hillary Clinton email investigation got reopened due to new classified emails being found on pervy Anthony Weiner's computer?  At that time, just shortly before the 2016 election, there was discussion in the mainstream media about whether or not Hillary could pardon herself once elected to end any investigations into this mess.  Here's an example from a site run by Dan Abrams, a well known media leftist.  The story was then sent out on Twitter by Mediaite.

When the Hillary story appeared, no one said much of anything about it.  Today is certainly different.  An ABC reporter with strong ties to the Democrats and the Clintons asks Rudy Giuliani if Trump has the power to pardon himself and he ultimately says that yes the President has that power but would never do it.  Next comes the feeding frenzy that the White House is considering a pardon for the President.  It's BS, I know.  Nevertheless, we get a non-stop avalanche of coverage anyway.

Why is it different when the issue is whether or not Trump could pardon himself when there's no proof he did anything wrong versus Hillary (were she president) pardoning herself for what was obviously criminal conduct?

The Baker and The Same Sex Wedding

The Supreme Court ruled today that the order by the Colorado state authorities that found a local bakery guilty of discrimination due to its refusal to bake a wedding cake for a gay bakery was improper and in violation of the law that requires fair treatment for sincere religious beliefs.   The court decided by a margin of 7-2 that the state authorities did not conduct themselves properly.  It specifically did not rule, however, on the issue of whether or not religious beliefs that gay marriage is wrong can overcome a local ordinance requiring service providers not to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation.  I could go into all the court's reasoning, but the main point is that the big issue in the appeal wasn't decided.

You would think from the media coverage, however, that the court actually ruled on the main point.  Most of the slant comes from stories announcing that the court did not find that religious belief overcome the anti-discrimination statutes.  The stories make it sound like the court found the opposite is true.  The reality is, however, that the court didn't rule either way.

It's often annoying to read stories in the mainstream media that butcher the facts and the rulings in a court decision.  It's even worse when, as in this case, the media intentionally twists the terms of the ruling so that it fits the media narrative.

This is an issue that will be revisited sometime in the future.  When that happens, we will learn the court's view on the main question.  Until then, however, we just won't know, no matter what the media says or does. 

Voters By Registration in PA

One data point that the media seems to miss on a persistent basis is voter registration and what it indicates for upcoming elections.  I took a look just now at the figures in Pennsylvania.  You may recall that while the Democrats have more registered voters in PA, Trump carried the state over Clinton in 2016 by just over 90,000 votes.  This result, more than that in any other state, was the biggest shock in 2016.

So what's happened since the 2016 election?  First of all, the number of Republicans and Democrats have both declined.  The decline in the numbers of Democrats, however, has been much greater than among the GOP voters.  In fact, the edge in registration numbers by the D's over the R's went down by rought 103,000 voters.  Some of the movement comes as a result of voters being purged from the rolls after they fail to vote for six years.  The other big force behind the changes in the voting numbers is individuals who change from one party to another plus new voters being added to the rolls for the first time.  Overall, though, these figures indicate that in PA, it is the Republicans who are outperforming the Democrats.

CBS Battleground Tracker Poll

It's pretty funny.  CBS is out with their first so-called "battleground tracker" poll for the November elections for the House.  CBS says that this poll is much better than those generic congressional polls that only provide a percentage for those who would vote for the D or the R were it election day today.  Then CBS goes on to say that if the election were today, the Democrats would win 219 seats in Congress plus or minus 9 seats.  The GOP would get 216 seats plus or minus 9.  The supposedly wonderful expanded methodology says it could go either way as of now.

The funny thing about the CBS results is that they just mirror what the generic polls report.  Hidden in the CBS poll is the question used in the generic congressional polls.  That question gives results in which the Democrats have a 5% lead over the GOP.  The generally accepted view of this polling is that a 5% lead for the Democrats in this question means that either party could win the House; it is a toss-up. 

Even funnier, however, is the fact that polls taken more recently show that the GOP has moved up by a few percentage points in the generic tallies.  Plugging that into the CBS model would, no doubt, result in a prediction that the GOP will keep the House.  CBS stays silent on that one.

The only actual reality when it comes to polls is this:  it is way too early for the polls to indicate anything other than that neither party has locked up a victory in the House next November.  The Democrats had surged to a clear lead six months ago, but that lead has now been blown.  Right now, the momentum is with the GOP, but who knows what will happen in the next few months?

 

Seriously, The Media is Focusing On This?

Can President Trump pardon himself?  That's the big question today in the world of the mainstream media.  The president's lawyer was asked this question on one of those usually inane Sunday morning "news" shows, and he responded that Trump had that power but would not consider using it.  That should have ended the issue, but, of course, it has not.  Now we are being treated (tweeted?) to endless discussions of President Trump considering whether or not to pardon himself.  Of course, Had Rudy Giuliani, the president's lawyer, refused to answer the question, the media would be running with stories about how the White House refused to rule out the use of the pardon power by Trump on himself.  In other words, this was a question designed to lead to negative coverage of Trump no matter what the response was.

Think about it for a moment.  Exactly what "crime" would the President issue a pardon for himself?  For two years now, the consistent conclusion has been that there is no evidence of any collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia and certainly no hint of involvement by Trump himself in anything related to Russia in any way.  The mainstream media nevertheless push the lie that Trump could be impeached for the Russia-Trump collusion hoax.  That lie, however, doesn't create a crime for which a pardon would be issued.  Maybe Trump could pardon himself for supposed obstruction of justice, but that didn't happen either.  The focus of the obstruction "investigation" has been the interaction between Trump and Jim Comey while he was still director of the FBI and also Trump's later firing of Comey.  There's no obstruction, however.  Comey already testified under oath that he did not feel directed or even pressured to drop the investigation of Mike Flynn, so it would be hard to make out any case regarding obstruction on that.  Further, in both situations, the President was acting well within the parameters of his office.  After all, he is the one ultimately in charge of all criminal investigation done by the Executive branch of the government.  So here too, there is no possible crime to pardon.

Today's pardon pandemonium is pure nonsense.