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Good Friday Morning! And I want to wish good luck to the Tennessee Volunteers baseball team, who faces off against Notre Dame in a three-game series in the Super Regionals this weekend. I’ll be cheering them on this weekend and look forward to enjoying college baseball and more playoff hockey.
The one thing I wasn’t watching this week was the January 6 hearings. The stories that Democrats leaked to the press in the leadup were awful, and even the media started downplaying them in the last few days. One of the first reviews came from Deadline, which blasted the hearings as “An Anemic Made-For-TV Special, 2022 Style.”
Beyond optics, the main reason I can’t be made to care about these hearings is that the time to do something was the second impeachment. I’ll dig into that and explore why Democrats are launching these primetime specials now, ahead of the midterms, as their standing in places like San Francisco plummets due to primaries this week–links to follow.
Where you can find me this week
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[6/6/2022] Biden’s America: Hot summer and an Energy Crisis – Conservative Institute
[6/10/2022] Gas hits $5 nationwide as Biden flounders – Conservative Institute
Jan 6, San Francisco’s elections, and what both tell us about the 2022 midterms
Many events are happening this week. I was trying to figure out how everything connected. And the best way I could do that is to comprehend why the January 6 hearings are an automatic dud. And then walk through why Democrats are using it for a desperation Hail Mary shot to the electoral end zone.
The big event, or alleged big affair, are the January 6 hearings in Congress. Democrats lined up some primetime television time Thursday evening to walk through the events of January 6, 2021, which was the riot at the capital building. Court proceedings and prosecutions are still occurring from that time, which isn’t a huge surprise. There were around 1,000 arrests, and it takes time for federal prosecutors to get through that load along with everything else.
My 30,000-foot view of these hearings is that they’re a sham. A worthless endeavor meant to try and damage the Republican Party ahead of the midterms. Nothing else.
I hold that view because the time to do something about the riot on January 6, 2021, was in the immediate aftermath, during the second impeachment of Donald Trump.
My newsletter for the January 6 events fell on January 7, so everything was fresh on my mind at the time. I don’t have anything I’d disagree with that analysis — mainly that there was a list of pros and cons to impeaching Trump. What happened that day was awful — full stop.
At the time, I thought Democrats were smart to push impeachment. Republicans were in disarray, and Democrats had leadership they could lean on to drive through articles of impeachment. The problem was evident even on January 7: Democrats didn’t want to push through an impeachment. As I noted, they wanted Trump’s cabinet to remove him via the 25th amendment, to keep their hands out of it. That was a joke.
The second problem I noted the following week: Democrats charging Trump with the single charge of inciting a riot had no basis in reality. An even more significant issue has played out: Democrats did not want Trump removed from the political landscape. They wanted him to remain. Here’s what I wrote a week later, on January 14, 2021:
We’re not going to get that sober investigation, nor serious-minded conversations on barring Trump from holding future office. And I can’t tell if that’s not going to happen because Democrats are utterly incompetent, or they don’t want Republicans to vote to impeach Trump in the Senate.
Here’s why. Trump’s approval ratings are headed towards all-time lows. January 6 has him at nearly 60-40 oppose/support. The Senate requires a 2/3 majority to convict on an impeachment article. Plenty of Republican legislators believe Trump’s conduct was wrong and even impeachable. But only ten voted for in the House, and we don’t know about the Senate yet. One of the Republican House members who voted for impeachment was Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois. Jake Tapper of CNN reported the following:
@RepKinzinger’s staff reached out to House Democrats requesting 7 minutes to speak in favor of impeachment, thinking maybe they would give him 5. They said sorry they could only offer one minute, he tells me, so he said nevermind. Seems like a missed opportunity for Democrats.
Another person who didn’t speak in favor of impeachment: Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming. Both Cheney and Kinzinger voted for impeachment. A smart political move would be to trot out supporters of impeachment within the President’s own party.
Part of impeachment is building that political case in favor of impeachment. If you’re a Democrat, getting a Republican to build a case for impeachment does two things. First, It makes your argument seem righteous and bipartisan. Second, it protects your more moderate members in purple districts by placing all the heat on those Republicans and not Democrats. Your weak flank can hide behind Republicans instead of their own vote. Nancy Pelosi and Democrats got neither of these things.
The easy explanation for this, which could be true regardless of what I say, is that Pelosi and Democrats are inept nincompoops. The proof for this is pretty simple: Pelosi doesn’t have any skill at working with “the other side.” You’re either doing what she wants, or nothing gets done at all. And when I say “other side,” I mean both Republicans and the various factions within her party. She’s not a dealmaker. She’s a prolific fundraiser and someone who only knows how to shove partisan legislation through with a simple majority. All her major legislative achievements from Obamacare on down required plowing through hyper-partisan legislation with no input from the other side.
The other explanation gives her more credit by suggesting that Democrats don’t want the Senate to convict Trump. They’ve purposely hammered this proposal because they only desire Democrats supporting it and no Republicans. Democrats are trying to keep Trump alive and well because they want him torturing Republicans for the next four years and potentially running again in 2024. Trump, with the black mark on him, is politically radioactive. Having Trump around is beneficial to Democrats electorally.
The Republicans I mentioned are also the same Republicans that Democrats have used on the J6 hearings. They didn’t bother with them when it mattered, but when it’s time for a photo-op to damage Republicans? Pelosi is all ears.
A few weeks later, the impeachment trial in the Senate died almost an identical death to the first impeachment. Democrats fumbled the ball over witnesses, made Trump’s defense look great, and Democrats snatched defeat from the jaws of victory — which was the title of my Conservative Institute piece at the time.
We are here, then, with the J6 hearings because Democrats wanted Trump on the political landscape, they never wanted him removed, and they wanted to bash Republicans. It shouldn’t be shocking then, dear reader, to expect Republicans to reject the bashing.
Democrats gambled that leaving Trump politically viable after sham impeachment would play to their benefit. But now that they’re in the middle of playing that card, they’re doing so in the worst political environment they’ve faced in a generation. I’m not speaking hyperbolically when I say the Democratic Party faces a true wipe-out in November, more extensive than 1994, 2010, or 2014. Polls are awful.
Conservatives also ignore the J6 hearings because they witnessed the media ignore a failed assassination attempt on a sitting Supreme Court Justice: Brett Kavanaugh. In case you missed that, a man was stopped outside Brett Kavanaugh’s house with a gun and other equipment, and he confessed to wanting to kill the Justice and then himself. To say that story got ignored by the mainstream media is an understatement.
For example, the following day, the New York Times not only didn’t place that story on the first page — they buried it 20 pages deep.
Think about that moment: a Supreme Court Justice faces a failed assassination attempt, and no one in the press cares. It’s astonishing. When that same press turns around and demands everyone pay attention to the J6 hearings, the whole “threat to democracy” line gets slightly stale.
The last point on J6 is why Democrats are launching this now: It’s the summer before the 2022 midterms. You can make a compelling argument that the Biden White House and Democratic Party have not had a single positive news story since they passed the infrastructure bill in November 2021. Before that, you’d have to go to the COVID-19 relief bill they passed after Biden got inaugurated.
If you’re a Democrat, you’ve had nothing but bad news since Biden’s disastrous pullout from Afghanistan. The “ace in the hole” Democrats have held up their sleeve is attacking Trump. That’s why we’ve seen them trot out the “ULTRA-MAGA” line, and now they’re back to the J6 hearings. It’s all about branding the GOP as the Trump Party.
The only people who take that line of thought seriously are Donald Trump and Democratic Partisans. The public is ready to punish Democrats in the midterms.
- In the RealClearPolitics average of polls, Joe Biden’s approval sits at 39.5% vs. 54.8% who disapprove — a 15.3% divide in public opinion.
- Four of the eight polls making up the average right now show Biden below 40% approval.
- Five of those polls have his disapproval north of 55%
- For the first time in the RCP average, Biden is decisively below 40%. At all previous points, he’d briefly dip below 40% and jump back above. He’s setting new lows now.
- Since late January, Biden has only had approval ratings above 42% twice — each time he hits it, his support drops. 42% is a ceiling for his support right now.
- Of the most concern: Biden’s disapproval struggled to stay above 54% before breaking below. Now, his polls have 54% as a new floor.
In sum, Biden’s approval ratings are at the worst of his Presidency. We don’t know what his actual floor in polling is. People have assumed his polls would follow Obama or Trump, who held 40-42% at a minimum. That’s an assumption, not a proven fact.
A cardinal rule of elections is this: it is very hard for a candidate running for office to outperform the President if they share the same party. If Joe Biden’s approval rating is below 40% come November, Democratic candidates will struggle to get more than 40% of the vote.
Those candidates that can outperform will feel Biden on them like a dead weight. Republicans who might be weak candidates otherwise will surpass their talents. It’s that simple.
Off-year elections in New Jersey and Virginia are early warning indicators for Democrats. Republicans rapidly made up ground in those states. Primaries from this past week are going to prove that true even more.
Perhaps the most significant elections in the past year have occurred in San Francisco.
- In February, three San Francisco school board members were recalled because of slow school re-opening plans due to COVID-19. Parents were livid at how the school board had treated schools and students.
- This week, San Francisco voters recalled Chesa Boudin, the far-left progressive District Attorney elected to reform the justice system. Boudin was responsible for refusing to prosecute or jail offenders of numerous crimes. Boudin lost 60% to 40%. Key to that vote was Asian American voters in San Francisco who experienced a dramatic surge of hate crimes targeting them across the city — and Boudin declined to prosecute. Other minority groups express similar sentiments, whereas Boudin sourced most of his support from well-off white districts in San Francisco.
Boudin was the champion of the “Defund the Police” movement, and under his DA leadership, crime skyrocketed across the city. Voters had had enough, and he got ousted. Now, similar voters in Los Angeles are looking at their DA, who has a similar crime-fighting profile (or lack thereof).
When I say Boudin is a far-left progressive, I’m understating things.
- His father: “David Gilbert (born October 6, 1944) is an American far-left activist who participated in the deadly 1981 robbery of a Brinks armored vehicle. Gilbert was a founding member of the Columbia University chapter of Students for a Democratic Society and became a member of the Weather Underground. Gilbert, who served as the getaway driver in the robbery, was convicted under New York’s felony murder law in the killing by co-defendants of two Nyack, New York police officers and a Brink’s security guard.”
- His mother: “Kathy Boudin (May 19, 1943 – May 1, 2022) was an American leftist terrorist and convicted murderer. She was a member of the radical left militant organization Weather Underground who was convicted of felony murder for her role in the 1981 Brink’s robbery. The robbery resulted in the killing of two Nyack, New York, police officers and one security guard, and serious injury to another security guard. Boudin was released from prison on parole in 2003 and became an adjunct professor at Columbia University.”
- His adoptive father: Bill Ayers. “During the 1960s, Ayers was a leader of the Weather Underground militant group, described by the FBI as a terrorist group. He is known for his 1960s radical activism and his later work in education reform, curriculum and instruction. In 1969, Ayers co-founded the Weather Underground, a revolutionary group modeled on the Red Guards in China active at the same time, that sought to overthrow American imperialism.[2] The Weather Underground conducted a campaign of bombing public buildings (including police stations, the United States Capitol, and the Pentagon) during the 1960s and 1970s in response to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.”
That’s his background. He walks in those circles, was raised in them, and tries to bring about the changes that insane part of the left wants to see.
It is hilarious, then, that he is blaming Republicans for losing. Let’s back up for a moment: A Democrat in San Francisco is blaming Republicans for losing. Nancy Pelosi represents that city in the House. I don’t even know many Republicans who would vacation in San Francisco these days, let alone live there. Every story from there is about people trying to get out.
I digress.
The takeaway is this: if Democrats are taking losses in San Francisco, struggling in New Jersey, and getting wiped out in Virginia, it will be a very long night in November. It wouldn’t shock me if Republicans had 55-56 Senate seats by the end of the evening. I also wouldn’t be surprised if they had a modern record for the number of House seats they held.
It’s going to get brutal. Democrats will not outperform Biden’s approval. The more that approval number sinks, the worse they’ll perform. The proof is in the pudding in San Francisco.
That’s why they’re putting everything they have into these J6 hearings. They believed it’d be an Ace. It might not even be good enough for a two of clubs.
Links of the week
The Boiling Over of America: Even California voters are fed up with progressives. And the Supreme Court faces a mounting crisis. – Peggy Noonan, WSJ
Will Boudin’s Recall Reverberate Across the Nation? – Susan Crabtree, RealClearPolitics
[Union busters are using woke/dei language to attack unions as bad] Breaking Unions With the Language of Diversity and Social Justice – The Intercept
[Note: this piece was clearly sourced by the liberal side of the court] After the leak, the Supreme Court seethes with resentment and fear behind the scenes – Nina Totenberg, NPR
The Senate Seats Most Likely to Flip in 2022 – Sean Trende, RealClearPolitics
Americans are more worried about crime than at any other time this century – Harry Enten, CNN
Fed GDP tracker shows the economy could be on the brink of a recession – CNBC
What’s next for Republican efforts against corporate activism: Their quarrel is with management, not shareholders. The policy agenda will reflect that. – Alan Cole, Full Stack Economics
U.S. household wealth drops for first time in 2 years – Reuters
‘Only God can help’: Hundreds die as Somalia faces famine – AP
The Biden administration ‘is deeply divided’ over China policy – Yahoo News
The Washington Post Fires Felicia Sonmez Amid Week of Infighting – The Daily Beast
Arrest outside Justice Kavanaugh’s home is shocking. But, sadly, not surprising: Police said the man was carrying a pack containing a handgun, a tactical knife, pepper spray, zip ties, a hammer and a crow bar. – Jonathan Turley, USA Today
Twitter Thread(s) of the week
Thread on Ruth Sent Us’s connection to the Kavanaugh story.
Satire of the week
Apartment Building Washing Machine Only Accepts Money Orders – Onion
Historic Powerball Lotto Jackpot Now Up To 2 Tanks Of Gas – Babylon Bee
Miley Cyrus To Perform Halftime Show At Jan. 6 Committee Hearings – Babylon Bee
Commandant awards personal-pan pizza to each Marine who reads a book: Books on tape don’t count. – Duffel Blog
Economists Confirm That Due to Inflation It’s Now Fine to Send Three Unanswered Texts – Reductress
‘We Bash Your Elbows On Purpose’: Flight Attendants Open Up – Waterford Whispers News
Thanks for reading!