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I appeared on Silvio Canto Jr's talk show from Dallas yesterday.  It's here.

NOVEMBER 3,  2014

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:56 P.M. ET: 

DEMS PUT ON A BRAVE FACE – From CNN:  "Democrats have a message for voters during the final, frenzied day of campaigning: All is not lost.  Party leaders insist they can still hold onto the Senate -- their last bastion of power on Capitol Hill -- and are spending the remaining hours before the polls open on Tuesday trying to convince their voters not to give up.  'I don't agree with the oddsmakers,' Vice President Joe Biden said in an exclusive interview with CNN Chief Political Analyst Gloria Borger. 'I predict we're gonna ... keep the Senate.'"  And I agree that the Japanese can never find Pearl Harbor.

OMEN?  – Hillary has been pounding the pavement for the Dems this cycle, building up chits for 2016.  But the plain fact is that she doesn't gin up much excitement.  From the Boston Herald:  "Locked in an intense battle with Scott Brown to hang on to her New Hampshire congressional seat, U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen sought a last-minute boost yesterday from a Granite State presidential primary darling, but the state’s GOP said Hillary Clinton’s stump speech drew an underwhelming crowd and shows Shaheen is in lockstep with President Obama...New Hampshire Republican State Committee Chairwoman Jennifer Horn told the Herald that reports Clinton’s speech campus drew 700 'must have been disappointing' because state Democrats 'booked a space that could hold at least twice as many.'"  It's been that way all along.  Hillary still leads in the polls for the Dem presidential nomination, but I wonder whether she's becoming an old story.

LAST MINUTE – Last-minute polls show tightening races.  While the Des Moines Register poll a few days ago showed Republican Senate candidate Joni Ernst seven points ahead in Iowa, two new polls show a dead heat.  Republican Cory Gardner polls only a few points ahead of incumbent Senator Mark Udall in Colorado.  Scott Brown and Jeanne Shaheen are almost tied in New Hampshire.   Races in North Carolina and Georgia are similarly close.  I've never seen so many races this tight on election day.  The oddsmakers say the GOP should take over the Senate, but, frankly, the Republicans have all the advantages this year and should have put it away by now.  The closeness shows that the Republican Party itself is unpopular, and must do far more to develop a positive, popular platform for 2016.  Just being "against" won't cut it.  And if Republicans do control both houses in the next few years, they must show an ability to govern. 

November 3,  2014     Permalink

MORE GRIEF FOR THE CHIEF – AT 9:52 A.M. ET:  A new survey tells the president exactly how the public feels about his leadership style.  If he's savvy, he'll take the advice seriously.  From The Hill: 

A vast majority of Americans say President Obama needs to change the way he is leading the country, according to a new poll.

The NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey released Monday found that 47 percent of Democrats say the president needs to substantially alter how he approaches his job.

Two-thirds of registered voters surveyed say they think Obama should undertake either “a great deal of change” or “quite a bit of change” to his leadership style. Nearly a quarter more respondents called for “just some change,” with just 8 percent saying “not that much change” was necessary.

Those numbers compare unfavorably to the weeks before the 2010 midterm elections, when Democrats lost control of the House. While the percentage calling for “quite a bit of change” and “just some change” have remained constant, those advocating for a “great deal of change” has risen 4 percentage points.

A quarter of those surveyed who say they want Republicans to control Congress say their vote is an explicit protest of the president’s job performance — an increase of 10 percentage points from the 2010 midterms.

Moreover, voters appear to reject the president’s plan for handling the crisis that has dominated headlines headed into the elections: Ebola. More than seven in 10 Americans say that doctors should be quarantined for three weeks after returning from treating patients in the Ebola hot zone. The president has argued that doing so could discourage public health officials from traveling to the affected area, which will prolong the outbreak.

COMMENT:  What this tells me is that Americans have caught on.  They see Obama for the empty suit that he is, a man vastly unprepared for the presidency.  And they want him to improve. 

The poll also reveals a possible flaw in our electoral system.  We're stuck with Obama for another two years, when critical problems will face the nation, even though he is vastly unpopular and his administration a mess.  Should we continue a political structure that gives a president four years in office, followed by another four if re-elected?  Or should we go to an alternative form – one six-year term has been suggested.  Or, maybe there could be easier ways of easing a president out of office.  Right now the only methods are resignation or impeachment and removal.  Maybe we should adopt practices that come from parliamentary systems, wherein a president could be removed if, by secret ballot, two thirds of each house of Congress, votes him out.  What do you think?

November 3, 2014       Permalink

GRIMNESS FOR OBAMA – AT 9:31 A.M. ET:  I'm sure he sometimes wonders where it all went.  He remembers the time in the 2008 campaign when he was treated like a king, even being cheered in Berlin.  What Obama never realized is that, after you're elected president you have to be president.  He hasn't a clue as to how to do that.  From Breitbart: 

At least nine other states approve of President Barack Obama at the same or lower rate as Louisiana.
An analysis of Huffington Post polling data reveals that Obama's approval rating in Louisiana is 39%. According to the Huffington Post's own figures, the following states rate Obama's approval at 39% or lower:

Alaska
Arkansas
Florida
Kansas
Kentucky
Montana
South Dakota
Tennessee
West Virginia

Embattled Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) sparked a firestorm of controversy on Thursday when she told NBC's Chuck Todd that Southern racism was to blame for Obama's unpopularity among Louisiana voters. Her Senate opponents, Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Col. Rob Maness (USAF, ret.), blasted Landrieu's controversial remarks and called for her to apologize to Louisianans.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) also expressed outrage. "She's basically calling the people of Louisiana, she's calling all of us in the South racists..." 

Jindal is, of course, a man of color.  His family is from India, and he's been elected governor twice. 

And...

Obama is nearly as unpopular throughout the nation as he is in Louisiana and the nine states the Huffington Post noted. According to Gallup, only 41% of America approves of Obama.

COMMENT:  We've seen other presidents slip in popularity, but I don't think we've seen a president so anointed as royalty at the start of his term, and so deep in the dumps as he looks to his last two years in office.  I don't really think he can recover unless he starts realizing that all wisdom is not between his ears. 

November 3, 2014       Permalink

ONE MORE DAY – AT 8:52 A.M. ET:  The election, or at least the major part of it, is tomorrow.  As we've noted, millions of Americans have already voted.  As we go through the analyses this morning, the one thing that comes through is that the predictions and hunches haven't changed much over the last weekend.  Most pundits still say that the odds favor a Republican-controlled Senate.  They also say that turnout is the key, and that a strong Democratic ground game, especially among black voters, can disrupt the predictions.

In one critical state, there are developments, at least according to Byron York of the Washington Examiner: 

For a brief time in mid-October, some Democrats believed Michelle Nunn, the party's Senate candidate in Georgia, could be the firewall that prevents a Republican takeover of the Senate. If Nunn could win the seat opened by retiring GOP Sen. Saxby Chambliss, then Republicans would need to pick up seven, not six, seats to take control.

In half-a-dozen polls taken over a two-week period in the middle of October, Nunn led Republican opponent David Perdue in five, while the candidates tied in one.  Democratic optimism surged. "National Democrats have just decided to pour $1 million into this race in Georgia, a sign of how important a victory here would be to their effort to beat the odds and hold on to control of the Senate," the Wall Street Journal reported Oct. 17. More pro-Nunn money came after that, with a barrage of ads focusing mostly on accusations the businessman Perdue outsourced thousands of Georgia jobs.

Now, things have changed. Perdue has recovered from the attacks — he indisputably helped create thousands of jobs in his career — and in the last six polls, taken since Oct. 16, Perdue has led in five, while one was a tie. In the RealClearPolitics average of polls, Perdue is up by 2.2 percentage points. In the newest poll, a NBC News-Marist survey released Sunday, Perdue leads by four points, 48 percent to 44 percent.

Perdue's position puts him in striking distance of the 50 percent total required for him to win outright, avoid a January runoff and dash a lot of Democratic hopes.

COMMENT:  We hope.  The Georgia seat is currently held by the retiring Republican senator, Saxby Chambliss.  Republicans must not lose seats if they are going to take the Senate.  It looks pretty good in Georgia, but we can't quite put this one away.

Oh, also in Georgia.  It appears that Republican Governor Nathan Deal will hold off a challenge tomorrow from Jason Carter, the grandson of Jimmy Carter.  I would never attribute the sins of granddad to the grandson, but I'd sleep better knowing that Jimmy had no influence over the governorship of Georgia, a position he once held.

November 3,  2014     Permalink

NOVEMBER 2,  2014

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:55 P.M. ET: 

OBAMA CAN'T  CATCH A BREAK – From WaPo:  "While President Obama was in Philadelphia on Sunday for a pre-election rally, Air Force One experienced a 'minor mechanical problem,' the White House said.  Obama traveled on the plane from Washington, D.C., to New Haven, Conn., then to Philadelphia, but it was replaced during his rally at Temple University with another C-32 aircraft, a modified version of the Boeing 757-200 planes the Air Force uses for the president's travel.  'While in Philadelphia, we have transferred to a backup airplane due to a minor mechanical problem with one of the aircraft's flaps,' White House principal deputy press secretary Eric Schultz said. 'This switch to a backup C-32 will not affect our schedule.'"  They didn't even give Obama a coupon for a free night in a hotel.  He's done.

SILVER SPEAKS – Possibly the best-known political statistician has made his prediction.  From The Politico:  "Statistician and political analyst Nate Silver said Sunday that Republicans have a roughly 75 percent chance of winning control of the Senate in Tuesday's election. 'It's still a close election,' said Silver, founder of ESPN's FiveThirtyEight blog. 'You have six or seven or eight races that could go either way … [But] the polls are clear enough that the GOP will probably win the Senate.'  Silver added later that 'signs look fairly poor for Democrats' less than two days out.  The assessment echoed a consensus across the Sunday shows that Republicans will have a good night on Tuesday. The GOP needs to gain six seats to take a majority in the upper chamber."  I can't wait.

ALREADY? – When leftist Bill De Blasio became mayor of New York City, he tried to reassure voters that we wasn't Karl Marx by appointing William Bratton, Rudy Giuliani's first police commissioner, to his old post.  But less than a year into de Blasio's term, Bratton has run into trouble, including trouble with the mayor's African-American activist wife.  Seems the commish cares about law enforcement more than he cares about political correctness, and that's not the way leftist regimes work.  Word is he's really on the outs with the new powers that be.  I wouldn't be shocked to see him replaced by a token minority, just to keep the Sharpton forces happy.  That would be a shattering blow to the NYPD.

November 2, 2014       Permalink

INCREDIBLE – AT 11:22 A.M. ET:  Remember those Nigerian girls who were kidnapped by an Islamist group.  There is news.  From AP, via the Washington Times: 

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria — With a malevolent laugh, the leader of Nigeria’s Islamic extremists tells the world that more than 200 kidnapped schoolgirls have all been converted to Islam and married off, dashing hopes for their freedom.

“If you knew the state your daughters are in today, it might lead some of you … to die from grief,” Abubakar Shekau sneers, addressing the parents of the girls and young women kidnapped from a remote boarding school more than six months ago.

In a new video released late Friday night, the Boko Haram leader also denies there is a cease-fire with the Nigerian government and threatens to kill an unidentified German hostage.

“Don’t you know we are still holding your German hostage (who is) always crying,” he taunts. “If we want, we will hack him or slaughter him or shoot him.”

A German development worker was kidnapped at gunpoint in Gombi, a town in Nigeria’s northeast Gombi in July. Police reported he was ambushed as he drove to work.

COMMENT:  This is the beastly force we are up against.  But notice that the cause of the kidnapped girls has produced virtually no reaction from so-called "women's" groups, who have sold out women in favor of a leftist agenda.  Hey, everything for the Marxist cause.

November 2, 2014       Permalink

IN MARYLAND? – AT 10:52 A.M. ET:  Could this be real?  Maryland is one of the bluest of the blue states.  Dominated by Baltimore, it is safe Dem territory.  But the gubernatorial contest has, very suddenly, become a horse race.  An upset in Maryland would be music.  The odds are still against it, but the trend is unmistakable.  From Fox:   

The campaign for Maryland GOP gubernatorial nominee Larry Hogan earlier this week enthusiastically predicted that a win Tuesday would be the surprise, upset victory of the midterm elections.

And it might well be correct.

Left off essentially everybody’s list of hot governors’ races, the tightening Maryland contest has now captured the national spotlight with big outside money and A-list politicians coming in to close the deal for Hogan or Democratic nominee Anthony Brown, who has served eight years as Gov. Martin O’Malley’s lieutenant governor.

That Hogan, a businessman and son of a former congressman, would even be close this late is a surprise.

Democratic voters outnumber Republicans 2-to-1 in Maryland. And only two Republicans have held the governor’s office the past four decades.

But a sluggish local economy and years of tax increases by the O’Malley administration -- including an infamous “rain water tax" -- appears to have voters looking for a change.

Brown had led the race by double digits from the start. But recent polls -- including one by The Baltimore Sun in mid-October that indicated Brown ahead by just 7 percentage points -- have shown his lead starting to slip.

However, the turning point seemed to occur after a Republican-sponsored poll released Monday showed Hogan trailing Brown by just 2 percentage points, 46-to-44 percent.

COMMENT:  The problem, of course, is that in states with large cities like Baltimore, Dems have a way of finding votes.  Oh, there's a box of uncounted ballots!  Oh, the tally on that voting machine is wrong.  Let's correct it.  Oh, here comes Aunt Millie to the polling place, even though she died 20 years ago.  Hi, Aunt Mil.  Nice to see you again.

We'll dream of an upset.

November 2, 2014       Permalink

TWO DAYS – AT 10:16 A.M. ET:  The election is 48 hours away.  Actually, that's not quite true.  In many states voting has been underway for weeks.  But the main event is Tuesday.  They start counting on Tuesday night.  New polls, just out this morning, give hope to Republicans.  From NBC: 

Just days before the midterm elections, Republican Senate candidates are in strong positions in three key Southern states, putting the GOP well within striking distance of regaining control of the upper chamber, according to brand-new NBC News/Marist polls.

In Kentucky, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell leads Democrat Alison Grimes by nine points among likely voters, 50 percent to 41 percent.

In Georgia, Republican David Perdue leads Democrat Michelle Nunn 48 percent to 44 percent.
And while Democrat Sen. Mary Landrieu in Louisiana leads in a three-way contest with 44 percent of the vote, she trails in a hypothetical runoff against either Republican candidate –Rep. Bill Cassidy or Tea Party candidate Rob Maness.

Losses in these states would complicate Democrats’ path to keeping their majority, given that they need to hold Republican gains to fewer than six seats (or seven, if Kansans reject their incumbent senator and the winner caucuses with the Democrats).

COMMENT:  We hope these figures are correct.  There will be a number of last-minute polls, but our side must get out and vote on election day.  It's the only poll that counts.

November 2,  2014     Permalink