By DEXTER DUGGAN
Looking for definitive insights into early August U.S. election results may be like searching for a big fish hooked by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s dubious, unending probe of alleged Russian collusion to win the 2016 presidential election for Donald Trump.
Having landed nothing important yet, Mueller’s anglers swear the catch is right there below the surface. Just wait until it gets reeled in — if only the fish will please put the barb into its mouth and start yanking on the line.
Like the elusive Russian collusion, the proportions of what mattered to voters in 2018 may not be plain until it’s flipping on the dock the evening of Election Day, November 6.
There’s plenty of partisan talk about what happened on August 7. But did it show big promise for Democrats come the November election? Or did it suggest the midterms won’t deliver so much for the out-party — the Dems this time around — despite every imaginable and unimaginable effort by dominant media to snag them a congressional majority?
Unconventional Republican President Trump surely has been making waves along the campaign trail.
Has his blustery style driven away some voters the GOP has depended on or needs? Or has experienced executive Trump managed to start rescuing a passive Republican legislative majority that, despite succeeding on tax reform, never delivered on seriously funding the vital border wall or repealing the Obamacare they swore to vanquish?
Conservative GOP political consultant Constantin Querard told Phoenix-based KFYI radio (550 AM) on August 8 that after you keep promising a product, you’d better come through.
At least as long ago as Obamacare’s signing in 2010, Republicans prominently campaigned to repeal it. But when they finally gained the necessary control of both houses of Congress and the White House as 2017 began, their promises collapsed.
Counseling caution about making forecasts, electoral-statistics expert Michael Barone posted at the Washington Examiner on August 8: “Republicans’ big gains weren’t visible at this point in the 1994 cycle (I wrote the first article predicting they might win a majority, in July of that year), nor were Democrats’ big gains in 2006 or Republicans’ sweep of Senate seats in 2014.”
Just two years ago, Barone recalled, “the smart money was overwhelmingly on the side of Hillary Clinton” to win the presidency.
And journalist Salena Zito noted, “It wasn’t that long ago that the Democrats won the first seven House special elections in the 2010 cycle and then got trounced in the midterm elections.”
Although other states had some significant primary elections on August 7, Ohio’s special election for a vacancy in its 12th Congressional District received the most media focus, with dominant media salivating over the tantalizing taste of a Democrat victory. Which, as of this writing on the evening of August 8, hadn’t occurred.
Ohio’s was a very close result, but, pending the counting of some absentee and provisional ballots and then a possible recount, the GOP’s Troy Balderson defeated the Dems’ Danny O’Connor by about 1 percent. Trump had gone to Ohio to rally for Balderson on August 4.
Fox News reported that Trump “highlighted how his endorsed candidates, including Balderson, outperformed the field in Tuesday’s races — and went on to claim that his personal campaign touch can lift Republicans over Democrats in other races across the country.”
Political consultant Querard told The Wanderer on August 8, “Credit goes to President Trump for going out, holding a rally, getting folks excited, and making a real difference in a close race. Credit also goes to the NRCC and RNC folks who spent a bucket of money and worked the ground hard.
“That said,” Querard added, “the president doesn’t have time to rally in 60 to 80 districts, and the RNC/NRCC can’t dump $3 million to $4 million into each of 60 to 80 districts, so Republicans in Congress need to start delivering on their promises and give their base a reason to turn out.”
Surely many could agree with pro-Trump conservative commentator Laura Ingraham that the president should switch his style away from frequent loud denunciations, including against the media (even though he may be correct in his criticisms), and instead focus positively on his administration’s notable achievements for the nation, starting with an energized economy.
Some analysts said suburban women voters were displeased with Trump’s style. One woman was quoted that she wouldn’t want to have this president of the U.S. home for dinner.
It’s not an adequate excuse to say that’s just Trump’s distinctive style, and people have to get used to it. As a successful businessman promoting his products, Trump surely learned he has to adjust his message to his audience instead of telling customers to accommodate themselves to him.
Without self-discipline and message discipline, it could be argued, Trump values indulging his personality over protecting his popular reforms.
Commentator John Fund posted at Fox News on August 8:
“President Trump’s policies now often poll favorably with a majority or near-majority of the voters, but his personal ratings hurt his party with swing voters. Political handicapper Charlie Cook of the Cook Political Report says that this fall the GOP will pay a ‘Trump penalty,’ which he defines as the price Trump and his party are paying for the president’s ‘modus operandi.’
“President Trump himself has decided that if he has become the issue for many voters, then so be it,” Fund continued. “Expect to see him continue as the center of attention in this fall’s campaign. That will make the November election an up-or-down referendum on the president — and that apparently is exactly the way he likes it.”
On the other hand, a pro-Trump Arizona Republican activist told The Wanderer on August 8 that Trump’s style is just what’s needed when it’s contrasted with “weak-kneed Republican congressmen.”
Rob Haney, a retired chairman of the Phoenix-based Maricopa County Republican Party, said: “With early voting showing Balderson trailing O’Connor 64 percent to 36 percent, I believe Trump’s visit to Ohio on August 4 prevented a Republican defeat. Trump’s popularity rests in the high 40s while the popularity of Congress rests in the mid-teen backwaters.
“Trump’s opponents fear his ability to communicate with his base and keep them energized through his unique personality,” Haney said. “No one except Trump has spoken the truth so forcefully in selling his agenda and responding to attacks.
“Imagine if Republicans in Congress had Trump’s force of character and had kept their campaign promises. No, it is not because of Trump that pundits are speaking of a Democrat ‘blue wave’,” he said. “The blue-wave threat is due to the mealy-mouthed, sniveling, weak-kneed Republican congressmen who have blocked Trump’s agenda and may suffer the voters’ wrath in November.
“If voter backlash occurs, you can bet those Republicans will blame Trump and not their performance and low popularity,” Haney said.
“Of course, Trump’s opponents are searching for a way to shut him up in the same manner they have intimidated Republican congressmen,” he said. “They are now trying to silence Trump by asserting that he will hinder the chances for Republicans in the midterms because of his unconventional frankness, tweets, and tough-talking counterattacks. I think that effort is doomed for failure.
“We have a very rare and powerful, vocal fighter for ‘truth, justice, and the American way’ in the D.C. swamp. I am so very grateful for Trump’s righteous courage, and I pray for his protection,” said Haney, a Catholic.
The left-wing bias of dominant media has been a heavy thumb on the scale of political coverage for as long as many people have been alive, so there’s always this disadvantage to begin with. To switch the metaphor, the Republican runner in a race has 35-pound weights attached to each leg by the media (unless he’s “maverick” Sen. John McCain), while the Democrat competitor gets a bicycle with a little motor.
Racist Sexist Tweeting
However, the flagrancy of the bias had new emphasis when the leftist dreadnought New York Times hired an opinion writer with a history of truly vile, despicable, contemptible, reprehensible tweets, then stood by its decision to keep her on staff.
Just one example from Asian racist Sarah Jeong that at least lacks words that have to be replaced by asterisks: “oh man it’s kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men.”
The fact she was to be an opinion, not news, writer makes no difference when just about every page in the Times is an opinion page.
When conservative activist Candace Owens did a little experiment by tweeting Jeong’s rants but substituting “black” and “Jewish” for Jeong’s use of “white,” while explaining what the experiment involved, Twitter still quickly banned Owens, not Jeong — until Twitter was called to account for its hypocrisy.
Recounting this, pundit Deroy Murdock posted at National Review on August 8, “There are two morals to this story. First, the Left relies on double standards the way cars run on gasoline. Second, racism is now totally cool with America’s liberals, as long as the bigotry is anti-white.”
And commentator Piers Morgan, not a notable conservative, asked on August 3 how long he’d keep his job at dailymail.com if he used such language against the politically protected, one second or two.
Yet, Morgan said, here’s The New York Times “hiring someone who, when it comes to hysterical rabid racist sexist tweeting, makes Trump look like a choirboy.”
The paper’s “decision to hire racist, sexist, profanity-loving man-hater Sarah Jeong doesn’t just make the paper look ridiculously hypocritical, it weakens them and makes Trump stronger,” Morgan said.
What’s perhaps even more interesting is that the Times’ dominant-media pals avoided making this a serious story.
If, say, a pundit at dominant media’s foe Fox News had been exposed for expressing joy over his cruelty to old black men, he’d have been burned to the ground in an immediate hail of hellfire. Absolutely no excuses allowed.
But when once again the left’s favored targets of dumb white “deplorables” are stretched on the rack to be tortured, well, hooray.
Just another reason to give no respect whatever when dominant media like the Times dance around and preen as our self-appointed moral rulers and judges.
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