Category: partisanship

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ideological culture partisanship

Partisan Pride Divide

national pride, patriotism, democrat, republican, military, higher education, America, freedom, democracy

“How proud are you to be an American?” a new NBC News poll asked.

“At the turn of the century, three quarters of Americans were ‘extremely’ or ‘very proud,’” Steve Kornacki explained to Meet the Press host Kristen Welker yesterday. “That number’s fallen to 56 percent.”

It is a sizable drop, leading Kornacki to inquire, “What’s behind this?” before supplying an answer: “it’s partisan.”

Boy, is it. Fully 90 percent of Republicans are “extremely” or “very proud” to be Americans, with just a mere 3 percent “only a little” or “not at all” proud. Compare that to Democrats, less than a third (29%) of whom are “extremely” or “very proud” to be Americans with a whopping 36 percent “only a little” or “not at all” proud.

There is a significant divide between those 65 years old and older, 75 percent feeling pride, and the 18 to 34 age group, with only 36 percent feeling it. But those differences pale in comparison to party identification.

In analyzing the poll at NBCNews.com, Jonathan Allen points out that Americans “have little faith in their institutions.” 

The military is the only institution mentioned in the survey that received overall majority support — 60 percent had a “great deal” or “quite a bit of trust,” including 86 percent of Republicans but only 40 percent of Democrats.

A bare majority of Democrats, 52 percent, had significant trust in colleges & universities, while only 17 percent of Republicans shared that trust. “The significance: this is the only major institution,” noted Kornacki, “that a majority of Democrats feel that way about.”

Institutions often disappoint and our government has done things for which the proper emotion is shame, not pride. But the principles of individual liberty, equality and justice, proclaimed here 250 years ago, have been, as Tom Paine predicted, “an asylum for mankind.”

A source of pride.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture national politics & policies partisanship

Promising & Not

Endorsements, Democratic Party, socialism, Mamdani

“We are capitalist, not socialist.”

Those words are from the “Promise to America” pledge promoted by a new group of the same name and unveiled last week by Reps. Tom Suozzi (D-New York) and Rep. Adam Gray (D-California). 

“Two Democrats in Congress who flipped Republican-held seats in 2024 are launching a pledge for their party’s candidates they hope will act as a rallying cry for centrists,” explains a Washington Post article, dubbing it “a direct rebuke to the party’s leftward tilt as democratic socialists such as New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) capture the party’s energy and activism.”

"We Are Capitalist, Not Socialist." Adam Gray, Tom Suozzi, Democratic Party

“We want safety,” their “Promise” continues, “not lawlessness.”

“No, duh,” would have been the response to such a statement years ago. But today? “Refreshing!”

These Democrats call for “secure borders, safe communities, honest government, and an orderly immigration system that protects the country, strengthens the economy, and treats people with dignity.” It’s a far cry from: Free healthcare for those here illegally!

“We believe America remains indispensable to global stability, democratic values, international security, and strong alliances,” the document expounds. “In a dangerous and uncertain world, America must lead with strength, purpose, and partnership.”

In closing, they declare: “We are proud, not ashamed of America.”

The Post suggests, however, that this slogan “could be polarizing on the left.” 

Sure, it is a much different message than Maine Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner has expressed. On an online forum back in 2021, in a discussion on securing disability benefits from the VA, a fellow veteran vented, “Fuck Uncle Sam,” to which Platner added a clarification: “Fuck him and take his money.”

Which message for Democrats?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Note: Sorry for the foul language but, frankly, I did not want to cushion the blow.

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ideological culture partisanship political challengers

A Perfect Fit?

Graham Platner, Democrat, Maine, The View, democracy

“These are character flaws that I’m tired of hearing about,” offered Whoopi Goldberg, Monday, on The View. 

She was speaking about Graham Platner, the leading Democratic Party candidate for the U.S. Senate seat in Maine currently held by Republican Sen. Susan Collins . . . and of his litany of scandals — the latest to garner attention being his sending of sexually explicit texts to as many as a dozen women during his marriage . . . while having been married for only two and a half years.

“Platner has faced criticism for a series of inflammatory Reddit posts and, more recently, for a Nazi symbol tattooed to his chest,” The Free Beacon reported last year. Mr. Platner says he was unaware that his tattoo was a Nazi symbol but, according to the Beacon, “Two Platner associates have contradicted his claim of ignorance.”

The Reddit posts included calling himself an “antifa supersoldier” and a “communist,” while also using anti-gay slurs and belittling veterans, police, rural white people, and African Americans.

After counting all his various scandals, The View regular Sunny Hostin concluded, “So he’s a liar, a racist, an antisemite,” then added, “He’s a homophobe.”

Nonetheless, Hostin said she is “conflicted.” Meaning she might still want him to be Maine’s next senator?

Now making a play for the Senate, Platner has kindly covered up the tattoo and deleted those deeply offensive Reddit posts. 

The 41-year-old presents himself as a working-class guy, though he comes from a wealthy family that placed him in a $75,000 a year prep school. He is an oyster farmer, but most of his income derives from disability payments. He told reporters that he bought his home with a VA loan, but his father loaned him the money.

“You’ve shown me who you are,” The View’s Sara Haines said of Platner, “and I heard you.” She declared, “This man should be nowhere near Congress.”

Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont socialist, begs to differ: “We desperately need somebody like him here in the U.S. Senate.”

Graham Platner should fit right in.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies partisanship

King & Kingslayer

Donald Trump, Thomas Massie, revenge, Republican, endorsement, elections

Two weeks ago, five incumbent Indiana state senators “weren’t just defeated,” as NBC’s Steve Kornacki explained, “they were defeated in landslides.” 

The five had bucked President Trump’s call to redraw the state’s congressional map, blocking the creation of two additional Republican-leaning districts and drawing the ire of the president and his supporters, who got behind their opponents. 

On Saturday in Louisiana, Sen. Bill Cassidy, a 12-year Republican incumbent, became the first elected U.S. Senator to lose in a primary since 2012. Again, Dr. Cassidy wasn’t simply eclipsed by a challenger; he came in a distant third place with less than 25 percent of the vote. Cassidy was one of seven GOP Senators who found Mr. Trump guilty in his second impeachment trial, following the U.S. Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.*

I cannot recall a president of either party ever wielding so much electoral clout within his own party — perhaps partly because other presidents did not attempt to reshape their party as aggressively as Trump has, and partly because no president has enjoyed the outsider status required to mobilize the disgruntled grassroots.

Today, Kentucky’s Republican Primary offers another stop on what the media has dubbed “Trump’s revenge tour.” The Bluegrass State’s 4th congressional district sports 14-year incumbent Rep. Thomas Massie facing Trump-endorsed challenger Ed Gallrein, a businessman and former Navy SEAL, in “the most expensive House primary on record.” 

President Trump called Massie “a third rate Grandstander” in 2020 but then endorsed Massie in 2022. After Massie’s opposition to the “Big Beautiful Bill,” the Iran War, tariffs, and support for releasing the Epstein files, Trump has gone after him.

Latest polling shows “the race to be evenly deadlocked,” but if anyone can withstand the Trump onslaught, it may be Massie . . . who is so thoroughly not a Washington insider.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

* Of the other six U.S. Senate Republicans, four chose not to seek reelection (Sasse, Neb.; Burr, N.C.; Toomey, Penn.; Romney, Utah), while Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski won re-election in 2022, and Senator Susan Collins of Maine is on this November’s ballot.

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election law litigation partisanship

Un-Redistricting Virginia

Gerrymander, Virginia, Circuit Court, voting, elections, democracy

A circuit court has ruled that Virginia’s new voter-passed congressional map, gerrymandered to give Democrats in the state a prohibitive advantage in the next congressional election, is unconstitutional.

Judge Jack Hurley, of the Circuit Court of the Commonwealth of Virginia for the 29th Judicial Circuit, Tazewell County, denied a motion to stay his injunction blocking certification of the election using the new districts. Former Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli reports that once a final order is drafted and entered, “it will be immediately appealed.”

If the rejiggering survives the challenge, it could be the factor that tips the balance in the House of Representatives toward the Democrats next November.

Cuccinelli, who is now national chairman of the Election Transparency Initiative, had been saying that passage of the gerrymander would not be the last word. In their rush to get the measure to voters and enacted before November 2026, lawmakers ignored sundry constitutional requirements.

The 2024 special session that took up the redistricting measure had been convened to legislate about the budget. “Its governing resolution limited the session’s scope. Expanding it to include a constitutional amendment on redistricting required a two-thirds vote that never occurred.”

Also, says Cuccinelli, the state constitution requires that “an election must intervene between first and second passage” of a proposed constitutional amendment. “Here, first passage occurred during an election cycle — not before an intervening one.”

Among other problems is the constitutional stipulation that “every electoral district shall be composed of contiguous and compact territory.” The proposed map violates this requirement “badly.”

When you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go, and this partisan map must go.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability national politics & policies partisanship

The AOC-Schiff Thesis

Congress, AOC, Adam Schiff, Eric Swallwell, controversy

I wonder how many others were amused, as I was last week, to hear Senator Adam Schiff praise members of his party for the ouster of his fellow Californian and Democrat, Rep. Eric Swallwell, from Congress.

The tale, as told on this website on Sunday, is that Swallwell — one of Schiff’s closest colleagues pushing the Russiagate gambit against the first Trump administration — was pressured to resign over the massive amount of complaints against him for sexual harassment and other unwanted sexual advances. There is even an accusation of rape. 

Also resigning was a Republican from Texas, Tony Gonzalez, for similar reasons.

Schiff — who claimed to be “sickened” and “aghast” at the accusations and what Swallwell “has done” — followed Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in scorning the Republicans for postponing dealing with the Gonzalez problem. He accused the Republicans of not wanting to abandon Gonzalez because they wanted to continue to maintain their majority in the House.

But this works both ways. Sure, Republicans postponed pressuring the ousting of Gonzalez until Democrats likewise agreed to pressure Swallwell to resign. Both parties maintain the previous balance. This is politics. Not great high-mindedness. On either side.

Further, the big issue was Swallwell’s gubernatorial run — contributing to the splitting up of Democratic votes thereby threatening to allow two Republicans to appear on the run-off on Election Day in November in California’s screwy Top Two system. 

Finding an excuse to undermine Swallwell’s run was surely a big part of the magnanimous Democratic effort to remove him from Congress.

“You think you know someone, and it turns out you don’t,” said Schiff about Swallwell. “I didn’t socialize with Eric Swallwell, but I worked with him on the Judiciary Committee — I would never have imagined that he was capable of something like this.”

I think we know quite enough about Schiff and his partisanship, as we do so many in Congress. They are capable of anything.

Meanwhile, the vote to expel Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-Fla.) — accused of expropriating FEMA funds to the tune of $5 million — has not exactly proven the AOC-Schiff thesis on swift Democratic self-policing. She’s still in Congress, though a vote may occur tomorrow, we’re told.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment government transparency partisanship

Open Secret Re-opened

Peter Schiff, Trump, classified documents

Sometimes the news, hot off the press, turns out to be re-heated leftovers. But while some foods should not be re-cooked, the latest declassification appears worth a second feast.

The “new” news is historic: “The FBI said Monday night that it is ‘closely’ reviewing newly declassified memos,” reports John Solomon at Just the News. The declassified material shows that “the intelligence community kept secret for years evidence raising questions about the credibility and bias of the main accuser in President Donald Trump’s 2019 impeachment case.”

The CIA analyst who posed as a “whistleblower” about Trump’s controversial phone call asking that the Ukraine government look into Biden family corruption in the country was a Biden supporter. Deep blue. A known hater of Trump.

He was also a friend of “fired FBI Director James Comey and [Peter] Strzok,” the latter notorious from his work during the heady days of the Russiagate biz.

The analyst’s name is redacted in the newly declassified documents, but, Solomon notes, other media outlets identify him as “Eric Ciaramella.” 

Why does that name seem familiar? Because Ciaramella’s identity has been an open secret for over half a decade, at least since October 2019. 

Though the name was unsuccessfully protected by Adam Schiff, now a U.S. Senator from California,  the biggest secret was his partisanship, and the weakness of his evidence, both “kept from Trump’s impeachment proceedings by ex-Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said Monday. 

“Gabbard accused the former watchdog of ‘weaponizing’ the whistle-blower process to hurt Trump.”

Not exactly shocking. 

Which the ever-increasing ranks of Trump critics may now regret. How many times can they impeach the same president? 

At some point a Never Cry Wolf element comes into play.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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initiative, referendum, and recall partisanship

Gerrymandered Hypocrisy 

Virginia, referendum, fairness, voting, democracy

“Gerrymandering is detrimental to our democracy,” declared Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger . . . back in 2019.

“Let voters decide, not politicians,” former President Barack Obama offered just last month. 

The problem? They’re correct!

And Republicans are now sharing the statements by these two high-ranking Democrats with Virginia voters. Why? They oppose the April 21 constitutional referendum that, if passed, would allow the legislature to gerrymander the state’s congressional district lines to likely turn the federal delegation from its current six- to five-seat Democratic majority into a ten to one Democratic majority.

How dare opponents repeat the precise words previously uttered by Spanberger and Obama as Virginians go to the polls!

WUSA-TV in Washington, D.C., headlined its report: “Anti-redistricting mailers in Virginia are misleading, critics warn.”

“This has been misconstrued,” explained Gaylene Kanoyton, the Political Action Chair for the Virginia NAACP. “This does not pertain to these unusual, unprecedented times that we are in right now.”

“It is true they made these statements years ago,” a fellow from my hometown was quoted, “but the situation has changed.”

“They don’t like it because we’re exposing their leaders for their hypocrisy,” argues former Republican Delegate A.C. Cordoza with Justice for Democracy PAC. 

Democrats can of course blame Republican gerrymandering efforts in other states to justify their own, but it is a race to the bottom for voters. 

But, as I pointed out last week, Democrats deserve all the blame. The language on the ballot is completely slanted, telling voters the measure will “restore fairness.” This is so outrageous that even the liberal Washington Post editorialized last month that “Democratic politicians are presenting the proposed amendment to voters in the most brazenly dishonest way imaginable.”

Partisans will always be self-serving. But can’t they even try not to appear blatantly hypocritical?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Against Fairness?

Virginia, voting, districts, democracy, language, fairness

I’m against fairness?

Nah, it’s just Democrats who think that, because I won’t vote for their proposed constitutional amendment allowing the legislature to redraw my state’s congressional districts. 

The official question on the April 21 ballot reads: “Should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to allow the General Assembly to temporarily adopt new congressional districts to restore fairness in the upcoming elections, while ensuring Virginia’s standard redistricting process resumes for all future redistricting after the 2030 census?”

What, exactly, is “fair” about this amendment? 

“If approved, Virginia’s 11 districts would likely go from six Democratic to five Republican leaning seats to 10 Democratic seats and one Republican seat,” explains WJLA, ABC’s Washington, D.C., affiliate. “The new map would draw heavily blue urban areas in Northern Virginia, with rural Republican areas far away.”

Democrat House Speaker Don Scott argues that “levels the playing field.” 

Well, it would be a fairer map if the commonwealth’s electorate were comprised of 90 percent Democrats and less than 10 percent Republican voters. Yet, in 2024, Democrat Kamala Harris garnered just 51 percent of Virginia’s vote for president. Even in last year’s blowout gubernatorial election, Democrat Abigail Spanberger won only 58 percent. During that campaign, Spanberger expressed skepticism of this district map . . . but then, as governor, signed on. 

Democrats, always selective in applying “fairness,” are outspending Republicans “by about 14 to 1 on advertising” and holding the vote for this constitutional question early, in April, with low voter turnout expected — for the first time in state history.

In the minds of Democrats, this maneuver is fair because President Trump has urged Republican states to engage is such partisan redistricting. That’s their case.

But arguments in favor of a measure do not belong in the wording voters see on their ballot as they make their decision. 

That’s unfair.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

Note: In the quoted ballot question, emphasis added.

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government transparency partisanship representation

#ThemToo Movement

Congress, transparency, sex scandal

No matter how partisan politics has become, there are a few issues that our politicians seem intent on supporting — or opposing — regardless of party.

Example? Consider how soundly the House scuttled the recent effort to bring transparency to taxpayer payoffs for representatives’ and senators’ sexual harassment, rapes, and other improprieties. 

Last Wednesday, 357 members of the House of Representatives voted to refer to a committee a resolution that would have forced the release of records related to sexual harassment claims against lawmakers. While that sounds innocuous, in this case it effectively killed the measure. That’s how Representative Thomas Massie (R-Tenn.) explained it, and that’s how it was reported in the news: everyone who voted to refer the resolution to committee knew they were sending it to die.

“Both parties colluded to protect predators,” lamented Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), who had introduced the resolution. “They voted to keep sexual harassment records buried, and they did it together.”

How together? Well the 357 members who protected their comrades from the ire of their constituents included 175 Republicans and 182 Democrats. Remember that there are currently 218 Republicans serving in Congress and 213 Democrats (with three vacancies and no independent representation). Nine members did not vote, while one answered as merely “present.” 

The uncooperative Republicans (willing to stab members of their own party in the back!) numbered thirty-eight, while recalcitrant Democrats (cruelly eager to shine sunlight on their fellow vampires!) numbered twenty-seven. 

While the House overwhelmingly voted to protect its members from transparency and their own voters, back on November 18, 2025, representatives voted 427-1 to demand the immediate release of all federal documents related to Jeffrey Epstein. 

Even more bipartisan. But that time it was for transparency.

Just not theirs.

This is key.

And this is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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