Categories
Update

What Went Wrong?

“In 107 days, what typically takes us a year and a half to two years in our presidential campaign, we were defining someone who was wholly undefined from the start, trying to remind people about the opponent and what life was like underneath him, and also take into account what the political environment was and the realities that we had to deal with,” the Harris – Waltz campaign senior adviser for strategy messaging Stephanie Cutter said on the November 26th episode of the progressive podcast “Pod Save America,” hosted by Dan Pfeiffer.

“When asked on ‘Pod Save America’ if Harris should or should not have done more to distance herself from Biden,” summarized The Epoch Times, campaign chair Jen “O’Malley Dillon said that it wouldn’t have helped to separate herself from Biden by cherry-​picking what should have been done instead.

“Look, vice presidents never break with their presidents,” O’Malley Dillon said. “The only time in recent memory is when Pence broke with Trump.”

Harris chose to remain loyal to Biden to avoid changing precedent, O’Malley Dillon said.

“Our focus was to look at the future,” she said.

On the failure of the campaign to secure a spot on the most influential podcast in the world, Ms. Cutter was politic: “We had discussions with Joe Rogan’s team. They were great. They wanted us to come on. We wanted to come on. Will she do it sometime in the future? Maybe. Who knows. But it didn’t ultimately impact the outcome one way or the other.”

The general consensus of podcasters seems to be that Kamala Harris appearing on Joe Rogan’s Spotify podcast would have only doomed her campaign. Rogan is known for authentic long-​form interviews; few observers believe Harris could fake authenticity for ten minutes, not to mention two hours.

As for these excuses made by campaign staffers, eighty-​year-​old Democrat campaign guru James Carville is on record with a ‘slightly different’ take:

“The vice president (Harris) was thinking about going on the Joe Rogan show and a lot of the younger progressive staffers pitched a hissy fit,” Carville said.

While Carville reiterated Harris’s staff claim that avoiding Rogan was not the determining factor for her election loss, he unleashed a vulgar rant about their management of her losing campaign.

“When you put a campaign together and you hire young people to do work, let me tell you exactly what you tell these people: What I would tell them, ‘Not only am I not interested in your f***ing opinion, I’m not even going to call you by your name. You’re 23 years old. I don’t really give a s*** what you think.’”

James Carville rips Kamala Harris staffers over choice to skip Joe Rogan podcast,” Toronto Sun (November 28, 2024).

In point of fact, Ms. Cutter was born in 1968 and Ms. Dillon in 1976.

Categories
Update

Raise the Minimum Wage?

At Ballotpedia, referenced here yesterday, we learn that a number of minimum wage measures were on the ballots this last election. The results were interesting. “In California and Massachusetts, voters rejected ballot measure to increase the minimum wage — the first time since 1996 that minimum wage increase measures were defeated.” 

As Paul Jacob has often explained, in these pages, minimum wage hikes do not do what their advocates think, or at least say, they do. And the usual results present a problem for the policy’s advocates. A Reason article by Justin Zuckerman, “The New York Times Claimed D.C.’s Minimum Wage Hike Created Jobs. We Exposed Their Error,” from Friday, shows a grand example of a persuasive article in the Gray Lady being used to convince voters that a Washington, D.C., minimum wage hike did no harm while also being based on a gross misunderstanding of statistics. Its author “misunderstood the data she was looking at. The chart she linked to in the article presented numbers ‘in the thousands,’ meaning that the actual data were not 14,168 but 14,168,000, which also makes sense because Krishna [the Times contributor] didn’t realize she was reading national BLS data — not local figures.” A huge error. Which Reason told The Times about, “and the paper issued a correction.”

But the advocates for minimum wage hikes continued to cite the article, despite the error, despite the admission that was the official correction.

Some errors go on repeat because they re-​inforce ideological prejudice. The minimum wage is one of those policies usually advanced in ignorance of all the work done on the issue. Often in defiance of common sense.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall Update

Measures for Measures

November 2024: There were 146 ballot measures certified for statewide ballots in 41 states. On the Fifth, “Election Day,” these measures were decided by voters. 

According to Ballotpedia, from “2010 to 2022, the average number of statewide ballot measures in an even-​numbered year was 161,” making 2024 slightly below average — noting that Louisiana will decide four constitutional amendments on December 7, and five states decided nine measures earlier in the year, bringing the total for the year up to 159.

  • A record number of abortion-​related measures were decided this year: eleven.
  • Drug-​use policies were on state ballots, including for marijuana (recreational, three; medicinal, two) and psychedelics: six
  • Democratic processes were on state ballots, including both for and against ranked-​choice voting: ten.
  • Democratic processes more specifically about voting were also on state ballots, including citizenship requirements (all passed) and voter i.d.: ten
  • Labor policies, including minimum wage policies, were on ballots as well: seven.
  • The number of education-​related measures was the highest in in 18 years: twelve

Ballotpedia is a great resource, and if you are looking for good information about what people are voting for and against, ballotpedia​.org should be your first resource.

Categories
Update

The Pass-​Over Was Policy

Last Monday, Paul Jacob covered the brewing story of Federal Emergency Management Agency supervisor Marn’i Washington, who told FEMA workers on the ground in Lake Placid, Florida, not to help households with Trump signs in the yard. Since then we’ve learned more. The problem wasn’t just a rogue supervisor.

The next day, the New York Post offered a juicy headline: “FEMA worker accused of telling staff to skip hurricane-​ravaged Trump homes claims it was common practice: ‘This is not isolated.’”

The Post article relied heavily on an episode of the Roland S. Martin podcast on YouTube:

Her explanation may not be what you have seen reported, however. The idea at FEMA, Ms. Washington says, is a policy of “avoidance and de-​escalation.” The trouble with Trump supporters, FEMA lore has it, is that they tend to be rude or otherwise resistant to FEMA help. So the agency, to avoid conflict, avoids some natural disaster victims as a policy. Washington says she did nothing wrong, or out of the ordinary.

FEMA is a controversial agency within the federal government, with a bad reputation amongst many Americans, not just Trump supporters. That hardly needs verification. Ms. Washington insists that the logs of FEMA workers will justify her claims.

Categories
Update

CNN, Donald Trump & Grover Cleveland

“Donald Trump will be America’s 47th president,” explained CNN on Saturday, “after mounting the most momentous comeback in political history.…”

But is it?

Consider the three federal elections that 19th century Democratic politician Stephen Grover Cleveland participated in (winning two non-​consecutive presidencies):

Note the course of Grover Cleveland’s three Electoral College returns: 219; 168; 277. Compare with Trump’s: 304; 232; 312*. Cleveland’s popular vote went up each time. Trump’s did too: 62,984,828; 74,223,975; 74,535,879*. You do the math, but it a quick look suggests that Trump’s comeback is no more momentous than Cleveland’s.

The real anomaly in the recent series of three elections was the whopping turnout for the 2020 outing, where Joe Biden, who did not engage in anything like a normal campaign, garnered a whopping 81,283,501 votes. Compare that to Hillary Clinton’s 65,853,514 votes in 2016 and the less-​than 71 million votes for Kamala Harris in 2024.

The real question is what happened, in 2024, to 2020’s over ten million “eager” voters. The question may be easy to answer, but it is nevertheless a huge one, and has elicited a popular graph online, widely shared:

Note that it has at least one obvious inaccuracy: the Republican presidential vote did not go down from 2020 to 2024.

Also note that CNN, quoted above, characterized the election as one that “will hand [Trump] massive, disruptive power at home and will send shockwaves around the world.” Accurate, or just CNN being CNN?


The asterisk, above, for 2024 returns is there to remind us that the election counts are not final.

Categories
Update

Disappointed Democrats Bemoan Lack of Censorship

In 2016, when Donald John Trump won the presidency in a squeaker election, major news media and the Deep State worked together to censor online and free speech in a big way, culminating in the election of Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., in 2020. Now, in November 2024, with many millions fewer voting than for Biden, Trump wins handily, taking the swing states and achieving what looks like a popular vote majority.

So what are major news media mavens doing?

Complaining about a lack of censorship!

Well, some are. Specifically, as said on The View, “It would help if we could regulate social media, because one of the biggest offenders is D.C. and Congress have not been able to do one thing in regard to the rogue corporations of social media,” meaning, mainly but not exclusively, ex-​Twitter/​X.

There are many such laments out there. Just remember the Constitution of the United States, though:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

First Amendment, approved by Congress along with other amendments and submitted to the states for their ratification on September 25, 1789; ratified December 15, 1791.

Paul Jacob has covered online censorship extensively. Here are just a very few examples:

Say No to Reich-​Harris Reich,” September 6, 2024
Censors Cancelled,” July 6, 2023
Invitation to a Beheading,” March 13, 2023
Buzz-​Sawing the Conservatives Treehouse,” November 17, 2020