Category Archives: Campaign ’16

A look WAY ahead to the 2016 campaign.

Steinenfreude

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is it bad that I take so much joy in watching the Left eat its’ own?

Two days ago I happened to write an article about the amazingly stupid conspiracy theory that the Green Party, which has run a presidential candidate every election since 1996, ran a presidential candidate in 2016 because of a Russian plot to sabotage American democracy. Today, Buzzfeed News reports that the Senate Intelligence Committee has asked Jill Stein’s campaign to comply with a document search.

This is what Russiagate has come to. This psychotic conspiracy theory is now so desperate to turn this endless fountain of nothing into something that it is rifling through the documents of a campaign which received one percent of the popular vote because its candidate had dinner in Russia two years ago.

Jill Stein – who took the same one percent from Democrats that the Libertarians took from Trump – is coming in for some of the same weaponized wrath that befell the Greenies in 2000.

Duty, Honor, Party

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

I’ve been seeing some particularly stupid articles arguing electors have the duty to vote their conscience, not their pledge.

 Article II, Section 1 of the United States Constitution provides that each state shall appoint electors.  How and who gets appointed elector is up to the legislatures of the states.  The electors meet in their respective states and cast their votes for President which are transmitted to the Senate to be counted.  This is a hold-over from the days when travel by foot or horse made national elections a logistical nightmare, but it’s still the law.

 Minnesota Statutes 208.03 provides that presidential electors shall be nominated by the major political parties at their convention and Minn. Stat. 208.04 says a vote for a presidential candidate cast in the general election is treated as a vote for the electors of that party.  When a Minnesota voter casts a ballot for Hillary, she’s actually voting for the electors appointed by the DFL Party.

 In 2015, Minnesota adopted the Uniform Faithful Presidential Electors Act to bring our law into closer conformity with the majority of states.  Under Minn. Stat. 208.43, electors sign a pledge:

 “If selected for the position of elector, I agree to serve and to mark my ballots for president and vice president for the nominees for those offices of the party that nominated me.”

 There is no penalty for refusing to honor the pledge.  There should be.

Minnesotans voted Hillary because, after listening to their speeches, scrutinizing their records and analyzing their promises, they thought Hillary would make a better president.  The law that equates a vote for Hillary as a vote for Pledged Electors does not authorize the electors to substitute their judgment for mine and instead vote for Bernie.  The electors are merely the messenger transmitting my decision to Washington.  We decide on the message.

 It must be that way.  I have no way to evaluate Muhammad Abdurrahman’s judgment and beliefs.  I never heard of him until he broke his pledge.  It would be insane for me to hand him carte blanche to vote for anybody he liked – that would defeat the whole purpose of having a general election.  Although it might make the campaigns shorter.  Under that system, you’d never get to see the candidates, never get to hear them.  You’d just vote “DFL” or “GOP” and the apparatchiks appointed by the big-shots in the smoke-filled rooms would pick whoever The Bosses decide to install as President – Hillary, then Jeb, then Chelsea, then one of George W’s girls . . . . 

 Joe Doakes.

Almost Official

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The electoral college confirmed what everyone but the most deluded of Democrats already knew:  Donald Trump is the President-Elect.

There was some drama; a total of six electors – four Democrats from Washington State, two Republicans from Texas – broke ranks and voted for other people:

In the end, however, more Democrats than Republicans went rogue, underscoring deep divisions within their party. At least four Democratic electors voted for someone other than Clinton, while two Republicans turned their backs on Trump.

With nearly all votes counted, Trump had clinched 304 electoral votes to Clinton’s 227, according to an Associated Press tally of the voting by 538 electors across the country.

“I will work hard to unite our country and be the President of all Americans,” Trump said in a statement responding to the results.

This won’t end the Democrats’ attempts to  affect the Electoral College process – when Congress meets on January 6 to officially count the votes, I fully expect Illinois to gin up 300 electoral ballots.

And they will no doubt redouble their efforts to abolish the Electoral College.   Hopefully this election will end all talk of the National Popular Vote on the GOP side of the aisle, at least.

Bam

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Punch:   Harry Reid on Mitt Romney talking with Trump about serving in the Administration:

“This is a man who came out big-time against Trump. Oh, the things he said about Trump. Well, that’s great, that’s wonderful,” Reid said. “Either he wasn’t telling the truth, or he’s a person with no character. After having said that, to go and do homage to this guy he said awful things about, I don’t think that shows much character.”

“Mitt Romney is somebody I had respect for,” Reid said, in a somewhat dubious assertion. “I have none anymore.”

Counterpunch:  Romney’s response, with emphasis added to wallow in the pure gloriousness of it all:

“I was indeed very critical of Mr. Trump during his campaign. But now he has been elected president and accordingly, if I could have helped shape foreign policy to protect the country I love, I would have been more than willing to do so,” Romney said through a spokesperson. “As for Mr. Reid, I lost respect for him when he repeatedly lied about my taxes and later admitted to it cheerily. Good riddance, Mr. Reid. The Senate will be better served without you in it.”

I always like Mitt.  I like him more now.

To Democrats, doing what politicians do – engage in rhetoric – is business as usual.  Until it’s a Republican, when suddenly it’s “hypocrisy”.

Good riddance, Reid.

Devils Of Our Nature

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I hate to indulige in schadenfreude.

Part of it is because I’m a pretty emphathetic guy.  I put myself in others’ shoes pretty easily.

Part of it is that while I don’t believe in karma, I do believe what goes around comes around.

However, hearing about the psychic trauma some “blue-staters” are feeling over this past weeks, I’m rapidly giving into my worse nature and saying “Good.  Suffer, you vacuous hamsters.  If your well-being is so wrapped around a presidential election that it affects your mental health, you should really not participate”.

“But Mitch – isn’t that an unfair caricature?”

Sorry, but no – it’s not.

Bubble?

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Minnesota has early voting.  People were coming to the office two months before election, to cast absentee ballots.  That was before most of the major revelations about Hillary.

 To what extent did early voting artificially inflate Hillary’s support?  Had those voters been required to vote on election day – knowing the full story about her – would some have changed their votes?

 Joe Doakes

The answer, I suspect?  To borrow a phrase, “bigly”.

Everything Old Is New Again

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Kevin Williamson on the return of at least some old fashioned values among Democrats after the election of Donald Trump who, let’s forget, had more in common with Bernie Sanders than any other candidate on the ballot:

The pretensions of the imperial presidency are going to haunt Democrats for the immediate future, but they’ll quickly rediscover their belief in limits on the executive. While they’re rediscovering old virtues, they might take a moment to lament Senator Harry Reid’s weakening of the filibuster, an ancient protection of minority interests in the less democratic house of our national legislature. They might also lament Senator Reid’s attempt to gut the First Amendment in order to permit the federal government — which in January will be under the management of Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, and — incredibly enough — President Donald Trump — to regulate political speech, deciding who can speak, about what and when, and on what terms. Perhaps they’ll thank those wicked “conservative” justices on the Supreme Court for saving basic political-speech rights. If they are smart, they will rediscover federalism, too, and the peacemaking potential of a school of thought that says in a diverse nation of 320 million souls, there is no reason that life in rural Idaho must be lived in exactly the same way as it is in Brooklyn or Santa Monica. As Charles C. W. Cooke pointed out, the same people who until ten minutes ago denounced federalism — which they mischaracterize as the doctrine of “states’ rights” — as an instrument for the suppression of African Americans are now embracing secession, which, in the American context at least, has a little bit of its own racial baggage.

Read the whole thing, naturally.

Two Cents

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A brief-ish article about Jason Lewis’s “upset” win in the 2nd CD by the always astute Matt Pagano.

You should read the whole thing, but here’s the good-news takeaway:

One more (extremely local) angle is that Lewis’ win will likely help revitalize the CD2 Republican Party. In the past few years, the local Party had come to be defined by infighting between opponents, and loyalists, to incumbent Rep. John Kline. Lewis’ election offers the opportunity to move past the Republican-on-Republican violence within the local Republican parties that has raged the past few cycles. If you’re a conservative activist who isn’t happy with Jason Lewis as your Congressman, you ain’t never gonna be happy.

https://medium.com/@mjp4liberty/unpacking-jason-lewis-win-in-mn-cd2-9ef3918c577b#.kpez2p77y

Spoils

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

“Hello, Congressman Never-Trump?  Yeah, hi, this is PRESIDENT Trump.  What’s all that wailing in the background?  Oh, you were just about to call to congratulate me?  Yeah, that’s great.  Listen, I’m gonna need some money to build the wall with Mexico.  About those appropriations in your district . . . be a shame if anything happened to them, like maybe a line-item veto.  Oh, I can?  Great, I’m glad to have your support.  That’s fine, talk to you soon.  Get some rest, you sound a little down.  Bye now!”

 Joe Doakes

We shall truly see.

Open Letter

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To: Anti-Trump Protesters, Celebribities moving to Canada, Garrison Keillor, People curled up in your safe spaces, and other people who are angry at the world today
From:  Mitch Berg, ornery peasant an Scott Walker vote
Re:  Why Trump Won

I  didn’t vote for Trump, but I most definitely voted for the GOP majority that he helped usher in.

I’ll just leave you with this:

Everyone who’s out there breaking things and beating people up?

Everyone who’s calling the election result a macroaggression and running for your safe space?

Everyone who keeps repeating that Trump called all Mexicans rapists (he didn’t) or that he’s going to bring on a wave of anti-gay repression (even the NYTimes called him the most pro-LGBT candidate among the GOP field, a year ago)?

Every teacher who called in “Grief Counselors” for the kids they’d painstakingly trained to be distraught over the election?

Everyone who took Wednesday off from work to cry about the election? Posting “He’s not my president” memes on Facebook? Jabbering about moving to Canada?

And above all, everyone who sniffs down your nose at what a bunch of morons your fellow citizens seem to be?

YOU are why Donald Trump won.

Not “racists”. Not Wall Street (they donated overwhelmingly to Hillary). Not ignorant rubes. Not me, a humble weekend talk show host who cordially disliked Trump’s public persona twenty years before most of you were making The Apprentice appointment TV.

You.

Liberal Logic

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Near as I can figure, it’s:

Step 1:  Run around waving signs, chanting chants, burning things and looting things and attacking people and vandalizing dissenters’ property (actually property dissenters rent…):

Anti-Trumpkins vandalized the GOP headquarters... ...no. They vandalized the building where the GOP rents space for its headquarters. The property owners will now have to remove the vandalism or get a ticket from the city. Not the GOP. The vandals.

Anti-Trumpkins vandalized the GOP headquarters…
…no. They vandalized the building where the GOP rents space for its headquarters.
The property owners will now have to remove the vandalism or get a ticket from the city.
Not the GOP. The property’s owners.

…and block highways.

Step 2:  Trump resigns.

Dear protesters:  please keep it up.  The GOP will gain seats in the mid-terms.

Kaeled

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Last year, exactly one pundit predicted Donald Trump would be in the race as of Christmas, to say nothing of winning the primaries and (as he predicted in May) the election itself.

It was Scott Adams, cartoonist behind Dilbert.

That Scott Adams.

Last year, when many observers were saying Trump was a stupid, under-informed clown, I was saying he was a Master Persuader. Pundits said he ignored facts because he didn’t know them or because he was a liar. I said he ignored facts because facts are useless for persuasion. Trump could learn lots of facts if he wanted to do so. But he knew it was a waste of time. These are two totally different views of reality. And yet they did not conflict. Clinton supporters still see the stupid, under-informed clown and I still see the Master Persuader. We live in totally different movies and yet we can still interact with each other, still eat and drink, still procreate when necessary.

The whole thing is worth a read.

The New Order

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I’ll be the first to admit – I didn’t see last night coming.

When I went on the air, I knew that Trump had to win North Carolina, Florida and Ohio to have a shot – even a long shot at the presidency.

All three fell; North Carolina fairly quickly, Florida with a bit of suspense, and Ohio in a complete rout.

From there, as Brad Carlson and I broadcast from the Radisson Blue and the GOP Victory Party, we puttered around with various scenarios, watching the numbers creep up, wondering if it’d come down to Nevada…

…until events bypassed us all.  When Wisconsin went Trump, I knew my math was out the window; when Michigan, New Hampshire, and – incredibly, finally, Pennsylvania – dropped in the bucket, I felt…

…like someone had dropped LSD into the cucumber water in the press pit.  I was, for one of very few times in my talk radio career, reduced to jabbering nonsense on the air.

We recovered, of course; to the best of my knowledge, we predicted the flip in the Minnesota Senate before the rest of the Twin Cities media, yet again; only a math mistake on my part precluded Brad and me from being first on the ground with an official prediction.

Local highlights:  The GOP broke their curse inside the metro:  Roz Peterson crushed her challenger; Randy Jessup and Dario Anselmo flipped solid first and second tier suburban seats; Paul Anderson flipped Terri Bonoff’s old seat.   Tim Walz is facing a recount against Jim Hagedorn; Obamacare cost him bad, but I have a hunch his ill-advised and arrogant photo with the Action Moms didn’t help much.

Nancy Laroche is now on the Crystal City Council!

And  – Congressman Lewis.  I love that.   We finally found a campaign where cynical lies aimed at the lowest, basest common denominator (worst than the stereotype Trump voter, even!) lost.  It restored my faith in Minnesota voters.

Downsides:  Dave Hann, one of the most decent people in politics, is out.  And Stewart Mills.  That hurt.

But what about Trump?  Kevin Williamson of National Review – an out-front non-fan of Trump (vide his coverage of Trump’s kickoff entitied “Witless Ape Ascends Escalator“, to telegraph the punch just a little) – has some advice, and I like it a lot:

The first and most important thing to do is to take whatever steps are necessary to ensure that Trump sticks by the promise he made — his record on keeping his word is not very good — on his list of Supreme Court nominees under consideration. If a Trump presidency means ensuring a generation of decent constitutional jurisprudence on the First and Second Amendments, then that will be worth a great deal in the way of tradeoffs. What tradeoffs? Conservatives should meet Trump on his own ground on the question of immigration, especially illegal immigration. His proposals on the question have been fantastical — making Mexico pay for a wall and all that — but his insistence that this be addressed rather than being kept eternally on the national back burner is appropriate. There are reasonable steps on immigration that can be taken, an enforcement-first approach that secures the borders (and the airports and the visa system) and focuses on workplace enforcement before moving on to broader reform questions, such as replacing the reunification-oriented chain-immigration system with one based on economic criteria.

The whole thing is, as always with Williamson, worth a read.

I, Jeremiah

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Heh.

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On the one hand, 4-8 years of Clinton will do for women what 8 years of Obama did for race relations.

On the other, we’ve got four more glorious years of non-stop blog and talk show fodder.

UPDATE:  Clearly, I wrote this on Sunday, expecting a Hillary win.

I neglected to delete it.

What the heck.

Dear Democrat Friends

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To:  My various Democrat friends
From:  Mitch Berg, ornery peasant
Re:  The sun will come out.

Suck it up, little campers.

I survived the last eight years.  You’ll survive the Trump years, as well -provided you don’t slash your wrists tonight, or freeze to death in a Canadian winter.

If it’s any consolation to y’all?  While a Hillary victory would have left a Democrat party marching in its usual lockstep, the GOP is going to have to work just as hard to focus Trump as it would have had to do to oppose HIllary.

By the way – is the nuclear option immoral again?

That is all.

Congrats In Order

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Congratulations, as I write this, to two long-time friends of this blog.

Rob Doar, political director of MN-GOPAC, was also campaign director for Randy Jessup, for whom the second try was the charm against Barb Yarusso up in Shoreview.

And long-time Shot in the Dark history correspondent First Ringer was the manager of the Dario Anselmo campaign – and between the two of them, they did the state the estimable favor of ejecting Ron Erhardt from public life in Minnesota.  Maybe he’ll blow Ringer’s head off?

Hopefully not.

Anysay – salute!

Judge, Jury And Executioner (UPDATED)

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We don’t know much about the man who shot two people at a dollar store on the mean streets of Burnsville yesterday.

And by “we”, I mean everyone but Erin Maye Quade, who promptly tweeted that the shooting proved the need for background checks.

Before any details were known.

Not only before the investigation had started, much less turned up any information, but before an arrest had been made.

She wants to represent you in the Minnesota House.

If you live in HD57A, please bring some friends to the poll and vote for Ali Jimenez-Hopper.

UPDATE:  Early, unofficial report:  the shooter is a registered sex offender who is legally barred from having guns.

Yep. That background check sure woulda done the trick.

Three Reasons Not To Vote For Angie Craig

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Reason #1:  She lied about her business background.   Her ads make her sound like some kind of entrepreneur.  In fact, she’s a “Human Resources” executive.  Now, God love all you HR people in the audience, but Human Resources is the exact opposite of entrepreneurship.  Fully-implemented HR processes are a leash around business’ neck, ready for government to yank.  And while I’m sure none of you HR people in my audience are like this, far too many are utterly worthless.

Reason #2:  She’s a lying pig, and voting for her would validate all that is slimy and stupid about American politics.  A vote against Craig – no matter who the opponent – is a vote against the basest, most rotten aspects of politics today.

Reason #3:  Her opponent is the father of modern Minnesota conservatism.  Jason Lewis has a 30 year record of putting his principles out there; walking back from ’em would be very, very hard – and, I suspect, anathema to him.  Add to that the fact – which I’ve already mentioned, but bears repeating as often as possible between now and election day – that Angie Craig is a lying pig who represents everything that is vile and pustulent about American politics today – and the choice is clear.

UPDATE:  Did I mention Angie Craig is a lying pig?

Be Careful Out There

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I suspect that Hillary Clinton has enough states with enough electoral votes to win the election – at that the vote-generation systems in her blue-city base of operations will generates any votes needed to give her the win.  1

And while any given liberal is no more likely to be violent than any given conservative, the fact is that when liberals get scared – and they are always terrified about something – some of them get violent.

In late July an unidentified 60-year-old man was shot in the leg at Winston’s Bar on Cleveland’s East Side. His assailant, Darnell Hall, 45, shot him after their discussion of presidential politics grew heated. The attacker “was enraged that anyone in the overwhelmingly African-American bar would support the GOP nominee,” the Plain Dealer reports. Hall later surrendered to police and was charged with felonious assault.
Two UCLA students told Sean Hannity on Oct. 25 they’ve seen a lot of anti-Trump violence on campus. Haley Nieves said protesters crashed one of their pro-Trump rallies. “They were stomping on the American flag during the event and even attempting to burn it afterward.” Dominique Blair said, “You face crazy leftist mobs that are not tolerant of your views whatsoever, and it turns into a lot of bad debates. Sometimes violent, sometimes hitting and fights. I’ve been all around it.” Blair added, “I am treated very poorly on my campus and other campuses. It’s very hard to be a conservative activist in Los Angeles.”

Given the amount of ink the left’s media has expended fretting about largely nonexistent violence on the right, you can expect the left to act out badly over the next couple days.

And if Hillary somehow loses?

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

1 – If you’re a regular commenter prone to claiming nobody can see, hear or say anything about vote fraud, do not bother leaving a comment until you have resonded tothis question it in detail.  I’m done playing games.

If You Live In Minnesota’s First Congressional District

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Rep. Tim Walz like to portray himself as a pro-Second-Amendment legislator.

walzwithgrabbers

But here the Representative is, huddled up with some of Michael Bloomberg’s paid shills, promising to support larding up law-abiding gun owners with additional regulations, and to carry the Bloomberg agenda (which, make no mistake, leads inevitably to New York-style gun control.

If you live in CD1, or know people there, please pass this around far and wide. Tim Walz is just another toady for the Dreamsicles.   His GOP challenger, Jim Hagedorn, is the real supporter of the

When it comes to supporting the human right of self-defense, he talks the talk every two years.

But actions – especially the dimwitted ones that Bloomberg’s “Moms” demand – speak louder.

Place Your Bets

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You just know Team Clinton – the finest collection of political skullduggerers, character assassins and anger merchants money can buy – didn’t burn through all their their oppo-research two weeks ago.  You just know they saved something for today, the last news dump before election day.

Let’s take bets.  What is Team Clinton going to dump today?

Squib

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One of my most fearless predictions of this campaign cycle; “Black Lives Matter” will be shown up as an election-year artifice of the Democrat party.

While the movement may well have started organically, it has most certainly been harnessed by Soros money toward the goal of getting black voters to turn out, after two cycles of voting for the First (Actual Ethnic) Black President, to vote for a geriatric authoritarian white woman.

It’s a legitimate worry for them – legit enough to drive Hillary to some fairly absurd lengths.

But some folks just can’t be pleased; Louis Farrakhan is not a Hillary fan:

“Mrs. Clinton backed the crime bill and then called our young people super predators. Of course she apologized, but just a minute. See Hitler could’ve said to the Jews after Auschwitz, ‘I’m so sorry.’ Would that be enough to satisfy you?”

“Look at this award that she got,” he continued. “In 2009 Hillary Clinton received the Margaret Sanger Award from Planned Parenthood. It was Mrs. Sanger who advocated population control of black and poor people.”

Farrakhan is hardly a speaker for all of African-America.

But he’s not wrong…

Surprise?

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Minnesota high school students choose Trump over Clinton:

More than 77,000 students from 213 high schools have taken part in the election so far, and the first round of results came in Tuesday morning.

The Republican ticket with Donald Trump and Mike Pence narrowly defeated Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine 35 to 33 percent. The Trump/Pence ticket received 26,930 votes and the Clinton/Kaine ticket received 25,333 votes.

When I was in high school, I think Jimmy Carter won by a 2:1 margin over Ronald Reagan.  So this is a surprise, to say the least.

Eurasia Has Always Been At War With Eastasia

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The Minnesota DFL is sending out mailers…:

14570281_10154072325051194_5375400904606317268_n

…blaming the GOP – not one of whose elected representatives voted for Obamacare – for Obamacare.

Two observations:

  1. So there’s your admission; the Democrats are officially admitting Obamacare and its children are worthless political turds
  2. Who would the Democrat be trying to reach with this piece?  The stupid, the incurious, the entitled, sufferers from Urban Liberal Privilege, the stupid…yes, I said it twice, but there would seem to be that many.

Pass it around.