“Biden said inflation was transitory, but it’s not. He said illegal immigration was seasonal, but it isn’t. He said paying money 2 illegal immigrants was garbage but it’s true. He said US wouldn’t leave Americans behind in Afghanistan but we did. Does he even know what’s going on?” – Ari Fleischer
“We’re protecting borders between North and South Korea. We’re protecting borders between Ukraine and Russia, but we just can’t manage to protect our own border.” – Congressman Andy Biggs
What the Gas?!?: Biden’s policies are driving gas and oil prices off the charts.
It costs more to fill up your car…bad idea.
It will cost more to heat your home…bad idea.
It will cost more to deliver goods around the country…bad idea.
We are no more dependent on foreign oil…bad idea.
Thanksgiving & Christmas will cost more with the family…bad idea.
None of this is good for America or your family.
Biden’s Inflationary policies are a TAX on EVERY American.
Biden’s radical environmental policies are putting unnecessary strain on our national economy and EVERY family’s budget. These crazy left wingers don’t understand that they will first bankrupt the citizens/voters who need the services before they bankrupt the fossil fuel companies they so love to hate.
Russiagate Exposed – Debunked: A MUST READ article titled “Anatomy of a media hit job — how press pushed Clinton’s lies against Trump”. The Clinton Campaign and their allies in the mainstream media created unbelievable chaos around the presidency for purely political purposes. They helped drive the country into a divide that will take a long time to heal.
“The media’s coverage of the Trump campaign, fueled by the Steele Dossier, finds a Russian under every bed. But in the end, little comes of it. Michael Flynn is fired as national security adviser after media outcry over his pre-inaugural conversations with the Russian ambassador, but such outreach is typical of incoming administrations. Papadopoulos pleads guilty to one count of making false statements to the FBI, with no suggestion that he worked with the Russians. Carter Page, despite months of wiretaps, is not charged. The most serious charges are against former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, but are entirely related to tax and bank fraud with his own businesses. In the end, the Mueller report finds no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. The dossier is debunked. Yet these stories remain unflagged by Twitter or Facebook. The headlines are still there.”
GOP Presidential Candidates: Assuming President Donald Trump decides against seeking the Republican nomination for President, here is the growing list of prospects (in alpha order) that are being “more than casually” talked about:
Governor Greg Abbott
Governor Chris Christie
Senator Tom Cotton
Senator Ted Cruz
Governor Ron DeSantis
Governor Doug Ducey
Ambassador Nikki Haley
Senator Josh Hawley
Governor Larry Hogan
Governor Kristi Noem
Senator Rand Paul
Vice President Mike Pence
Secretary Mike Pompeo
Governor Pete Ricketts
Senator Marco Rubio
Senator Ben Sasse
Senator Rick Scott
Senator Tim Scott
Governor Glenn Youngkin
The ONE thing they all have in common with the American people…they don’t want President Joe Biden re-elected for a second, disastrous term. Elections have consequences and now the American people are suffering under the results of bad, progressive Democratic policies.
From my perspective, the future of the Republican party is bright!
–Saul Anuzis
60 Plus Weekly Video Rewind
In this week’s video rewind- 60 Plus commends bipartisan effort on Medicare Part D reform, Treasury nominee wants to see US energy companies going bankrupt to fight climate change, and Joe Biden can’t believe the cost for a gallon of gas!
Links to the articles discussed in the video:
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/nov/8/medicare-needs-to-eliminate-cost-sharing-for-neede/
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/treasury-saule-omarova-energy-industries-bankrupt
https://www.dailywire.com/news/biden-did-you-ever-think-youd-be-paying-this-much-for-a-gallon-of-gas
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Why Democrats May Have a Long Wait if They Lose Their Grip on Washington
Usually, it’s the party out of power that frets about whether it will ever win again. This time, it’s the party in control of government that’s staring into the political wilderness.
Democrats now have a Washington trifecta — command of the White House and both chambers of Congress. If the results of last week’s elections in Virginia and elsewhere are any indication, they may not retain it after next November’s midterm elections. And a decade or longer may pass before they win a trifecta again.
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The unusual structure of American government, combined with the electorate’s reflexive instinct to check the party in power, makes it hard for any party to retain a hold on both the White House and Congress for long.
Since World War II, political parties have waited an average of 14 years to regain full control of government after losing it. Only one president Harry Truman has lost Congress and retaken it later. In every other case, the president’s party regained a trifecta only after losing the White House.
American consumers are paying a steep price for Biden’s policies
When is Joe Biden going to admit that the inflation problem with rising prices for everything from gas, to groceries, to new cars, to apartments and homes isn’t getting better, it’s getting worse?
The government just reported that yearly producer prices are up more than 8 percent from just a year ago. When producer prices rise, those costs are soon and inevitably passed on to shoppers in higher consumer prices. Gas prices nationally are up $1.31 a gallon from last November, and don’t be surprised if $5 a gallon isn’t around the corner.
For tens of millions of Americans who aren’t rich, “transitory” inflation is feeling more like runaway inflation. Worker pay is rising at about 4 percent — that’s the good news. The bad news is consumer prices are rising closer to 6 percent, which means in purchasing-power terms, paychecks are shrinking.
Combine that with the man-made energy crisis and you’ve got a witches’ brew of problems haunting the Biden administration. America is producing 2 million fewer barrels of oil today than when Donald Trump was president. So at $83 a barrel, this means we are losing about $165 million a day in national output and $50 billion a year. This has only given leverage to OPEC and the Saudi oil sheiks to raise prices — and there’s nothing we can do about it.
Joe Biden just keeps on lying to the American public
President Biden appears to be suffering from a bad case of malarkey syndrome. A textbook example was presented last week when he was asked about his administration’s proposal to pay up to $450,000 compensation per person to illegal migrant families that had been separated under the Trump administration.
It was “garbage,” “not true” and “not gonna happen,” he told Fox News’ Peter Doocy at a White House press conference Wednesday.
The president was so emphatic, it seemed to be an open-and-shut case. The Wall Street Journal’s story revealing the Department of Justice negotiations with migrant families must be wrong.
But not so fast. If you are familiar enough with the president’s blarney, you may have picked up the sleight of hand in his answer.
Doocy had asked about payments of “up to” $450,000.
Biden repeated the question back to him, without the qualifier, but with a sly smirk: “$450,000 per person, is that what you’re saying? That’s not gonna happen.”
That afternoon, the ACLU called out the mendacity in the politest way possible, suggesting the president was not “fully briefed about the actions of his very own Justice Department.”
Lo and behold, the next day, Biden was “perfectly comfortable” with the payments, said White House deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. What he really meant was that the $450,000 figure might not be entirely accurate.
Right.
Gloomy landscape for Democrats in midterms as Biden’s approval drops to 38% in USA TODAY/Suffolk poll
A year before the 2022 midterm elections, Republicans hold a clear lead on the congressional ballot as President Joe Biden’s approval rating sinks to a new low of 38%.
A USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll, taken Wednesday through Friday, found that Biden’s support cratered among the independent voters who delivered his margin of victory over President Donald Trump one year ago.
Biden and his party are poised for a rebound, advocates argue, after the House passed a $1.2 trillion “hard” infrastructure bill late Friday, sending the signature measure to Biden’s desk for his signature. An encouraging economic report released Friday morning showed stronger-than-expected job growth.
Kamala Harris:Liberals saw Harris as a unique champion. Lately, they’re disappointed.
That said, the survey illuminates the size of the hole Democrats need to dig out of as they look toward the elections in one year – on Nov. 8, 2022 – that will determine control of Congress and shape the second two years of Biden’s term.
It’s Not That Democrats Lost. It’s That They Lost Everywhere
Four years ago, New Jersey Senate President Steve Sweeney survived the most expensive legislative race in American history, a $25 million brawl with the New Jersey Education Association. On Tuesday, it appears he lost his seat to Edward Durr, a truck driver who spent $153 on his challenge.
Sweeney wasn’t the only New Jersey Democrat to lose his seat, although the party held onto its legislative majorities. It also appears that Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy narrowly survived a surprisingly strong challenge from Jack Ciattarelli, a Republican former assemblyman.
But the fact that Republicans were able to score gains in an overwhelmingly blue state – Joe Biden carried New Jersey by 16 percentage points last year – points to trouble for Democrats all around the country heading into next year’s midterms. Democrats lost in all kinds of areas where they normally win, from South Texas to South Jersey and Long Island.
“These results should be an alarm clock rousing us from sleep,” said Bill Pascrell, a New Jersey Democratic congressman. “If we don’t deliver then we won’t deserve to govern.”
Republican Glenn Youngkin’s victory in the Virginia governor’s race was the top story out of Tuesday, but looking ahead, the bigger danger for Democrats is that Republicans made gains everywhere – among suburbanites, rural voters and Hispanics.
“It tore through the veil of the national Democratic talking points, and the myths they’ve tried to sell for years have been laid bare,” says David Carney, a Republican consultant. “It’s a tenet of national Hispanic organizations on the left that somehow every Democrat will win if enough Hispanics or people of color vote, and it’s not true.”
The president’s party nearly always pays a price in midterms. The Biden presidency is not shaping up to be any kind of exception. Republicans laid all manner of problems at his doorstep, from inflation and the messy Afghanistan withdrawal to rising energy prices and the vaccine employer mandate they view as unconstitutional.
Meanwhile, congressional Democrats have proven to be much better at finger-pointing than at passing actual legislation, at least thus far. “It’s just that people are angry,” Carney says. “It’s going to wreck where a lot of Democrats are with their base.”
Republicans hold notable advantage heading into 2022
Joe Biden’s low approval rating not only impacted recent elections in Virginia and New Jersey, it also could spell doom for Democrats in the upcoming midterms and even impact Biden’s ability to run for re-election, according to a USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll taken of registered voters immediately following those elections last Tuesday night.
The poll is a historic low point for the Biden administration, no matter how you look at it. Biden’s 38% approval rating (59% disapproval) is lower than any Suffolk University/USA TODAY poll taken since he took office. Notably, it is also lower than the 41% approve (55% disapprove) statistic our team recorded in August – in the chaos preceding the United States’ withdrawal of personnel from Afghanistan.
This poll also shows that the generic congressional ballot test of voters has flipped to Republicans, which is unusual because this indicator often gives Democrats the edge. The generic congressional ballot test is an important barometer of voting behavior because it removes individual dynamics of each race and focuses on how voters are leaning between the two parties. In the Suffolk/USA TODAY poll, this indicator not only tilted to Republicans, but it also completely flipped the other way: 46% would now choose a generic Republican candidate for Congress compared to 38% for a Democrat.
That news should worry the moderate Democratic establishment, who are trying to steer their general elections through traffic and potholes without GPS, and while checking the rearview mirror for progressive Democratic primary challengers eager to overtake.
Joe Biden is all-in for open borders
Until recently, there was still hope the Biden administration would reverse course and bring law and order back to the southern border.
Those hopes were annihilated on Oct. 29, when Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas released a curt, four-page memo terminating, once again, Donald Trump’s Migrant Protection Protocols.
Before the COVID pandemic, the program had successfully brought order to the southern border by ending the release of illegal immigrants into the United States. Before its creation, illegal immigrants arrested for illegally crossing the southern border would tell Customs and Border Protection agents that they feared returning to their home countries. All of these migrants had been coached on what specifically to say by human traffickers and drug cartels they paid to smuggle them to the border.
These words triggered the need for a determination by an immigration court judge as to whether the illegal immigrant in question actually deserved asylum. But since tens of thousands of migrants are exploiting this loophole every month, the immigration court system doesn’t have the capacity to hear their cases in a timely manner. The illegal immigrants were therefore released into the U.S. to unite with friends and family already here (often in the country illegally themselves) and disappear before their asylum hearing. Only about 15% would win their asylum claim, and virtually none were ever deported. Those who didn’t win their asylum claims could just live illegally in the U.S. forever…
… For now, there is no end in sight to the chaos on the southern border caused by Biden’s open-border immigration policies. Only a new occupant of the White House can restore American sovereignty now.
Biden-omics: The threat of massive tax hikes is slowing the economic recovery
President Biden says that his multitrillion-dollar tax increase “will not slow the economy. It will make the economy function better, and it will create energy.”
Biden could not have been more mistaken. The threat of a massive tax increase hanging over the economy has slowed what should be a booming recovery. It has disrupted economic growth. Over the last six months, businesses and workers have been bombarded with stories out of Washington about the coming tax increases and the potential damage to the economy. Much of the congressional work on tax increases has been done in secret, with no public hearings or open discussion. New and radical tax proposals seemingly surface every week.
These potential tax increases, as well as the prospect of more deficits and debt, have created real economic headwinds, affecting investment and hiring decisions, and crushing consumer confidence.
The people are not pleased with what has happened to the economy. An NBC News poll indicates that 71% of respondents believe we are heading in the wrong direction, 57% disapprove of Biden’s handling of the economy, 65% believe the economy is in poor shape, and nearly half believe it will get even worse next year.
Most folks blame Washington for these economic problems. According to a recent Gallup poll , a majority of respondents believe “the government is trying to do too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses.” In the same survey, only 19% of respondents support higher taxes and more government spending. Half of respondents say they prefer less government and lower taxes, while 29% want no changes in tax and spending levels.
How Glenn Youngkin won
After Glenn Youngkin’s historic win in Virginia last week, many want to know: How did he do it?
First things first: Candidate quality matters. Youngkin is a disciplined communicator, an optimistic leader, and a relentless campaigner who took his message into communities long ignored by Republican candidates.
Terry McAuliffe ran a nationalized campaign like a U.S. Senate candidate, bringing in Beltway celebrities and treating 2021 like it was 2020 all over again. McAuliffe previously led the Commonwealth, but his message was “I’m the Democrat, and it’s my turn. Again.”
Youngkin made the race about Virginia and the challenges Virginians face. He could be found pumping gas in Fairfax and at grocery markets in Short Pump, talking about rising fuel, food, housing and utility costs.
He started with a 2 percent favorability rating among Virginia Republicans. This is where data matters. We did a deep dive in December to not only identify likely Republican voters in a general election, but Republicans who needed a harder push to turn out, as well as Democrats and independents who could be moved by a Youngkin candidacy. We identified the voters we would need to win if turnout reached 3.1 million, and then revised it to 3.2 million voters after seeing voter registration numbers in August and September.
Our initial goal was to win 507,423 likely Republican voters across the Commonwealth, another 400,720 gettable Republicans that we would need to persuade to turn out, and the 647,291 swing votes we would have to earn with a more inclusive message in a state trending blue. As Election Day neared, we expanded our swing vote targets, as well as our Republican turnout targets.
Republicans regain campaign mojo — and it’s Bush, not Trump
The Bush campaign style is making a comeback.
Democrats should be afraid. Very afraid.
Among the messages emerging from Glenn Youngkin’s victory in the Virginia governor’s race last week is this: The era of angry, fire-breathing GOP candidates may be over, replaced by a campaign approach Democrats rarely seem to beat. Instead of a raging Donald Trump, Jim Jordan, or Marjorie Taylor Greene, there is the shrewd candidate with a keen eye for wedge issues, camouflaged by khakis and a calm demeanor.
Think George Bush — senior and junior.
Both Bushes presented themselves as easy marks Democrats were eager to challenge. They came across to many as privileged politicians who couldn’t play campaign hardball.
Wrong…
… Youngkin’s victory shows the GOP that everything old may be new again.
They can hold their base with adroit nods in their direction while burying the fury-filled political style that has turned off swing voters and independents.
The Bush Restoration
The populist wave is receding, leaving neoliberal elites in charge of both parties and a beleaguered working class out in the cold.
Everybody has a hot take on the results of the nationwide elections on Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2021. Here’s mine: The elections prove the neoliberal restoration is proceeding apace.
By “restoration,” I mean the return to power of establishmentarian Republican-right neoliberals and Democratic-left neoliberals—who together comprise the American ruling elite—at the expense of Democratic progressives and Republican conservatives. Following the populist upheavals of 2016-2020, American politics is reverting to the pattern of 1992-2016, when moderate pro-business Democrats like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and moderate pro-business Republicans like the two Bushes alternated in power while squelching the voices of the American majority.
The mechanism by which this happens is the American two-party system. If you think of the factions in the two major parties as separate parties, then we have a de facto four-party system. From left to right, the parties are progressive Democrats, neoliberal Democrats, neoliberal Republicans, and conservative Republicans. While their donor bases are somewhat different, with tech and finance leaning toward Democrats while extractive industries are more Republican, both Democrat and Republican neoliberals are effectively two wings of one party: the neoliberal establishment uniparty. Neoliberal elites tend to move in the same establishment social circles and their children tend to go to the same Ivy League schools. Most of them would feel awkward talking to working-class people of any political persuasion who are not their servants.
The heat and noise of cultural warfare over issues like race and wokeness conceals a broad consensus within the narrow class of people whose needs and opinions are actually represented within the American party system. Business-class Republicans quietly support Planned Parenthood, while business-class Democrats are hostile to unionization (though they may tolerate harmless company unions that act in concert with corporate HR to enforce woke corporate norms). Republican neoliberals quietly, and Democratic neoliberals loudly, favor gay marriage and abortion rights—and also free markets, deregulation, cheap-labor immigration, and offshoring of industry to low-wage countries. They recognize the need for a safety net but prefer to subsidize low-wage workers through programs like the earned income tax credit (EITC)—as opposed to raising the minimum wage or cutting off the supply of low-wage immigrant labor that deprives the least educated American workers of real bargaining power.
GOP hopefuls crank up the ‘if-Trump-doesn’t-run’ primary
Mike Pompeo and Rick Scott are headed to Iowa this week and next, followed by Tim Scott in mid-April. Mike Pence plans to visit the early primary state of South Carolina, while Ron DeSantis appears to be conducting a soft launch in his home state of Florida.
Jeff Kaufmann, chair of the Iowa Republican Party, said he’s never seen so much interest so early in a presidential election cycle.
Iowa’s going to be hopping,” Kaufmann said.
But what’s truly unique about the Republicans’ pre-presidential primary is the contingent framework that is unfolding around it. It’s a primary — but a wholly conditional one. Prospective 2024 candidates, donors and conservative media outlets — the entire Republican ecosystem — are building strategies and structuring the race around the single question of whether former President Donald Trump runs again.
Party panicking as rural America turns on Biden’s Democrats
The bad news for Dems has been largely overshadowed by the spectacle of their infighting.
The good news for Democrats is they finally pushed through an infrastructure bill that would have become law months ago if it hadn’t been held hostage by progressives.
The bad news for Democrats is that’s been largely overshadowed by their chaos, bitter infighting, and relentless focus on a more massive spending bill whose contents are a mystery to most Americans.
But there’s even worse news for the party, which is that they’re getting shellacked among rural voters. And building a bunch of roads and bridges is not going to win them back.
One media analysis after another is concluding that President Biden’s party, in the wake of last week’s dismal election showing, is in deep trouble in small-town America, and no one seems to have a solution.
The upshot, says Politico, is that “it will be difficult, if not impossible, to hold on to majorities in the Senate, which is dominated by rural states, and many state legislatures without at least some rural support.” What’s more, virtually everyone in politics believes the Democrats will lose the House next year.
One sobering statistic: In the 2008 presidential contest, Republicans won 70 percent or more of the vote in only four small Virginia counties. When Glenn Youngkin won the governor’s race in the commonwealth, he was over 70 percent in 45 counties.
Anatomy of a media hit job — how press pushed Clinton’s lies against Trump
Russiagate has fallen apart, with special counsel John Durham exposing the notorious Steele Dossier as a collection of lies and made-up stories. But you wouldn’t know it by reading most of the media, which have mostly ignored the story.
More importantly, they haven’t faced up to their own part in pushing this witch hunt. Relying on one anonymous source — ex-British spy Christopher Steele — they spun a supposed conspiracy between Donald Trump and Russia. But they never revealed the fact that Steele was being paid by Hillary Clinton’s campaign for opposition research, and they never examined Steele’s sources, who were unreliable or nonexistent.
Here’s how the media amplified Steele’s baseless claims to create hysteria. None of these stories have been updated, no corrections have been made.
The players…
What Redistricting Looks Like In Every State
An updating tracker of proposed congressional maps — and whether they might benefit Democrats or Republicans in the 2022 midterms and beyond.
Ten states have now finalized their redrawn congressional maps for the 2020s — most recently Iowa, Alabama and North Carolina (though the latter two will face lawsuits alleging they are racial gerrymanders).
At this point, Democrats have gained five seats nationally from the redistricting process, Republicans have gained four, and the number of competitive seats has dropped by five. But while it appears as though Democrats have had the upper hand in redistricting so far, a lot of that advantage is thanks to Texas Republicans giving Democratic incumbents safer districts in exchange for shoring up their own seats. Republicans also control the redrawing of many more districts than Democrats, so that Democratic net gain isn’t likely to last long. We’ve already seen, for instance, Republicans in North Carolina and Ohio pass or propose maps in recent days that are highly biased toward the GOP according to various fairness metrics.
That said, there are still some states left for Democrats to potentially redistrict to their advantage, such as Illinois. The legislature there has already passed a proposed congressional map that is heavily biased toward Democrats, creating 13 blue seats, three red seats and just one competitive seat; all that’s left for it to become law is the governor’s signature.
How Are The “Culture Wars” Being Covered On Television News?
How is the phrase “culture war(s)” being covered on television news? The timeline below shows total mentions of the phrase across CNN, MSNBC and Fox News over the past decade, showing that mentions begin to rise after Donald Trump’s election, but surge during the July 2020 George Floyd protests, falling rapidly after, before peaking again in March-April 2021…
…Looking at the words mentioned most commonly alongside mentions of the “culture wars,” prominent terms include “President,” “Trump” and “Republican,” reflecting the former president’s centrality in the discussion around culture wars.
Commonsense Solidarity: How a Working-Class Coalition Can Be Built, and Maintained
An experimental study, the first of its kind, from Jacobin, YouGov, and the Center for Working-Class Politics offers a new and powerful perspective on working-class political views.
Earlier this year, Jacobin collaborated with YouGov to survey working-class voting behavior in the United States. The work was done in conjunction with the newly formed Center for Working-Class Politics.
In the last five years, a rejuvenated progressive left has established itself as a potent force in American politics. Inspired by Senator Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential run, progressive Democratic challengers have mobilized donors and volunteers around a boldly egalitarian economic platform, winning an impressive array of local, state, and congressional races. The relative electoral success of this new left is one of the major political stories of our moment.
And yet, for the most part, these progressive triumphs have been concentrated in well-educated, relatively high-income, and heavily Democratic districts. Even when progressives have won primaries in working-class areas, they have generally done so without increasing total turnout or winning over new working-class voters. And in races outside the friendly terrain of the blue-state metropolis, the same progressive candidates have largely struggled. Overall, progressives have not yet made good on one key promise of their campaigns: to transform and expand the electorate itself.
This poses a major challenge to any hope for a national political realignment on progressive terms. Recent events suggest that left-wing candidates may continue to replace moderate Democrats in demographically favorable urban districts, which could lead to more progressive policies at the municipal or state level. But the national picture is less promising. There are simply not enough districts of this kind to win control of the US House of Representatives, never mind the Senate. For the kind of majority necessary to pass Medicare for All or any of the other big-ticket items on the social democratic agenda, progressive candidates will need to win in a far wider range of places. Until they do, their political leverage will remain sharply limited at the local, state, and national levels.
The Political Typology: In polarized era, deep divisions persist within coalitions of both Democrats and Republicans
Even in a polarized era, deep divisions in both partisan coalitions.
Partisan polarization remains the dominant, seemingly unalterable condition of American politics. Republicans and Democrats agree on very little – and when they do, it often is in the shared belief that they have little in common.
Yet the gulf that separates Republicans and Democrats sometimes obscures the divisions and diversity of views that exist within both partisan coalitions – and the fact that many Americans do not fit easily into either one.
Republicans are divided on some principles long associated with the GOP: an affinity for businesses and corporations, support for low taxes and opposition to abortion. Democrats face substantial internal differences as well – some that are long-standing, such as on the importance of religion in society, others more recent. For example, while Democrats widely share the goal of combating racial inequality in the United States, they differ on whether systemic change is required to achieve that goal.
These intraparty disagreements present multiple challenges for both parties: They complicate the already difficult task of governing in a divided nation. In addition, to succeed politically, the parties must maintain the loyalty of highly politically engaged, more ideological voters, while also attracting support among less engaged voters – many of them younger – with weaker partisan ties.
Pew Research Center’s new political typology provides a road map to today’s fractured political landscape. It segments the public into nine distinct groups, based on an analysis of their attitudes and values. The study is primarily based on a survey of 10,221 adults conducted July 8-18, 2021; it also draws from several additional interviews with these respondents conducted since January 2020.
This is the Center’s eighth political typology since 1987, but it differs from earlier such studies in several important ways. It is the first typology conducted on Pew Research Center’s nationally representative American Trends Panel, which provides the benefit of a large sample size and the ability to include a wealth of other political data for the analysis, including the Center’s validated voter study.
How the Progressive Left spins Losing Elections?!?
Election guru Rachel Bitecofer: Democrats face “10-alarm fire” after Virginia debacle
Democrats could still win midterms and stop Trump’s coup, says election forecaster — if they actually had a plan.
L ast week’s victory by Republican Glenn Youngkin in the Virginia gubernatorial race offered a likely preview of the 2022 midterms, in which the Republican Party will use the bogeyman of “critical race theory” to mobilize white voters anxious about demographic change and overly eager to protect their children (or other people’s) from the truths of American history. Former governor Terry McAuliffe was unable to muster anything close to an adequate defense against these racist moral-panic attacks.
The obligatory political postmortems and “explainers” that followed McAuliffe’s defeat tell a tale of dueling agendas. Predictably, Democratic “moderates” are blaming “progressives” and “liberals” for being too “woke,” which supposedly translates into “suburban voters” — largely a euphemism for easily frightened white people — flocking to Youngkin and the Republican Party.
Predictably, the more liberal and progressive wing of the Democratic Party and the media class have come to the opposite conclusion, arguing that McAuliffe’s inability to address questions of race and justice in any substantive way — and specifically his inability to rebut the campaign of lies and propaganda around public education and racism — demobilized Black voters in particular, a sure path to defeat.
