Free Republic

Put aside all the daily campaign controversies, and the 2016 election will hinge on one thing: Will the coalition of voters who twice showed up in large numbers to elect President Obama turn out to vote for Hillary Clinton, the assumed Democratic nominee? Horse race polls, favorability ratings, those will all fluctuate many times between now and next November. But if Clinton can't find a way to engage unmarried women, millennials and minority groups — it's going to be over for her. That's why this Democratic poll released on Monday, taken by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research on behalf of...

Congressman Seth Moulton, D-MA, has added his voice to the 2016 presidential race, endorsing former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. "Everyone in the race has strengths and weaknesses, and I don't agree with any of them on every issue," Moulton wrote in a letter to supporters Sunday. "But none of those differences are big enough or deep enough to risk losing the presidency to the likes of Donald Trump or Ted Cruz. "It comes down to this: who will fight hardest for working people, defend and expand the middle class, and protect our freedoms?" Moulton wrote. "The answer, for me,...

It all goes downhill after 30 — at least when it comes to happiness. “Adults over 30 are less happy than their predecessors,” concludes a study published online Thursday in the journal Social Psychology and Personality Science, which examined happiness data from more than 50,000 adults, gleaned from the General Social Survey, carried out by NORC at the University of Chicago, a nonpartisan, independent research organization, which has collected information about American adults since 1972. From 2010 to 2014, adults over 30 had an average happiness score of just 2.18, compared with 2.24 a decade ago. That’s significant considering happiness...

Congressional Democrats led by Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are quietly working to repeal the "Cadillac tax," a 40 percent excise on certain expensive health-insurance policies enacted as part of the so-called Affordable Care Act, which grows less affordable by the minute. The Cadillac tax was never going to be long-lived. It was a lie from the beginning, a part of the great fiction that allowed Democrats to claim that Barack Obama's signature health-insurance initiative would add "not one dime" to the deficit, as the president repeatedly insisted. But the tax was and is bitterly opposed by important Democratic constituencies:...

And Republicans across the country should take note. According to all the polls leading up to last Tuesday’s gubernatorial election in Kentucky, Republican businessman Matt Bevin wasn’t supposed to have a chance. This was the same Matt Bevin who had launched a lamentably unsuccessful primary campaign last year against Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and was treated by much of the press in the state (OK, technically the commonwealth) as a loose cannon who couldn’t be taken seriously. But Mr. Bevin pounded away at ObamaCare. And if you’re wondering why, since that’s ostensibly a national issue, you might recall that...

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-11-04/democrats-lost-the-war-for-staying-power

Washington (AFP) - The Internet was supposed to facilitate better exchange between the public and news media. But vile and hateful comments changed all that. In the face of rising vitriol -- attacks, bigotry and general nastiness -- news organizations are increasingly throwing in the towel on online comments. Last month, Vice Media's Motherboard news site turned off reader comments, saying "the scorched earth nature of comments sections just stifles real conversation." It instead began taking "letters to the editor" to be screened by staff. Vox Media's online news site The Verge said in July it was "turning off comments...

For the most part, Republicans trounced Democrats in state and local races across the country. It was a great night for the GOP, especially Matt Bevin's surprise win in Kentucky. Most had written him off in the weeks prior to Election Day, citing the inability for both him and his Democratic opponent, Attorney General Jack Conway, from getting any sort of traction with the electorate. In the end, Bevin beat Conway by almost ten points. The Republican State Leadership Committee, who serves at the frontlines of state and local races, noted their massive victory during their conference call yesterday....

ABC NEWS Updated 15 mins ago Louisiana State Police charged two law enforcement officers in the shooting death of a 6-year-old boy and the wounding of his father. Norris Greenhouse Jr., 23, and Derrick Stafford, 32, were charged with second-degree murder and attempted second-degree murder in the shooting in the city of Marksville on Tuesday, Col. Mike Edmonson said during a news conference late Friday. Jeremy Mardis was killed and his father, Christopher Few, was left in critical condition. The shooting happened when the two city marshals allegedly opened fire on a vehicle following a pursuit, said Edmonson.

Startling election losses on Tuesday have given new urgency to top Democrats in Washington planning to coordinate campaign resources, according to people involved in behind-the-scenes conversations. The discussions, which involve members of Congress, the Democratic National Committee, and party organs like the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, center on how to better coordinate political planning ahead of next year’s elections, when Democrats hope to climb out of a deep hole created by midterm and off-year elections. At the same time, interviews with top party officials from across the country and across the ideological spectrum reveal...

The Democratic presidential contenders opened a televised forum in the early voting state of South Carolina Friday night with an attack on front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton, who's seen her numbers rise after a summer slump. [...] The forum marked the start of a weekend of wooing African-American voters in South Carolina. Clinton used the campaign swing to expand on her criminal justice policy, rolling out a series of new proposals that would reduce mandatory minimum sentencing for nonviolent drug offenders, grant greater discretion to judges and retroactively eliminate the five-year minimum sentence for possession of crack cocaine. ...

Democrats and their anti-gun allies sure know how to sell firearms. Barack Obama probably should get an award. For the sixth month in a row, we've seen record gun sales (via Stephen Gutowski/Free Beacon): The Federal Bureau of Investigation processed a record number of background checks in the month of October, indicating that gun sales were at an all time high for the sixth month in a row.The FBI's National Instant Background Check System processed 1,976,759 firearms related checks in October. That is a 373,290 increase in checks over last year and a new record for the month. It...

Today, three Iowa politicians signed a pledge calling for “a World War II-scale mobilization” to fight climate change. Des Moines Mayor Frank Cownie, State Rep. Dan Kelley, and State Senator Rob Hogg, a leading candidate for US Senate, all Democrats, signed a document calling on the US government to reduce emissions 100 percent by 2025 by “enlisting” tens of millions of Americans to work on clean energy projects—creating full employment in the process. It’s likely the most ambitious pledge to fight climate change put forward this election cycle, even if right now, it's a symbolic gesture aimed at drawing attention...

Friday, November 06, 2015 Latino anchor babies spew vulgarities at Trump in offensive video ad WARNING: Vulgarities throughout ad - unfiltered The pro-immigrant group "Deport Racism" is behind a vulgar new video with children calling Trump a "racist d#ick" "mother f###er" and Trump supporters "racist suckers." When asked his thoughts about this video Cuban-rooted presidential candidate Marco Rubio said the video was "Disgusting," and asked "What kind of parents allows their kids to do this?" Fox News' Geraldo Rivera, an immigration advocate, said the video border along the line of child abuse.

In November 2008, California voters narrowly approved Proposition 1A, which provided $9.95 billion in government money for a statewide bullet-train network. The initiative passed, even though the California High-Speed Rail Authority had been legally required to release a detailed, updated business plan by October 1 of that year, so that voters would have time to learn exactly how the state planned to finance what was then billed as a $43 billion project—and no updated plan was in view. Rail officials failed even to release a preliminary report before the election, claiming that state legislators’ long delay in passing the fiscal...

In the first Democratic primary debate, each candidate was asked to name an enemy they were proud to have made during their political careers. Hillary Clinton, the current frontrunner, named roughly half the country as her "enemy" when she replied "[...] probably the Republicans." Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, who is currently polling within the margin of error in nearly every national poll, thinks that Clinton's answer to that question is a sign that she is far too partisan and is unwilling to work with others on Capitol Hill. In a new piece published today on Yahoo! News, O'Malley tries...

Outsiders like to think of San Francisco as a hotbed of contentious activism. Locals have tended to regard City Hall as the arena where Democrats and progressive Democrats mix it up. With Tuesday's election, you can say goodbye to any notion of anarchy. All bow to the victorious political machine. City Hall is all-Democrat all the time -- yet conservative in its own fashion: the status quo is king. Hang on, esteemed reader, because City Hall relationships read like a soap opera digest.Mayor Ed Lee, who was re-elected, was handpicked by his predecessor Gavin Newsom in 2011. Lee, then city...

On Tuesday, at the voting booth, America took a hard turn in the Republican direction. In race after race and state after state, the big winners at the ballot box were Republican candidates and Republican principles. I know why. It’s because the Democrat brand sucks. It’s because Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and any number of their hangers on have turned their party into something hostile to the beliefs and lives of an increasing number of Americans. Let me give you some examples. The Democrat Party is the party of people who hate the cops. If you think cops are...

Last night's off-year elections produced a number of noteworthy outcomes, none larger than Republican Matt Bevin's upset victory in Kentucky's gubernatorial race. Bevin ran as a hard-charging outsider conservative, warts and all. Public polls gave his opponent, Democrat Jack Conway, a modest but stable lead throughout the race's home stretch, averaging out to a three-point Conway advantage in a three-way contest. They were off by double digits. Bevin won handily:DailyKos tweet at link ... Bevin, boosted by a massive investment from national Republicans and help from his former nemisis Mitch McConnell, nationalized the race, tying Conway to President Obama at...

E.C. councilman in jail facing murder charge wins second term 18 hours ago • Elvia Malagon elvia.malagon@nwi.com, (219) 662-5331 EAST CHICAGO | East Chicago 3rd District Councilman Robert "Coop" Battle spent Election Day in the Lake County Jail pending a murder charge. He's accused of shooting to death on Oct. 12 Reimundo Camarillo Jr., in the 4200 block of Euclid Avenue in East Chicago, according to court records. He also faces a federal drug charge stemming from a traffic stop in Porter County where police found 73.22 grams of marijuana and $100,700 in cash. Despite his pending legal battles that...