Free Republic

Democrats need to outperform Hillary Clinton to take back the House. Ossoff did worse than her. Democrats faced yet another disappointment in Tuesday’s special elections, as Jon Ossoff, their candidate in the runoff for Georgia’s 6th congressional district, fell short and Republican Karen Handel came out on top. Meanwhile, in the much lower-profile race for another open House seat in South Carolina’s 5th district, Democrat Archie Parnell came far closer to winning than expected in a heavily Republican territory. In the end, he lost to GOP nominee Ralph Norman. The results make Democrats 0-for-4 in the House districts vacated by...

Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City, says Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election to President Trump because "she never got a real message out, whereas Donald had us saying ‘Make America Great Again.'" "Hilary never got a real message out," said Bloomberg, who considered running for president as an independent, in an interview Tuesday night with CNN's Anderson Cooper. "It was don't vote for that guy and the gender issue. Whereas Donald had us saying ‘Make America Great Again,'" said Bloomberg in an interview Tuesday night with CNN's Anderson Cooper. "I don't know what again means. But...

Alex Green: Why your kids hate capitalism THE CRUX - stansberryresearch.com From Alexander Green, Chief Investment Strategist, The Oxford Club: Equity investors rarely stop to think about it, but the stock market is the essence of capitalism: the private ownership of the means of production. With very little money and a quick phone call – or a click of the mouse – you can own a fractional interest in any of thousands of the nation’s most profitable businesses. The system is fair too. You will pay (and receive) no more or less for your shares than the wealthy do. And thanks...

Republican Ralph Norman has won South Carolina’s special House election to replace Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney in Congress. Norman defeated Democrat Archie Parnell in a closer than expected race for South Carolina’s 5th Distrct on Tuesday night. Norman had 52 percent of the vote to Parnell’s 48 percent when the Associated Press called the race with 89 percent of precincts reporting. The DCCC’s money was aimed at turning out black voters, and much of the money went towards ads on African-American radio and canvassing in heavily black parts of the district. Other national Democrats, many with...

A Democrat-controlled House would overturn the election and impeach Trump. Throughout history, grandiose visions of world-altering consequences have motivated political assassins. Gavril Princip’s June 1914 rendezvous with Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo is a horrifying example. Despite the historical track record, until James T. Hodgkinson’s June 2017 criminal assault on a Virginia baseball diamond, a chilling congressional coup d’état scenario which alters history in these United States would be little more than an edgy plot-line in a paperback thriller. In the Hollywood movie version there is a one hundred percent certainty right wing activists would be the monsters who attempted the...

Lack of jobs is the deepest concern facing communities in rural America, according to a poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation. President Trump carried rural areas in 2016, and the foundation wanted to understand the experiences and political views of individuals in these areas. For this study, researchers polled voters in Ashtabula County in Ohio. Fifty-four percent said they approve of Trump’s handling of his job compared with 40 percent who said they disapproved. Fifty-one percent of rural voters were confident that Trump's policies would create jobs, 57 percent said they believed his policies would keep the country safe from...

If Donald Trump were impeached, as some Democrats would like, Mike Pence “would be worse” for domestic policy than the current president, U.S. Sen. Al Franken told International Business Times. But the vice president would be less dangerous on foreign policy, said Franken. Franken made the comments in an interview with IBT during a stop on his book tour in Denver. During the wide-ranging discussion, the Minnesota Democrat said his party could use the so-called “nuclear” option to try to block the Trump administration’s health care bill. On a contentious environmental issue, Franken parted ways with many progessive Democrats in...

Party officials fear the potentially demoralizing effect of a defeat. SANDY SPRINGS, Ga. — Democrats are closer than they ever could have imagined to winning a House seat in the Republican suburbs of Atlanta, and dealing a resounding blow to Donald Trump. But they’re also gripped by anxiety about what happens if they fall short Tuesday. A loss in Georgia’s special election here could leave the party demoralized, with little to show for all the furious organizing, fundraising and spending in a handful of congressional special elections in the early months of the Trump administration. As a result, Democrats are...

Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian influence on the 2016 presidential election presents a preview of Hillary Clinton's 2020 presidential campaign, suggests Ira Stoll. Blaming the outcome of the election on illegal Russian interference takes the blame off Clinton for losing. Clinton can already point out that she won the popular vote in 2016. If her electoral vote loss was the result of foreign interference—rather than, say, a poorly managed campaign, or a candidate who couldn't connect with out-of-work coal miners, or the wrong substantive message—then perhaps a 2020 replay, without foreign interference, might yield a different outcome, some will suggest....

“The foolish and wicked practice of profane cursing and swearing,” declared George Washington, “is a vice so mean and low that every person of sense and character detests and despises it.” Theodore Roosevelt concurred: “Profanity is the parlance of the fool. Why curse when there is such a magnificent language with which to discourse?” The answer is that profanity is a useful substitute for discourse when one is losing a debate and needs to trump reason with passionate intensity in order to win. That is what is happening in the current degraded state of our national political conversation. I’m not...

I think this is simple, rather than simplistic: 1.The people who are for Donald Trump, are for him. And almost nothing he can say or do, or that can be said or revealed about him, will undercut that support. The things that ordinarily would be considered “shocking” or “disqualifying” haven’t eroded belief among his base, and probably won’t. 2.But there are not enough of these people to get 270 electoral votes for Trump. There were enough to give him an initial plurality in a huge GOP field, and to keep him coming out ahead as his GOP rivals foolishly attacked...

A new poll released by WSB-TV on Friday night showed Democrat Jon Ossoff’s lead over Karen Handel Shrink slightly in the special election to fill an open U.S. House seat in Georgia. Ossoff led Handel by 1.7 points, 49.7-48, among likely voters in the poll conducted by Landmark Communications. In the last WSB-TV/Landmark poll released last week, Ossoff led Handel by 2.5 points. The poll released on Friday surveyed 800 likely voters on June 15 with a margin of error plus or minus 3.46 percentage points.

As the Reverend William Barber appeared as a guest on Saturday's AM Joy on MSNBC to give his religion-based views on current events, host Joy Reid at one point seemed to worry about not being able to talk more about Republican Rep. Steve Scalise's conservative views and his history on "race," as she recalled the discredited story that the congressman spoke to a white nationalist event 15 years ago. The Reverend Barber declared that he hopes that Scalise stops being "homophobic," and that Republicans -- presumably including Scalise -- stop "preying" on "the poor and on minorities and the sick,"...

MARIETTA, Ga. | Chris Hummel got an unexpected Father’s Day surprise Sunday when Bikers for Trump — sporting tattoos galore, black vests and a massive flag with the group’s insignia — came to his doorstep in an Atlanta suburb and politely encouraged him to support Karen Handel in the high-profile runoff for Georgia’s empty seat in Congress. Mr. Hummel and his wife, Karen, assured Chris Cox, founder of Bikers for Trump, and the six men and women who were going door to door with him that they had voted early for Mrs. Handel over Democrat Jon Ossoff.....

<p>Interesting discussion including a screenshot from 538 showing Trump 53% favorable, 41% unfavorable, and a new Reuters with a D+12 sample and Trump 51.9% favorable to 42% unfavorable.</p> <p>This is right in line with Rasmussen's 50%.</p> <p>But, as I maintain, if you exclude CA and NY, and look at 10-15 "battleground" states including FL and AZ, GOP voter registrations are marching upwards so D+12 is likely off by 13!!!</p>

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has a warning for President Trump: “Donald, you ain’t seen nasty yet.” Warren read aloud from her new book “This Fight is Our Fight: The Battle to Save America’s Middle Class” and took questions at a town hall event in New York Friday, HuffPost reported. Warren blasted Trump for his economic policies, saying they are hurting the middle-class Americans who voted for him. “What Donald Trump and the Republican majority in the House and the Senate want to do to us, is they want to deliver the knockout blow to the middle class,” she said. She...

Suppose most Americans were to conclude that President Trump is unfit for office. How long would it take to remove him? If President Nixon’s example provides any guidance, the answer is: a long time—if ever.(GRAPH-AT-LINK) Consider the first chart, which shows Nixon’s approval ratings throughout his truncated second term, and also Trump’s approval ratings so far. (All of the approval numbers cited here are from Gallup’s Presidential Job Approval Center.) Nixon’s second-term approval started strong, in the high sixties, but plummeted as Watergate revelations emerged. By the time the Senate Watergate hearings began, in May of 1973, his ratings were...

Pollsters had major trouble spotting the surge of support for Corey Stewart in Virginia’s Republican governor’s primary this week, suggesting they still can’t figure out how to successfully survey Trump supporters. Mr. Stewart, chairman of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors and onetime Trump campaign chairman in Virginia, ran as the Trump figure in the race, pursuing an anti-establishment message that centered around a tough approach to illegal immigration. Polling — which was strikingly infrequent — showed Mr. Stewart failing to crack 20 percent support, trailing Ed Gillespie, the putative front-runner, by as much as 27 percent. In the...

To talk about the 2018 elections is to hear of a possible Donald Trump backlash carrying Democrats to a House of Representatives majority. While Democrats hope that blue wave washes over Republican districts in Orange County, it’s not yet forecast to reach the Inland Empire, even though the traditionally Republican region has turned purple. “In a remote scenario, we’d have to be talking about a tsunami,” said David Wasserman of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, which studies and handicaps congressional races. With Trump’s popularity at record lows and the party outside the White House typically gaining seats in mid-term elections,...

THEY GOT NOTHIN’ The recent testimonies of James Comey and Jeff Sessions would appear to have put to rest much of the suspicions of “collusion” and “obstruction of justice” that have been passionately pursued by the leftards in the Congress, the Lame Stream Media, Facebook, etc. In the nine months they have been investigating these issues, I have no doubt that, in their desperate anti-Trump zeal, they have frantically looked under every rock on this planet and have found absolutely nothing!! Considering the daily postings of fake, fictitious and bald-faced mendacious “news” items based on leaked information from anonymous (or...