Politics Can Trump Deliver? The once and future president delivered a strong electoral victory, but he needs to fulfill his mandate to cement his legacy. President-elect Donald Trump won an impressive victory, but it is important to put it in the context of the political polarization of the past quarter-century. The entire premise of Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign, and President Joe Biden’s before that, was that it was impossible for Trump to win a national plurality.  Yet Trump did win a plurality of the national popular vote, without any third-party candidate drawing more than 0.5 percent. Whenever enough millennia have passed for California to be finished counting votes, he will probably be a tick above or below 50 percent. Still, nobody would have confused it for a landslide before 2000, when presidential elections routinely became close-run affairs. Even Barack Obama’s win in 2008 was closer to Jimmy Carter’s in 1976 than LBJ’s in 1964. Obama did just well enough to manage to survive slippage in his support four years later and win a second term. Obama and George W. Bush were both reelected with roughly 51 percent of the popular vote. Biden won in 2020 with a similar vote share. In all three cases, pundits behaved as if the winning candidate had ushered in a permanent national majority for their party. But their wins were far more modest than the Electoral College, God bless it, often made them appear. In each case, they bled support and their party lost the following presidential election. Trump’s party is no less vulnerable to this fate. He begins his second term already underwater in favorability ratings, though in better shape than he was in most of his previous stint in the White House. It isn’t entirely clear how much of Trump’s support is transferable to other Republicans and even this year he had limited success in dragging GOP Senate candidates across the finish line, especially in the battleground states. In January, Republicans will hold 53 Senate seats and have a House majority that is smaller percentage-wise than that. The window of opportunity will be brief. As in 2017, Trump will enter office with many people in both parties somewhat stunned by his electoral success, though this time it is more the breadth of his victory than the fact of it that was the big surprise. But soon it will be the 2026 midterm elections and then shortly after that the 2028 presidential campaign—and the race to succeed Trump—will begin in earnest.  Trump has a mandate for three things: lower prices, securing the border, and avoiding wars. His base and rank-and-file Republicans surely want other things, much of it to the good, but his success or failure will largely depend on these three things, none of them entirely under his control. Most of these things were realities in the first Trump term, especially on the border front. There was still room for improvement on the forever wars and he was not wholly blameless for inflationary pandemic spending, though Biden was the one who disastrously kept pushing stimulus after the lockdowns were mostly over and people were returning to work. The border looks like it will once again be the area where Trump enjoys his greatest opportunity for success. He will at least abandon the Biden-Harris policies that were the real root causes of the crisis and reinstate some of his own that worked four years ago. At first glance, he is mostly putting the right people in place to implement these policies. That’s less clear on foreign policy, where there have already been dust-ups in MAGA world over personnel. Trump wants some telegenic tough guys on his national security team, but will they be able to deliver no wars? The once and future president is not as committed a noninterventionist as some of his strongest supporters, but it remains a key campaign promise. Trump is also going to attempt a more aggressive approach to tariffs than in his first term, this time amid the aftershocks of inflation running at a 41-year high. Even if he is successful at reshoring American jobs, which is the point of the tariff policy, this election does not make it a foregone conclusion that voters in the Rust Belt and elsewhere will necessarily prioritize jobs over low prices.  None of this is to say that Trump can’t complete the working-class realignment of the GOP and hand things over to J.D. Vance in excellent shape. But it’s going to take a decent amount of work, and Trump will need to prove once again in big spots that he is more pragmatic than ideological.  The post Can Trump Deliver? appeared first on The American Conservative.

Politics Cornyn Will Undermine the Trump Agenda The Texan is a living fossil of the Bush era. Credit: image via Shutterstock One week ago, Donald Trump and J.D. Vance orchestrated one of the greatest comebacks in American politics, solidifying their Jacksonian moment in national history. But just as Andrew Jackson’s agenda faced relentless establishment resistance, Republicans in Congress who doubted this moment would come to fruition are already working to undermine its implications. The Senate GOP’s mantra seems to be: “The American people have made their decision—now let them enforce it.” The chief Republican reactionary is undoubtedly Texas’s senior senator, John Cornyn. Cornyn, 72, has been a fixture in Texas politics since 1985, when he was appointed district judge in Bexar County (San Antonio). Elected to the Texas Supreme Court in 1990 and then as Texas attorney general in 1998, Cornyn rose to the U.S. Senate in 2002 as a George W. Bush ally. Since then, he has been reelected to the Senate three more times without controversy. Now Cornyn has launched his seventh campaign—this time to replace Mitch McConnell as leader of the Republican Senate Conference and Chuck Schumer as Senate majority leader. Big John is a strong contender. An old-school Republican straight from the now largely defunct Bush wing of the Texas GOP, he represents an obvious choice if the Senate Republican Conference seeks a one-for-one replacement for McConnell. In both style and policy, Cornyn and McConnell are nearly indistinguishable; the Texan’s ascent to the leadership position would be likely to undermine the Trump-Vance mandate for populist-nationalist reform. Central to the Trump-Vance agenda is reshaping America’s foreign policy. Exhausted by decades of fruitless wars, the American people have tasked the Trump administration with reducing their overseas commitments, from Ukraine to the Middle East. While much of this can be addressed through the presidency’s bully pulpit, reshaping the Pentagon and national security agencies along realist lines will require congressional cooperation. Here, Cornyn could prove a significant obstacle. A staunch neoconservative, Cornyn has consistently supported American military interventions across the globe, including those in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and Ukraine, among others. Cornyn’s Bush-era belligerence has persisted, making him one of the Senate’s most ardent backers of Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky. Cornyn co-authored the Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act of 2022, enabling nearly $90 billion in military, economic, and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, despite longstanding concerns about corruption and misuse of funds. He also introduced the Stop Russian GOLD Act, applying secondary sanctions on entities transacting with or transporting Russian central bank gold. Cornyn has dismissed concerns over NATO expansion’s role in escalating tensions, asserting, “The United States has played no part in creating this crisis, but we have a responsibility to support the Ukrainian people as they fight to defend their sovereignty.” Efforts by the Trump administration to negotiate with Russian leadership are almost certain to face resistance—if not outright sabotage—from a Cornyn-led Senate. Reeling from decades of neoliberal economic policies, working-class voters have issued a mandate for reshoring American manufacturing and reshaping trade agreements. Trump’s commitment to protectionism remains steadfast; in Trumpian lingo, “The word tariff… is a beautiful word.” Yet Cornyn has consistently opposed these efforts. A lifelong free-trader, Cornyn supported agreements as far back as the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) in 2005. He criticized Trump’s first-term tariffs on Mexican imports as akin to “holding a gun to our own heads” and has continued to voice opposition to Trump’s trade policies, labeling them “problematic” as recently as this August. Cornyn’s trade rhetoric, of course, provided much-needed ammunition to the Harris-Walz campaign during a hotly contested general election.  While Trump holds considerable unilateral authority over trade policy, major agreements—such as Trump’s USMCA—require Senate approval to become permanent and enduring. Cornyn’s ideological commitments make it clear he would frustrate Trump’s trade agenda at every turn. Paramount in Trump’s domestic agenda is controlling the unprecedented trafficking crisis at the southern border. Trump has pledged to carry out the largest deportation operation in American history and “wage war” on cartels. Cornyn, however, has a mixed record on immigration. While he has introduced border security bills and occasionally opposed amnesty, he has also supported targeted amnesty measures and criticized Trump’s zero-tolerance policies. In 2016, Cornyn trashed Trump’s proposal to build a border wall as “naive.” During the migrant surges of 2021, he supported the DREAM Act, working with a coalition of business interests reliant on trafficked labor.  The conservative Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) awarded Cornyn just a 71 percent legislative rating for the 118th Congress, citing his votes against common-sense border reforms amid Texas’s border crisis. By contrast, his junior senator, Ted Cruz, earned a perfect 100 percent.  Cornyn’s opposition to the Republican Party’s new electoral mandate has prompted major Texas GOP groups to oppose his leadership bid. The Tarrant County Republican Party—representing the largest Republican county in America—joined the Dallas County GOP in passing resolutions rejecting Cornyn’s candidacy. Their statement reads: Whereas, John Cornyn, who repeatedly has stood against Republicans and sided with the Democrats pushing omnibus bills that do not benefit Americans, is being considered as a top contender for this role. BE IT RESOLVED that Tarrant County Republican Party rejects John Cornyn as a possible Majority Leader of the United States Senate and encourages Republican U.S. Senators to elect a majority leader that represents President Trump and the America First Agenda, such as Rick Scott or John Kennedy. Whether the Republican Senate Conference will align with these Texas counties remains to be seen. The Conference is set to convene and vote by secret ballot for the next generation of GOP Senate leadership on Wednesday. Will the Senate heed the American people’s emphatic call for reform, or will it double down on a dying consensus? The fate of Cornyn’s leadership bid will provide the answer. The post Cornyn Will Undermine the Trump Agenda appeared first on The American Conservative.

How Leaders Use MASS PSYCHOSIS to Control You And Millions. Descent Into Madness - Delusions By Design - 214,557 views Oct. 30, 2024 MR. BRAIN - In this video, we dive into the unsettling concept of mass psychosis—a phenomenon where entire societies lose their grip on reality, swept up by collective fear, delusion, and manipulation. From historical witch hunts to the rise of totalitarianism, we examine how mass psychosis has led ordinary people to embrace irrational beliefs, commit unthinkable acts, and submit to powerful forces. - Through insights from psychologists like Carl Jung and experts on the psychology of totalitarianism, discover the mechanisms that trigger this disturbing shift and what it means for our modern world. - Enjoyed the video? Show your support with a Super Thanks, and help us create even more valuable content for you! - FAIR USE FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES Mirrored From: https://www.youtube.com/@mrbrain122

The sweet sounds of California. The post “Trying to imitate”: The singer Tom Petty thought had the voice of an angel first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

A great band. The post Mother’s Finest: The opening act every headliner hated first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

⚠️ Order your shirts here: https://www.markdice.com ? Order my new book from Amazon here: https://amzn.to/40vEC9U ⚡️ Join my exclusive Locals community here: https://markdice.locals.com/support ? Sponsor me through Patreon here: https://Patreon.com/MarkDice Order my book "Hollywood Propaganda: How TV, Movies, and Music Shape Our Culture" from Amazon: https://amzn.to/30xPFl5 or download the e-book from Kindle, iBooks, Google Play, or Nook. ? Order my book, "The True Story of Fake News" ➡️ https://amzn.to/2Zb1Vps ? Order my book "The Liberal Media Industrial Complex" here: https://amzn.to/2X5oGKx Mark Dice is an independent media analyst and bestselling author of "Hollywood Propaganda: How TV, Movies, and Music Shape Our Culture.” He has a bachelor's degree in Communication from California State University and was the first conservative YouTuber to reach 1 million subscribers (in 2017). He has been featured on Fox News, Newsmax, the History Channel, E! Entertainment, the Drudge Report, and news outlets around the world. This video description and the pinned comment contains Amazon and/or other affiliate links, which means if you click them and purchase the product(s), Mark will receive a small commission. Copyright © 2024 by Mark Dice. All Rights Reserved.

The Harris campaign represented progressive governance in microcosm. Take the million dollars it spent on Oprah Winfrey’s production company to stage a town hall–style event. Democrats pried $15, $25, and $50 donations from the Social Security checks of seniors frightened into believing Adolf Hitler soon resurrected in the likeness of the former owner of the New Jersey Generals so that they could make one of the wealthiest women in America wealthier. The money left the payers poorer and Stedman with a broader smile upon his face. The lesson? Outcomes rarely match intentions. The government programs they push inevitably end up working out this way, too. Take aid to higher education. The more the government gives in student aid, the more colleges and universities can charge. The more the market can bear, the more schools charge, the more schools charge, the greater the demand for aid, and so on. Subsidies to healthcare unleash similar, unhealthy results. Failure justifies greater government funding. The YouTube ads from Harris peddled desperation — unspeakable outcomes — lest you tithe to them. Many did. None feel gratified by the result. And poor results this go-around do not weaken but perversely strengthen the arguments for giving more next time. The lesson? The greater the failure a liberal scheme, the greater the demand for money to make it work. Despite spending more than any political campaign in any country in history, the Democrats failed to reach their objective. They lost. In terms of the Electoral College, which, given that it and not the popular vote elects presidents, Donald Trump won comfortably. Yet, the Harris campaign spent more than double what the Trump campaign spent. Cash, whether in politics or public policy, does not solve problems. This does not necessarily mean, as the Notorious B.I.G. postulated, “mo money, mo problems.” It does mean welfare money cannot replace a father, high per-pupil expenditures rarely correlates with high test scores, the bigger the government the bigger the corruption — and a campaign drowning in money might simply mean wealthier consultants. The lesson? Throwing money at a problem never on its own solves it. Despite raising and spending more than $1 billion, and well-wisher auxiliary groups additionally raising and spending more than half that on Harris’s behalf, the campaign reportedly still solicits donations in the hopes of erasing a $20 million debt. Yes, team blue ended up in the red. Leftists love other people’s money, and never spend it as responsibly — whether it comes from compulsory taxation or a voluntary contribution — as they do when faced with the dilemma of whether to reach into their wallet to tip the hotel maid (spoiler alert: they don’t). The same Democrats who blew billions of dollars on failed campaigns that flipped the Senate, kept the House in Republican hands, and reelected, after four years in the wilderness, Donald Trump, wanted authority over trillions in tax dollars. Does anyone wonder why our national debt approaches $35 trillion given the way politicos steward donations? The lesson? Do not entrust money to incontinent people who use Oliver Twist’s plaintive plea — “I want some more” — as a permanent demand. Democrats told Americans that if they did not vote for them, democracy would end, that the Republican nominee resembled Hitler, that racism and misogyny motivated Republicans, and that only their victory stood in the way of a fascist America. These same hate-filled scare tactics pass for an argument when trying to coax votes from the other side on legislation. The name-calling explains both the poor performance at the polls and the failure to win over votes on bills from the people described as championing a neo-Jim Crow and embracing fascism. The lesson? Whether looking for votes on Election Day or on a Capitol roll-call vote, honey works as a more effective enticement than a nail-studded Louisville Slugger. The way Democrats campaigned foreshadowed how they would govern. Americans seeing how they campaigned determined how they would vote. READ MORE: $1 Billion Raised, $20 Million in Debt, $1 Million for Oprah’s Endorsement Reclaiming Education for Boys The post Five Frightening Ways Democrats Campaigned as They Govern appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

In the wake of the 2020 election, my friends who are Trump voters were distraught. These folks range from early Gen X to early-to-mid Boomers. Worried that the world was ending, they decided to ask me, their “professional” political friend, what they could do. My advice was twofold: First, turn off the TV. The 24/7 news stations have one purpose — to wind up and propagandize people. Turn it off. The second piece of advice: Y’all are retired. Start running for local political office or make the trek to Austin and lobby for your positions. You have time and money. Do something! Oh, and for good measure, I recommended going back to church. Setting one’s sights above tends to help the below make more sense. It doesn’t work the other way around. Many of these folks did turn off the TV and reclaim their sanity. They switched to long-form podcasts. They became more informed and less hysterical. Now. In this election, one group of voters surprised everyone: Boomers. Aren’t people supposed to get more conservative as they age? Not this group. I have a couple theories as to why this might be. Before the election, I warned about two groups of people who are less conservative than they should be and could cost Trump the election. One was white millennial men. The other was Boomer women. It’s the Boomers who capture my curiosity. Why would they vote more liberal than Gen X — the only cohort that voted in the majority for Trump? My theory is that Boomers, when not sitting on their piles of money made in the stock market, watch cable news shows constantly. They’re the only group that still consistently does this, and they’re the only group brainwashed ideologically based on the stations they watch. No matter whether they are FOX, CNN, or MSNBC addicts, they’re radical, balls of impotent rage sitting in recliners with computers on their laps, sending missives to their friends and family. How many gray-haired ladies have you seen screaming at the store or on the street corner? I just saw one such video where a liberal, silver-haired crazy got into the face of a young black woman for voting for Trump. “Don’t you know they’re racist?!” She was arrested for pushing the Trump voter in the face. “You can’t put your hands on someone,” the female cop can be heard saying off-camera. What the hell? What is wrong with people? Propaganda. This lady likely counts Rachel Maddow as a friend. People who watched CNN and MSNBC constantly and then The View in the mornings heard daily diatribes against Nazis (key words for Boomers who grew up with WWII veterans for parents) and heard nothing of Kamala Harris’ ignominious rise to power or Joe Biden’s mental decline. They never heard about topics radicalizing other generations like transgendering children or the DEI madness in corporations and on college campuses. Boomers missed out on so many of these phenomenon. They can pretend that elementary students aren’t being fed porn books. They can ignore the problem of boys in girls’ locker rooms or boys taking the place of girls winning in sports. They don’t know about Drag Queen Story Hour, and if they hear about it, they believe that it’s an exaggerated thing. They’re retired and so avoided the DEI madness. They didn’t have the threat of speech codes and the race training programs consuming corporate HR departments. Their wealth and paid-for homes insulate them from the problems of inflation and illegal immigration. They’re living in protected enclaves. All of the problems Trump elucidated are overstated, you see. Where is the compassion? Meanwhile, they are fed a stream of lies portraying their fellow men as villains. Right-wing “extremism” is believable for the “give peace a chance” generation. They voted Democrat because they were lovers. They wore daisies in their hair and bell bottoms on their legs. They were “beneficiaries” of abortion and The Pill and no-fault divorce. They hung their identity on social change and Jane Fonda’s fist and flower power. They believe their political enemies are racist, sexist homophobes. Some believed that to be feminist meant never having children, and so they didn’t. Meanwhile, they’re the enlightened, tolerant, good ones. The world has changed around them, but they consume media that confirm beliefs that are 50 years old. My mom has neighbors who sit in their recliners watching MSNBC all day and couldn’t believe that Kamala lost. At the mailbox during a bland conversation, they professed to having never heard how Kamala Harris came to power. They knew nothing of Willie Brown. They claimed ignorance of all sorts of issues. How could this be? Well, they probably never have heard these stories. Ronald Reagan said this of liberals two generations ago, “The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.” That truism is as accurate today as it was when Reagan said it. The media’s hold on the Boomer generation has them knowing so much that isn’t so. Let’s hope that the destruction of the media in the wake of this election brings a crack of light into the minds of these folks. Maybe then they can see. Or maybe the more than half of this generation that voted for Democrat insanity will go to the grave thinking thoughts that just aren’t so. MORE from Melissa Mackenzie: About Tolerance The Spectacle Ep. 164: Trump Wins, But the Fight Continues Donald Trump Wins! The post The Kids Are Alright, It’s the Boomers Who Are Bananas appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

On most political issues during her presidential campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris ran on “vibes” of centrism rather than concrete policies. But on abortion, there was no mistaking where Harris stood. Here, she was energized and unequivocal. She was on a one-woman mission to give all women easy access to abortion at all stages of pregnancy. The clarity with which Harris laid out her platform on abortion — unlike her ambiguity on other issues — accentuated the extent to which abortion was the central issue of her campaign. Giving women the ability to abort their children was the purpose of her candidacy. Harris’ resounding loss throws into question the wisdom of such a focus. Voters, exit polls tell us, cared much more about the economy than abortion, suggesting that Democrats would do well to emphasize pocketbook issues to a greater extent. But the rejection also raises the possibility that the promotion of unchecked abortion is, at some level, distasteful to a majority of Americans. After all, Kamala staked her entire campaign on abortion — creating the dichotomy that a vote for her was a vote for abortion “freedom” while a vote for Trump was a vote for abortion bans — and she was soundly rejected. The Harris campaign had believed that the issue of abortion would incite Republicans and independent voters, particularly women, in purple and red states to vote for her. The campaign framed abortion as an issue of freedom, and portrayed laws that banned abortions or limited them as authoritarian. The use of “freedom” to refer to the unrestricted ability to kill one’s unborn child was omnipresent in the campaign. On her campaign website, for instance, Harris said: “In this election, many fundamental freedoms are at stake: the freedom to make your own decisions about your own body without government interference.” Harris was so all-in on abortion that she held several rallies that were wholly dedicated to it, including her rally with Beyoncé, who said she was endorsing Harris in order to ensure that her children would be able to abort her grandchildren. (“I’m here as a mother. A mother who cares deeply about the world my children and all of our children live in. A world where we have the freedom to control our bodies.”) Harris drove around in a bus emblazoned with the phrase “Fighting for Reproductive Freedom” and repeatedly warned women that Trump would undermine their ability to abort their children. At the rally with Beyoncé, for instance, she said, “If you think you are protected from Trump abortion bans because you live in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New York, California, or any state where voters or legislators have protected reproductive freedom, please know: No one is protected.” It was for abortion that Harris was willing to abandon her “pivot to the center,” as she voiced support for ending the filibuster in the Senate in order to pass a federal law requiring abortions to be performed nationwide. This all-encompassing focus on abortion led Harris surrogates and supporters to frame the election as a moral choice: Either you were freeing women to live exactly how they wanted, unburdened by the children they unintentionally conceived — or you were forcing women to give birth to children they didn’t love. It was Michelle Obama who brought this into the starkest focus. At an October rally in Kalamazoo, Michigan, she said: “To anyone out there thinking about sitting out this election or voting for Donald Trump or a third-party candidate in protest because you’re fed up, let me warn you: Your rage does not exist in a vacuum. If we don’t get this election right … we as women will become collateral damage to your rage.” She even begged the men in the audience to view women as more than “baby-making vessels.” There were certainly many who responded to this framing by happily stating that they were supporting Harris because they wanted themselves and their family members to be free to kill their unborn children. One such voter was Jason Faasse, a Michigan father of three girls. Faasee explained to CNN that he voted for Harris because he wanted his daughters to be able to abort any of his grandchildren that they didn’t want. “I have three daughters — four children overall. And women’s rights are pretty important to them,” he said. “But just their bodies, their choice, that type of mentality.” A similar explanation for voting for Harris was also provided by Virginians Andrea and Steve Chottiner in an interview with CNN. Andrea said, while holding one of the couple’s two daughters, that she voted for Harris so that her children would be free to abort her grandchildren: “The top issue for me was the right to choose, abortion rights, women’s healthcare. We have two little girls, and we want to make sure they have rights and freedoms and safety.” Her husband, holding their other daughter, echoed his wife, saying, “Well we’ve got two girls here and I want to make sure their rights are taken care of and, you know, they don’t have to worry about anything.” A Wisconsin voter, Maddie Stoelinga, also told CNN that the abortion message at a recent Kamala Harris rally had left her “feeling inspired to protect women’s rights and my own body.” And yet, a majority of Americans rejected this grotesque perspective. Even if they had voted for Trump based on his promise to not limit abortion access, they still had not embraced Harris’ message that the freedom to kill their unborn children should be the top priority. That is a sign that there is at least some recognition by a broad swath of the country of the ugliness and evil of abortion. It also gives Republicans an opportunity: to call out those who would refound America on the freedom to kill their children, and to work against them under the banner of combatting their ugly hatred. The post Did Kamala’s Abortion Obsession Alienate Americans? appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.