FROM KAVANAUGH TO CARAVAN… The Blue Wave Ebbs into the Red Tide: The 2018 Midterm Election Analysis & Predictions
It is once again time for the blog to forecast the upcoming 2018 midterm elections. Our predictions of the past national and state elections, since 2014, has been off the charts accurate.
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Full disclosure: I am a Democrat and former Democrat elected official [Hudson County Freeholder and New Jersey State Assemblyman]. I have continually expressed my analysis and opinion that the Dems increasing shift from a progressive, liberal philosophy and policy to radical, far-left, socialist activism is continuing to destroy this once great party. The repercussions of this evolving transformation will be devastating.
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Typically, the first midterm election of an incumbent President’s term will see a loss of seats in the House and Senate for that President’s party. The media and the Dems seized on the premise that the 2018 elections would produce a “Blue Wave” and shift control of the House and Senate to the Dems. The premise was also supported by major media outlets and press which are anti-Trump and pro Democrat—they no longer try to hide their bias.
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The polling to date, with the exception of issue-oriented queries, are wrong; and are to be just as distrusted as they were during the course of the 2016 Presidential election. Even pollsters and the media can’t refrain from plying their bias into their polling forecasts. Generic polling of Congressional races is the biggest con—because some Dem districts in urban areas usually provide a sometimes 60 to 80 percent plurality in such areas, which then skews the generic national polling numbers. This flawed polling dynamic produces worthless data.
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House seats have a different flavor than Senate races. In Congressional races the likability of the candidate, local issues particular to a district, and incumbency weigh in heavily. The GOP was dealt a tremendous blow when a large swarth of its incumbent members decided not to seek reelection, taking incumbency out of play in those districts. In addition, in middle America, Democrats nominated more sane moderate candidates, such as Conor Lamb, from Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District.
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The reason the blog withheld its forecast for so long is because the Dems’ Blue Wave has been ebbing away rapidly. What should have been a decidedly Democrat victory in November has been, and is continuing to be, whittled away by the Dems rabid hatred of the President. Democrat radicals continue to increase their number in the party. Too be quite blunt and honest, these members and elected officials in the party, at times, appear to be off the wall.
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Mainstream Independents and Democrat moderates are repulsed by the antics of these extremists, and they continue to move out of the party and withhold support for Democrat candidates linked to the far-left agenda. This doesn’t seem to phase this radical element that continues to plot an extremist agenda for the party.
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The fate of the midterm election rests in the hands of a large grouping of independents who will tip the scales in favor of one party over the other on election day. Most of the movement of this grouping of voters, since August and September, has been towards the GOP. The main impetus for the movement of voters was initially the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, despite what biased polling shows.
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The Dems played their cards at the onset of the hearings. Chuck Schumer declared he would do anything within his power to defeat Kavanaugh’s nomination, then the Dems on the Senate Judiciary Committee declared they would not support Kavanaugh’s confirmation—without the nominee ever being questioned yet. …That’s not very American.
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When the hearing unfolded, the conduct of the Dems was an embarrassment. Senator Cory Booker likened himself to Spartacus, threatening to reveal undisclosed documents at the risk of expulsion. We would later learn that Spartacus already was made aware that the documents he was bravely revealing were already cleared for release. Whoops!
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When they couldn’t beat Kavanaugh on substance and character, it was time to resort to a longstanding Dem tradition at Supreme Court nominee hearings—stepping down to the gutter and tossing sleaze. Here, the Dems produced an eleventh-hour witness who claimed Kavanaugh attempted to rape her. The fickle fingers of Senator Dianne Feinstein held onto the accuser’s letter until after Kavanaugh’s questioning ended. Obviously, part of a strategy to attempt to run out the clock on Kavanaugh and any future Trump replacement.
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The Dems reluctant witness, Christine Blasey Ford, was kept in the close proximity of known Dem operatives, where she allegedly wrote the letter leaked to the media and to Feinstein. [The suspicion of this blog is that the letter was composed by Democrat operatives. Why? Because a passage in the letter refers to Ford’s close friend, Leland Ingham Keyser, as a “him.” Only someone not knowing that Leland was a female could make such a mistake—Ford knew her close friend was a female, the letter writer did not.]
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The Dems turned the committee hearing into a circus sideshow—like clowns piling out of a midget car, one by one, they each took turns at trying to destroy a decent Catholic American with a beautiful family and impeccable resume, all verified by six FBI background checks. They were even aided and abated by Stormy’s Daniel’s attorney, Michael Avenatti, who declared Kavanaugh to be a gang rapist, using an accuser too dumb to follow the script laid out for her. Spartacus seized the opportunity to fundraise off of this sad spectacle.
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To make matters worse, despite the fact that all of the witnesses Ford cited couldn’t corroborate her story, the Dems then declared that women who make accusations of sexual assault should be believed, even if their charges were uncorroborated—eradicating the long held American constitutional right of “innocent until proven guilty.”
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The Dems didn’t succeed with their typical sexcapades attack, as was once employed in an attempt to destroy a previous nominee, Robert Bork; and then trotted out again to try and destroy another African American nominee, Clarence Thomas. Thomas called them out, declaring the Dem antics as a “high-tech lynching” of a black man who chose to think differently. The Dems then meekly climbed back down their man hole and retreated back into the DC sewer.
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This Dems conduct caused, yet again, another mass migration of people out of their party—alike the blue-collar workers that they wagged the party’s middle finger at during the 2016 national elections. This time, they managed to begin losing a faction that they desperately needed to count on for support in the mid-terms—suburban housewives.
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When the Dems abandoned the notion of “innocent until proven guilty” for ‘believe the women accuser and not the evidence,’ the suburban housewives and other women, who have sons as college students or of high school age, began to have second thoughts. Their sons could become fair game like Kavanaugh. The Dems antics since Kavanaugh—proposing his impeachment, storming the Supreme Court, and using mobs, excuse me, crowds of paid protestors to harass Senators who supported Kavanaugh’s nomination—served to further hemorrhage voters from their party.
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The other key factor that will affect the outcome of the mid-term elections is the migrant’s caravan, and soon to be several caravans of [illegal immigrants, refuges, undocumented aliens], take your pick, enroute from Honduras and intending to storm the United States southern border to invade the country and plead for asylum. This is a well-choreographed and non-spontaneous event, again; being ably supported by its glowing coverage in the media.
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The caravan is composed mostly of young men of army age, who push their scant camouflage—women and children—in front of them whenever the media cameras are rolling. This also happens to be one of the best dressed caravans—clean tee shirts and new sneakers dominate the wardrobe of the impoverished marchers. Sadly, news reports of sexual assaults of woman and children in the migrant caravan are beginning to leak out.
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The only thing the well-oiled caravan might be missing is the Duke Ellington orchestra. And, what are the odds that Spartacus will show up and lead the march, high stepping it out in front of the caravan? Probably, as soon as his handlers can figure a way to milk some campaign dough off of this crisis.
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By the time the next blog is written, you will learn that three countries working at arm’s length, but in concert with each other—Venezuela, China, and Iran—are providing the funding and resources for these caravans to move forward, for the express purpose of creating chaos in our country. The organization being used as the instrument for the delivery of the caravans will be found out to be Pueblo Sin Fronteras, a Honduras based organization able to hide their financial supporters, and whose mission is to migrate people out of the Central and South Americas.
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The caravan crisis will further gin up support for GOP candidates. The Dems and their protectors in the media are totally misplaying this crisis. The media has been covering and tracking the caravan the way they do hurricanes. The Dems’ failure to support Trump’s vow to stop the invasion will cost them votes and seats that they counted on winning. Blue wave, goodbye!
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Even liberals and progressives are concerned about the threat posed by the caravans, and what it will lead to if they are encouraged and not stopped. The Dems and media hate Trump so much, that when he takes a position that an overwhelming number of Americans will support, their kneejerk reaction is just to oppose and attack him. They collude among themselves to label the President a “fear monger.” This strategy, like the Kavanaugh strategy, will also go down in flames.
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As I am up against post time for this blog, breaking news is reporting that a far-right extremist is responsible for mailing explosive devices to prominent Democrat politicians and CNN news. The media, no doubt, will attempt to massage this incident as a reason to depose of Trump and Republicans from office, in an attempt to help the Dems to rebound in the mid-term elections.
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If the Dems can stay out of the spotlight and just let their supporters in the media carry the day for them, then they have the potential for riding the wake of this story to shore for a victory. The media does have the ability to subtly flip Independent voters. The only thing that can screw this up is the radical elements of the Dem party stealing the stage from the failed mad bomber news story.
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So, with all of this in mind, here is the blog forecast for the upcoming mid-term elections, shaped by the fate of three major news stories influencing independent voters: the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, the migrant’s caravan heading for our border, and the drama of the right-wing nut, the failed mad bomber.
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The GOP still holds control of the Senate. Here in New Jersey, for the very same reason that the sleaze attack against Kavanaugh backfired on the Dems, the sleaze dished out against incumbent Senator Robert Menendez will likewise backfire on the GOP. Additionally, the mad bomber story moves enough of New Jersey’s abundant Independent voters over to Menendez. The incumbent Senator will be reelected by a larger than expected margin. Again, without the mad bomber story impacting voters, the GOP would actually pickup seats in the Senate. However, even if the story does move independents off of Republicans, the GOP still wins the Senate by a seat or two.
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If the election were held three weeks ago, the Dems would have taken the House. But after the Kavanaugh disaster and the Dems expected continued fumbling of the caravan crisis, they blew their opportunity. The failed mad-bomber gives them new hope. The prediction today is that the Dems pickup seats in the House, though not enough to hold the majority. The worse that they continue to publicly portray themselves in the waning days before the election, the more seats they will lose, expanding the GOP victory.
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But, if the Dems can give their antics a rest, and just allow their friends in the media to carry the ball for them by massaging the failed mad bomber story right up until election day, then they have a chance to rebound. Independent voters and suburban women can be persuaded to send Trump a message about rhetoric. Unfortunately for the GOP, the failed mad bomber was one of their supporters. In this case, the Dems can win the House by a whisker. But the Dems hatred for Trump continues to blind them, perhaps depriving the party of the discipline necessary to win elections. We shall see.
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What was it that President Nixon once said? “Those that hate you never win, unless you hate them back…and then, you destroy yourself.”
Lou Manzo is a former Assemblyman from Jersey City.
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“The only thing that can screw this up is the radical elements of the Dem party stealing the stage from the failed mad bomber news story.”
Prescient observation
I think the radical faction in the Democrat Party wants the party to lose this election so they can blame the loss on the old guard (Pelosi, Schumer, Feinstein), remove them and take over the Party.
Already superseded by the massacre in Pittsburgh.
The “failed mad bomber”… was a gay stripper with ties to blackwater and the CIA…. but now that the story is fading…. those facts are fading as well.
I worry about boxes of bogus ballots in the trunk of Vinny’s Cadillac
Long standing tradition in blue cities… good comment.
I resent this implication that Dems are just a bunch of middle-of-the-road people and that the party has been taken over by radicals. Clinton and his New Democrats were mainly a blip in the historical timeline of the party that gave us The Great Society, McGovern, Carter, the mortgage meltdown and that rammed ZeroCare and gay marriage down the public’s throats when they didn’t want it. There may have been centrists in the Democrat Party at one time, but it hasn’t been a centrist party in my lifetime.
Now they send transgenders into the classrooms.. even in Denver – and think “suburban moms” … are going to sign on for this?
So – supporters who do bad things decide the election? Not so fast.
The Unibomber had a copy of Al Gore’s book on his bed stand. Antifa continues to bloody old men and women with MAGA hats… Feinstein employed a Chinese spy as a driver and or chief of staff. A Minnesota Muslim running for the house – MARRIED HER BROTHER…. not a rumor … FACT.
Broadway produces a play depicting the assassination of a sitting President. And we all know about the Orange head in Kathy Griffin’s hands.
I’m not sure that a gay stripper Phillipino with ties to Blackwater and the CIA – cuts it in this club of heinous acts with which to tar the opposition.
I AM a Suburban woman. X chromosomes don’t cloud my vision or my ability to sift the facts and see the numbers for violence left or right.
First I was told that a bad Truman Capote imitation was “credible proof” that a spoiled frat boy was an entitled little drunk 35 yrs ago .. maybe, but no cigar.
THEN he was a gang rapist … A veritable Prep School Bill Cosby…. uh, no.
I don’t think the mushy middle of America cares much for this ongoing spectacle – left or right …. but don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s MY Yorkie.
Actual violence – spoken, inferred or committed – is clearly in the D camp.
What are the odds that after 2 years of continuous Democrat violence that Republicans just happened to choose to get violent 2 weeks before key elections?
only 2?
I left a long comment last evening disputing some points in the article but don’t see my comment here. I left it under my own name and it was based on my first-hand reporting on both Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas. Does the moderator impose some kind of preference for anonymous comments (from who knows where)? Of a preference for pro-Trump comments? What gives?
If there is preference for pro Trump comments, they are very lonely
I’m not a Democrat and never have been. There’s a few that I liked in the past, but no more.
That said, Trump co-opted the Democrat talking points of connecting with the little guy. That’s why he won. He talks to the middle class like Democrats of old did. Nowadays, Democrats make comments on how Trump supporters are uneducated (no college). What kind of dumb strategy is that? It’s a total reversal of the old Dem talking points.
But then again, it doesn’t surprise me one bit. The Democrats have become, literally, a uber-far left party.
I sincerely hope they lose way more seats than some are predicting. Then the real moderates in that party can start kicking out the socialist flakes….. the same way we righties are getting rid of the establishment RINO flakes.
“Trump co-opted the Democrat talking points of connecting with the little guy.”
I think Trumps message is more like Reagen’s: Prosperity for all, America First and Common Sense. Aspiration to a better life and more economic wealth.
The fake bomb maker was a Democrat until he changed his registrarion in 2016. As a felon, how he did that in the state of Florida is puzzling. Also, the ‘stickers’ on his new van were professionally constructed by a graphic designer. In one photo supposedly at a Trump rally, his shirt has the exact same graphic on it as one of his side windows.
More than likely, this is alao a false flag event sloppily generated by a team. LEO has already verified a psychological exam noting that this man did not have the capacity to create these props, and they are looking for accomplices.
More antics. No one is believing any of this any longer, thanks to the Democrat party.
and what of the hand delivered fake bombs? How does a felon change his voting registration? I want to see more about the blackwater cia friend.
Trump has placed Dems into a corner:
They put illegals ahead of US citizens.
Want open borders where drugs and human trafficking are problems.
Want to raise your taxes.
Want to offer one size fits all health insurance run by govt.
Want to over regulate.
Want to make US companies less competitive.
Want to control your guns.
Don’t support law enforcement.
Want Judges to make rather than interpret laws.
Want a weaker military.
If Dems are counting on the failed mad bomber to save their Blue Wave they are going to be very disappointed. Outside of already deep blue areas, nobody sees a lone nut job as somehow connected to the GOP. The Dems disgraceful behavior during the Kavanaugh hearings cost them winning the House. Middle America looks at these left wing violent mobs as scary and dangerous. Middle America does not share the far left’s mission to repeal the Constitution. The Dems support for the caravan is just more support for lawlessness and violence and disdain for Middle America’s economic interests.
the non bomber story does not help Democrats, sorry. He was no Republican…he is a troubled soul, very sick and in need of help with a criminal history as long as your right arm…. He was a registered Democrat until last year…The Democrat Party today is lost and will implode soon, it is in need of reflection and major changes…the Caravan story will not go away and the Dems own that too…Oh and by the way, I and my whole family were life long Democrats…but we have all just Walked Away…
BLAH, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH…
Trump…
BLAH, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH…
Clinton…
BLAH, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH…
The Republicans…
BLAH, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH…
The Democrats…
Meanwhile…
Like many others I was disgusted by the behavior of the dems during the Kavanaugh hearings. Especially shocking was their abandonment of the principle of innocent until proven guilty for males in general and white males in particular. I am female and found such an idea chilling. I also wondered if the dems were so dumb they did not understand that women with high school age sons would be voting along with men of all ages. The caravan is also a big problem. The brazenness of these migrants who first broke down a fence to invade Mexico and just recently rejected a generous offer from the Mexican government. That included healthcare, education and a job. Shows who these mostly male migrants really are. They are not refugees seeking safety since if that was the case they would have accepted Mexico’s offer. They are illegal economic migrants who care nothing about this country and deserve rejection. As for the failed bomber I’m sure the democrats and their media allies hoped to keep that story alive but it was swept off the front pages with the deadly shooting of Jews in a place of worship by an avid Trump hater.
This clown is as much a Democrat as Paul Ryan.
He signed his name to the op-ed. He’s a former elected official, a former Democratic Party elected official. The Democratic Party has moved left by any measure, on countless issues. Its not even debatable by intelligent people.
For example, in the 1990s, there was a bipartisan commission that spent years studying the immigration issue headed by Barbara Jordan (D-Houston), the first black House member since Reconstruction. Jordan was concerned about illegal immigration because she felt it had done tremendous harm to her District in Houston. Her commission came up with a comprehensive plan for immigration – ending chain migration, emphasizing skills-based immigration and reducing legal immigration by half. This is almost exactly the plan advocated by Trump by the way. The Jordan plan was endorsed by leaders from both parties and even by President Clinton, but Jordan died shortly afterward. The simple fact that virtually no Democrat will condemn the idea of thousands of illegal immigrants overwhelming the border at once, nor proposing any solution to the idea of thousands of people doing so again and again shows you have far the Democrats have moved left, with many elected officials advocating getting rid of ICE. Back in 2005, Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton condemned illegal immigration and staunchly defended our borders. They won’t do so today.
The Democratic Party has steadily moved leftward since the early 1970s, adopting almost every cause of campus leftism and in the process, alienating much of its old base, but that accelerated under Obama, which is why they lost 1,000 legislative seats in eight years nationally. Its now in danger of becoming a permanent minority party in much of the country, being strong only in the major cities, wealthy suburbs and in college and university towns. Law professor Joan Williams has been writing about the alienation of the working class by the Democrats for years at the Huffington Post. She warned that one day, a populist Republican would rise up and excite those old Democrats and change the elector map, the one we thought was set in stone and that’s what happened.
The election is now eight days away and now, the question is what the Democratic Party will do if it looses more seats in the Senate and does not manage to flip the House. Will it keep moving steadily leftward, or will it learn from its mistakes and try to regain its lost base and widen its appeal?
That’s rich. The Republican Party has moved so far right that it now welcomes neo-Nazis.
I don’t disagree that it has suffered because it has abandoned to a great extent it’s populist economic appeal. But that’s because it moved RIGHT, not left. Immigration is not a left right issue as witnessed by the support for hiring immigrants, especially in agriculture.
There is really no point in trying to have a discussion when you claim that the GOP welcomes neo-Nazis. The modern Nazi movement consists of a few hundred absolute nut cases.
I have spent a great deal of time actually studying National Socialism and their belief system included aspects of what we would consider both the right and the left – it was of course National Socialism, where the state controlled and supervised all industry rather than owning the means of production as in the Soviet Union – but in the main it was deeply rooted in an imaginary German history and a great feeling of grievance from the way the Great War ended, with the German army surrendering rather then being defeated. The National Socialists grew out of the Volkish movement and a fanciful idea of a pre-historic Eden on the Rhine, which is why they loved Wagner so much and had little Rhine Maidens dancing around in their heads. They were also influenced greatly by Occultism. And, the whole movement only took hold because of Adolph Hitler and as the state was militarized, everyone took an oath, not to the state, but to Hitler personally. In the end, while calling everyone you disagree with a “Nazi” or a “Neo-Nazi,” may feel good, it isn’t accurate or helpful and ends any fruitful discussion of real political and philosophical differences between left and right. In the real world, Anglo-American conservatism is rooted in the British and Scottish Enlightenment, men like Burke, Smith and Locke with a big hat tip to Montesquieu. We can tell what men believe by who they revere and who they read and the overlap between what National Socialists read and who they idolized and modern conservatism is practically non-existent. Calling anyone short of real Nazis – like the Anti-semitic killer in Pittsburgh – Nazis is not helpful, not accurate and because the actual Nazis brought about World War II and the deaths of tens of millions, morally reprehensible.
As far as immigration, it was not an issue that always broke on the left/right axis, like many others do. The elite of both parties have little interest in working class people, be they white, black, Asian or Hispanic, which is one of the major reasons that there was an opening for Trump on trade and immigration.
However, the modern left in both the United States and in Europe, where I have lived has now come to believe in a “borderless world,” the the “free migration of peoples.” It increasingly does not advocate for any immigration control or borders, especially for the United States, which is NOT entitled to enforce its borders because the left believes the land is stolen and thus the United States is in itself illegitimate. This is the prevalent view on the college and university campuses I visit and the reason that few Democrats will even address the issue of immigration at all and will pretend that columns of ten thousand illegal immigrants at a time is not a threat to the sovereignty of the nation.
We can of course have legal immigration or seasonal workers without allowing millions of illegal immigrants into the country, we had such programs before illegal residency got so bad and I come from an agricultural background. In my own family’s experience, there were American seasonal workers who traveled with the harvest seasons. There were tens of thousand of Americans who did seasonal agricultural labor before immigrants began to fill those jobs and the family farm still has the bunkhouse from those days. Mechanization ended the vast majority of those jobs, so the needs in agriculture are actually a fraction of what they used to be and can easily be addressed by the type of seasonal programs that existed between the United States and Mexico in the 1960s. The wave of illegal immigration began primarily because the landowners could pay them less, which is why the labor hero Caesar Chavez was a vociferous and dedicated opponent of illegal immigration, because he felt it hurt the workers he represented.
The reality is that there is simply no difference between the modern Democratic Party of the United States in virtually every major position and the leftist and socialist parties in Europe. When I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, the difference was far more dramatic. It was during the Vietnam War that the “New Left” began to influence the Democratic Party and a number of its most radial figures became politicians and thought leaders, often university professors. In fact, many of the major leftist terrorists, bombers – who bombed with real bombs – went on to teach at major universities. Eventually, the New Left subsumed the old time labor and liberal left. There are very few liberals left on campuses today and the few that are left are of retirement age and the old time labor unions have less and less influence, partially because the manufacturing base that provided their jobs and their influence has eroded thanks to trade agreements that the leadership of both parties were for. But immigration needs to benefit the nation as a whole, not simply provide a captive class of workers for major corporations who would rather hire an indentured H-1 servant than an American.
Look at all the right wing nutjobs that have crawled out of the woodwork on here.
Well, Lou as it turns out the Mad Bomber is from Brooklyn and was a Democrat and Obama supporter. What changed before he decided to romp around in-between strip gigs and a strip club manager?
That will be the repressed news but for how long? How does a convicted felon change voting registration from Democrat to Republican anyway?
You’re correct about the Senate & House outcomes. You’re looking incorrect about Menendez who has little enthusiasm in his backyard or most of New Jersey.The Cook Report shifted the race to toss up. Who has the momentum? It’s Bob Hugin with a moderate steady campaign who has chewed up a 20+ lead Menendez lost. No one is excited to pull the lever for a certified pedo-criminal.
The anti-American nihilist Left has to be put out of its regressive misery. Even NJ may see the vast majority of sane voters insist on it.
The new generation of Americans are decidedly far more left-oriented (many to the extreme left as you put it). You seem like someone in the early 60s who don’t understand the politics of the new generation who are widely traveled, multicultural and more educated. Eventually, they will be by far the largest voting bloc. My prediction is that in another decade or so, Reps will start moving to center or even to the left just to survive.
Born in 1947, this boomer ran a head shop, listened to Beatles and Jefferson Airplane, and now wants machine guns on the border.
[oh, not to forget – I think trans, lesbian and gays should not be allowed to raise children – I’ve seen too many of those freaks destroy lives]
As to your thesis….. um, no. Every other boomer I know votes just like me.
GET OFF MY LAWN!!
Black youth in America have been warned for generations not to leave the political plantation known as the Democrat Party, and for generations they obeyed that command. Now, Conservative political commentator Candace Owens, who is black, young and Republican, is challenging that assertion. She and others have launched BLEXIT as a clarion call to black voters across America to walk away from a party that has done nothing but betray them and use them to enrich themselves. Can you say #RedWave2018 http://www.nowtheendbegins.com/americas-black-youth-voters-abandon-democratic-party-record-numbers-blexit-movement-launches-candace-owens/