There was a special election to fill the seat for Pennsylvanian’s 18th congressional district yesterday and it appears the Democrat has won. The district had gone for Trump by 20-points in 2016, but the lackluster baby boomer the Republican Party put up could not be bothered to campaign, much less notice the issues important to the voters. The Democrat, on the other hand, sounded more like Trump on most issues, than his own party. He was lying, of course, but people will vote for a liar over someone who appears to hate them.
The yesterday men of the Left are pointing to this and claiming it is the sign of what’s to comes next fall.
The Democrat candidate claimed a congressional election in a Republican heartland in Pennsylvania, as a vote seen as a referendum on Donald Trump’s performance as president remained officially too close to call early on Wednesday.
n an ominous sign for Republicans eight months before national midterm elections, official results with all ballots from voting booths counted showed moderate Democrat Conor Lamb leading conservative Republican Rick Saccone by a fraction of a percentage point.
Trump won the Pennsylvania 18th Congressional District that they are contesting by almost 20 points in the 2016 presidential election.
With TV networks, which often call U.S. elections, yet to predict a winner, officials were continuing to count several hundred absentee ballots to try to determine the result.
Democratic sources said that, once those ballots were included, they expected Lamb to have won the election by more than 400 votes.
“It took a little longer than we thought but we did it. You did it,” Lamb, a U.S. Marines veteran, told cheering supporters late on Tuesday.
Speaking before Lamb claimed victory, Saccone – who has described himself as “Trump before Trump was Trump” – said the contest was not yet over.
The Democrats are looking to replay what they did in 2006 where they rounded up a bunch of reasonable sounding people to run in Republican districts. Voters, revolted by the GOP, were willing to give the reasonable sounding Democrats a shot. It was a cynical ploy, but what made it important was the shamelessness. Usually, political parties scheme to fool the voters behind closed doors. In 2006, the party was right out in the open about what they were up to and they laughed about it afterward to their friends in the press.
It is why this coming midterm is probably going to follow a different course. For starters, the Democrats that are winning are doing so in opposition to their own party. Conor Lamb ran around saying nice things about Trump, while the Republican sounded like every generic Republican the voters have come to hate. The Left will want to pitch this as a referendum on Trump, but really what is shaping up is a referendum on the GOP establishment. They do nothing but foot drag and obstruct the Trump agenda.
It is also a warning to the Democrat leadership. Their coalition of fruitcakes is an unreliable voting block. You will note thus far that they have won these special elections by appealing to white voters, not left-handed bisexual trannies of color. Conor Lamb sounded like Democrats used to sound in the 1950’s, talking about bread and butter issues in a language normal people can understand. White people will vote for a person who is pro-white, regardless of party. That is a lesson the Washington elite has yet to learn.
The thing is though, the establishment of both parties is locked into a model of politics that belongs in a museum, rather than a modern campaign. The old Left-Right framework is no longer relevant. Within the white vote, the issue is nationalism versus cosmopolitan globalism. The establishment of both parties continues to operate as if the politics of gesture is still salient. They still play the Fukuyama end of history stuff, where all the big issues have been decided, so what’s left is pointless gestures and meaningless symbols.
Phase change in politics is a slow moving thing as the people being phased out never come to terms with their own fate until it is just about sealed. The generation of politicians running both parties are creatures of the previous era. They evolved to fit that era and, in many respects, they are the perfection of that era. The best politicians of any age usually reach perfection just as they are no longer needed. That is America today. We have a political class perfectly designed for 1992, but utterly useless for our current era.
What this means is a period of contentious and contradictory elections, as the voters and politicians try to figure out what works. In the demographic age, democracy can only evolve in one direction and that’s people voting their skin. This is the lesson of history and the inevitable result of biology. Baby boomers are, for the most part, locked into the civic nationalist model. Younger generations are adapting to the new reality.
I’ve been sneaking in the “how to parse propaganda” to my now 17 year old boy for several years: I’ve described it as helping him develop a logical and critical mind, as indeed it is.
Simplest example ” up to 5 years” really means “no more and almost certainly less than 5 years”
When you start to parse political statements in this way: “Free” means “paid for by someone else” (And it’s not going to be my generation, is it, son?) the gross stupidity and deceit of the left is undeniable.
The fun thing is you can do it in the face of liberals and other than fume, there is no response.
politicians may well start talking populist, but they will not pass populist legislation because…that’s not how you get paid…and it’s all about gettin paid…congress is avoiding having to pass the populist legislation they promised by using the congressional leaders (ryan and mcconnell) as stalking horse…the media collaborates by portraying ryan and mcconnell as the people to take the blame for stopping the populist legislative agenda of trump…that way the gop congressmen can avoid the blame…yes, ryan and mcconnell will have to resign or get beaten, but the big money is gonna reward them well…
and if the dems take power they will elect a stalking horse to take the blame…
bottom line–there is no political solution for this mess…the politicians may well all start running on a populist campaign…but the establishment will work together to prevent populist changes…look at what happened in 2009 after obama and other Dem politicians got elected after promising single payer…
We have a huge Cuck problem in Nevada also, have for around twenty years when they took over Nevada GOP in a coup.
Hey Z, what do you make of this?
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/03/07/dems-m07.html
There is a theory called “Blue Empire vs Red Empire” in explaining the rivality between the American elites and different agencies of the US Goverment.
The “Blue Empire” is the Dems, CIA, State Department, FBI,.. The “Red Empire” is the GOP, NSA, Pentagon, Military-Industrial-Complex.
It seems the Dems want to regain Military support with their candidates. Trump has surrrounded himself with Generals for some reason.
I don’t remember if it originated with him but the blogger 28Sherman talked about this Blue Empire/Red Empire stuff frequently.
Doesn’t seem to hold up under basic scrutiny. The political left has dominated the leadership of all those institutions for generations. GOP and Dem also cease to be meaningful when you are talking about neoliberals and neoconservatives, which are effectively the same.
Very, very good. Military intel types running for 25% of the seats. Add in Bezos’ running their secret cloud and such facts as one of Bezos’ CIA contracts alone is worth $600 million.
We’re seeing an upper tier convergence that we don’t really have terms for.
Nomenklatura- an Industry sector that combines military, political, business, and mafia- fits, and we mistake factional disputes as opposition.
They’re only fighting for which streetcorners they get or the size of their cut. Something both old and new is emerging.
As today’s post says, the platform messages are a tad outdated.
Don’t recall the NSA, Pentagon, MIC doing badly under Barry the Kenyan.
The relative lack of responses and conversation on this subject suggests that there isn’t too much to say about it. Maybe because this election stuff largely circles around which political operative gets his ticket punched, for the opportunity of participating in all the graft and the massively increased personal wealth that comes from it.
“Younger generations are adapting to the new reality.”
Where’s the evidence of that? My 28YO daughter and son-in-law caucused for Bernie Sanders. If you look at what’s happening on college campuses, the Left is doubling down on stupid. Young people have not been taught how liberty and the free market have lifted people out of poverty. They think the answer is socialism.
Maybe you have rotten kids.
My two eldest and their spouses, aged 23 to 26, voted for Trump. While growing up I spent a lot of time informing them about US history, especially the philosophical bloodlines connecting Democrats/Socialists/Communists from FDR to the present. I tried to give them a template to guide them in the future.
Not all young people are in colleges.
The Communists used to call their countries “democratic republics”. If all we need is words, then we can call our system “socialist” and all these young people can enjoy the emoluments of a free society without guilt.
Remember, this is a word game to them; re-title “The Wealth of Nations” as “Das Kapital” and they wouldn’t know the difference, having read neither.
The stupid party isn’t stupid merely because of its putative leaders, but also because most of its rank and file voters are equally stupid. I recently voted in our local primaries as a final experiment before I again stop wasting my time (resumed voting with Trump’s campaign). While the guy running to replace our finally retiring senile congressman ran unopposed and won (and thus far he seems to have done okay as a state legislator), a totally cucked and corrupt woman won the primary to replace him in the state position. A nice churchian teacher, she beat the more anti-immigration businessman by 10%. Mainstream repukes are STUPID and deserve to be ‘represented’ by dems ‘of color.’ They’ll be declaring their anti-racist credentials as their daughter are raped and their own throats are slit.
I disagree; the rank-and-file isn’t “stupid”. Look, in any normal campaign you have 40% voting for X and 40% voting for Y. They aren’t – considered as a herd – stupid; they’re just expressing one of two ‘opinions’ that our system of control gives them – then they’re off to work.
The remaining 20% is where the action is. And they’re… what? Stupid? maybe. Weird? maybe. Bored? maybe. Gifted by epiphany? Maybe. Bussed to the polling stations en masse? Maybe.
And then there are the Z people, the 50% who don’t vote at all, the rabble that must somehow or other be ruled by somebody, of whom the controllers – and you and me – know nothing.
An Ingsoc motto comes to mind: Only Proles and Animals are free.
And I reiterate, the voters are stupid. The bulk of the ‘conservative’ voters behave as though Trump was a necessary evil, a boor who was useful merely to shake up the system. Now the electorate wants to return to voting for TruCons with the standard GOPe message. Baltimore’s own Mencken was spot-on when he opined that the people deserve to get what they want “good and hard.”
Rahm Emanuel ran a lot of veterans for the House in 2006 and 08. Most of them lost their seats in 2010 and 12 after voting for Obamacare. The Dems are repeating the strategy this year, with no shame. The Dems are far more dogged and shameless than Republicans, and this is why they win over the long run.
A couple of things occur to me: there are a bunch of Jeff Flake style GOPers who really think “this whole Trump thing” is just going to blow over. This includes people trying to run for office anew, not just incumbents. Also, I think it’s hard to find people who have the nerve to openly run as pro-Trump, especially in swing states. Heck I live in a state that went for Trump and I hardly saw any Trump lawn signs, and I’ve hardly seen any stickers or MAGA hats since the election. Lots of people voted, but no one wants to say so, at least not in the cities where there are lots of liberals mixed in.
I don’t think the House is going to flip to the Democrats in November. Sure, Democrats cheat far better than Republicans, but that works best on the national level in the presidential race. On the other hand the propaganda onslaught against Trump and Trumpism is unparalleled in our history. Most people are political morons and don’t dig deep into the meat of the issues like we do around here, so maybe the propaganda will work in November. Nevertheless I still feel pretty confident that the Republican controlled governorships and the gerrymandering that follows, that it’s likely the House will be secured by the Republicans. The Senate might be a different matter because the cheating (illegal votes) the Democrats will certainly conjure up could be enough to swing the balance. Let’s hope the House holds Republican, because if somehow Republicans lose both houses of Congress then Trump will certainly be impeached.
Lies and good looks will beat lies and bad looks every time.
For Democrats, it also bears mentioning that nearly every single solitary “Blue Dog” Democrat lost in the 2010 midterms after being launched into power in 2008 in an epic wipeout. Those clowns ran as conservatives, and then they voted stright down the line for Pelosi/Reid/Obama, and they got torched for it. So, the ones who win will not be there long, I suspect.
For the GOP, the long dead carcass of a party continues to prove to its voters why it needs to be disbanded. It spent most of 2017 in opposition to Trump, and the voters have sat up and taken notice. That’s what happened in AL, for example. Strange beats Moore in 2017 if the GOP is passing Obamacare repeal, passing tax cuts, enforcing immigraiton law, and slapping down the Russia investigation as the sham that it was and is. Instead, they all went on TV to preen about what a bad guy Trump is…and voters are punishing them for it.
Here’s hoping the GOP dies as a political party in the next 10 years.
Whoever won will have to defend the seat 8 months from now. Maybe better if Mr. Clean Democrat gets in and has dirty himself up for a few months voting for whatever Steny Hoyer tells him to.
I’ve lately found myself envying Italians, with their dizzying selection of political parties and bizarre scissors-and-tape arrangements that make governments possible at all, if sometimes only for weeks. The necessary coalitions follow the vote and may be tracked by the citizen; here, all the coalitions are in place; we just get to hear the resulting slogans that empower the coalition, and are not allowed to glimpse the underlying structure.
A country this size needs twenty parties.
Yeah, looks like the Demos got a mandate, right?
Pathetic offering by the Republicans as usual. They really do need a major siesmic realignment. Given what we know about voting corruption and malfeasance, the republican surely won.
No Biggie.
It is always a challenge to get talented people who dislike big government willing to run for office.
The GOP seems to only look for untalented guys who love big government.
I’m 52 and have been hearing about this small government stuff my whole life. Yet, no matter who is in charge, government keeps growing. As a result, the blather about cutting government no longer registers with me. They may as well be talking about the flying monkey problem on Venus.
So run for office! (because I damn sure am not entering that awful profession) I’ll vote you!
If only we had elected Hillary. The flying monkey problem what the third item on her agenda:
1. Cackle Maniacally
2. Enemies List (aka Operation Liquidation)
3. Win Nobel for Flying Monkey on Venus Solution
From the best of my knowledge, the GOP has a substantial problem finding candidates who wouldn’t be crucified on their social media record. Younger GOP candidates are much more likely to have transgressed into thought crime.
This is why I no longer care about the deficit. Milton Friedman once said that politicians will always spend everything the government takes in from taxes, and whatever else they can get away with on top of that. Even if so called fiscal conservatives were able to enact spending cuts, the left would cue up the “grandma off the cliff” commercials, win the next election cycle, and spend us right back to the debt we would have had with no cuts. So give me my tax cut and go f yourselves.
What’s your plan for your grandkids?
I got my 16 year old a second passport last year so he can get the hell out of dodge when it’s necessary..
And it will be.
The Republican Party, naturally, operates on all electoral levels, and it does well winning town boards and county legislatures even in a blue state like mine. Extrapolated over the whole country I can see why the GOP has won so many seats at the sub-Federal level.
The problem is that the GOP has abandoned aspirations to national rule or influence; the success – and the cash – are all down here at the level of towns and counties and deep-red congressional districts.
The GOP spends its money on keeping county managers and such in the clover; we could have won or at least competed for the governorship and the US Senate seats here; we’re not blue like CA – but no, no statewide effort at all. The NYS GOP has smaller fish to fry. Why shoot for the PowerBall win when you can make a nice ‘augmented’ living in the state senate, a permanent gig if the Party is behind you.
What you wrote. That is only one issue gop weenies blather on but do nothing when they have the power. So although i very much care about sound tax and soending policy, i no longer include it when making political calculations. Include most all social issues. Obamacare. I coild go on. Gop talks big and does nothing. Ideology is dead. Civic nationalism is dead. I vote for the guy who looks like me and makes noise that he like ke and my sort and will use the power of govt to see ghat me and mine survive and prosper.
There was a time when I thought things like limited government and low, transparent taxes were top issues. Then I started to understand that they were proxies for pro-white and pro-nationalist. The people in opposition to those things were the cosmopolitan internationalists and their coalition of non-whites. The Finns are hardly libertarian, but they are the happiest people on earth. That’s mostly because they take being Finnish seriously.
Sure – and they drink like fish.
Finns like binge drinking. Their consumption over all is less than most Euro countries. Binge drinking is a very northern thing. The closer you get to the more common it is for some reason. Finns will drink themselves unconscious over a weekend and then not drink at all for the rest of the month.
Yes, the eternal conundrum for our side.
There’s no MONEY in that.
The Republican looked and acted like Lindsey Graham’s even more retarded brother.
Interesting election, especially in respect to the GA-6th election last year. In that case, the eGOP won with a person whose name really might have been Generic Republican Nobody against a Democrat who was basically Justin Trudeau.
But GA-6 is populated with people who are all Director of Southeast Regional Marketing for some Fortune 1,000 company, which is to say: globalists, vaguely attached to low taxes and uncomfortable with some elements of the American freak parade. They’re happy with sportsball and redecorating the kitchen and their $80,000 cars. They never liked Trump and can only be weakly attached to his coalition.
Was GA-6 a real victory? Was this PA election a real loss?
Likely demographic. Penn is very white outside urban areas. Atlanta is a particularly dark city in a dark state with the darkness extending regularly into the suburbs. You can fool gullible whites in whitopia who think the economy is issue #1, but it takes much more time and money to convince a southern kulak, even a wealthy one, that they should vote for the party that defies the savage negro.
I’m a Western Pennsylvanian, but not in the 18th district. Lamb presented himself as a normal man but that doesn’t matter if he votes like a transgender negro lesbian dwarf according to the Party line his bankrollers will dictate. Republicans in Western Pennsylvania suck. They have allowed Democrats to control Pittsburgh since 1933. They literally are cucks, and always will be.
What surprises me most is how well the stupid party did. The Democrats have an overwhelming advantage to the stupid party in political affiliation in the district. They ran a ridiculous candidate and he didn’t even bother to try. Yet the stupid party almost won. For better or worse the district will disappear shortly. It shows that there is a desire amongst the electorate for bread and butter issues, not what the cloud people want. The elites in the stupid party better figure it out or they will be out.