In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

The RealClearPolitics headlines are usually tepid, cautiously juxtaposing a slightly right-of-center piece with a rabid left winger under the pretense that they're somehow bipartisan, reflecting someone's wish dream of conventional wisdom. But for some reason, this morning's titles are oddly unanimous: 7 Theories for Why Biden Is Losing (And What He Should Do) by Ezra Klein at the New York Times, Alarmed Dems Run From Biden in Battleground States by Alexander Bolton at The Hill, Biden Can Save America From Trump by Dropping Out by Jeremy Mayer at USA Today, and How Lawfare Turned Trump Into a Superhero Frank Miele at RealClearPolitics. None of them mentions the national popular-vote poll aggregate, which always tops RCP's list. Some of them mention the battleground-state aggregates, but even then with some skepticism. As Ezra Klein puts it in the lead piece, Biden is losing to Trump. His path is narrowing. In 2020, Biden didn’t just win Michigan, Pennsylva...

At RedState: Trump spoke at the Minnesota GOP’s annual Lincoln Reagan fundraising dinner on Friday. . . . “Although he has agreed to debate, so I don’t know, maybe they know something. He’s going to be so jacked up for those debates, you watch. "I'm going to demand a drug test," he declared. "I don’t want him coming in like the State of the Union,” Trump said. “He was high as a kite.” By the end of the evening, Trump said, Biden was “exhausted.” “We’re going to demand a drug test.” Even on the right, there's been a certain amout of pearl-clutching about this, from pretty much the same people who worried that he thought Hannibal Lecter is a real person. For instance, Jazz Shaw at Hot Air seems to think this was a serious proposal: If Biden refuses to do this, there isn't much that Trump could do about it. Nobody, including elected officials or candidates, can be forced to release their private medical records, although they are free to do ...

Fr Mike Schmitz's Bible in a Year podcast in recent weeks has been moving through First and Second Samuel, with its dysfunctional story arc of King Saul and King David. It's hard not to see Biblical reverberations in King Saul, a failed ruler intensely jealous of his eventual successor, David, but there's now the additional parallel that US Catholic bishops, beginning with Cardinal Gregory. are criticizing Joe for being a "cafeteria Catholic", which faintly echoes Samuel's mesaage that God has rejected Saul as king. But an even closer parallel is the story of David and his strange, almost codependent, relatonship with his entitled son Absalom . He was a great favorite of his father and of the people. His charming manners, personal beauty, insinuating ways, love of pomp, and royal pretensions captivated the hearts of the people from the beginning. He lived in great style, drove in a magnificent chariot, and had fifty men run before him. Absalom ha...

Things haven't been going well for Team Biden in recent days, not least because Hunter's "sugar bro", Kevin Morris, has told associates he is tapped out . According to Politico, Kevin Morris, a Hollywood entertainment lawyer who has long supported the president’s son, has told associates that he has run out of resources to help fund Biden’s legal defense, according to a person close to Morris who was granted anonymity to discuss private conversations. Whoa, let's parse this one out. First, I live in Hollywood, and I know something about the place. Tinsel Town is built on hype, and Kevin Morris is nothing if not a creature of hype. Here's the standard line as printed in the New York Post as of 2022: Morris is a successful lawyer and big-money Democratic Party supporter who has become Hunter Biden’s newest fixer and “sugar brother,” allegedly loaning the president’s son $2 million to help pay off his overdue federal taxes. . . . The lawyer, who counts C...

I think the single most cogent and succinct take on Biden's announcement that there will be debates is from New York WOR radio host Mark Simone in the clip from the Kudlow show above. At 1:55, he says, Whenever somebody suddenly demands debates, it means they're way behind. If he's behind in the rigged public polls, he must really be behind in the private polls. I think Saturday is what made this happen. I think that panicked them that Trump got 100,000 people. We've never seen 100,000, I think that really scared them. Now, why so early? We've never had a debate before the convention. I think the Biden people know he could be a disaster, and they'll need time to fix it if he is. And also, the people running Bidenworld, they gotta decide if they're gonna keep him. If they switch, it will be at the convention. They wanted to test him out. Pollster Richrd Baris said on his People's Pundit Daily podcast on Rumble at 37:15: Biden's team...

Fox reported Peter Doocy's question to Karine Jean-Pierre yesterday: "Why do you think Americans are so down on President Biden?" Doocy asked. "I know you don't like to talk about polls like the five of six swing states that he is losing right now to somebody who is a criminal defendant, but more broadly, it doesn't seem like anything you guys are doing is making [Biden] more popular. Why do you think that is?" Doocy is putting this in the context of the latest New York Times/Siena poll, but Byron York made the situation plainer in the Washington Examiner : On Nov. 5, 2023, the New York Times published a story headlined, “Trump Leads in 5 Critical States as Voters Blast Biden, Times/Siena Poll Finds.” Focusing on the states most likely to decide the 2024 election, the New York Times reported, “The results show Mr. Biden is losing to Mr. Trump, his likeliest Republican rival, by margins of four to 10 percentage points among registered voters in A...

The headlines want to pretend there's something new here, Trump now leading in 5 battleground states — all of which Biden won in 2020: poll , but the polls have been the same for months. In April, according to Reuters , Republican Donald Trump leads President Joe Biden in six battleground states in the 2024 U.S. presidential election, according to a Wall Street Journal poll released on Wednesday that cited concerns about the economy and Biden's performance. Trump garnered a lead of between 2 and 8 percentage points among voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina on a ballot that included third-party and independent candidates, the Journal said. The results were similar in a one-on-one matchup with Biden, it said. In Wisconsin, a seventh state where the contest is expected to be close, Biden was ahead by 3 points on a multiple candidate ballot and tied in a head-to-head contest with Trump, the Journal said. In February, According to Mor...