Mike Benz Has A Good Lead

Mike Benz draws an interesting connection with the alleged January 6 pipe bomber in the video embedded above. At 3:20:

The guy in chgarge of the FBI at the time was the one who sold fake pipe bombs three months earlier in the Whitmer fednapping case. Steve D'Antuono was how did they bust them on the Whitmer fednapping case, where over half of the co-conspirators turned out to be federal assets or informants. It was two FBI agents, this is the Detroiit FBI Field Office, Steve D'Antuono these guys were under, who went to a bunch of Three Percenters, that was one of the militia groups, the big three militia groups, the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers on January 6, went to the exact miltia group that was involved in January 6, infiltrated them, convinced them, trained them on how to build homemade pipe bombx, and then busted them buying pipe bomb parts and chaged them with attempted possession of weapons of mass destruction.

According to Wikipedia,

On October 8, 2020, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced the arrests of 13 men suspected of orchestrating a domestic terror plot to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, and otherwise using violence to overthrow the state government.

. . . Two men pleaded guilty and offered to testify on behalf of the prosecution as part of a favorable plea deal, while two men were acquitted at trial. Two other men, who had received a hung jury at the first trial, were later found guilty of kidnapping conspiracy and conspiracy to possess weapons of mass destruction. One of those men was also convicted of another explosives charge.

. . . The defense has argued that this is a case of entrapment, claiming to have identified twelve FBI informants. They contend that the entire plot was fabricated by federal agents.

According to this site,

Steven D'Antuono was the Assistant Director of the FBI Washington DC Field Office from 13 October 2020. . . . [He previously was] special agent in charge of the Detroit field office from 2019 to 2020 . . . . In January 2021, in the aftermath of the 2021 United States coup d'etat attempt [sic], he worked hand-in-hand with the US Attorney's office and local and national police to arrest and charge multiple individuals who took part in the insurrection, opening over 160 case files.

Steven D'Antuono has already appeared here several times in connection with his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on June 7, 2023. It's worth quoting again what I quoted in this post almost two years ago:

"People surmise and suspect that, 'oh, there's all this video all over the country, all over D.C.' It's not true," Steven D'Antuono, the former head of the FBI Washington Field Office, testified before the House Judiciary Committee on June 7, 2023.

. . . "We did every check, every lab test, every data. We ran this through systems back and forth, up and down, sideways, all over the place," he testified about the search for the suspect.

Thery did every check, every lab test, except it looks like they never did gait analysis, which is the focus of the Blaze Media story, and which was apparently used to track down Osama bin Laden -- certainly it was a known tool as of 2008:

Nearly seven years after Osama Bin Laden disappeared, US intelligence agencies are still chasing his shadow. And shadows are precisely what they should be looking for, says NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

By analysing the movements of human shadows in aerial and satellite footage, JPL engineer Adrian Stoica says it should be possible to identify people from the way they walk – a technique called gait analysis, whose power lies in the fact that a person’s walking style is very hard to disguise.

So, even though gait analysis was available to the FBI in 2021, they apparently didn't use it, although it looks like gait analysis might have identified the perp -- unless, of course, they knew who the perp was all along. Gait analysis could simply be a cover explanation; the actual basis could well be something else, like an informant. But Mike Benz's remarks in the video above are bringing me to a new theory:

• I've noted the incredible amateurishness of the figure in the hoodie, face mask, and custom shoes in the video, as well as the next-door neighbor, who was apparently traced almost immediately due to a Washington Metro card
• But then there's the stranger question of how the videos seem to show the two bombs being planted the evening of January 5, but a Secret Service sweep of the DNC headquarters found no bomb the morning of January 6, yet a local woman nevertheless did find a bomb about 12:30 that day
• The photos of the alleged hoodie-and-face-mask perp, Shauni Kerkhoff, do not suggest what Trump would call a high-IQ individual -- in fact, they almost suggest someone with a handicap
• Steven D'Antuono, under whose authority the "investigation" of the bomber took place, had a history of exploiting and entrapping low-IQ individuals to make high-profile cases.

So I'm starting to lean in the direction tbat Kerkhoff, if in fact she is the person in the hokey disguise in the video, is a dupe, a mark, one of a cast of suckers recruited and handled by FBI agents to play a role equivalent to Marinus van der Lubbe, a mentally questionable individual who was convicted and executed for setting the Reichstag fire.

One thing that makes me wonder if this is the case is Kerkhoff's apparent ambivalence in setting the bombs -- she wanders around, sits down on a bench, gets up, wanders around some more before finally placing them. I suspect she was deeply conflicted about planting bombs she was convinced would kill and maim many people, although I suspect they were fake, created by schemers from the start to look like amateur devices, but she believed they were real.

However, something about the plot went awry, and things didn't turn out as planned. I think the bombs were fake and never meant to explode -- that D'Antuono would claim they were viable in his testimony strikes me as suspicious -- but Kerkhoff and the next door neighbor suddenly became unnecessary (I'm not sure why they weren't rubbed out, to tell the truth). But because whatever was supposed to happen didn't work out for whatever reason, it was important to call off the investigation.

However, I'm also coming to the opinion that the Blaze Media investigation is so buttoned-down and so limited in its actual scope -- all it ever does is put a name to a hoodie and face mask -- that I think it's been heavily massaged by current FBI and Juastice Department insiders, and they already know a great deal more than is in the published story. For instance:

DOJ Pardon Attorney Ed Martin says he spoke with Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino over the weekend, who gave him a very promising update on January 6th and the pipe bomber:

"I spoke to Bongino and he said 'We are in this completely. It's not off the radar.' I know we are making… pic.twitter.com/jGovWEhPgX

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) November 11, 2025

I Still Want To Talk About The Interesting Stuff

So the Democrats caved last evening, and there's a leadership crisis in the party. I was on this Thursday and Saturday. It happened, as I discussed then, because they allowed Trump to back them into a structured choice in which the alternatives to caving would be seeing the filibuster nuked or abandoning their key constituencies of federal workers and welfare recipients.

Trump knew this would happen when he flew Air Force One on a victory flight over the Lions-Commanders game yesterday afternoon, even befiore they caved. Nothing new here.

What I do think is a more interesting topic is the alleged January 6 pipe bomber. As a good contrarian, I note that this topic, which even many alt sites wouldn't touch when the story broke, has now completely disappeared from any news at all. That means it's got to be worth pursuing.

On November 1, I posted about the two prevailing theories of the case, that the individual in loose clothes, a hoodie, and face mask seen in surveillance video placed the bombs during the evening of January 5, or that a woman who lived nearby, Karin Younger, may have placed the bombs not long before she reported them on the morning of January 6. Both theories involve a woman, one Ms Younger, the other the widespread speculation that the person in the mask and hoodie, 5'7" tall, walked like a woman. The revelations this past weekend add support to this second theory.

More productive, though, is that the individual in the mask and hoodie in the videos, irrespective of gender or even name, comes off as an amateur. The hokey disguise is amateurish enough, but he or she wanders for blocks around the target areas, hesitates, and wanders around some more. I asked Chrome AI mode, "What is the sequence of actions the figure in the mask and hoodie makes while wandering around Capitol Hill the evening of January 5, 2021?" It answered,

• Circa 7:30 p.m. EST: The suspect was first seen on security cameras carrying a backpack near the intersection of 1st Street S.E. and North Carolina Avenue S.E..
• Between 7:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. EST: The individual walked to the DNC building on South Capitol Street S.E..
• Circa 7:54 p.m. EST: After walking off and then backtracking to a bench, the suspect sat down and placed the first pipe bomb underneath a bench outside the DNC headquarters.
• Circa 8:00 p.m. EST: The individual left the DNC area and proceeded toward the RNC office. The suspect was briefly lost on camera during this time.
• Circa 8:16 p.m. EST: The suspect arrived in an alley behind the RNC building and placed the second pipe bomb. The placement of this bomb was not directly caught on camera.
• Circa 8:18 p.m. EST: The figure was last seen on camera heading east on Rumsey Court S.E..

So it took the person almost half an hour to wander around the scene before placing the bomb at the DNC headquarters, all the time dressed in a highly distinctive outfit and apparently unaware that cameras were everywhere. Then the person took another 16 minutes to travel what, according to Chrome AI mode, is approximately 0.17 miles (around 900 feet), which is a short three to four-minute walk. Then, after apparently planting the RNC bomb, the person quickly skedaddled.

Whatever this was, it wasn't a professional operation. Since Chrome AI mode has been hitting quite well today, I asked it, "How would professional, experienced operatives have planted the January 6 pipe bombs?" It answered, in part,

• Minimizing Identifiers: A professional operative would have worn completely generic and disposable clothing to avoid leaving behind forensic evidence or a discernible trail based on unique items like specific models of sneakers.
• Optimal Timing and Discretion: Operatives would choose a time with minimal foot or vehicle traffic to reduce the chance of witnesses or appearing on CCTV, or would use methods to disable surveillance systems beforehand. The time the DNC and RNC bombs were planted (between 7:30 and 8:30 p.m. the night before) still involved some public visibility.
• Operational Planning and Reconnaissance: Professionals would conduct extensive reconnaissance to identify surveillance blind spots and escape routes, ensuring the devices were placed in locations that were highly likely to cause casualties or significant disruption if detonated, rather than in easily discoverable, accessible spots like behind bushes where they were found.
• . . . Evasion of Digital Forensics: Operatives would employ rigorous counter-surveillance tactics, use burner phones (or leave personal phones elsewhere to avoid geofencing data), and avoid using any personal vehicles or equipment that could be tracked or linked to their identity.
• Secure Communications and Logistics: The entire operation, from acquiring materials (which would likely be from hard-to-trace sources) to planning the placement, would involve secure communication channels and logistics, leaving no digital or paper trail that law enforcement could exploit.

It concludes,

The fact the suspect remains unidentified after more than four years suggests some level of careful execution, but the relative simplicity of the devices and their failure to detonate are often cited in expert discussions as potential indicators of an amateur or an operation that prioritized placing the devices quickly over ensuring their functionality or maximizing their impact.

Except the devices were planted anything but quickly! The person dithered for nearly an hour, followed on video, doing something that should have taken at most ten minutes! The story as it's begun to emerge after the Blaze Media version was released is that the person (assuming it's Ms Kerkhoff) seems to have worked with her next-door neighbor both to use a Washington Metro card that was tied to the neighbor, and apparently later to be picked up in the neighbor's Subaru on the way home.

Clearly neither was following professional tradecraft, and via former FBI Agent Kyle Seraphin, the neighbor had already been traced via the Metro card the suspect had used to travel to the site -- but then the FBI dropped the case, which probably, given the amateurishness involved, should have been easily solved.

Certainly both individuals, Ms Kerkhoff as either a police officer or a CIA security guard, and her neighbor, said to be a civilian Air Force employee, could at minimum be removed from their jobs via ordinary due process, given the evidence.

So what's happening now? I would assume that at minimum, the FBI would need to interview Ms Kerkhoff, if for no other reason than to rule her out as a suspect. But as I surmised yesterday, the Blaze writers had almost certainly already been tipped off to Ms Kerkhoff by a source within the FBI. But so far, Director Patel and Attorney General Bondi are silent. The five-year statute of limitations for prosecuting the wannabe bomber or bombers has yet to run out, on January 6, 2026. I asked Chrome AI mode, "What is the federal penalty for planting a pipe bomb, even if it doesn't explode?" It answered,

Planting a pipe bomb, even if it does not detonate, is a serious federal offense that can lead to imprisonment for a term of years or life, or even the death penalty, depending on the specific charges and the intent and circumstances of the act. The act can be prosecuted under various statutes, including those related to the use of a weapon of mass destruction or attempted malicious destruction by explosive, which carry severe penalties.

I've got to assume something is in the works, although the most obvious suspects, highly trained deep state operatives, probably aren't involved, due to the incredible amateurishness of the whole operation.

The J6 Pipe Bomber Story Explodes -- Or Does It?

Blaze Media published a lengthy, detailed story yesterday that alleges that the figure who appears in surveillance footage planting pipe bombs on the evening of January 5 in loose clothing, face covered with a mask and hoodie, was then-Capitol Police officer Shauni Rae Kerkhoff.

A forensic analysis of a female former U.S. Capitol Police officer’s gait is a 94%-98% match to the unique stride of the long-sought Jan. 6 pipe-bomb suspect, according to a Blaze News investigation confirmed by several intelligence sources.

A source close to a congressional investigation of Jan. 6 additionally told Blaze News evidence has emerged recently that pointed toward law enforcement possibly being involved in the planting of the pipe bombs.

A software algorithm that analyzes walking parameters including flexion (knee bend), hip extension, speed, step length, cadence, and variance rated Shauni Rae Kerkhoff, 31, of Alexandria, Va., as a 94% match to the bomb suspect shown on video from Jan. 5, 2021. The veteran analyst who ran the analysis for Blaze News said that based on visual observations the program can struggle with, he personally pegged the match at closer to 98%.

Kerkhoff, who was a Capitol Police officer for four and a half years, left the department in mid-2021 for a security detail at the Central Intelligence Agency, sources told Blaze News.

While a few alt aggregators have linked the story, many haven't. and there's been little reaction. The most complete set of arguments that the story is false is at The Daily Kos:

The Blaze's report centers on forensic gait analysis—a technique that compares how people walk. According to their investigation, a software algorithm produced a "94%-98% match" between Kerkhoff's gait and that of the pipe bomb suspect captured on video. Several unnamed "intelligence sources" allegedly confirmed these findings.

But here's what's missing: any official confirmation whatsoever. The FBI, Capitol Police, and Department of Justice all declined to comment on The Blaze's report. More importantly, Ed Martin, a DOJ special attorney, explicitly stated that the DOJ has not identified Kerkhoff as the suspect—directly contradicting any suggestion that government officials had confirmed the identification.

. . . Gait analysis can be a useful forensic tool, but it's far from foolproof. The American Bar Association notes that while gait analysis "can be compelling, corroborating evidence," it works best when combined with other forms of identification. In this case, The Blaze is asking us to accept a single analyst's interpretation of video footage—footage that, according to their own reporting, may have been manipulated by the FBI to reduce frame rates.

But none of this is a direct refutation, and I hear several big dogs that aren't barking here. First, we've got to consider that Shauni Rae Kerkhoff is the quintessential ordinary person-on-the-street who's suddenly subject to major allegations. Let's take a hypothetical example: "John Bruce, a quietly retired Los Angeles computer engineer, was identified yesterday as the hit man who took out Jimmy Hoffa on July 30, 1975, after Hoffa was last seen in the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox Restaurant in Bloomfield Township, Michigan."

My reaction, like just about anyone in that situation, would be to hire an attorney who would immediately hold a press conference demanding a retraction and apology and file a defamation suit. This is essentially what Richard Jewell, the Atlanta security guard who was wrongly alleged to have planted the Centennial Olympc Park pipe bomb, did. So far, there has been no equivalent reaction from Shauni Rae Kerkhoff, and the longer we go without one, the hinkier this looks. An X user here pops the obvious question to Steve Baker, one of the Blaze reporters:

Aren’t you jumping the gun? She’s going to sue if you’re wrong.

— Tufty Thesinger (@Plutois9th) November 8, 2025

His answer: What gun did I jump?

Second, I worked much of my career in classified environments, and even if they weren't formally designated as such, they nearly always involved highly sensitive corporate IT information. The uniform reply people are trained to give when contacted by the press over any such matter is to say that they "can neither confirm nor deny". The various agencies contacted about Kerkhoff have either declined to comment, or in the case of Ed Martin, stated only that the DOJ had not identifiied Kerkhoff, presumably meaning it had not done so in any public way. This didn't mean that no other agency had identified Kerkhoff, or that Kerkhoff wasn't under investigation.

Third, the Blaze story identifies other areas where the allegations against Kerkhoff seem to fit previously unexplained parts of the existing narrative, such as the peculiar dead end involving a Washington Metro card:

Former FBI Special Agent Kyle Seraphin realized Friday that he was doing surveillance next door to the woman now suspected of being the Jan. 6 pipe bomber.

“The FBI put us one door away from the pipe bomber within days of January 6, and we were deliberately pulled away for no logical or logically investigative reason,” Seraphin told Blaze News Friday. “And everything about that tells me that they were involved in a cover-up and have been since day one.

. . . Seraphin’s team spent two days watching the man, but Seraphin’s request to go face-to-face with the person of interest was denied. The team was pulled off the case the same night, he said.

. . . The FBI tied a DC Metrorail SmarTrip card allegedly used by the pipe-bomb suspect to an Air Force civilian employee but determined that while the man purchased the card, he did not use it. The suspect allegedly used the card to travel from D.C. to a stop in Falls Church after planting the pipe bombs. The Air Force civilian employee had purchased the SmarTrip card a year earlier.

In other words, Kerkhoff's nezt door neighbor gave her a Metro card he'd purchased but never used that she then used to travel to Capitol Hill to plant the bombs -- but the FBI pulled their guys off the case.

Fourth, the gait analysis had to have been done because there was a tip. The Blaze reporters didn't just randomly run the gait analysis on thousands upon thousands of people, finally shouting "Eureka!" when a random hit showed up. Somebody on the inside must have said something like, "Now, I never told you this, but you might find it interesting to look at a Capitol Police officer named. . ." The Blaze reporters then said, "Hmm, how can we prove this?" and came up with gait analysis, after they somehow got the masters of the FBI surveillance footage the FBI had never released. My guess is there was an FBI insider involved.

This is all coming out during what is effectively a four-day holiday weekend, and as I've pointed out, ever since Columbus Day, everyone who's anyone has been winding down for the holiday season that lasts from Thanksgiving to MLK's birthday. We'll have to see what else falls out.

So, How Goes The Shutdown?

There were two long and contentious Senate Democrat caucus lunches this week, from which participants emerged "tight-lipped" but "unified". What they were apparently "unified" about was a Friday offer from Minority Leader Schumer:

"I've spoken with my caucus, and Democrats are offering a very simple compromise," Schumer said during a Friday speech on the Senate floor. "Democrats are ready to clear the way to quickly pass a government funding bill that includes health care affordability. Leader Thune just needs to add a clean, one-year extension of the ACA tax credits to the CR so that we can immediately address rising health care costs."

"Now, the ball is in the Republicans' court. We need Republicans to just say yes," he continued.

Schumer is also demanding a bipartisan commission to negotiate the subsidies.

Schumer is demanding a negotiation, but what he doesn't seem to underatand is that the negotiation is already under way. At the link,

30 minutes after Democrats offered to reopen the government if Republicans agree to extend pandemic-era (temporary) Obamacare enhancements, Republicans rejected it outright - with one senior Senate GOP aide saying it's 'dead on arrival,' Bloomberg reports.

In Thursday's post, I linked yet again to a business school analysis of Trump's negotiating style. Its overall elements are these:

• Trump will announce a best-possible -- or even impossible -- goal, which he will pursue with bravado
• However, he will be ambiguous about what terms he may ultimately accept
• He will also make it plain that he's always willing to walk away from any deal
• He will maneuver his opponent into a position where not accepting Trump's deal puits the opponent in an impossible situation
• Trump will be generous once his deal is accepted.

In summary,

The structured choice approach is powerful because Trump essentially narrows down the other party’s choice set to only two options: one with a clear incentive and the other with an unpredictable (potentially, devastating) threat.

What stage are we at now? Trump has announced his best-possible goal: end the shutdown by nuking the filibuster. He reiterated this yesterday. However, he's been ambiguous about what he might accept short of nuking the filibuster.

But how is he maneuvering the Senate Democrats into one impossible alternative option? Let's keep in mind that the Democrats aren't actually unified. There's a group of moderates that want an off-ramp from he shutdown, and they've gotten as far as pushing Schumer to make the compromise offer he made yesterday, which we may surmise was the outcome of the caucus lunches on Tuesday and Thursday.

Both parties had seemed optimistic heading into this week. But the mood has turned gloomier, and those involved in bipartisan talks were skeptical there would be a breakthrough Friday. GOP leaders were noncommittal Thursday on whether the Senate would stay in Washington through the weekend.

“Unfortunately, it’s folks trying to figure out a path forward. But there is no organized effort at this point that is bearing fruit,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) told reporters Thursday. “There are attempts to find a way to bring people forward, but I’m discouraged. I’m hoping that overnight, things might change a little bit, but I’m not optimistic.”

. . . Some freshman Democratic senators are trying to make progress: Sens. Andy Kim and Lisa Blunt Rochester plan to meet with GOP Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (Penn.) and Jeff Van Drew (N.J.) Friday to talk about a possible bipartisan plan. One Democratic aide involved in bipartisan talks said “we are not going to get a better offer.”

“The hard-liners have yet to articulate any sense whatsoever of how they think this ends or any proposal to get Republicans to the table other than waiting longer and longer,” another Democratic aide said. “And in the meantime it’s the families who can afford it the least that are increasingly getting walloped by the shutdown.”

On one hand, nuking the filibuster is a bad alternative for many senators in both parties. But what other alternatives are available? The hard liners appear to be maintaining a position that they'll continue the shutdown indefinitely until Trump caves. But as Mark Halperin put it recently, the Republicans have been able to maintain message discipline, while Democrat moderates, as we see above, are clearly getting uncomfortable. Republicans are only feeding the discomfort:

On Friday’s “Alex Marlow Show,” Sen. Dave McCormick (R-PA) discussed the shutdown and said he is “fearful” it will impact Thanksgiving.

Host and Breitbart Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow asked, “Are the Democrats going to ruin Thanksgiving with the shutdown?”

McCormick said, “I’m fearful they are.”

McCormick added that he figured there would be a resolution after the election because Democrats would soften, but that hasn’t happened.

On one hand, the mere fact that Schumer offered any sort of compromise yesterday is a sign the Democrats are softening, but so far, whatever compromise they can justify to themselves isn't moving Republicans:

GOP senators rejected the offer out of hand. Majority Leader John Thune told CBS News it was a "nonstarter" that "doesn't even get close." Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina called it "terrible" and "political terrorism."

. . . Thune said the Senate is likely to work through the weekend, but he has not scheduled a 15th vote on the House-passed continuing resolution. That vote is seen as the key to unlocking a deal put forward by Republicans that would tie an extension of government funding to a trio of longer-term appropriations bills.

So here is how the alternatives are shaping up for the Democrats:

• Trump could potentially convince enough Republicans to nuke the filibuster if the shutdown goes on long enough
• Any compromise acceptable to enough Democrats won't get Republican support
• Both Republicans and Democrat hard liners are willing to let the shutdown continue
• In effect, Trump is willing to walk away from any deal.

Meanwhile,

U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says it is possible that flight reductions could be increased to 20% if the shutdown continues much longer. Thus far, the disruptions are occurring during what has become a pre-Thanksgiving lull for the airlines, intercity buses, and Amtrak.

But if the shutdown lasts another couple of weeks, things could change. Beyond that,

The Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, estimates that at least 670,000 federal workers are furloughed and roughly 730,000 are working without pay.

The Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan federal agency that provides analysis to lawmakers, said in a letter last month that the reduction in hours worked by furloughed federal employees alone could end up costing the economy $14 billion by year-end if the shutdown stretches to Thanksgiving.

So far, it's the Democrat moderates who are clearly the nervous ones. Trump has been running the show, it's pretty clear, and he has the Republican congressional leadership with him. Based on the business-school analysis, his aim is likely to maneuver the Democrats into a position where they have no alternative but to end the shutdown without any meaningful concession from Republicans. This will likely cause a Democrat leadership crisis.

If anyone thought that spinning Tuesday's election results as a disaster for Republicans wouild change Trump's shutdown strategy, that's not how things are working out.

Why Were The Polls So Wildly Off In Tuesday's Elections?

This is a key question that nobody's asking.

• The Real Clear Politics average for the New Jersey governor's race had Sherrill ahead by 2.7%, and many commentators had this within the margin of error. She won by 56.3% to Ciattarelli's 43.2%, a 13.1% margin.
• The RCP average for the Virginia governor's race had Spanberger ahead by 8.5%. She won by 57.2% to Earle Sears's 43.6%, a 13.5% margin.

I asked Chrome AI mode, "What is considered an accurate poll election prediction?" It answered,

An accurate poll election prediction is one where the actual election outcome falls within the poll's stated margin of error and confidence interval. However, polls often understate the full range of potential error, meaning the reported margin of error may need to be wider in practice to be truly accurate.

The RCP poll averages don't have a stated margin of error, because they are just a composite of individual polls with differing margins of error. But let's look at individual polls before those elections. According to Newsweek,

The latest AtlasIntel poll (October 25-30; 1,639 likely voters, =/-2 percent margin) gives Sherrill a narrow edge, 50.2 percent to 49.3 percent.

Meanwhile, a John Zogby Strategies poll, carried out among 1,205 people between October 31 and November 3, places Sherrill ahead (55 percent) of Ciattarelli (43.4 percent). There is a +/- 2.9 percentage point margin of error.

Research Co. also has Sherrill in the lead with 3 points more than Ciattarelli (52 percent to 48 percent) among 450 likely voters questioned between November 2 and 3—there is a =/- 4.5 percentage point margin of error.

Only the Zogby Poll, which had Sherrill ahead of Ciattarelli by 11.9 points vs the 13.1 point actual difference, was within the 2.9 point margin of error at 1.2 points. The others were wildly off. At the same link for the Virginia race,

Trafalgar Group has given [Spanberger] a 5.6 percentage point lead over Earle-Sears (49.8 percent to 43.3 percent).

Meanwhile, the latest Insider Advantage survey of 800 likely voters (questioned between November 2 and 3) has Spanberger at 50 percent and Earle-Sears at 40 percent. There is a +/- 3.46 percentage point margin of error.

Research Co.’s poll (November 2 and 3 among 450 likely voters) shows Spanberger with a lead of 54 percent over Winsome Earle-Sears’s 46 percent. There is a =/- 4.6 percent margin of error.

No margin of error is cited for the Trafalgar poll. The Insider Advantage poll had Spanberger ahead by 10%, with a margin of error at 3.46% Spanberger won by 13.5%, just outside the poll's margin of error. The Research Co poll had Spanberger ahead by 8 points, with a 4.6% margin of error. But Spanberger won by 13.5%, again outside the poll's margin of error. The Virginia polls were only slightly more accurate than the New Jersey polls, with the result for RCP that they got garbage in-garbage out in both races.

The effect of this sloppy work was to build an expectation that the Republicans had a chance of winning, especially in New Jersey. As far back as July, the conventional wisdom went,

Mikie Sherrill by a landslide?

Nobody believes that will be the result of New Jersey’s piping hot governor’s race come November. Not the Republicans. Not the Democrats. Not the campaigns. And not the Rutgers-Eagleton pollster who last week released a survey that says Sherrill, the Democratic nominee, has an early 20-point lead over Republican Jack Ciattarelli.

So somehow, the pollsters managed to create an inaccurate impression that Ciattarelli was going to come from behind and score an upset victory over Sherrill, when Sherrill nevertheless won by a landslide anyhow. Who benefitted from this?

On one hand, the media did, simply in terms of clicks and pageviews and eyeballs. It generated national interest in an otherwise blah and predictable local race, when the same Republican had already run and lost against a Democrat twice. The alt media also seized on the story as a potential Republican success story.

But let's recall what Rush Limbaugh said about the polls:

The polls are nothing more than a tool for making public opinion. The polls are not taken to reflect public opinion at all. The primary purpose of polls is to depress and dispirit Republican voters by making them feel constantly like they’re in the minority.

In this case, the polls and the media worked to create one "piping hot governor's race" that was never piping hot at all, while feeding completely unrealistic expectations that Republicans could win in Virginia. And when rhe optimistic buildup fell completely flat on election day, the media -- even the putative non-partisan commentators -- spun it as a disaster. Thus Sean Trende at Real Clear Politics:

The GOP went into the night with reasonably upbeat expectations. Polls showed a close race in New Jersey, and it looked as though Republicans might keep the attorney generals office in Virginia. Neither outcome happened.

. . . It's hard to see what good news there could possibly be for Republicans here. Incoming Virginia governor Abigail Spanberger won by 15 points, while even Jay Jones, the problematic attorney general candidate (see below) won by around 6 points, similar to the Democrats margins in 2017. In New Jersey Sherrill nearly equaled Gov. Phil Murphys 2017 margin. Counties like Bergen and Passaic, where Donald Trump made big gains among minorities last year, swung back toward Democrats.

Except that the Republican expectations were fed by the polls, whose purpose in life, at least according to El Rushbo, is to depress and dispirit Republican voters. But wait a moment -- here's Sean Trende, the public face of the Real Clear Politics polling averages, flat out admitting that it was the polls -- and the RCP averages -- that misled Republicans. Shouldn't he be asking himself some serious questions here? Apparently not. RCP is going to keep on getting a few good polls, mixing them in with a lot of garbage polls, and averaging it all out. the main effect is to depress and dispit Republicans, even when they're creating putatively optimistic trends out of pure moonshine.

Nuke The Filibuster!

The current government shutdown, whatever else it may be, is a negotiation. Whatever rhe conventional wisdom may say about Trump's current situation, it's unwise to forget that Trump is a skilled negotiator. In the current shutdown crisis, I think he's following an established pattern. His call to nuke the filibuster is a good example. At 4:15 in the video above, he says,

I've been saying for the last 30 days, we've had four or five different points, "Yes, sir, they're going to get it right now, we should have it done in a day." I've heard that about four times. I heard it after [No] Kings. . . I heard it after a couple of other moments in time. And I said, "No, I don't believe so." And now I heard it's after the election. I don't believe so. I think they're kamikaze pilots. . . . They'll take down the country if they have to.

His argument is that the Democrats, althougn in the minority, will use the filibuster to block every Republican initiative for the rest of his term, so it's time to nuke the filibuster:

That demand is putting Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and other GOP leaders in an awkward spot. Thune and many other senators oppose terminating the filibuster, an arcane procedural tool that empowers the minority party to delay or block a piece of legislation they oppose.

Getting rid of it would help Republicans in the short term, but many in the party have warned that getting rid of the filibuster could come back to bite them if Democrats return to power in the Senate.

Trump-'s reply is that it's only a matter of time before the Democrats retake power, when they'll certainly nuke it themselves; best do it now, when we can reap the benefit. This may seem like Trump the impulse-driven egoist is back, but I think this is a carefully thought-out strategy. Let's take another look at the business-school analysis of Trump's negotiating style that I frequently link here:

As much as Trump watches others, he is aware of being watched: “life is a performance art,” he wrote Think Like a Champion. “Understand that as a performer, you have a responsibility to your audience to perform to the best of your ability”.

. . . In addition to flaunting his ability and willingness to “walk away,” Trump the performer also anchors high – i.e., makes the first move and asks for a maximum possible value to get the most out of the negotiation. “My style of deal‐making is quite simple and straightforward. I aim very high, and then I just keep pushing and pushing and pushing to get what I’m after. Sometimes I settle for less than I sought, but in most cases I still end up with what I want”.

. . . [A]mbiguity has been an enduring part of Trump’s negotiation toolkit from his early days as a businessman to the present day as occupant of the Oval Office. Before running for president he wrote, “never let anyone know exactly where you’re coming from. Knowledge is power, so keep as much of it to yourself as possible”.

. . . The structured choice tactic is central to Trump’s coercive negotiation approach. In his use, the method has the following logic: choose my proposal, which I have promoted with bravado or, being less desperate for the deal than you are, I will walk away, ominously suggesting that significant adverse consequences could follow. “Leverage,” Trump notes in The Art of the Deal, “often requires imagination, and salesmanship”. The structured choice approach is powerful because Trump essentially narrows down the other party’s choice set to only two options: one with a clear incentive and the other with an unpredictable (potentially, devastating) threat.

What Trump is doing with the shutdown, if we put it in the context of these strategies, is anchoring high: he's asking the Republican senators to nuke the filibuster, when this is something they're unlikely to do; he knows this. On the other hand, if the shutdown goes long enough and causes enough pain, this could happen. Trump is an effective persuader. But both Republican and Democrat senators are uncomfortable with nuking the filibuster. Nuking the filibuster is the "unpredictable (potentially, devastating) threat" in Trump's structured choice.

The clear incentive on the other side is to vote for cloture, leave the filibuster in place, but end the shutdown. There's also ambiguity in play. Trump has the megalomaniac role in his repertoire, and he's playing it here. What's he going to do? But his performance isn't aimed at Schumer or Jeffries -- he's aiming at splitting away enough moderate Democrats to vote for cloture. And they clearly exist:

Top Senate Democrats say the party is working through “differences of opinions” as they scramble to find an off-ramp to a month-old partial government shutdown that is set to become the longest on record Wednesday.

Democrats emerged tight-lipped from an unusually long closed-door caucus lunch on Tuesday as they weighed options to end the shutdown while pushing to extend enhanced health insurance subsidies that are set to expire at year’s end.

. . . A bipartisan deal to end the shutdown is likely to require some Democrats to agree to reopen government without an extension of the health subsidies that has been their top demand. Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., declined to discuss details of the roughly three-hour caucus lunch, saying only that “we’re exploring all the options.”

Retiring Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, one of a small group of Democrats who have been holding informal talks with Republicans, was likewise mum on details.

The problem on the moderate Democrat side is that the longer the shutdown lasts, the less predictable are the results. Meanwhile, Trump is clearly displaying a lack of concern over how long the shutdown lasts -- as he said in the video, people keep telling him it will end soon, but he doesn't think so. The Democrats want to be kamikaze pilots, but right now, there's nothing he can do about it short of nuking the filibuster, which is up to the Senate -- and which they won't do.

So the filibuster goes on, and Trump is going to let it happen -- or in other words, he's willing to walk away. There's a clear choice, on the other hand, to end the resulting ambiguity.

All I can say for sure is that it's a mistake to underestimate Trump

More On The Alliance Between The Upper Class And Marx's Lumpenproletariat

Because I'm on the other side of the country, and we have enougn problems of our own in LA, I wasn't following the New York mayoral election very closely. But this piece at the Manhattan Contrarian blog provides another examination of what amounts to an alliance between the upper class and Marx's Lumpenproletariat, traditionally the urban underclass of street criminals, vagabonds, pimps, and prostitutes, which is too unrelaible to be an ally of the working class, and the upper class, the 1%.

As things have been falling out in the 21st century, it see3ms to me that Marx's Lumpenroletariat has expanded beyond street criminals and other traditional riff-raff to include the homeless, whose ranks have been swelled by the easy availability of addictive drugs; illegal migrants; and sexual deviants, who form a powewrful interest group. This certainly seems to be the group whose electoral power gave Zohran Mamdani the victory in New York's mayoral election, which the writer at the link says is a major defeat for the middle class:

It’s Election Day in New York, and Zohran Mamdani, the socialist assemblyman from Queens, is almost certainly going to be the next mayor. But on his home turf, residents are terrified of the policies he supports.

Among those policies is Local Law 97, which will require over 50,000 buildings to reduce emissions 40% by 2030 and 80% by 2050. For large buildings, full compliance requires full electrification and millions of dollars in renovations. The alternative is to pay hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in annual penalties.

. . . The law “is an existential threat for New York’s co-op and condo owners,” former New York Lieutenant Governor and Save NYC cofounder Betsy McCaughey said. “It will massively increase the costs for them to keep their home, while endangering the solvency of their homeowners’ associations. It may ultimately trap them from being able to sell their apartments as the market crashes and liens are placed against their developments for the unpaid conversion costs.”

. . . On the eve of the election, 150 Queens residents gathered in the courtyard of Glen Oaks Village to oppose Local Law 97. Undeterred by the chilly, overcast weather, they warned their fellow New Yorkers that the radical climate policy could force them out of their homes.

One of the speakers was Alicia Fernandez, the treasurer of a 726-unit apartment building in Mamdani’s state assembly district. “We had a full feasibility study done for our building, and the costs came to 60 million dollars for our 726 apartments. That is $60,000 per one-bedroom and over $125,000 for our three-bedroom units.”

Condo and co-op owners know that expenses like that mean assessments from the homeowners' association, which are burdensome enough just to maintain the building, leaving aside the cost of such extravagant upgrades. Past a certain point, if residents can't afford the assessments, they have to sell their units and move. But if assessments for environmental upgrades put the cost of units out of reach for potential buyers, it will be impossible for current owners to sell their units.

Glen Oaks, a middle-class apartment complex with 2,904 units and over 10,000 shareholders, is representative of the hundreds of thousands of residents facing this crisis. Bob Friedrich, the president of Glen Oaks, has been speaking out on behalf of his shareholders since Local Law 97 was first drafted in 2019.

“[Our buildings] remain the last stronghold of affordable middle-class homeownership,” said Friedrich, noting that Local Law 97 “threatens that affordability.”

The end game in this situation would likely be that, with the market for condo and co-op units destroyed, the homeowners' associations would be forced into bankruptcy, and in some way or other, the city would seize the units. At that point, the current owners would be forced out, and the city, Zohran Mamdani, mayor, would be in a position to redistribute the property, which would go to the Lumpenproletariat, his supporters. The problem there is that a great many of the co-op owners, while they might be sociologically "middle class", are actually unionized workers, part of the traditional working class. The link continues,

Like his ally, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Mamdani loves stoking conflict between the rich and the poor, the landlords and the tenants. He presents New York City as a town of the haves and have-nots, and that narrative has propelled him to the national spotlight.

But it’s an incomplete picture. While progressive politicians love to present New York City as a town of the ultra-rich and ultra-poor, there are several neighborhoods — many of them in the outer boroughs Mamdani represents — where a middle class has been able to thrive. Members of that middle class say that Local Law 97, and politicians like Mamdani, hurt them by misrepresenting their concerns and ignoring their existence.

This isn't a bug, it's a feature. It's related to the proposal to tax unrealized capital gains that surfaced during the 2024 presidential campaign.

While a “Kamala Harris unrealized capital gains tax” proposal made the rounds during the lead-up to the 2024 election, it was initially suggested by former President Biden. Vice President Harris signed off on the proposal, and it later became a discussion topic during her presidential campaign, although she did not publicly address it.

What are unrealized capital gains tax rates? The proposal would have imposed a 25% minimum income tax on unrealized capital gains for taxpayers with a net worth exceeding $100 million.

That might sound like it would impact only the very rich, but the amount it would raise would probably be trivial in comparison to total government spending. The inevitable solution would be to lower the net worth threshold until it hit the middle class, where in fact we see the big bonanza: home equity. Levying an unrealized capital gains tax on home equity would result in an enormous one-time tax bill for middle-class homeowners that would force a massive sale of homes to meet it.

The reuslt would be a destruction of the middle-class housing market and the socialization of increasing swaths of real estate. The wealthy upper class would have devised ways to shelter themselves from this, while it wouid give the government the ability to redistribute residential real estate, which would in effect allow the government to award it to the underclass at the expense of the bankupted working and middle classes.

This is what the diagram at the top of this post omits: while the underclass is represented there as the bottom of the loser hierarchy, notice how the suburban and provincial middle class are both in a position of being squeezed out by those at the top of the diagonal winnmer-loser line-- but the diagram also creates an artificial distinction in a "diploma divide" between the middle and working classes, which as a practical matter is fast disappearing. College degrees are increaingly worthless.

The fact is that the traditional middle and working classes are merging, and they risk being squeezed out together between the financial elites, the professional class, and the underclass, an updated version of Marx's Lumpenproletariat. The ultimate problem is what Marx saw; the underclass is simply not a realiable ally, not of the working class, which Marx fully understood, nor in fact of any other class. This is the big mistake the upper class is making.

The upper class, or at least some of it, is still trying to bargain with the specter of a world proletarian revolution, or a more recent variation, the "helter skelter" race war. Via Fabian socialism, its strategy had been to temporize with the demands of the working class to forestall the revolution. The result of this policy over two centuries has been to create a de facto alliance between the middle and working classes. But at some point, the upper-class objective changed to temporizing with the Lumpenproletariat, an entirely different matter.

The Lumpenproletariat is not a reliable ally. This is the upper class's big mistake. The current leftists who affect a Marxist-Leninist outlook are simply not Marxists; they're agents of the upper class.

UPDATE:

Alex Soros, the son of leftist billionaire megadonor George Soros, on Tuesday hailed socialist Zohran Mamdani’s election to become the next mayor of New York City.

“So proud to be a New Yorker! The American dream continues! Congrats, Mayor Zohran Mamdani,” Soros wrote, sharing a picture of him and Mamdani.