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Table of Contents: Win or Lose, Trump Has Once Again Left The Elites Flabbergasted: Gary Abernathy, Washington Post, Nov. 4, 2020
Election Night Reveals Trump’s Triumph Over Implacable and Dishonest Opposition, Which May Win a Second Term: Conrad Black, Epoch Times,Nov. 4, 2020 Polarized Electorate, Mail-In Ballots Could Spark Post-Election Legal ‘Fight Of Our Lives’: Tom Hals, Reuters, Nov. 2, 2020
The Isolated American Jews: Caroline Glick, Israel National News, Nov. 3, 2020 _____________________________________________________ _Win or Lose, Trump Has Once Again Left The Elites Flabbergasted
Gary Abernathy Washington Post, Nov. 4, 2020Once again, it was fascinating on Tuesday night to watch and listen to election analysts of all stripes express their surprise that the Democratic nominee not only wasn’t running away with the election, but that President Trump actually had a chance to win it.To be surprised by how the night unfolded is to have believed, without evidence, that pollsters had corrected their 2016 errors and that former vice president Joe Biden’s victory was assured. Regardless of the final outcome, polling itself was possibly Tuesday’s biggest loser.Nationally, so many questions were awaiting answers. Would the aggressive get-out-the-vote ground game of the Trump campaign and Republican National Committee — touted as superior to the Democrats’ — overcome being vastly outspent on traditional television advertising? Were “shy” Trump voters a real phenomenon that pollsters failed to measure? Did the enthusiastic multitudes who turned out for Trump’s final swing-state barnstorming tour reflect growing momentum? Tuesday’s returns seemed to answer each question: Yes.While much was made about the substantial early votes cast this year, voting in ways other than showing up on Election Day has been increasingly common in many states, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. Just four years ago, 16 states saw early, mail and absentee voting exceed in-person Election Day voting, including 75 percent of Arizona voters, 68 percent in Florida and 65 percent in North Carolina.Still, the expansion of such activity across the nation as a whole, driven by pandemic concerns, was unprecedented. That Democrats were much more likely to vote early than Republicans gave Trump an opening to cast doubt on the reliability of the early vote process. But playing that card seemed increasingly unnecessary thanks to the magnitude and fervency of Trump supporters who flooded polling places on Election Day. When the returns started coming, states that had tabulated early votes first seemed to back up claims of an easy path for Biden. But when the votes cast on Tuesday were added, Trump roared back.In Ohio, votes in presidential elections are usually counted efficiently and without much drama. Like many states, all 88 counties tabulate the early votes first — which favored Biden and made Ohio look like it might flip — and then count Election Day votes, which swung it back to Trump.The president’s apparent ability to hang on to the Buckeye State on Tuesday didn’t signal nationwide victory, but it did mean a Biden landslide was unlikely. Would Trump’s Ohio success mean the state would find itself on the wrong side of a presidential race for the first time since 1960, or would it foreshadow an upset electoral win? That answer wasn’t clear as of this writing, but Trump helped his cause by apparently retaining Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Texas. The youth vote, #NeverTrump GOP defectors, social media’s anti-conservative biases, the liberal media, being outspent on TV in the closing weeks — by late Tuesday, it looked as though Trump was overcoming all of it. That might turn out to be mistaken, but even if it does, the broad repudiation hoped for by his enemies clearly did not come to pass. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.] Election Night Reveals Trump’s Triumph Over Implacable and Dishonest Opposition, Which May Win a Second Term This was written at 4 a.m. EST on Nov. 4. The president appears almost certain to emerge with the majority of electoral votes; he has substantial leads compared to the number of votes outstanding, in Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, Alaska, and the single district in Maine; Nevada is uncertain. But he is the favorite in all of the other states just mentioned. It is technically possible but unlikely that his present margins in all of these states are surmountable without a greater tampering with the genuine vote than is likely to be possible given the degree of aggressive legal vigilance over the process that the president has already announced. It is ungracious and it may have been tactically unwise to be quite so forceful and explicit. But after the vicious and almost seamless assault that the national political media have made upon him, it isn’t especially blameworthy. Never in American history have the political media been so one-sided, so contemptuous of what was long the professional hallmark of good journalism—the separation of reporting from comment—and so strident and uniform in their hostility to one candidate as in this election, and throughout the past four years. Mighty Achievement As it is likely to take at least a few days to determine the apparent victor in each of these states, and further litigation is certainly threatened, a snapshot of the current state of affairs still reveals a mighty achievement in Trump’s battle for reelection. He had a won election following the collapse of the fatuous impeachment controversy in March, largely on the basis of a full-employment, low-tax, low-inflation economy. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic was instantly exploited by his opponents as requiring a profound and lengthy shutdown of the economy. The Democrats piled onto the bandwagon of the more vocal scientists and preemptively accused the president of being “anti-science,” and he obligingly presided over a substantial economic shutdown while promising that it would be brief and that economic recovery would be quick. …. [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.] Polarized Electorate, Mail-In Ballots Could Spark Post-Election Legal ‘Fight Of Our Lives’ U.S. Election Day on Tuesday has all the ingredients for a drawn-out court battle over its outcome: a highly polarized electorate, a record number of mail-in ballots and some Supreme Court justices who appear ready to step in if there is a closely contested presidential race. The only missing element that would send both sides to the courthouse would be a razor-thin result in a battleground state. “If it comes down to Pennsylvania and Florida I think we’ll be in the legal fight of our lives,” said Jessica Levinson, who teaches election law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. Election disputes are not unusual but they are generally confined to local or statewide races, say election law experts. This year, in the months leading up to the Nov. 3 showdown between Republican President Donald Trump and his Democratic challenger Joe Biden, the coronavirus pandemic fueled hundreds of legal challenges over everything from witness signatures, U.S. mail postmarks and the use of drop boxes for ballots. “As soon as the election is over,” Trump told reporters on Sunday, “we’re going in with our lawyers.” Two court rulings on deadlines for counting mail-in ballots have increased the likelihood of post-election court battles in the event of close outcomes in Pennsylvania and another crucial state, Minnesota, the experts said. The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Oct. 29 that Minnesota’s plan to extend the deadline for counting mail-in ballots was an unconstitutional maneuver by Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat. Minnesota officials were instructed to “segregate” absentee ballots received after Nov. 3. Meanwhile, on Oct. 28, the U.S. Supreme Court let stand a ruling by Pennsylvania’s top court that allowed officials to count mail-in ballots that are postmarked by Election Day and received up to three days later. The justices said there was not enough time to review the state court ruling. As in Minnesota, Pennsylvania officials will segregate those ballots, teeing up a potential court battle in the event of a close election. If any post-election battles are heard by the Supreme Court, it will have a 6-3 conservative majority after Trump-appointed Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed on Oct. 26. Three of the justices were appointed by Trump. The president said in September that he wanted his nominee confirmed because the election “will end up in the Supreme Court and I think it’s very important that we have nine justices.” … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.] The Isolated American Jews Without knowing the results of the U.S. presidential elections, certain conclusions can already be drawn safely. For instance, we can say with certainty that between 70 and 80 percent of American Jews voted for former Vice President Joe Biden. On the face of things, American Jews could have been expected to vote in the same proportion, in the exact opposite direction. After all, from Britain to France to Australia, in recent decades, Jewish communities in advanced industrial democracies have moved from left to right. Their move came in response to the transformation of their traditional political homes into hostile ground. Since the early 20th century, parties on the political left were traditionally more sympathetically inclined to Jews than parties on the right. But since the outset of the 21st century, that historic trend has been largely reversed. Parties on the left have become increasingly hostile to Jews and parties on the right have been making sustained efforts to win over the support of the Jewish communities. From Toulouse to Leeds to Berlin to Melbourne, Jews have been reading the same political map and turning to the right. In America, the political situation is comparable to that of other Western democracies. From one election cycle to the next, the power of progressive forces hostile to Israel and to Jewish Americans has grown in the Democratic Party. In contrast, the Republican Party has become the most pro-Israel and pro-Jewish party outside of Israel the world has ever seen. And yet, in stark contrast to their brethren in England and Belgium, American Jews have steadfastly maintained their allegiance to the Democrats and the political left. Over the past four years, the contrast in political behavior between American Jews and Jews from other Western democracies has become ever more remarkable. On the one hand, Donald Trump is the most pro-Israel and pro-Jewish president in U.S. history. Trump has stood with Israel almost unconditionally. He has fought anti-Semitism in the United States more effectively than any other president and he has done so throughout his presidency. For their part, the Democrats have taken giant strides towards becoming the U.S. version of the Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour Party. It isn’t simply that rising stars of the Democrat Party like congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Ilhan Omar boycott Israel. They do so with the full backing of the party’s leadership. Biden’s running mate Sen. Kamala Harris sided with Omar against American Jews who called for the party to censure Omar after one of her more egregious anti-Semitic outbursts last year. Harris has strong ties to the National Iranian-American Council—the Iranian regime’s lobby in Washington. Campaign financing filings from the Biden campaign on the eve of the election show that NIAC is one of its largest campaign donation bundlers. Harris enthusiastically supported the nuclear deal with Iran and boycotted last year’s AIPAC conference. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.] For Further Reference: Dems Appear Unlikely to Gain Control of the Senate: Jewish Insider, Nov. 4, 2020 — Democrats appear to have fallen short of the blowout Senate majority predicted by polls and politicos, losing a number of races they had hoped would grant them a majority in the upper chamber — with control still undecided. “Pollsters Have No Reason To Live Any More.” John Catsimatidis, @JCats2013, @CatsRoundtable, John Batchelor Show, Nov. 3, 2020 US Military Will Not Referee A Disputed Result, Say Generals: Rozina Sabur, The Daily Telegraph, Nov. 4, 2020 — ‘This heinous act [was intended to] send an intimidating message to the president’s opponents, and particularly, Jewish voters.’ With Trump And Biden Battling Still, American Jews Grapple With Profound Political Shifts: Ron Kampeas, JTA, Nov. 4, 2020 — American Jews woke up on Wednesday to a presidential election that is extending their anxiety and to electoral maps that show a Republican Party changed by a president they repudiated with their votes. Canadians Have ‘A Lot at Stake’ in this U.S. Election: Former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney: BNN Bloomberg, Nov. 2020 — Former prime minister Brian Mulroney joins BNN Bloomberg to discuss his expectations for U.S.-Canada relations after the U.S. presidential election outcome is determined, and what areas of the Canadian economy could feel the most impact. |
