Free Republic

WHEN 46 STARTS TO EQUAL 41 — It won’t be long before “George Herbert Walker Biden” creeps into the vernacular, given the parallels surfacing between the 41st president and the 46th. Like the first President Bush, President Joe Biden is viewed by much of Washington as fundamentally decent — good at democracy and foreign policy but bamboozled by an economy that, apart from inflation, he keeps suggesting is fine. People didn’t feel that way in 1992, and despite job growth and low unemployment, they certainly don’t now. The price for Bush was a second term. Looking back 20 years, Time...

In the civil war between Donald Trump and the GOP’s waning establishment, no Republican has crossed the former president and come out ahead. Yet as Rep. Liz Cheney’s likely ouster from House leadership lays bare, Trump has reserved a special fury for the scions of the GOP’s leading families in his attempt to exercise full dominion over the Republican Party. Whether it’s the Cheneys, the Bushes or the lesser bloodlines — such as the Romneys or the Murkowskis — Trump has been relentless in his efforts to force them to bend the knee. Even Cindy McCain, the widow of the...

By almost every measure that political operatives, academics and handicappers use to forecast elections, the likely outcome is that Joe Biden will win the White House. Yet two weeks before Election Day, the unfolding reality of 2020 is that it’s harder than ever to be sure. And Democrats are scrambling to account for the hidden variables that could still sink their nominee — or what you might call the known unknowns. Republican registration has ticked up in key states at the same time Democratic field operations were in hibernation. Democratic turnout is surging in the early vote. But it’s unclear...

From @POLITICO's @Davidsiders: @KamalaHarris ' rise gives California a shot at serious national power https://politi.co/2Y7LWt7 via @politico

Politico Article.

His resiliency in the primary has caught the attention of the party establishment. Suddenly, Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign is being taken seriously. For months the Vermont senator was written off by Democratic Party insiders as a candidate with a committed but ultimately narrow base who was too far left to win the primary. Elizabeth Warren had skyrocketed in the polls and seemed to be leaving him behind in the race to be progressive voters’ standard-bearer in 2020. Story Continued Below But in the past few weeks, something has changed. In private conversations and on social media, Democratic officials, political operatives...

The center of the Democratic party is throwing a fit. The party's moderate wing has suddenly produced back to back threats of Michael Bloomberg and Deval Patrick entering the presidential primary, revealing its determination to have an imposing presence in a race shaped by unrestrained liberal policy prescriptions and candidates.

DES MOINES — A Democratic presidential field that has struggled to precisely define its general election indictment of Donald Trump appears finally to have found it. In the wake of mass shootings in Ohio and Texas — the latter of which was tied to a suspect whose anti-immigrant sentiments led to the killing of 22 people — candidates are road-testing a withering argument that draws a direct line between gun violence and the president’s racist rhetoric. “We are living with a toxic brew of two different things, each of which is claiming lives and each of which represents a national...

Could Politico have already reached peak Beto and is now on the downward slope from the zenith? Despite their own senior media Jack Shafer back in October begging "Stop the Press Before It Profiles Beto O’Rourke Again," the paeans to failed senate candidate Beto O'Rourke have continued unabated at Politico. However, that might have changed on Saturday when Politico writer David Siders expressed how irked he was with their beloved Beto appearing to be playing games as to whether he would announce his candidacy for president that he wrote that he "is now manufacturing suspense."