Free Republic

CNN — The results of this month’s election point toward a 2024 presidential contest that will likely be decided by a tiny sliver of voters in a rapidly shrinking list of swing states realistically within reach for either party. With only a few exceptions, this year’s results showed each side further consolidating its hold over the states that already lean in its direction. And in 2024 that will likely leave control of the White House in the hands of a very small number of states that are themselves divided almost exactly in half between the parties – a list that...

If you want to get a full sense of why so many Democrats seem to be frustrated with President JOE BIDEN at the moment, here’s one piece you need to read: “Is Biden a Man Out of Time?” by The Atlantic’s Ronald Brownstein. Whether the specific issue is abortion rights, court reform, voting rights, the filibuster, or the DOJ’s investigation into DONALD TRUMP’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election, “[m]any Democrats share a sense that … Biden and his team have been following, not leading. And that tendency points to an enduring question about Biden, who was first elected to...

Click here to read the full articleUnearthed doc­u­ments from one of the lead­ing Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty pro­pa­gan­da groups reveal the names of “main­stream” U.S. jour­nal­ists tak­ing jun­kets from the group in exchange for favor­able cov­er­age, The Nation­al Pulse can exclu­sive­ly reveal. The trips often came just before opin­ion edi­to­ri­als and news reports excus­ing Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty crimes, or oppos­ing trade show­downs with the nation.The Nation­al Pulse can now exclu­sive­ly reveal West­ern jour­nal­ists – includ­ing those praised by Pres­i­dent Biden and mar­ried to poten­tial mem­bers of his White House – who are list­ed as hav­ing accept­ed trips from the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist...

Even a disease as far-reaching as the coronavirus hasn’t entirely crossed the chasm between red and blue America. In several key respects, the outbreak’s early stages are unfolding very differently in Republican- and Democratic-leaning parts of the country. That disconnect is already shaping, even distorting, the nation’s response to this unprecedented challenge—and it could determine the pandemic’s ultimate political consequences as well. A flurry of new national polls released this week reveals that while anxiety about the disease is rising on both sides of the partisan divide, Democrats consistently express much more concern about it than Republicans do, and they...

With only a few exceptions, Democrats face more uncertain prospects in Republican-held House seats centered on the blue-collar, exurban and rural communities where Trump remains popular

Ronald Brownstein, a senior editor for The Atlantic and senior political analyst at CNN, recently issued a bleak tweet: “Today felt very much like an update of the 1850s: 2 very distinct parts of US that no longer care to even fake that they respect or value the other. Like Trump, #Kavanaugh built his strategy on rallying 1 side of that divide vs the other. Seams are unraveling-not just on #SCOTUS” Slappy acknowledges there’s a national schism but says that she and her neighbors see Washington as divided, not their communities. James Butler, a local mayor and vice president of...

Even before Christine Blasey Ford delivered her controlled but explosive testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, college-educated white women like her represented a rising threat to Republican prospects in the November election. But Ford's detailed allegations of sexual assault against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh could allow Democrats to solidify an unprecedented advantage among those women, who represent one of the few steadily growing components of the white electorate. Coming even as many professional white women are already recoiling from President Donald Trump's definition of the Republican Party, and Democrats have nominated an unprecedented number of professional women...

After beating back the repeated Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Democrats, for the first time in years, are taking the offense on health care. While the flashiest proposal—for an entirely government-run system—remains a distant aspiration, Democrats are again looking for new ways to expand Washington’s role in shaping the health-care system. Their ideas include new plans to expand coverage, restrain drug prices, and create a public competitor to private health-insurance companies. Encouraging all of these efforts are polls showing that support for the ACA clearly increased during the long legislative struggle over its future. “People are increasingly...

Two new polls show President Donald Trump’s rising support among black voters, highlighting his political gains from pushing employers to hire Americans instead of lower-wage migrants. The growing support from blacks — despite furious Democratic claims of racism — could become a shocking political validation in November when Trump will face millions of upper-income Democratic voters who are angry at his “Buy American, Hire American” policies. Among black men, Trump’s “2017 average approval rating significantly exceeds his 2016 vote share,” admitted a January 11 article in the Atlantic by author Ronald Brownstein. “23 percent of black men approved of Trump’s...

Donald Trump has advanced to the brink of the Republican presidential nomination not by transforming the GOP electorate, but by dividing it along a new axis. Though some conservative Trump critics have claimed that he has relied on a surge of non-Republican voters, the exit polls conducted so far in 15 states point toward the opposite conclusion. Overall, although turnout has soared from 2012, the share of the total primary votes cast by self-identified Republicans this year is virtually unchanged. And Trump has beaten his rivals among self-identified Republicans in every exit poll conducted in states that he has won....

As the sprawl­ing, brawl­ing Re­pub­lic­an pres­id­en­tial field gath­ers for its second de­bate here to­night, the new ABC/Wash­ing­ton Post na­tion­al poll may point to a crack in the ar­mor of con­front­a­tion­al front-run­ner Don­ald Trump. While the poll found that Trump con­tin­ues to hold a com­fort­able lead among Re­pub­lic­ans na­tion­wide, de­tailed res­ults provided to Next Amer­ica show that large num­bers of white-col­lar GOP voters doubt that he has the qual­i­fic­a­tions, per­son­al­ity, or tem­pera­ment to suc­ceed as pres­id­ent.

President Obama's approval rating remains ominously weak among the constituencies that could tip the battle for control of the Senate in November, the latest Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor Poll has found. In the latest poll, Obama also faces a formidable intensity gap that could foreshadow turnout challenges for Democrats: The share of adults who strongly disapprove of his performance (39 percent) is nearly double that of those who strongly approve (21 percent).

Other conservatives in this dependably Republican state are unhappy with Graham for supporting the failed Senate effort to legalize illegal immigrants and for his role in the 2005 bipartisan compromise that preserved the right of the Senate minority to filibuster judicial nominees. In the midst of this unease, several local Republicans -- including the lieutenant governor -- have floated the possibility of challenging Graham from the right for the GOP Senate nomination next year. In Connecticut, Republican Rep. Christopher Shays has a different problem. Last year, he narrowly survived a Democratic tide that left him the sole Republican holding a...

Does President Bush really believe what he's saying about the effort from congressional Democrats and some leading Senate Republicans to provide health coverage for millions of uninsured children? He's portraying it as the first step on a slippery slope toward "government-run healthcare," as if senior senators in both parties were conspiring with Michael Moore to import Cuban doctors to inoculate and indoctrinate American children. In fact, Congress is moving responsibly to remove a blot on the nation: the 8 million children without health insurance. It is doing so by expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, a state-federal...

In fact, to survive 2008, Republicans will probably need some combination of separation (from Bush) and rehabilitation (for him). But neither end of that equation will be easy. Bush's disapproval rating has exceeded 58% all year and has not fallen below 50% for two years — the longest stretch of such presidential weakness since Truman finished his second term beleaguered by Korea, corruption and Joe McCarthy. It's true that Republicans in 2008 should perform slightly better among voters who disapprove of the president than George H.W. Bush and Gore did, because their nominee, unlike those men, won't be the retiring...

But the drive for party unity has always carried costs too, and they seem to be growing in Bush's second term. By asking so few tough questions of Rove — and DeLay — congressional Republicans may be increasing their vulnerability to Democratic charges that the GOP is abusing its unified control over government to protect its own. "They really have become so arrogant that they don't think the rules apply to them," Democratic consultant Joe Lockhart says — an argument likely to headline many campaigns by Democrats next year. The emphasis on party cohesion also constricts Bush's maneuverability on issues....

But new long-term population projections from the Census Bureau show that anyone who believes Democrats can consistently win the White House without puncturing the Republican dominance across the South is just whistling Dixie. The census projections present Democrats with an ominous equation: the South is growing in electoral clout even as the Republican hold on the region solidifies. Veteran demographer William H. Frey, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank, this month extrapolated the census numbers into projections for the electoral college over the next quarter century. His conclusions, in a paper titled "The Electoral College Moves to...

From Social Security, to intervention in the sad case of Terri Schiavo, to the appointment of conservative federal judges, every major debate positions the parties in the same way: Republicans are on offense, Democrats on defense. The debate on the federal budget isn't about whether to raise taxes to reduce the deficit, it's over how much more to cut taxes. Washington isn't examining how to expand coverage for those without health insurance, but whether to cut the Medicaid program that provides the central strand in our society's safety net. Democrats are furiously laboring to prevent Bush from carving out private...

Initially, Bush and most conservatives would probably resist add-on accounts — an idea President Clinton favored — as a costly new entitlement. But such accounts could offer Bush his best chance of promoting more ownership — and winning spending cuts that help stabilize Social Security's finances. If he wants a bipartisan Social Security deal — and not just a fight to organize around politically — they might offer his only chance.

The comparison to Roosevelt is just as strained. Progress for America, a conservative group, has run television ads arguing that Bush, in his drive to restructure Social Security, is displaying the same "courage and leadership" that Roosevelt did in creating the program during the Depression. No one doubts that Bush is willing to take political risks. But he is taking those risks on behalf of an agenda that, for better or worse, inverts Roosevelt's vision of how to increase economic security for ordinary Americans. With ideas like personal investment and healthcare savings accounts, Bush is proposing policies that would shift...