Harris Skips Meeting With Mexican Officials to Go Politicking in New Jersey

Harris Skips Meeting With Mexican Officials to Go Politicking in New Jersey

BY RICK MORAN 

AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin

Joe Biden named Vice President Kamala Harris last March as his point person in the administration to address “challenges” at the southern border and to work with other Central American nations to address the “root causes” of the problem of illegal immigration.

That was the official line, anyway. Actually, Biden put Harris out in front of border security because whoever was going to lead the effort to halt the flow of refugees at the border was going to fail. Biden didn’t want anything to do with the matter.

As it turns out, neither does Harris. She didn’t even visit the border until June and that was only after the mainstream media began to wonder why the administration’s point person on the border crisis wasn’t visiting, like, you know…the border. She checked that box off her to-do list and went on with her other duties as vice president.

So Biden placed Harris in an untenable political situation and Harris is refusing to fall on her sword for her boss by not embracing the role of “border czar.”

Almost certainly, this will lead to more uncomfortable questions, such as why Harris was in New Jersey kissing babies when other administration officials were in Mexico meeting with government officials on security matters.

Fox News:

Attending Friday’s high-level talks in Mexico’s capital were Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Ken Salazar, a former U.S. senator from Colorado who now serves as the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, also attended.

It doesn’t get more “high-level” than that. This wasn’t a meeting of some undersecretaries or assistant secretaries. These people were the heavy hitters in the Biden administration when it comes to securing our nation’s border.

So where was Vice President Harris?

Harris, meanwhile, traveled to the Garden State, visiting a daycare center at Montclair State University in Little Falls and a vaccination site at Essex County Community College in Newark to promote the Biden administration’s agenda.

The vice president last visited the border in June, spending several hours in El Paso, Texas, while on her way to her home in California. It’s the only time she’s been to the border since taking office.

Do you get the distinct feeling that Vice President Harris doesn’t want anything to do with the border, despite her boss telling her to ramrod the effort to control the human wave of refugees and illegals?

“Vice President Harris is ignoring the real problem areas along our southern border that are not protected by the border wall and are being overrun by the federal government’s ill-thought-out, open border policies,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said in a statement ahead of her late June trip.

Harris and her spokespeople have countered that she has focused on behind-the-scenes discussions with Latin American leaders regarding the “root causes” of migration, such as poverty and political corruption in countries such as Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

If your house is burning down, you don’t sit down at the kitchen table and talk to your wife about how best to prevent fire from destroying your home.

Biden’s political gambit in fobbing off responsibility for the border crisis to Harris isn’t working. It worked when Biden was vice president and was given thankless tasks like organizing the “Big Skedaddle” out of Iraq. Biden was grateful to do anything.

But clearly, Harris has her own agenda and it doesn’t include taking the responsibility for the political tar baby at the border. As Biden’s position as president erodes and the murmurs of a health issue grow, Harris wants to be ready to answer the call no matter when it comes.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/10/09/harris-skips-meeting-with-mexican-officials-to-go-politicking-in-new-jersey-n1522756?utm_source=pjmedia&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm&bcid=15803c7fc8c68b6fd1f0a5e7f4b59fc49df45d48335d4339ad60f7b0a0c7404d&recip=28668535

Biden Gun Speech Filled With Falsehoods

Biden Gun Speech Filled With Falsehoods

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Stephen Gutowski • April 8, 2021 3:34 pm

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President Joe Biden made numerous false and misleading statements while unveiling a package of gun-control actions on Thursday.

Biden falsely described how federal firearm laws work as he called for Congress to amend those laws. He pushed the Senate to pass H.R. 8, which would ban private gun sales unless done through a licensed dealer, by claiming there is a special exemption for sales made at gun shows.

"Most people don't know, you walk into a store and you buy a gun you have a background check," Biden said in his speech at the White House. "But you go to a gun show, you can buy whatever you want and no background check."

Most people do not know what the president said because it is not true. Federal law does not regulate gun sales based on where they occur. Instead, it regulates them based on who is involved in the sale. If a licensed gun dealer is selling a gun to a private citizen, the sale must go through a background check. Licensed dealers can and do sell guns at gun shows.

When a private citizen sells his own used firearms to another private citizen inside their own state, federal law does not require a background check to be performed. Private citizens do often sell guns at gun shows, but such sales can be conducted anywhere else as well. Some states go beyond federal law and require all gun sales or even transfers between private citizens to go through a licensed dealer, as H.R. 8 would require.

Biden also falsely claimed the gun industry is uniquely protected from all liability while advocating for the repeal of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.

"People don't realize the only industry in America, a billion-dollar industry, that can't be sued, that are exempt from being sued, are gun manufacturers," Biden said. "This is the only outfit that is exempt from being sued."

That claim is also false. Gun manufacturers can be sued and sometimes are sued over claims of negligence. Remington settled a lawsuit over an alleged design flaw with the trigger on its popular Model 700 rifle, and Sig Sauer has been sued multiple times over an alleged safety defect with its P320 handgun. The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which Biden hopes to repeal, provides immunity to the industry over lawsuits stemming from the criminal misuse of guns by third parties.

Even the limited immunity granted to the gun industry is not unique. Numerous other industries benefit from protections against lawsuits that do not implicate willful misconduct on the part of the company. Pharmaceutical companies developing COVID-19 vaccines have immunity from lawsuits over side-effects caused by the life-saving drugs under the 2005 Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act. The same immunity extends to employers who require vaccinations for employment, according to CNBC.

Biden called on the Senate to pass gun-control legislation that has been approved by the Democratic House. He argued on behalf of H.R. 1446, which would extend the amount of time the FBI can delay a gun sale, with more misleading information. Biden said the existing three-day limit for conducting a background check allowed Dylann Roof to carry out the 2015 Charleston church shooting.

"What happened is someone was allowed to get the gun used to kill those innocent people at a church service," Biden said. "If the FBI didn't complete the background check within three days. There was a process. If it wasn't done in three days, according to the Charleston loophole, you get to buy the gun."

While the shooter in the Charleston case did get his gun after a three-day delay, extending the delay period would not have changed the outcome in that case. The shooting happened two months after the purchase and the FBI did not find the records that should have prohibited him from buying a gun. Then-FBI director James Comey said the records were not found because of a mistake made by the FBI when reviewing the shooter's criminal records.

"The alleged killer of so many innocent people at the Emanuel AME church, should not have been allowed to purchase the gun he allegedly used that evening," Comey said in a 2015 statement. "We are all sick that this has happened. We wish we could turn back time, because from this vantage point everything seems obvious, but we can’t."

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the false and misleading statements made by Biden during his speech. At a press briefing following Biden's comments, White House press secretary Jen Psaki clarified his remarks on background checks at gun shows.

"No it's not his belief," Psaki told Real Clear Politics reporter Philip Wegmann when asked if Biden thought there was a special exemption in federal law for background checks. "He believes that background checks should be universal."

https://freebeacon.com/guns/biden-gun-speech-filled-with-falsehoods/

TRUMP: STILL LIVING RENT-FREE IN THE HEADS OF LIBERALS

TRUMP: STILL LIVING RENT-FREE IN THE HEADS OF LIBERALS

BY STEVEN HAYWARD IN 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, DONALD TRUMP, POLL

So, Trump is on steroids. My first question is, how can you tell? Second, is not the phrase “Trump is on steroids” a liberal’s worst waking nightmare? I have every expectation that if he’s still on steroids at the next debate, the first time Biden pops off Trump will go all Incredible Hulk on him, and it will look something like this (which I still enjoy almost as much as those highlight reels of the media on election night in 2016), except on steroids!

Watching left-Twitter the last few days, coming up with a new conspiracy/deception theories about every 15 seconds, it occurs to me that they’ve never realized that of course a Manhattan real estate developer would know how to live rent-free in their heads for four years. Rent control won’t help them now! And the great thing is, even if Trump loses the election, he will continue to haunt liberals for the rest of their lives.

And about that election thing: there is simply no way that Trump is 14 points behind Biden, as the poll Paul wrote about yesterday contends. Or maybe he is, kinda like last time:

Hillary Clinton Leads Donald Trump by 14 Points Nationally in New Poll

Hillary Clinton has widened her lead over Donald Trump, polling 14 percentage points ahead nationally, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll, which comes 12 days before the presidential election. Conducted after the final presidential debate, the poll finds the Democratic nominee leads Trump among likely voters 51% to 37%, a significant lead over the Republican candidate.

Now, I can point to defects in the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll that comes up with the 14 point lead, or I can point to the other recent polls showing the race within 2 – 3 points. Actually, it might be worth sharing a bit of John Zogby’s analysis put out this morning:

There have been three national polls since the first Presidential debate. Two polls (one for Investors Business Daily by TIPP and the other by John Zogby Strategies-EMI Research Solutions) show a 3- and 2- point lead respectively by the former VP. The other by the Wall Street Journal and NBC with a 14-point lead by Mr. Biden. Let’s get the obvious out of the way. TIPP is an excellent polling outfit, one of the most accurate covering Presidential races over the past decade. The WSJ/NBC has been around a long time and is truly bipartisan – a joint project by prominent Democratic and Republican pollsters. And my Zogby polls have an unbroken record of near-perfect accuracy from 1996-2012.

So somebody is still wrong, as these polls differ by more than the margin of error. There’s more in the complete story at the link, but let me turn to other technical reasons to believe the election will be very close, and why Trump has a decent shot at winning even if he is in fact behind right now.

First, we need to wonder if there isn’t a very large “shy Trump vote” lurking out there. Given the non-stop media hostility (and social peer pressure) to Trump, do you think everyone is telling pollsters the Truth? The hint something is amiss is come from the consistent poll results that a large number of people keep saying their neighbor is going to vote for Trump, or that they expect Trump is going to win.

Second, we now have a mounting record of polls failing to catch the “shy Tory vote,” starting with the Brexit vote in Britain in 2016, and then the last Australian national election. Every single poll for two years showed the Labour Party would beat the Liberal Party at the next election, but on election day (in a nation with mandatory voting don’t forget), the Liberal Party won, chiefly because Australian voters were alarmed at the growing radicalism of the Labour Party. Sound familiar? Then in the last British election, while polls showed a Tory edge, none forecast the huge Tory landslide that occurred. It is easy to believe our polls are failing to catch a “shy Trump vote.”

Third, all the surveys show a huge enthusiasm gap between the two candidates. Trump voters are highly motivated, while Biden excites very few people. This gap usually counts for something. Hatred of Trump will motivate the Democratic base to turn out, but whether independents and weak-partisans will turn out to the same degree is unknown and unknowable. Some of the wide variance in the polls depends on how their turnout models are adjusted. They work just like climate models to some extent!

Fourth, there are some other, non-poll related technical factors to take into account. It is worth looking back for a moment to the 2012 election, when Obama became the first president ever re-elected with a lower vote total than his initial election. How did he do it? The Obama campaign was brilliant and thorough in identifying every possible pro-Obama voter, mostly through very sophisticated data mining, and turning every single one of them out to the polls on election day. But for this supreme campaign effort, Romney might have taken him. (By contrast, the RNC’s digital turnout effort in 2012 was a fiasco.) Unless the Trump campaign is incompetent, I expect they have replicated this method to a far better degree than Biden has been able to do, because they had a bigger head start. One clue: new Republican voter registrations in several swing states are up sharply, way ahead of new Democratic registrations. And the Trump campaign has been knocking on doors by the millions, while the Biden campaign has had very little direct voter contact.

And there are a number of intangibles I can mention that favor Trump’s re-election, but I’ll stop with these technical factors for now.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/10/trump-still-living-rent-free-in-the-heads-of-liberals.php

FLASHBACK: Obama Stole an Election, Not Trump

FLASHBACK: Obama Stole an Election, Not Trump

 

BY MATT MARGOLIS 

President Obama contemplating in oval office (Shutterstock)

“The president’s misconduct cannot be decided at the ballot box,” said Adam Schiff last week. “For we cannot be assured that the vote will be fairly won.”

The message was clear: impeach Trump or he’ll steal the 2020 election.

If you ask Democrats, anytime they've lost an election it was not lost fairly. In 2000, George W. Bush “stole” Florida. In 2004, he “stole” Ohio. In 2016, Russia got Trump elected. Any high-profile election loss by a Democrat in a race they thought they would win is met by a cacophony of accusations of voter suppression, foreign interference, vote tampering… you name the excuse, they’ll throw it out there hoping it will stick. Many Democrats, including presidential candidates, give credence to the conspiracy theory that Stacey Abrams had the Georgia gubernatorial stolen from her, because of, you guessed it, voter suppression.

The Democrats’ tactic of citing the upcoming 2020 election is merely a preemptive delegitimization should Trump win. A Trump victory will for sure result in Democrats at all levels of government calling for investigations, and there will be a coordinated effort to undermine Trump’s second term.

This preemptive attack on the results of the 2012 election has had me thinking though. It’s long been noted that anytime Democrats accuse Trump or Republicans of something, it’s the Democrats who are actually guilty of it.

A scholarly study conducted by the American Enterprise Institute concluded that suppression of the Tea Party movement by Obama’s IRS helped him get reelected.

The Tea Party movement’s huge success was not the result of a few days of work by an elected official or two, but involved activists all over the country who spent the year and a half leading up to the midterm elections volunteering, organizing, donating, and rallying. Much of these grassroots activities were centered around 501(c)4s, which according to our research were an important component of the Tea Party movement and its rise.

The bottom line is that the Tea Party movement, when properly activated, can generate a huge number of votes-more votes in 2010, in fact, than the vote advantage Obama held over Romney in 2012. The data show that had the Tea Party groups continued to grow at the pace seen in 2009 and 2010, and had their effect on the 2012 vote been similar to that seen in 2010, they would have brought the Republican Party as many as 5 – 8.5 million votes compared to Obama’s victory margin of 5 million. The bottom line is that the Tea Party movement, when properly activated, can generate a huge number of votes-more votes in 2010, in fact, than the vote advantage Obama held over Romney in 2012.

The effectiveness of the Tea Party, combined with Obama’s relatively small margin of victory in key swing states, suggests that the IRS’s suppression of the Tea Party movement likely tipped the scales in favor of Obama.

"Had the Tea Party repeated and built on their activism of 2009 and 2010 in 2011 and 2012, Obama would have lost the election. What happened to the Tea Party boost? It didn't grow from 2010. It appeared to weaken," Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform wrote in his book, End The IRS Before It Ends Us. "The Tea Party didn't fall down the stairs. It was pushed."

Norquist referenced the fact that Lois Lerner had received specific orders to “do something” about conservative funding in advance of the 2012 election, after the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court. "Everyone is up in arms because they don't like it. The Federal Election Commission can't do anything about it. They want the IRS to fix the problem. The IRS laws are not set up to fix the problem ... so everyone is screaming at us right now: fix it now before the election," Lerner said, according to Norquist’s book.

By targeting conservative groups, hundreds of Tea Party groups were never able to operate and mobilize against Barack Obama in the 2012 election, preventing a similar outcome as the 2010 elections.

James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal agreed that the IRS helped Obama in 2012. “Barack Obama’s reelection deserves to be listed with an asterisk in the record books. We know only that he did win with the help of a corrupt IRS. And if indeed the election was stolen, many in the media were complicit in its theft.”

For all the Democrats' bellyaching about 2016 and now about 2020, it should not be lost on the American public that there is far more evidence that the IRS’s targeting of conservative and Tea Party groups helped Obama win reelection in 2012 than there is evidence that Trump colluded with Russia, or is trying to “steal” the 2020 election.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/flashback-obama-stole-an-election-not-trump/

BEHOLD THE LORD, PART 1

BEHOLD THE LORD, PART 1

 BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN IMPEACHMENT

In the Wall Street Journal, Kim Strassel tees off on the egregious Adam Schiff, who apparently sees himself as a sort of Grand Inquisitor on behalf of the Democratic Party:

Rep. Elise Stefanik was informed this week by Republican House Intelligence Committee staffers of a new diktat from Chairman Adam Schiff. It made the New York Republican’s jaw drop.

We supported Ms. Stefanik when she first ran for Congress a few years ago, as a “Power Line Pick”–one of our better choices.

Democrats had informed Republicans that, from here on out, the committee would produce a single, printed transcript of every interview it conducted as part of its impeachment inquiry. Only members of the three committees involved in the purported inquiry would be allowed to view that printout, and only in the presence of a Democratic staffer. Ms. Stefanik—an elected member of Congress who sits on the Intelligence Committee—will be babysat while reading by an unelected employee of the Democrats.

Everyone who pays attention agrees that this is a ridiculous and unprecedented process. Worse, a ridiculous process run by Adam Schiff!

Democrats keep their witnesses locked behind secure doors, then flood the press with carefully sculpted leaks and accusations, driving the Trump-corruption narrative. And so the party goes, galloping toward an impeachment vote that would overturn the will of the American voters—on a case built in secret.

The Democrats have been talking about impeaching Donald Trump since before he took office. I think everyone understands that what is going on now is simply an attempt to overturn the 2016 presidential election, which the Democrats have always regarded as somehow illegitimate. This is the worst breach in our democratic traditions since the Democrats argued that the election of Abraham Lincoln was illegitimate in 1860.

More from Kim Strassel, who makes the point that the Democrats’ refusal to vote in favor of conducting an impeachment inquiry means that they are unmoored from any historical precedent: “Normally an authorization vote would be followed by official rules on how the inquiry would proceed. Under today’s process, Mr. Schiff gets to make up the rules as he goes along. Behold the Lord High Impeacher.”

[Schiff’s] rules mean he can issue that controlling decree about “only one” transcript and Democratic staff supervision of Republican members. It means he can bar the public, the press and even fellow representatives from hearings, even though they’re unclassified.

It means he is able to shield from scrutiny the whistleblower who prompted this impeachment proceeding. It means he can continue barring Republicans from calling opposing witnesses. It means he can continue refusing to allow White House counsel in the room to hear the accusations against the president.

Mr. Schiff apparently even believes his impeachment authority allows him to ignore longstanding rules. A recent letter from Republican members of the Intelligence Committee objected to Mr. Schiff’s new practice of withholding official documents. They listed nearly two dozen letters from the committee (to recipients ranging from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to White House counsel Pat Cipollone) that had not been uploaded to the committee repository—which, they note, violates House rules. Republicans aren’t even allowed to know what questions Mr. Schiff is asking.

If anyone has tried to justify the Democrats’ absurd impeachment process, I haven’t seen it. The Democrats know that what they are doing is indefensible, but they don’t care. They know that they don’t have a plausible presidential candidate, so their goal is to pair “Trump” and “impeachment” in headlines so persistently that naive voters think there must be something to it.

Who knows, that strategy might work. But if you have any idea what is going on, you know that the Democrats’ impeachment drama is a bad joke.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/10/behold-the-lord-part-1.php

TWO CHEERS FOR TRUMP’S NORTH KOREA POLICY

BY PAUL MIRENGOFF IN NORTH KOREA, TRUMP FOREIGN POLICY

It’s amusing to observe how some on both sides of the political divide are talking about President Trump’s North Korea diplomacy. Some anti-Trumpers castigate the president for “making nice” with a despicable dictator like Kim Jong Un, when there is no realistic hope of a deal that leads to North Korea’s denuclearization. Some Trump supporters applaud Trump’s outreach to the dictator as an “art of the deal” moment that may, indeed, result in denuclearization.

What’s amusing is that many of these people, on both sides, would be taking the opposite position if a Democratic president were engaging in the outreach to Kim.

I take a middle ground position. No, Kim Jong Un isn’t going to dismantle his nuclear program in exchange for economic concessions, no matter how substantial. There is no viable deal to be had on these terms regardless of how artful a negotiator Trump may be.

But the fact that Trump has established a non-hostile relationship with Kim makes both the Korean peninsula and the U.S. safer places. It reduces, somewhat, the possibility of war due to miscalculation or fear.

How do I reconcile this position with my opposition to President Obama negotiating without preconditions with the Iranian regime? Easily. North Korea possesses nuclear weapons.

This reality changes everything (which is why North Korea isn’t about to give up its nukes). Once a nation obtains nuclear weapons, we can’t afford not to talk with it.

Thus, President Trump deserves credit for his outreach to North Korea. But let’s not pretend that his diplomacy represents some sort of masterstroke. And let’s not be disappointed if Trump fails to reach a deal that produces denuclearlization.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/07/two-cheers-for-trumps-north-korea-policy.php

THE VOTER SUPPRESSION MYTH

BY STEVEN HAYWARD IN 2018 ELECTION, CONSPIRACY THEORY, DEMOCRATS, VOTER FRAUD, VOTING RIGHTS

Democrats believe their own bull—- about the Side of History so much that they can’t imagine losing an election, because if you have History on your side how can you lose except by someone using the Dark Side of the Force. Hence the daily claim of the left that Democrats have lost because of voter suppression. Kamala Harris, for examples, has claimed: “Let’s say this loud and clear — without voter suppression, Stacey Abrams would be the governor of Georgia, Andrew Gillum is the governor of Florida.”

There have been numerous takedowns of this claim, even by the New York Times.  And the Wall Street Journal had a good editorial on this a couple days ago. (Also David French’s excellent article on this in National Review.)

But I want to bring to you attention a terrific Twitter thread on this subject from Coleman Hughes, a black undergraduate at Columbia who is making a mark at an early age for dissenting from the identity politics orthodoxy. I’ve compiled his whole thread here into one piece:

How strong is the case that Republicans have suppressed minority votes? Georgia’s gubernatorial election between Brian Kemp and Stacey Abrams is the most widely-cited recent example. Let’s start there.

In 2016, Trump primed his base to reject a potential loss to Hillary with lies about undocumented and dead people voting en masse. In reality, these phenomena were virtually non-existent. He was rightly called out in the media for lying.

In Georgia, Abrams did the same thing, priming her voters not to accept a loss to Kemp on the grounds that Kemp was overseeing his own election, purging people from the voter rolls, & closing down polling locations––allegedly targeting blacks with all of these tactics.

But the voter suppression narrative does not hold up.  First, at the time of the Abrams-Kemp election, there were more registered voters in Georgia than there had ever been in history. (source:sos.ga.gov/admin/files/Vo…)

More important, the percentage of voters who were non-white was higher than in 2014––and higher than it had ever been in history. (Source: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/election-2018-exit-poll-analysis-56-percent-country/story?id=59006586)

The main criticism of Kemp was that he “purged” hundreds of thousands of voters from the rolls––disproportionately minorities. But several things about this claim are misleading.

First, the “use it or lose it” law that requires such voter roll purges was created in 1997 by a Democratic legislature and signed into law in 1998 by a Democratic governor. (Source: https://www.allongeorgia.com/georgia-state-politics/voter-roll-purging-it-was-a-democrat-backed-initiative-from-2-decades-ago/)

You get “purged” from the rolls if you don’t vote for two general elections in a row. But once you’re purged you can still vote. You just show up to your polling location and submit a provisional ballot, rather than a regular ballot. (Source: https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/11/georgia-election-critics-question-legitimacy-stacey-abrams-lost/)

The evidence that Kemp even attempted (much less succeeded) to suppress votes is likewise weak. First, Kemp publicly opposed a proposal to close 7 precincts in one majority-black county.

Second, in 2014 he created the first ever online registration service and even created a registration smartphone app, making it easier than ever before the get registered.

Third, Kemp just amended the 1998 law, giving ppl two extra years before they get “purged,” preventing polling locations from being closed within 60 days of an election, & accepting absentee ballots even if they have signature mismatches.  (Source: https://www.apmreports.org/story/2019/04/11/georgia-brian-kemp-use-it-or-lose-it-voting-law-changes)

Why would he do any one of these things, let alone all three, if he were trying to suppress black votes? The “evidence” against Kemp was speculative and almost conspiratorial, much like Trump’s “evidence” of widespread illegal and posthumous voting.

Virtually none of the above facts appeared in Vox and NY Times-world. So ppl with a left-wing news diet accepted it as “fact” that Kemp stole the election from Abrams.

The problem is not that ppl in NY Times and Vox world are stupid or malicious. It is that there is a huge disincentive from expressing even moderate skepticism about accusations of racism. I imagine it’s a bit like publicly defending a “known communist” in the McCarthy era.

Which brings me to this recent Pew Poll, which found a historic and unprecedented rise in voter turnout for the 2018 midterms––including for blacks:

When presented with evidence of massively increased voting for blacks, some feel the burden is on me to prove that voter suppression didn’t happen, rather than on them to provide evidence, *real* evidence, that it did.  You can’t prove a negative.

If your gut tells you a policy suppresses votes, that’s not evidence that it does. Voter ID laws, often maligned as attempts at minority voter suppression, have no effect on turnout & are popular with non-whites.

Others have cited the dip in turnout between 2012 and 2016 as evidence that black votes were successfully suppressed.

But what’s more likely: (1) widespread successful voter suppression by Republicans between 2012-2016, followed by a complete reversal in the efficacy of such suppression tactics between 2016-2018, or…

(2) Obama excited black people a lot in 2012 and drew out a lot of infrequent black voters; Hillary was far less exciting in 2016, so black turnout dropped again; then Trump’s surprise win galvanized the Resistance and increased turnout hugely in 2018.

I think (2) is far more likely and you should too.

It’s almost as if black people have agency, and large swings in voter turnout don’t need to be explained by evil racist forces. What a crazy thought.

Nice piece of reporting by young Mr. Hughes.  Keep your eye on him. I suspect he’s going to be the next Thomas Sowell or John McWhorter.

Bottom line: Democrats are lying about this and know they are lying about this.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/05/the-voter-suppression-myth.php