Trump Haters Gaslighting Trump Supporters

 

Trump Haters Gaslighting 

Trump Supporters

By David Limbaugh

It's getting scary out there, people. Everywhere you turn, Trump haters are venting their wrath against Trump supporters, as if supporting President Trump is an unforgivable sin.

They're projecting and gaslighting — blaming Trump and his supporters for everything they're doing. It's madness, but at long last, they might have awakened the sleeping giant they're trying to hunt down and destroy.

MSNBC's Joy Reid tweeted, "Genuine question: what will be the relationship between the majority of Americans, and Trumpists after this long, national nightmare ends — and it will eventually end — do people anticipate simply letting bygones (be) bygones with people who joined the Trump personality cult?"

What bygones? Who's doing what to whom? What are we Trump supporters doing to you Trump haters, Joy? We are trying to mind our own business and stay safe. Are you and yours?

MSNBC's Donny Deutsch likened a Trump rally to a Hitler rally from the early '30s: "Well, basically you had a destruction of the belief in the free press. You had a blurring between the executive branch and the Justice Department. You have creating an other, whether it's Muslims, whether it's Mexicans, whether it's congressmen who weren't born in this country. And then you have the destruction of free elections. And we're here."

This is screaming insanity. Trump supporters aren't censoring people on social media. They aren't threatening their opponents' civil liberties. They aren't violating the separation of powers, which leftists routinely do, including through their activist courts and lawless executive orders (under former President Barack Obama). They're not demonizing other races, as you maliciously accuse. Quit belching that vicious slander. And they are not the ones threatening the integrity of the electoral process. The left, on the other hand, has promised to stack the Supreme Court; add territories to the union to increase its electoral prospects; circumvent the Electoral College; obliterate the integrity of the voting process through rampant unverifiable mail-in ballots and the elimination of voter ID rules; and lower the voting age to 16. Republicans aren't the ones threatening to lawlessly invoke impeachment to block Trump's lawful Supreme Court nominee.

Increasingly deranged, intolerant, hateful and unhinged actor-turned-artist Jim Carrey said, "Too many Americans support Trump because he appeals to their basest and most primitive urges." This is a direct indictment of millions of Trump supporters — many of whom have been your fans. Tell me, Jim: What base and primitive urges do you mean? Our commitment to the Constitution, law and order, equal protection under the law for everyone, liberty, prosperity and a strong national defense? Protecting the borders to ensure orderly and legal immigration? Are these commitments racist and sexist to you, Jim? If you really believe that, you are obviously blinded into irrationality by your hatred and need of therapy and prayer. Please get the tree trunk out of your own eye. In the meantime, sketch a picture of your own dark heart.

And how about the now-famous Leo Guinan, who publicly bragged that he told his parents neither he nor his children would visit them because they had placed Trump signs in their yard. After receiving blowback for this self-indulgent and heartless act, he publicly apologized.

We have obnoxious leftist "protestors" in St. Petersburg, Florida, taking over peaceful diners' tables from restaurant to restaurant, ratcheting up the despicable practice they began a few years ago to harass Trump supporters.

And, once again, we have violent leftists rioting in the streets of Louisville, where two policemen were shot trying to keep the peace.

How can things be more surreal? I'll say it again: The left is projecting its own darkness onto Trump and his supporters. Countless leftists accuse Trump of inciting violence and hate while displaying their own intolerance and hatred and committing violence. Trump is trying to stop the violence, while Democratic governors and mayors are fanning the flames.

Fair-minded Democrats, please don't fool yourself into rationalizing that these things are happening equally on both sides of the aisle. It simply is not true. And don't fall into the insidious trap of Trump Derangement Syndrome, which now possesses large swaths of Americans because of the left's concerted effort to smear Trump and his supporters as racists for political gain.

How many Trump supporters are burning down cities, murdering cops, threatening mayhem if Joe Biden is elected, bullying Biden supporters out of restaurants, accosting people with Biden caps or yard signs, threatening to withhold their children from their Biden-supporting parents and stirring up racial disharmony throughout the nation? When have Republican lawmakers ever tried to destroy the character of a Democratic president's Supreme Court nominee?

Yes, Republicans say they're ready to defend themselves, but I know of none who are threatening to commit violence and mayhem if Trump loses.

I don't know how people can be so warped as to condemn Trump for allegedly inspiring violence simply because they don't like him, when they themselves are actually committing violence or enabling those who are. I don't know how they can rage against Trump as a dictator when he is doing nothing but exercising his lawful authority in office and appointing justices who will uphold the Constitution and rule of law, and when they are openly promising to thwart the Constitution in countless ways if they regain power. Notwithstanding the planted trick question, Trump will not resist the peaceable transition of power, but he might legally contest a stolen election. Meanwhile, prominent Democrats are promising not to accept a Trump victory — just like they never accepted his 2016 victory.

No, Joy Reid, we Trump supporters are not part of a cult, no matter how much Trump haters have convinced themselves otherwise. But we do see him as the last best hope to restore America's greatness — and that includes liberty, peace and security for all, not just for those who agree with us, unlike many on your side believe. We are relying on him to lawfully prevent the left's destruction of the nation, its violence and lawlessness, and its abolition of liberty.

God save the republic.

https://www.creators.com/read/david-limbaugh/09/20/trump-haters-gaslighting-trump-supporters

SUICIDE OF THE LIBERALS

SUICIDE OF THE LIBERALS

BY SCOTT JOHNSON IN COMMUNISM, RIOTS, RUSSIA, THE LEFT

We have previously drawn attention to Professor Gary Saul Morson’s New Criterion essay “How the great truth dawned,” Professor Morson’s New Criterion lecture “Leninthink,” Professor Morson’s New York Review of Books review “The horror, the horror,” and Professor Morson’s book Narrative and Freedom: The Shadows of Time (Steve wrote about it here).

To these I now want to add Professor Morson’s First Things essay “Suicide of the liberals.” Drawing on his knowledge of Russian history and literature, Professor Morson observes the weakness of liberal reformers in the face of the revolutionary terrorists and their cadres to the left of the liberals. Professor Morson observes, for example:

How did educated, liberal society respond to such terrorism? What was the position of the Constitutional Democratic (Kadet) Party and its deputies in the Duma (the parliament set up in 1905)? Though Kadets advocated democratic, constitutional procedures, and did not themselves engage in ­terrorism, they aided the terrorists in any way they could. Kadets collected money for terrorists, turned their homes into safe houses, and called for total amnesty for arrested terrorists who pledged to continue the mayhem. Kadet Party central committee member N. N. Shchepkin declared that the party did not regard terrorists as criminals at all, but as saints and martyrs. The official Kadet paper, Herald of the Party of People’s Freedom, never published an article condemning political assassination. The party leader, Paul Milyukov, declared that “all means are now legitimate . . . and all means should be tried.” When asked to condemn terrorism, another liberal leader in the Duma, Ivan Petrunkevich, famously replied: “Condemn terror? That would be the moral death of the party!”

Not just lawyers, teachers, doctors, and engineers, but even industrialists and bank directors raised money for the terrorists. Doing so signaled advanced opinion and good manners. A quote attributed to Lenin—“When we are ready to kill the capitalists, they will sell us the rope”—would have been more accurately rendered as: “They will buy us the rope and hire us to use it on them.” True to their word, when the Bolsheviks gained control, their organ of terror, the Cheka, “liquidated” members of all opposing parties, beginning with the Kadets. Why didn’t the liberals and businessmen see it coming?

That question has bothered many students of revolutionary movements. Revolutions never succeed without the support of wealthy, liberal, educated society….

What we have here is history lesson that is also a parable for our disjointed time. Highly recommended.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/09/suicide-of-the-liberals.php

Blue Truth Matters

 HEATHER MAC DONALD: Blue Truth Matters.

The Black Lives Matter movement trades on Americans’ ignorance about the demographics of criminal offending. As long as that ignorance prevails, BLM’s anti-cop narrative will continue destroying the institutions of law and order.

Activists and their media enablers present racial disparities in police activity—be it stops, arrests, or officer use of force—as prima facie evidence of police bias. They generate those racial disparities by comparing policing data to population ratios.

In New York City, for example, a little over 50% of all pedestrian stops conducted by the New York Police Department have a black subject. But blacks are slightly less than a quarter of the city’s population. Voilà! Proof of racism, declare the mainstream media, Democratic politicians, and virtually the entirety of academia.

Census data is the wrong benchmark for evaluating police behavior, however. The proper benchmark is crime rates, because policing today is data-driven, deploying officers to where criminals prey on their victims.

Blacks in New York City commit over 70% of all drive-by shootings, according to the victims of, and witnesses to, those shootings, who are overwhelmingly minority themselves. Add Hispanic shootings to black shootings and you account for nearly 100% of all shootings in New York City. These numbers mean that virtually every time an officer gets a “shots fired” call over his radio, he is being called to a minority neighborhood, on behalf of a minority victim, and being given the description of a minority suspect, if anyone is cooperating with the police for once. The cops don’t wish this reality into being. It is forced upon them by the facts of crime.

Such disparities exist in every American city. In Chicago, blacks commit about 80% of all shootings and murders, and whites less than 2%, though both blacks and whites are each a little less than a third of the population. In St. Louis, blacks commit up to 100% of all homicides, though they are less than 50% of the population.

Officers cannot use their lawful powers of enforcement, in other words, without having a disparate impact on blacks, since blacks commit the lion’s share of violent street crime.

You’re not supposed to talk about this, though. But the data are what the data are. Believe in science.

 by Glenn Reynolds

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/401971/

Support For Trump Among Rank-and-File Union Members Remains Strong

Support For Trump Among Rank-and-File Union Members Remains Strong

BY RICK MORAN 

(AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

Organized labor is likely to spend upwards of half a billion dollars to elect Joe Biden. That money will not only be in the form of direct contributions but many millions more in organization. Get-out-the-vote operations, phone banks, door-to-door canvassing, and so much more.

But the rank-and-file members of unions have their own ideas about who should be president. They voted in surprisingly large numbers for Donald Trump in 2016 and despite a massive campaign by labor leadership to convince them otherwise, they appear ready to give their support to Trump in 2020.

Politico:

“We haven’t moved the needle here,” said Mike Knisley, executive secretary-treasurer with the Ohio State Building and Construction Trades Council, who estimated that about half of his members voted for Trump in 2016 and will do so again. “Even if given all the information that’s been put out there, all the facts — just pick an issue that the president has had his hands in — it doesn’t make a difference.”

Among members of North America’s Building Trades Unions, there is a dead heat in six swing states, with Biden receiving 48 percent of the vote and Trump 47 percent, according to an internal poll shared with POLITICO.

Trump, who has shown in the past that he can attract traditional Democratic voters, appears to be having even greater success in 2020.

“He has a very, very, very solid foundation of our members,” said James Williams, a vice president of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, whose surveys of members painted a similar picture. “They connect with his messaging and a lot of the fear-mongering going all the way back to when he was first elected with, ‘Be afraid of the immigrant. The immigrant’s here to take your job.’ That resonated with our membership. They feel like their way of life and their way of living is under attack and without really understanding the dynamics at play. I mean, the immigrant worker is being abused by employers.”

The clueless union vice president identified the reason the union members are supporting Trump but can’t quite believe it. “They feel like their way of life and their way of living is under attack” finds a familiar echo across the country among the working class and less educated whites. Elites like the union vice president don’t understand it. Trump has successfully framed the election for them as one of survival.

How that plays out politically will spell the difference between victory and defeat.

Trump’s support in some unions could provide an opening for him in the Midwest, particularly in the key Rust Belt states that powered Trump’s victory in 2016 — Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — where union voters have a sizable impact. Roughly one in six voters nationwide is either a union member or comes from a union household, according to a Gallup Poll earlier this month, and that number rises to more than one in four in states like Michigan.

Hillary Clinton won the union vote in 2016 by less than half the margin Barack Obama got in 2012. Given the extraordinary closeness of the race in those Midwestern battlegrounds, if history repeats itself, Trump is likely to duplicate the feat of winning all three states — and the election.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2020/09/22/support-for-trump-among-rank-and-file-union-members-remains-strong-n954312

Trump Announces Ban On Woke Capital Working With U.S. Government

• STAFF WRITER

THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES HAS UNVEILED A BAN ON COMPANIES WHICH PROMOTE CRITICAL THEORY AND MARXIST POLITICS FROM WORKING WITH THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT.

The move is an extraordinary intervention in the cultural debate raging in the United States and further afield, and doubles down on the President’s announcement from earlier in September, wherein he banned “efforts to indoctrinate government employees with divisive and harmful sex and race-based ideologies.”

The move will likely spur on the Trump base ahead of the November 3rd election, and will rile hard-left activists who have been looting and rioting across the U.S. for months, using “black lives” as a cover for their Marxist activities.

More detail from CityJournal correspondent Christopher Rufo:

https://thenationalpulse.com/breaking/trump-announces-ban-on-woke-capital-working-with-government/

Democrats Really Haven’t Thought Through This “Total War” Thing

 

Democrats Really Haven’t Thought Through This “Total War” Thing

The Democratic Party establishment is having a full-bore freakout over President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell exercising their constitutionally enumerated powers to nominate and confirm a Supreme Court replacement for Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

They’re talking about “total war“:

Furious Democrats are considering total war — profound changes to two branches of government, and even adding stars to the flag — if Republicans jam through a Supreme Court nominee then lose control of the Senate.

On the table: Adding Supreme Court justices … eliminating the Senate’s 60-vote threshold to end filibusters … and statehood for D.C. and Puerto Rico. “If he holds a vote in 2020, we pack the court in 2021,” Rep. Joe Kennedy III (D-Mass.) tweeted.

Why it matters: Democrats are enraged by GOP hypocrisy of rushing through a new justice for President Trump after stalling President Obama’s final nominee.

Dems aren’t optimistic about blocking the nominee. But they have many ways of retaliating if they win Senate control — and are licking their chops about real movement on ideas that have been pushed futilely for decades.

For instance, the Constitution doesn’t fix the number of justices, which could be changed by an act of Congress and the president’s signature, according to the National Constitution Center.

Also, Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer said that if “Senate Republicans move forward with this, then nothing is off the table for next year.”

I don’t think Democrats have thought their cunning scheme all the way through.

If Democrats really want to contemplate total war*, then what’s to prevent Republicans from implementing those same measures next year if they win?

Eliminate the filibuster? Bring it on! Packing the court with two more justices? Why not four?

Democrats seem to be operating on the old Soviet doctrine of “What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is negotiable.” We should take any “if we win, we’ll do X” proposal as a blueprint of our own (assuming it’s not outright unconstitutional; after all, Republicans, unlike Democrats, still respect the Constitution).

What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

---

*Like pretty much all their rhetoric these days, “total war” is drama queen overstatement. In a real left-right no-hold-barred, actual honest-to-God shooting war, the right wins because we have all the guns.

https://www.battleswarmblog.com/?p=45750

POLL: CALIFORNIA VOTERS DON’T WANT RACIAL PREFERENCES REINSTATED

POLL: CALIFORNIA VOTERS DON’T WANT RACIAL PREFERENCES REINSTATED

BY PAUL MIRENGOFF IN POLL, RACIAL PREFERENCES

In 1996, voters in California passed Proposition 209, which amended the state’s constitution to prohibit public institutions from discriminating on the basis of race, sex, or ethnicity. I wrote about the beneficial effects of Prop 209, including higher graduation rates for Blacks and Latinos, in this post.

This year, Californians will vote on Proposition 16, an attempt to remove the ban on racial preferences from the state’s constitution. Prop 16 has the support of governor Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris, the entire state Democratic establishment, the teachers unions, Hollywood, and woke athletes. Its backers enjoy a massive financial advantage over its opponents.

However, a new poll finds that Prop 16 lacks the support of one very important group — California voters. According to the poll, only 31 percent of likely voters say they will vote for it. 47 percent say they will vote against it.

Forty-six percent of Democratic likely voters say they support Proposition 16, compared with 26 percent of independents and 9 percent of Republicans. The San Francisco Bay Area (40 percent of likely voters) and Los Angeles (37 percent) are the only regions where more than one-third of voters support Prop 16.

However, we should keep in mind that, according to this poll, there are an awful lot of voters who are undecided about Prop 16. Given their financial advantage and backing from the establishment, supporters of racial preferences will make a strong run at winning over the undecideds and bringing Democrats into the fold en masse.

Nonetheless, I’m very encouraged by this poll. Frankly, I didn’t expect opponents of preferences to have a 16 point edge in California.

The vote on Proposition 16 will be extremely consequential. If deep-blue California defeats it, then it’s hard to imagine any state going the other way on racial preferences.

There are times when identity politics can seem almost unstoppable as a corrupting political and cultural force. Defeating Proposition 16 would show that it isn’t.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/09/poll-california-voters-dont-want-racial-preferences-reinstated.php

WATCH: Portland Activists Block Truck, Demand Passenger Give Black Power Salute And Chant ‘Black Lives Matter’

By  Hank Berrien

•

 Over the weekend, leftist activists blocked a pick-up truck in Portland near the central police precinct, demanding that the passenger next to the driver give the black power salute and chant “Black Lives Matter”; the truck was later smashed and a window shattered.

The Daily Wire reported last week that a leaked email from a former top official at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) stated that the department had “overwhelming intelligence” that the extremist violence in Portland was “organized” by individuals with an ideology categorized as “Violent Antifa Anarchist Inspired” (VAAI).

The Daily Wire noted:

CBS News reporter Catherine Herridge tweeted out a letter that she obtained that was written by Brian Murphy, former Acting Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis at DHS, that said in July that the violence in Portland had reached a level that officials could no longer state that the violence was “opportunistic” but that it was “organized.”

Murphy stated in the email that the individuals who were attacking the federal facilities in the city did so “based on those ideologies.”

“We have overwhelming intelligence regarding the ideologies driving individuals towards violence and why the violence has continued,” Murphy continued. “A core set of threat actors are organized, show up night after night, share common TTPs [tactics, techniques and procedures] and drawing on like minded individuals to their cause.”

A poll conducted by DHM Research between September 3 to 8, 2020, of Oregon residents found that 42% of respondents felt the police should use more force; another 18% felt the force currently used was fine with them. Additionally, 66% of Oregonians disapproved of the protests. “Voters ages 18-29 are the only group to approve of the protests, with 62% saying that they approve compared to 33% who disapprove,” DHM Research pointed out.

Only 10% of respondents approved of Oregon Democratic Governor Kate Brown’s response to the protests, and even that was better than the 8% of respondents who approved of leftist Democrat Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler’s response. 46% of Oregon voters approved of the Portland police response to the ongoing protests and 45% disapproved.

DHM Research stated, “At the end of the survey, we asked voters what word is a more accurate description of the events in Portland: 55% said riot and 37% said protest.”

On September 9, the city of Portland — decimated by rioters the prior three months — banned the use of facial-recognition technology by local police.

“Its decision to prevent both local government and businesses from employing the technology appears to be the most sweeping ban yet by an individual city,” CNN reported, adding:

The new rule prevents “private entities in places of public accommodation” in Portland from using it, too, referring to businesses that serve the general public — a grocery store or a pizza place, for instance. It does not prevent individuals from setting up facial-recognition technology at home, such as a Google Nest camera that can spot familiar faces, or gadgets that use facial-recognition software for authenticating users, like Apple’s Face ID feature for unlocking an iPhone.

 https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-portland-activists-block-truck-demand-passenger-give-black-power-salute-and-chant-black-lives-matter

Colorado Is The Test Run For Democrats’ Vote-By-Mail Blame Game

 Colorado Is The Test Run For Democrats’ Vote-By-Mail Blame Game

Democrats are setting up Louis DeJoy and the U.S. Postal Service to be the

 ‘fall guy’ for 2020 vote-by-mail elections, ignoring much-needed USPS 

reforms.

By Jimmy Sengenberger

SEPTEMBER 17, 2020

Democrats have a new prime target in their political sights: U.S. Postal Service and Postmaster General Louis DeJoy. On Friday, Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold sued USPS and DeJoy for a supposed “attempt at voter suppression that violates the United States Constitution and federal statutes and must be stopped immediately.” This time, the “voter suppression” and “constitutional violation” came in the form of a postcard sent to voters with incomplete information about vote-by-mail.

Really? One deficient informational postcard is powerful enough to commandeer Colorado’s elections authority and suppress the right to vote?

In truth, Democrats are again using USPS to attack President Trump, openly accusing him of conspiring with DeJoy to disrupt USPS and interfere in vote-by-mail elections. Democrats insist on using USPS as a scapegoat when — not if — vote-by-mail issues arise in untested states. The left may be escalating the blame-game, but this scapegoating is nothing new.

Problems with the Post Office, a quasi-government agency, go back decades. Democrats, however, are only apt to highlight USPS flaws when it suits their political narrative; otherwise, they ignore them. It’s in the left’s handbook, and it’s ripped from my home state of Colorado.

The Colorado Precedent

Following Washington and Oregon, the Centennial State became the third to hold statewide vote-by-mail elections in 2014. Over the next five years, Colorado’s legislature improved the system. Now, as even Republican election officials in Colorado agree, our state has proven that universal mail-ballot elections can work well – when given enough time to prepare and with proper safeguards like signature verification.

Yet, in a warning to states rushing to implement a brand-new, statewide vote-by-mail system, even Colorado’s has issues. Usually, they stem from incompetent, partisan election officials, and last year provides one prime example.

In November 2019, Colorado held off-year elections. It was the first general election overseen by Arapahoe County Clerk Joan Lopez, a former DMV staffer with no elections experience. Despite being an off-year with only local races, it was plagued with mistakes and maleficence.

Notably, Lopez failed to request first-class postage for nearly 700 replacement ballots to guarantee timely arrival. Instead, would-be voters received them on election day. Lopez neglected to track those ballots, which would informed her of delays. Her predecessor, Matt Crane, explains:

Mail with the elections indicia, such as ballots, is supposed to be treated like first-class mail. It doesn’t always happen that way. That’s why two weeks out and thru the mailing deadline, we paid extra for first-class to make sure ballots that close to Election Day truly get first-class treatment.

Crane, who helped implement Colorado’s vote-by-mail system in 2014, says voters “should drop their ballots off and not use the mail” within a week before election day. The goal is first class and timely delivery, but there is never any guarantee.

Instead of owning up to her failure to adequately prepare, Lopez blamed USPS. Griswold came to the rescue, holding a finger-pointing press conference. “The USPS understood they had a problem on Election Day — they called all their carriers to come back, ‘Emergency! Pick up these ballots to send them out!’” she declared. “But they failed to notify us. And there are things that we could have done.”

Here was Colorado’s secretary of state, covering for a county clerk and blaming USPS for the failure of election officials to take precautions. All this happened under the watch of an Obama holdover postmaster general. How can it be argued with a straight face that any of these things are Trump’s fault?

Is the USPS the Democratic Party’s ‘Fall Guy’?

In her latest lawsuit accusing DeJoy of “voter suppression,” Griswold challenged two bullet points on the election mailers that recommended voters request a mail-in ballot “at least 15 days before Election Day” and to “mail your ballot at least 7 days before Election Day.”

She points out that, as a universal mail-ballot state, every registered Colorado voter is automatically sent a ballot. She also notes that voters needn’t mail their ballots back, as they can drop them off at a dropbox or vote center.

At best, Griswold can quibble that USPS provided incomplete information to voters. She’s absurdly arguing, however, that by suggesting voters contact local election officials or plan to give enough time before Election Day to mail in their ballots, they are advancing “voter suppression” — akin to Jim Crow-era poll tests and taxes.

This is Griswold’s second lawsuit publicly disparaging USPS. Last month, Colorado joined more than 20 states in suing DeJoy to halt efficiency improvements and cost-saving measures, many of which happened during the Obama administration. In every instance, the real intent of Democrats appears to be setting up Trump to take the blame for any future vote-by-mail issues.

When 46 states were notified by the Postal Service back in May that they should plan ahead, given an expected influx of mail ballots, USPS acted responsibly. Now, Democrats are acting irresponsibly with their deceptive claims.

The Truth about the USPS’s Woes

The Postal Service has been plagued with problems for decades. While congressional Democrats and media liberals claim USPS’s financial challenges are due almost entirely to a 2006 law requiring they pre-fund retiree benefits — including health-care benefits — the reality doesn’t fit their partisan arguments. Moreover, USPS has struggled to keep up with the times.

Consider the following statistics about USPS:

• No net profit since 2006, losing $83.1 billion since then.
• $11 billion in debt to the U.S. Treasury with $59 billion owed in future health benefits.
• Annual revenue in 2019 was $71.2 billion, a noticeable drop from $74.9 billion in 2008.
• Delivered 31.4 percent fewer pieces of mail in 2019 versus 2000.

Its decline has been driven by first-class mail, a 33.6 percent drop over the past decade. Furthermore, just last year, USPS ran an $8.8 billion budget shortfall — nearly $4.5 billion of which was due to overtime, late delivery, and extra transportation — and is expected to run a deficit of $10 billion in 2020.

As Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, ironically put it in a 2001 issue paper, “USPS is hamstrung by a pseudo-governmental status that stifles innovation and excellence in both itself and the competition.” He condemned both their “preferential treatment before the law” and “restrictions that place the USPS at a disadvantage relative to its private competition.”

Hypocrisy and Obstruction

Polis was right in 2001 — even going so far as to advocate privatizing USPS — and his paper reveals Democrats have known about the USPS problems for a long time. Two decades later, his arguments are even more significant.

We must not allow Democrats to deceive the American people with feigned outrage and to play both sides, extending Post Office problems with one hand while blaming Trump with the other. As we navigate this election season and the unceasing flood of issues, understand that USPS reform is and has been a long-term issue addressed by both parties. This didn’t start with Trump, nor will it end after his retirement.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/09/17/colorado-is-the-test-run-for-democrats-vote-by-mail-blame-game/