2020 will surely qualify as an "annus horribilis" in the history of the Republic.
By New Year's, one in every 1,000 Americans, 330,000, will be dead from the worst pandemic in 100 years. The U.S. economy will have sustained a blow to rival the worst year of the Great Depression.
The COVID-19 pandemic was a crisis tailor-made for a xenophobe like Donald Trump. The coronavirus provided an ideal opportunity to turn the president's biggest liability -- the nativist bigotry that went so far as to lock children in cages and then lose hundreds of their parents, which elicited disgust even among some of his supporters -- into a strength in early 2020. Trump's explicable failure to knock this easy pitch out of the ballpark is my biggest explanation for why he lost the election to a singularly lackluster opponent.
Many establishment Republicans, particular of the NeverTrump variety, are telling us it’s time to move on from the 2020 presidential election. They promise future electoral reform and holding the cheaters accountable, with a better outcome in 2024.
When the Electoral College meets Monday, it will almost surely certify former Vice President Joe Biden as the 46th president of the United States. And he will take the oath of office Jan. 20.
Eighty-five percent of counties with a Whole Foods store voted for Joe Biden. That factoid, relayed by The Cook Political Report's David Wasserman, tells you something important about the election -- and about today's Democratic Party.
Republicans retain an edge in the Electoral College.
— Joe Biden did better than Hillary Clinton in the lion’s share of states.
— However, when one takes into account how the states voted relative to the nation, Republicans retain an edge in the Electoral College.
— Despite voting for Biden, key battleground states such as Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin all became more Republican relative to the national voting. Biden did solidify a number of the Clinton-won states, though, most notably Minnesota and New Hampshire.
Patient rights and bioethics are impossible without truly informed consent. This fundamental concept has vanished from public view faster than paper towels and toilet paper from your grocery shelves. Informed consent matters more than ever because we are entering the most coercive era of medical tyranny in human history.
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Judging from the fake news media's collective primal scream this weekend, you would think the American economy were lying flat on its back in the intensive care unit. Yes, the economy has been battered in blue states that have masochistically shut down their hometown businesses. But in most red states that are keeping commerce flowing despite a second deadly wave of the virus, unemployment is typically below 6%.
The Biden-Harris administration will confront "a pandemic, an economic crisis, calls for racial justice and climate change. The team being assembled will meet these challenges on Day One."
"My sense is that if Trump wins, Hillary supporters will be sad," left-wing writer Sally Kohn tweeted the day of the 2016 election. "If Hillary wins, Trump supporters will be angry. Important difference." Kohn turned out to be wrong about her own side that year, which angrily set about delegitimizing Donald Trump's victory. She was wrong, too, in her apparent assumption -- shared by shop owners who boarded up their windows -- that Trump supporters would react as violently to his defeat as the Black Lives Matter movement reacted to a death in Minneapolis.
In early August 1990, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded and occupied Kuwait and declared it to be his nation's lost 19th province.
Walter Williams loved teaching. Unlike too many other teachers today, he made it a point never to impose his opinions on his students. Those who read his syndicated newspaper columns know that he expressed his opinions boldly and unequivocally there. But not in the classroom.
PHOENIX -- A motley throng of patriots amassed Monday at the Hyatt Regency for a raucously peaceful "Stop the Steal" rally. There were Zoomers and Boomers, "America First" leaders and Proud Boys, tea party veterans and indie Donald Trump loyalists. I flew down from Colorado to lend my support to all these anti-establishment activists brave and vigilant enough to take to the streets. Praise for "Christ the King" rang out amid demands that a special legislative session be convened.
Many of us will give money to charity this month. Americans give more than any other people in the world.
If Israel, as is universally believed and has not been denied, was behind the assassination of Iran's leading nuclear scientist, questions arise:
It's not exactly clear how it happened. No one expected it, least of all the media and pollsters. But that promised big blue wave of Democratic victories across the country turned instead into a red tidal wave from coast to coast. Most progressive ballot issues in the states -- from tax increases to racial preferences -- also came crashing down.
Progressives and other leftists promise/threaten to pressure/take to the streets to make demands of President-elect Joe Biden if/when he falls short of our expectations. We on the left don't want to be one of those bad bosses who tells you your work isn't good enough but never says what they expect from you in the first place, so you're reduced to fumbling around in the dark.
In the first two decades of the century, President-elect Joe Biden's choice for secretary of state supported U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen. He was an ever-reliable liberal interventionist.
One of the many big surprises in this month's surprising election was the Democrats' failure to overturn Republican majorities in state legislatures. Various Democratic committees budgeted $88 million to flip majorities in big states such as Texas, Florida and North Carolina. Total gains: zero.
