Washington Post: “As Trump has become the defining character of this Republican presidential primary contest, the race itself has seemed to take on elements of his personality — in particular, his aggressive, seemingly shameless rejection of the idea that he has ever been wrong.” “The influence is especially strong in Fiorina and Carson, the two other political outsiders, who have risen in Trump’s slipstream. All three will be onstage Tuesday evening in Milwaukee for the fourth televised GOP debate.” “As with Trump, some of these outsiders’ most memorable debate moments have come when they uttered statements that turned out to be exaggerated or untrue. And, like Trump, they have played to a distrustful electorate by criticizing the fact-checkers and refusing to acknowledge that any facts were wrong.” Reality has a liberal bias. Not the media.

Based on the polling, Secretary Clinton should crush Ted Cruz. But polls don't vote, people do. And right now, the Cruz voters are fired up - and the Clinton voters aren't. But that isn't surprising. Democrats have spent 25 years honing a simple, yet wholly uninspiring message - "We are a little less crappy than them!" IT IS A HORRIBLE MESSAGE THAT HAS FAILED, AND FAILED, AND FAILED. Yet, with that terrible track record, the Beltway geniuses who run the Democratic Party are about to run that play one more time.

the Democrats’ problem is social capital

Posted on November 9, 2015 by Peter

Ben Carson is crying about media scrutiny, saying it is unfair and that is because secular progressives fear him. LOL. Dr. Carson, as a secular progressive, let me tell you that I do not fear you. I pity you. You are a pathological liar with a clear psychological problem and a mental illness. I find you laughable as well. If you were to be your party's nominee, Hillary Clinton would win nearly 50 states and all Republicans everywhere would be swept out of office. So I am actually rooting for you.

This is the latest in a series of on again off again ICarly style podcasts I'm doing with Donviti. This iteration is going to keep to under 30 minutes and is going to deal with, being 50, Eagles Football, some politics and Game of Thrones (if that show ever comes back on. [Note to my fellow DL contributors - I'm only putting it here for now, so don't worry.]

The President discussed the importance of reducing the number of people without health insurance during the Open Enrollment period for Obamacare, and the Governor highlighted four new milestones reached in conjunction with the Delaware Bayshore, including the preservation of a key wetland and opening of a new walking trail and ADA-accessible viewing platform on the property. We also have the behind the scenes West Wing Week.

Jonathan Chait: “A new paper by political scientist Corwin Smidt… documents the decline of swing voters, or (as many political scientists call them) ‘floating voters,’ which means voters who pull the lever for a different party than the one they supported in the previous election. From the 1950s through the 1980s, 10 to 15 percent of voters floated between the two parties in presidential elections. Recently that rate has fallen to about 5 percent.” “The sorting of American politics into semipermanent, warring camps unfolded over decades… But every effort to break the stalemate in the age of polarization has failed. Red-state Democrats and blue-state Republicans have tried to create separate, localized identities for their candidates that can allow them to compete in hostile terrain. It doesn’t work because elections at every level have increasingly grown nationalized. The divide between red and blue America is comprehensive.” The true swing voter is like a white elephant: rare. I only have one in my life. What the media considers "swing voters" are really just annoying Independents that do in fact have ideological preferences one way or the other, but can only be motivated to vote on rare occasions. Obama brought a lot of these voters out in 2008. Bernie Sanders is attempting to do the same thing now. George W. Bush brought a lot of these voters out on the right in 2004, and the selection of Sarah Palin brought a lot of these voters out to vote for McCain.