Civilization
Harris, Trump, the debate, and the stakes
Tonight Donald Trump and Kamala Harris have their debate, and the stakes, for each candidate and for the country, couldn’t be higher.
Tonight, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris will debate, face to face, for the first time. Those two, and the voters, are playing for the highest of stakes. Harris is playing for personal vindication. So is Trump, but he might also be playing for his life, which his enemies tried once already to take. But the voters are playing for the highest stakes of all: the very existence of their country. The choice lies between one who respects the Constitution, and one who disrespects it. Voters must learn quickly to discern which is which.
Harris and her allies getting desperate
Last week a poll result dropped like a thunderclap. The latest New York Times/Siena College poll shows Trump leading Harris in the popular vote. (Source: Michael Schwarz, The Western Journal.) True, Trump leads by one point. But at the same time last cycle, Biden led by six points. This latest result wrecks the Cheater’s Baseline, and surely Harris knows this. It also wrecks the argument by proponents of the National Popular Vote Compact. They sought to preclude Trump by having legislatures in enough States that appoint 270 or more Electors, pledge to give their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote. If Trump’s popular vote lead holds, where does that leave them? That could explain their near-absolute silence since this result dropped.
Yesterday, a CNN segment featured a meltdown between two commentators. Marina Cardona for the left, and Scott Jennings for the right, argued about the meaning of some CNN polls. Cullen Linebarger of The Gateway Pundit provided this transcript, which CNAV has supplemented after listening to the video:
CARDONA: One of the key takeaways for me in the CNN poll was that the vast majority of Americans believe that the vast majority of Donald Trump’s policies are way too extremist and that it’s the vice president’s policies that are much more mainstream and in-line with the majority of what the Americans value and believe. That is what she [Harris] needs to continue to focus on, and how her policies will match that.
MODERATOR: Maria Cardona, Scott Jennings, we’ll have to leave the conversation there…
JENNINGS [interrupting]: If that – if that – can I just say – if that were true, if people believe he’s (Trump) an extremist, then why isn’t she winning? Why isn’t she ahead in the New York Times poll? Why isthis race tied nationally? You and I both know that, if it’s a tied race nationally, there is a 100% he’s gonna win the electoral college!
CARDONA: Oh, but see, we – we – we [crosstalk] we don’t necessarily know that Scott. Because, see, in 2022, the polls showed that Republicans were winning! And there was going to be a massive red wave! There was no red wave! Because after Roe v. Wade, the polls are underreporting and not showing this massive mobilization of women and men who believe that women should have bodily autonomy….Who believes that a commander-in-chief should not be a liar-in-chief…
JENNINGS: So you believe that pollsters are not counting [inaudible]…
CARDONA: No, you said that to me the other day on air; that’s not what I’m saying…
JENNINGS: Then what are you saying?
CARDONA: What I’m saying is that women can go into a polling booth with more than one thought in their head! They can tell a pollster that the economy is their number one issue and go into the polling booth and say to themselves (because I’ve heard them say this to me!), “You know what, the economy will come back. And I know that Vice-President Harris is working to make sure the economy comes back. But Republicans want to steal my bodily autonomy and the right for me to make decisions about my own body and my own family.”
And I don’t want to grow up, I don’t want my kids to grow up, I don’t want to raise my daughter in a country where she’s going to have less rights than I did. That is a massively, hugely potentially potent issue, Scott, that Republicans don’t understand and are not counting on…Donald Trump knows that, and he’s afraid of it, and ALL OF YOU ought to be afraid of it. That, I think, is NOT showing up in the polls.
At that point the moderator insisted on shutting down the conversation, possibly because he was “up against a hard break.”
Of course, Maria Cardona was talking about the Blue Seawalls that contained the Red Wave in 2022. But one of those Blue Seawalls, then-RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel, is no longer present; neither is Kevin McCarthy. Nor did Ms. Cardona mention a CATO/YouGov poll in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, showing voters there trust Trump, not Harris, on foreign policy.
They believe Trump is more likely to keep Americans out of foreign wars and conflicts (WI: 52%, PA: 51%, MI: 52%), to help end the war in Ukraine (WI: 51%, PA: 50%, MI: 54%), and make foreign policy decisions based on American interests first (WI: 51%, PA: 54%, MI: 56%).
Other issues telling against Democrats
In addition to foreign policy, immigration also tells against Democrats – and directly against Harris. Not long ago, she boasted of bringing in immigrants from Haiti. Now come reports that they are catching and eating ducks and swans from public parks in Springfield, Ohio. Some have caught them snatching and slaughtering pet cats and dogs, then butchering, roasting, and eating them. Several influencers have created memes showing Donald Trump hugging dogs and cats.
In a hearing in the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) raged against Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the Chairman. He was talking about that last post, and Jim Hoft provided this transcript:
What in the hell is this? The chairman tweets, “Protect our ducks and kittens in Ohio,” because he goes down some crazy rabbit hole, completely debunked, that aliens are eating pets? My God, are you okay, Mr. Chairman? Because last year, for a very long time, you tweeted and promoted Kanye West as he was calling for genocide against the Jews, and you kept it up. Now, when we have victims coming here, you’re tweeting this nonsense. I don’t know why you would do this. I hope you’re okay. I don’t know if the aliens who are eating your ducks are in the room with us right now. But, Mr. Chairman, this is a serious issue. These people have loved ones who have been lost, and you tweeted this.
In other words, this congressman, who once threatened Americans with nuclear attack if they oppose his gun-control proposals,
just accused several citizens of Springfield, Ohio of lying to their town council. Nor does he make clear whether the “aliens” in his view are illegal immigrants or extraterrestrial scouts.
A policy statement?
Over the weekend, the Kamala Harris campaign released a “policy page” purporting to give her policy positions. Trump War Room had fun with this, according to Christina Laila (TGP).
So did Sen. J. D. Vance (R-Ohio), Trump’s running mate:
But yesterday CNN ran a segment about the policy paper that stunned host Erin Burnett, again according to Christina Laila. Burnett referred to an investigation of a 2019 ACLU questionnaire that Harris answered, with answers that were much more left-leaning. Commenting on one feature – surgical mutilation and hormonal poisoning for migrant children – she said:
You would be hard to think you would come up with taxpayer-funding gender transitions for detained migrants.
At noon today, Laila came up with this bombshell: that page is a cut-and-paste job, stealing from Biden’s campaign website. A leftist influencer noticed it, and reacted in outrage:
As the above thread shows, the Harris campaign did remove the “elect Joe Biden” messages – after millions had seen it. So even leftists get impatient with Harris – for seeming to be incapable of having an original thought.
Harris down in the polls
Harris seems to be down in more polls than the New York Times/Siena poll. Ben Kew (TGP) mentioned Nate Silver’s polls, also showing Trump with a considerable advantage. Tellingly, Trump was at a disadvantage two weeks earlier:
Trump supporters, reading this, accuse Silver of trying to engender complacency, and urge one another to campaign as if Harris had the advantage. Which is probably sound advice – though Democrats have accused Silver of being a paid shill for Trump.
Politico Playbook, two days ago, reported that the Harris camp has taken alarm at her poor poll showing. The link comes by way of Web Cache, a rival to the Wayback Machine. Kew shared this excerpt:
Asked about the poll, the Harris campaign pointed to a Sept. 1 state-of-the-race memo in which campaign chair JEN O’MALLEY DILLON tried to set expectations about how close the race would be.
She wrote that “we head into the final stretch of this race as the clear underdogs” and emphasized Trump’s advantages, adding that “Trump has a motivated base of support, with more support and higher favorability than he has had at any point since 2020.”
She also reminded Harris supporters — whose excitement about their candidate may have outstripped her actual advantages — that margins in the race will be “razor thin,” which at the end of the day is probably the biggest takeaway from this poll.
On Saturday, Trump himself posted a warning that clearly indicates he hasn’t forgotten the Election of 2020.
CEASE & DESIST: I, together with many Attorneys and Legal Scholars, am watching the Sanctity of the 2024 Presidential Election very closely because I know, better than most, the rampant Cheating and Skullduggery that has taken place by the Democrats in the 2020 Presidential Election. It was a Disgrace to our Nation! Therefore, the 2024 Election, where Votes have just started being cast, will be under the closest professional scrutiny and, WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again. We cannot let our Country further devolve into a Third World Nation, AND WE WON’T! Please beware that this legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials. Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.
Sep 07, 2024, 7:01 PM
These, then, are the stakes in tonight’s debate, which will begin at 9:00 p.m. EDT on ABC-TV.
Terry A. Hurlbut has been a student of politics, philosophy, and science for more than 35 years. He is a graduate of Yale College and has served as a physician-level laboratory administrator in a 250-bed community hospital. He also is a serious student of the Bible, is conversant in its two primary original languages, and has followed the creation-science movement closely since 1993.
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