You may have heard the Biden Justice Department is suing Google in federal court for being a "monopoly." That's a bizarre charge given that few, if any companies in all American history have lowered prices more than Google -- which provides access to information that used to take hours or days to find -- with merely a click of a button, and instantaneously. And it does it basically for free.
"The Jerry Springer Show" has been off the air for years, but you'd never know it to judge by the state of American politics, which now serves up titillation and outrage as reliably as Jerry Springer ever did.
Are non-white voters really moving away from the Democratic Party? To partisan Democrats confronting this question on Twitter (sorry, X), it seems preposterous that the party of former President Donald Trump, whom they routinely call a racist, could be gaining support from blacks, Hispanics and Asians.
— We analyzed 48 states to see which have the most lopsided state Senate and state House chambers compared to how the state voted for president.
— Both parties have some states in which the legislative breakdown significantly exaggerates the patterns of the presidential vote.
— For Democrats, Hawaii, Rhode Island and Massachusetts have the most “excess seats” above the presidential vote threshold. For Republicans, the list is both longer and more varied, with Florida, Ohio, and Wisconsin standing out as at least somewhat competitive states where the Republicans have large excess seat advantages.
— In all, Republicans have proven much more adept than Democrats at leveraging presidential vote patterns into even larger majorities in state legislative chambers. The GOP has achieved significant levels of excess seats in about three times as many states as the Democrats have.
— Gerrymandering is one reason for this, but it probably doesn’t explain the exaggerated legislative majorities in many states. Rather, the phenomenon of excess seats appears to be a natural consequence of minority parties being doomed into irrelevance once they start consistently losing presidential and statewide races, sapping their ability to recruit candidates and build party infrastructure.
Want a soda? You'll pay more for one in Philadelphia, because five years ago, local politicians decided to tax it.
Fear has a name in the Democratic Party, and that name is Cornel West.
What's worse? When politicians shut down the government, or when they lock down businesses, stores, schools, churches and restaurants -- and nearly all private commerce in America?
This would be a perfect question for a Rasmussen Reports survey, especially ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
You could blame Victor Hugo. In 1846, the French novelist observed a young man being arrested for holding a loaf of bread he stole.
— The presidential voting gap between the nation’s most populous counties and the rest of the nation has nearly tripled from 1996 to 2020.
— The 2000 and 2016 elections were the biggest contributors to this gap.
— While there is nearly a 40-point difference between the top and bottom halves, the gap did not grow from 2016-2020.
Colorado has a popular Democratic governor, Jared Polis.
Pauline Kael knew she wasn't a representative American.
In boasting about Bidenomics two weeks ago in Milwaukee, President Joe Biden declared that his policies are "restoring the American dream." Then he went into his creepy whispering mode and assured us "it's working."
"These rich men north of Richmond, Lord knows they just wanna have total control." So goes the refrain of singer and songwriter Oliver Anthony's suddenly famous song. "Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do, and they don't think you know, but I know that you do."
COVID cases are up. Hospitalizations climbed 24% last week.
In 2016, Donald Trump faced the strongest Republican presidential field in decades.
COVID mania just won't go away. The deadly strains of the virus have been gone for two years now, and yet the recent outbreak of a mild flu-like variant is again stoking panic on the Left.
Having completed the first presidential debate of the 2024 campaign cycle, it's tempting to focus on minor but perhaps momentarily decisive details, such as whether Ron DeSantis was wise to outsource strategy to a committee that he's legally barred from communicating with or whether it was wise for Trump campaign spokesmen to not be allowed in the Fox News spin room.
— Vermont and California were two blue states where the pro-abortion rights sides of 2022 ballot measures ran considerably ahead of Democratic nominees for statewide office.
— Also in 2022, voters in Kentucky and Montana defeated GOP-backed abortion-related ballot questions; the results of those votes may provide something of an electoral roadmap for Gov. Andy Beshear (D-KY) and Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT).
— The pro-abortion rights side has generally run ahead of Democratic candidate performance recently, although there are now examples from several states of Democratic candidates doing better than the ballot issues in a variety of heavily minority areas.
— In each of the seven states that have held abortion-related ballot measures since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling, the pro-abortion rights side has outperformed Biden more In the counties that make up lesser-populated “bottom half” counties in these states.
The betting odds say the next election will likely be a rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
