Sebastian – Page 25 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Key Elements of Fitz’s Victory

I’m seeing a lot of articles pointing to our Congressional race as the rare GOP hold in a district that went for Hillary.

By contrast, look at the few districts where House Democrats fell short of expectations. Despite Democratic domination in the Philadelphia suburbs, Pennsylvania Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick was one of the few Clinton-district Republicans to prevail. He was running against Scott Wallace, a wealthy self-funder with tenuous ties to the district who held out-of-the-mainstream views on law enforcement and foreign policy.

The other suburban districts all fell to the Dems. This is mostly due to the Dem-controlled PA Supreme Court gerrymandering those districts to favor Democrats. But it’s worth taking a look at Fitz, and understanding the key elements of his win.

The PA Supreme Court decided to preserve the tradition that Bucks County must be contained within a single Congressional district. To make the numbers work, we’ve always had a small part of another county added to us. Once it was part of Philadelphia. Then they remove part of Philly and added a few Montco exurbs to make it a little safer for Republicans. The PA Supreme Court, to make the district lean more Democratic, moved the part of Montco that completes our district in closer to the city to make it more Dem leaning. But Bucks County is now the most red of the ring counties, so they didn’t have the free hand to completely rewrite the political map that they had with other congressional districts. It went from slight GOP lean to slight Dem lean.
His opponent was a loon, and he wasn’t. The Bucks County Dems have usually made the mistake of running loons against the incumbent. All they had to do this time was not be crazy, and they couldn’t even manage that. Fitzpatrick might be a squishy RINO, but he’s not crazy.
Fitz embraced more traditional Democratic positions than may Republicans in the area. He won the endorsement of the AFL-CIO. I probably don’t want to know what he had to promise to get that, but it was a smart move on his part to woo the unions.

Understand that in the ring counties (and I include Chester County in this even though it’s not technically a ring county), the upper to upper middle class hoity toity were the loyal base of the Republican Party. That loyalty has flipped, and the GOP isn’t getting them back. But too many of the GOP candidates and leadership around here don’t get that: they stick to the old messaging and act as if the coalition hasn’t changed. They want to blame Trump for their losses, but aren’t looking at the coalition that brought Trump to power and how different it looks than the one they think is still viable.

For the foreseeable future, the GOP has lost the hoity toity, and they need to find voters to replace them with. There’s no path forward for the GOP here that doesn’t involve seducing the working class vote, which you aren’t going to do by embracing hoity toity issues like gun control. I only have two NRA endorsed candidates left in the area, and both did better than the candidates that did not carry endorsements. My state rep won with a comfortable margin. Tomlinson, my State Senator is holding on to a razor thin margin, and he’s probably going to a recount. It’s a squeaker, but he’s in the lead as of now. He had a strong challenger.

I’ll be honest, as long as Nancy Pelosi is taking the gavel, I couldn’t have cared less of Fitz lost his seat to a nutty Dem. We might have a chance at unseating a nutty Dem in a better year for Republicans, but I don’t see things getting better for Republicans around here with the current crop of dopes and dinosaurs that are running the party.

Lame Duck Session

Seeing a meme go around social media about passing National Reciprocity or SHARE in lame duck, just like Obamacare. Facts:

National reciprocity already passed the House. The House was never our problem. The Senate is our problem. The Senate is now less of a problem because we flipped at least one “no” vote (McCaskill) to a “yes” vote, but we don’t get that Senate until Nancy Pelosi takes back the gavel.
Obamacare did not pass in lame duck session. It became law in March of 2010, well before the midterms where Dems took a “shellacking.”
SHARE could pass the House in lame duck, but the problem is still the Senate.

For the foreseeable future, our agenda at the federal level isn’t going anywhere. Bloomberg has successfully halted our momentum and pushed us back to a defensive position. What we have to hope for are judicial confirmation, lots of them. I also have to say, I wish RGB a full recovery, but maybe it’s time for her to retire and look after her health. I know I wouldn’t still want to be working at 85.

Irish Bobby Will Be Back

I agree with Miguel’s co-blogger on this count: we haven’t seen the last of Robert “Beto” O’Rourke. The Dems never really had a chance of flipping a Texas Senate seat, but they came closer to Cruz than they had any right to. O’Rourke is a phenomenal fundraiser and strong campaigner: probably too good at fundraising for the Dems in this year’s Senate races. He sucked a lot of Dem donor money into a lost cause. But he’s a personality to keep an eye on. I said the same thing about Obama when they first put him in front of a national audience, and I was right about him too. He’s not going away. Not by a long shot.

As a Nation, We Like Ourselves Some Gridlock

As far as I’m concerned, having Nancy Pelosi as House speaker, and still having to listen to Brian Fitzpatrick say “bipartisan” every other word is a double whammy. But I expected it. He basically ran as a Democrat with an R after his name who wasn’t insane, which contrasted him with the real Democrat who was.

Anyways, I’m not particularly happy or unhappy with the results. Cocaine Mitch will get to pack the federal judiciary with more constitutionalist judges for the foreseeable future which we’ll need if we are to secure the Second Amendment through the courts.

I am very happy to hear from Miguel: “Now, if I am not mistaken, all NRA-endorsed candidates for Executive positions won (we are using the NRA as guide to see who is pro-gun only) and that tells us Gun Rights is not a dead of an issue as they tried to sell, although they almost pulled it.” This was a really important election to win in Florida. They cannot be allowed to push Florida into the anti-gun column, like they have successfully done with Washington. Ballot measures will tend to go to whoever spends the most money, and unfortunately we cannot compete with Bloomberg on ballot fights in a state as blue as Washington.

Glenn Reynolds has some good commentary on the “purple puddle.”Â Also, from The Hill, “The blue wave ran into Trumpâ€™s red wall.“

Don’t Forget to Vote

#GunVote 11/06/2018

That is all.

A Victim of Their Own Success?

I think there might be something to this WSJ article.

The left had important achievements. It did rescue America from an unsustainable moral illegitimacy. It also established the great menace of racism as Americaâ€™s most intolerable disgrace. But the leftâ€™s success has plunged it into its greatest crisis since the â€™60s. The Achillesâ€™ heel of the left has been its dependence on menace for power. Think of all the things it can ask for in the name of fighting menaces like â€œsystemic racismâ€ and â€œstructural inequality.â€ But what happens when the evils that menace us begin to fade, and then keep fading?

Read the whole thing. I’m not saying there’s no racism anymore, but I do get the sense that the Democratic coalition has been rocked by its own success in the culture wars, and has been desperately looking for issues to hold their coalition together.

Was It Wrong When Your Guy Did It?

I agree that DJT’s EO ending birthright citizenship is unconstitutional. But I’m seeing a lot of this:

Mr. President, amending any part of the Constitution by Executive Order puts every part of the Constitution at risk of being amended by Executive Order. Today itâ€™s the 14th Amendment. Tomorrow it could be the 1st. Itâ€™s OUR Constitution not YOUR Constitution. #ImpeachmentIsNotDead

— Congressman Al Green (@RepAlGreen) October 30, 2018

Unconstitutional Executive Orders? Where could he gave gotten that crazy idea from? I have an Uncle that loves to throw our the charge of “Whataboutism,” also known as pointing out hypocrisy. True Whataboutism is using someone else’s flaws to distract attention away from your own. There are certainly people out there who cheer their team, right or wrong. But a lot of people who do that wrap their cheerleading up in high-minded rhetoric and ideals. Pointing out “No, it’s just cheerleading,” is calling it for what it is. It’s no surprise the people who are having that pointed out to them don’t particularly like it. No one wants to think they are a sucker.

If it is high-minded ideals, can we all agree now that rule by EO, and specifically unconstitutional EO, is a bad thing? If yes, do we have a consensus on dismantling executive power and making the executive branch much weaker than it currently is? Or is it only bad when the other guy has the pen?

On Our Discourse

This is very much worth your time to read. From my social media feeds, I’m seeing a lot more virtue signaling about hate than I am debate over gun control. Â That’s should be a good thing. Who likes hate? But it’s all coming from people who do some pretty impressive hate mongering for anyone who disagrees with them on an hourly basis. There are nazis on every street corner, you see. Trump is responsible for each and every one of them! If you voted for Trump, so are you!

In other words, more than half of my Shabbat morning congregants, and in some more traditional synagogues, almost all of them, should have the doors barred against their entry. Jews who make minyans, pay shiva calls, underwrite nursing homes and kindergartensâ€”people who make Judaism possible, with their flawed but real human presence, for other peopleâ€”should be cast out of our midst because of the levers they pull in the privacy of a voting booth. And what, after all, would a Jew who fled from Iran know about anti-Semitismâ€”or protecting the Jewish community?

Donald Trump is neither a devil or an angel. He is not Hitler, and fascism is not descending on America. I am becoming more convinced this madness is being driven by Baby Boomers who, as a whole, were never properly socialized for social media. I’ve been participating in online communities almost since there were online communities. You have to learn the pitfalls. People are not instinctively wired to interact in this medium.

I do know people my age who are being driven mad by the algorithms, and I know plenty of Boomers who have enough self-awareness necessary to put it in context or just stay away from it. But generationally, Boomers seem to have fewer tools to cope.

Social media is total poison. Even the dealers know it. I have to embrace Social Media to cultivate an audience these days. My motivation to keep doing that, in case you can’t tell, diminishes with the day. I must pay homage to the gatekeepers. They are the first to tell me, daily. Pay us money, and you can access your audience. Once upon a time I earned my audience without transfer payments to Silicon Valley. Not anymore. I won’t pay them, but I pay for it with reduced traffic.

Armed in Houses of Worship

I’m not the church going type, but I don’t think I’ve been in a church unarmed since I got my carry permit 16 years ago. The fact is they are juicy targets for whack jobs looking for headlines. Same for festivals and other public gatherings.

“Gun-toting rabbi says congregants should arm themselves.”

I couldn’t agree more. I get a lot of people are uncomfortable with the idea of guns in churches, but the fact is that the quickest way to end a mass shooting is accurate and prompt return fire. Doesn’t matter whether it’s the cops or someone else. Carefully aimed bullets are carefully aimed bullets, and despite what idiots in the media think, these are trainable scenarios where armed citizens usually prevail when around. Other than the emotional reaction, there’s nothing special about a church as a place that makes it different for carrying than any other place.

Giving Him What He Wants

There’s an article running in USA Today that is offering the mass killer exactly what he wants. I was reluctant to link to it, but people should see. “Who is [murdering loser]? Accused Pittsburgh synagogue shooter left anti-semitic trail.”. USA Today is hardly alone, though.

CNN: “Here’s what we know so far about [murdering loser], the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting suspect.”

New York Times: “Who Is [murdering loser], the Suspect in the Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting?

ABC: “Pittsburgh synagogue shooting: What we know about alleged mass shooter [murdering loser].”

Fox News: “Who is [murdering loser]? Pittsburgh synagogue suspect posted views online.”

Oh yeah, go read his manifesto and everything. From everything I’m seeing the guy was a loser. That fits the profile of most mass killers.Â For all the whack jobs in the tin-foil hat part of the gun community, saying this is a “false flag” because of the timing, it’s not. It all makes sense if you understand the motivation. We’ve unfortunately reached the point where in order to get the infamy you seek, you need to be politically useful to a narrative, or you need to kill a lot of people. Otherwise you’re act is going to get memory holed in a few days. If you want weeks of seeing your name in lights, you need to work for the media.Â This is not some crackpot theory. It’s also known that mass killers extensively plan their rampages:

Extensive planning indicates that rampage attacks serve purposes. These also fall into clear repeated patterns, including vengeance, infamy seeking, and a need for a sense of macho power, often with a background of long-term internal discord and interpersonal defeats.

We can’t do much about the other factors, but we can do someone about infamy seeking. I’m not asking the media to not cover news, and I would never suggest the government ought to restrict freedom of the press. But we can voluntarily take action. We can drive a culture that doesn’t offer infamy to those who seek it.

Don’t make the killer famous. I won’t even mention their names. I’m not going to quote the killer, but he has a quote which indicates he understood the timing of this. I believe he realized hitting this close to an election would make him useful and would drive heavy media coverage. The media fell right into place, on cue. “Who is <asshole murderer>?” Way to go guys. Out there, somewhere, the next murdering loser is taking notes.