CNN announced Thursday that hosts Jake Tapper, left, and Alisyn Camerota, right, will be moving to primetime. (Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty Images; Kevin Mazur / Getty Images)
By Abby Liebingfor WESTERN JOURNAL September 23, 2022
As CNN continues to change its programming and shuffle its hosts, Jake Tapper and Alisyn Camerota have been promoted to primetime spots despite their current viewership falling behind other major networks.
Tapper, who works as CNN’s main Washington anchor, will move to the 9 p.m. slot throughout the election season, CNN announced Thursday.
That slot hasn’t had a set host since the network fired Chris Cuomo in December 2021, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
“The world has come to rely on Jake’s no-nonsense approach to covering the news, especially during high-stakes election cycles,” CNN’s new CEO and chairman, Chris Licht, said in a statement.
Tapper has been with CNN since 2013, hosting shows such as “State of the Union” and “The Lead.” Before that, he was ABC News’ senior White House correspondent, the Inquirer reported.
CNN said he will start his stint in the 9 p.m. slot on Oct. 10 and remain there until Nov. 11.
John Berman and Brianna Keilar will move from the morning to take over Tapper’s 4 p.m. slot.
Meanwhile, Camerota will be moving from her co-anchor spot on the afternoon “CNN Newsroom” to the 10 p.m. spot that was previously held by Don Lemon, CNN announced. She will share anchor duties with senior legal analyst Laura Coates.
“This move will showcase [Tapper’s] tough reporting, smart analysis and consequential interviews as our audiences navigate the myriad of issues at stake in the midterms,” Licht said. “By adding the insights, experience and strong voices of Alisyn and Laura, we will advance and expand on that coverage, creating something complimentary and compelling in primetime.”
However, neither Tapper nor Camerota has fared very well with viewers in their current time slots on the network, Mediaite reported.
Looking back at some of last week’s numbers, Fox News thrashed the CNN hosts.
Tapper had a mere 742,000 viewers for “The Lead” at 4 p.m. Friday, just over half the number — 1.37 million — that Fox News drew for “Your World with Neil Cavuto” in that period, Mediaite reported. MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace was first in the time slot with 1.51 million viewers.
“CNN Newsroom,” which Camerota co-hosts from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., was similarly pummeled by Fox News on Friday, with about half the viewership, according to Mediaite.
In their primetime slots, Tapper and Camerota will be up against Fox News heavyweights Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Greg Gutfeld, who routinely dominate from 9 to 11 p.m.
Licht continues to shuffle a lot of CNN anchors and shows since he started as CEO in April.
The announcement of Tapper and Camerota’s moves comes on the heels of the news that Don Lemon was losing his 10 p.m. spot and moving to a morning show, Wolf Blitzer was getting more time on air as he anchors 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., and “Reliable Sources” host Brian Stelter was fired.
Erin Burnett and Anderson Cooper are two of the only anchors who will remain on their regular shows during their regular hours (7 and 8 p.m., respectively), CNN said.
First Joe says he conquered COVID and it’s gone. To stay relevant and continue to rant and carry on, Tony the fauch said it’s never going away. Then Joey came back and said it’s not totally gone so booster up again. Then the CDC director came on and said well she really said nothing.
During an interview with ABC News on Thursday, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky repeatedly refused to say whether she agrees with President Joe Biden’s assessment that the coronavirus pandemic is over.
Host Terry Moran asked, “Dr. Walensky, what was your reaction when you heard President Biden say the pandemic is over, and what do you think of that?”
Walensky responded, “You know, here’s what I can tell you, we’re in a different place. Schools are open and businesses are open. We have a lot of population immunity out there right now. We have a lot of protection from vaccination already. Deaths are still at 350 a day, but they are way lower than they were a year ago, two years ago at this time. So, we are continuing to do everything we can promoting these updated booster shots so that people can get the protection that they need, but recognizing that we are in a much better place than we were a year ago at this time.”
Moran then asked, “But the pandemic is not over, from your perspective?”
Walensky responded, “Well, we continue to encourage people to do all the things that they can do to protect themselves. We have the tools right now to protect yourself. You can get your primary series, if you haven’t yet gotten it. You can get your updated fall bivalent vaccine. And then, should you actually get [infected], we have tools like Paxlovid so that you can protect yourself against severe disease, hospitalization, and death. So, I think, as we look at the big picture, things are very different. Our hospitals are not overwhelmed, people are back to work, schools are open again. I think those are really and critically important metrics.”
Later, Walensky discussed how the CDC needs to do a better job communicating with the public.
Do they really just throw "classified" documents on the floor like that?
Visits: 40
Former President Donald Trump said during a Wednesday night appearance on the Fox News show “Hannity” that his will is missing and he thinks the Justice Department has it.
Last month, the FBI raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property in Palm Beach, Florida, and confiscated boxes of documents, claiming they should not have been in his possession and included classified material.
The former president denounced the unprecedented raid and said the FBI took a wide range of private papers along with other documents.
On Sunday, Trump made his first trip to Mar-a-Lago since the raid, and he spoke about that with host Sean Hannity in an interview at the Florida estate Wednesday night.
Hannity noted that Trump had lost about 500 pages of documents protected by attorney-client privilege.
“They took a lot. I think they took my will. I found out yesterday,” the former president said. “I said, ‘Where is it?’”
“Am I in it?” Hannity asked as Trump repeated, “I think they took my will.”
“That could cause a lot of problems,” he said, smiling at the Fox News host’s question.
“That could cause a lot of problems if that gets published for people who won’t be so happy, or maybe will be very happy,” Trump said.
The former president said the Justice Department “shopped” until it found someone who would sign the warrant to raid his property.
Trump, who was not at Mar-a-Lago for the raid, said he learned of it when a worker called him.
“I was in New Jersey. I got a call in the morning from somebody that’s here. … ‘Sir, the FBI just came in.’ I said, ‘What? The FBA? Who?’ And they go, ‘The FBI.’ And I said, ‘How many people?’ And he said, ‘Many, many people, sir. Many, many people.”
He said he was told the FBI wanted to do the raid “quietly, silently.”
The former president told Hannity that after he received questions from the media about the raid, he put out a statement announcing it.
“These are dark times for our Nation, as my beautiful home, Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided and occupied by a large group of FBI agents,” Trump wrote in a statement on Aug. 8.
“Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before. After working and cooperating with the relevant Government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate.”
During the “Hannity” interview, Trump said, “I declassified everything.”
That question was debated Tuesday in a hearing by special master Raymond Dearie, who wanted the former president’s attorneys to point to a specific instance or document proving Trump’s claim, according to The New York Times.
Dearie indicated that absent such proof, he would be inclined to agree with the Justice Department on the issue, meaning documents it says were classified will be treated as such.
Trump has repeatedly criticized the conduct of the FBI during the raid.
“Arrived in Florida last night and had a long and detailed chance to check out the scene of yet another government ‘crime,’ the FBI’s Raid and Break-In of my home, Mar-a-Lago. I guess they don’t think there is a Fourth Amendment anymore, and to them, there isn’t,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“In any event, after what they have done, the place will never be the same. It was ‘ransacked,’ and in far different condition than the way I left it. Many Agents — And they didn’t even take off their shoes in my bedroom. Nice!!!”
Radical-Rep-Rashida-Talib-ERUPTS-After-CEO-Jamie-Dimon-Schools the loon.
Visits: 11
Drill baby drill is the message the nations largest bank CEO’S told the House Banking Committee. One of the House Loons was not happy. By her comments it was obvious that she hasn’t a clue of what’s going on. The whole hearing was over six hours long. Bur this one loons comments stood out. This from Survive The News.
Executives from the country’s six largest banks testified before the House Financial Services Committee on Wednesday for its annual oversight to discuss issues including climate change and fossil fuels.
Far-left Rep. Rashida Talib (MI-D) asked all the bank executives if they have a policy against funding new oil and gas products.
Talib erupted after JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon humiliated her with his highly concise and on-point response.
“Absolutely not and that would be the road to Hell for America,” Dimon replied.
Dimon — asked for his analysis of modern energy investments into older forms of power including coal and gas — said the US is not on the right path.
“We aren’t getting this one right. The world needs 100 million barrels effectively of oil and gas every day. And we need it for 10 years,” Dimon said.
“To do that, we need proper investing in the oil and gas complex. Investing in the oil and gas complex is good for reducing CO2,” he continued.
“We’ve all seen, because of the high price of oil and gas — particularly for the rest of the world — you’ve seen everyone going back to coal.”
He added, “Not just poor nations like India and China, Indonesia and Vietnam — but wealthy nations like Germany, France and the Netherlands. CO2 is getting worse. We need to have proper rules and regulations and government policy to have an effective transition to reduce CO2, keeping energy secure.”
The loons response is in this tweet.
Rep. @RashidaTlaib challenges bank CEOs to agree to stop funding fossil fuels, is rejected by every single one
Undocumented Democrats heading here to vote.-Giphy
Visits: 31
Yes this is satire. No names were used so we could protect those who committed the crimes.
You may have heard the story about the undocumented and the ambulance chasers. A governor takes 50 undocumented out of the camps to nowhere that Joey boy set up. Sends them off to what would be a dream come true. A trip to see how the other side lived.
They signed off ( more on that later ) and they loaded up and headed off to Martha’s Vineyards. Well when the rich progressives ( white as white can be ) found out they weren’t the house staff they ordered, panic set in.
The ambulance chasers showed up and Shazam. Shades of the old countries policies set in. But instead of being jailed, they sued. Now forget the fact that papers were signed ( English or Spanish ) rights were violated. Rumor has it the ambulance chasers offered not one, but two McDonald’s gift cards. Life doesn’t get better than that.
I am now closing a second OP in a week, both due to one person’s persistent inability to distinguish between the discussion of morality (or ethics, if you want to go with David Gerrold in When Harley was One) and a discussion of religion.
Despite being warned many times that the article was about morality, not religion — even though the original article was published in 2015 by a religious commentator, and I pointed this out in the OP — this person kept injecting religion-tainted comments into his responses, mostly in a negative sense.
Morality is not inextricably linked to a particular religion.
Morality — right and wrong — is not inextricably linked to a particular religion. Or to ANY religion, for that matter. And to continually link the two in a negative fashion is, at best, a disingenuous tactic. Had a fellow Mod not requested the poster be allowed to continue on the site so the Mod could try to talk sense to him, I would have banned him for his disruptive behavior long ago.
This person exhibits a lot of behaviors typical of leftist trolls, such as “circling back” to the same position over and over again and other, similar, logical fallacies. While people left of center are welcome here for well-mannered discourse, trolling is not.
I’ve noticed that potential “right-wing” trolls don’t last long on left-leaning websites. So it’s hard to compare their behavior. Why? Because left-leaning websites and their denizens tend to have rather unique definitions of inclusion, tolerance, diversity, and freedom of speech — something they are always virtue-signaling and claiming that the “right-wing” posters are against it.
And, in continually injecting religion (namely Judeo-Christianity) it was inevitable that someone else would feel the need to defend his/her faith against these perceived attacks.
Since this OP has been devolving into something neither MC as the original owner nor I as the current owner, wish to see. I am closing that thread for this reason.
So what has Mayor Suarez done for Miami? Removed the Sanctuary city designation. In his own words.
“We’ve balanced our budget. We have surpluses… because of that, we have 1.4% unemployment,” said Suarez, noting how scarce surpluses are in American cities and states today. “We had 12% growth last year, the second most growth in recorded history. So, while our president decides he wants to divide us, to distract us, I think, we are in Miami staying united and growing.”
“I know firsthand that Americans want a government that is on their side but off their backs; a government whose hand is off their wallet and whose nose is out of their bedrooms. They want a country that stands tall and a government that gets the basic things done—so they can live their lives and provide for their families. And Americans want leaders who are here to help them and to serve them, not to rule over them or regulate their lives. They want leaders who champion America the way a mayor champions a city. Because when you think about it, America is really one big city—a shining city—where everyone plays a role, everyone finds a place, and everyone has a home.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday announced a sweeping package of what he called the country’s “most aggressive” climate measures to “accelerate the state’s transition” to non-conventional energy sources.
The package includes 40 bills that appear to provide new green rules on laws related to things ranging from large-scale industry to the family home and private and public transportation.
The Democratic governor’s office said in a statement the package of climate change-focused measures aims to cut pollution and target “big polluters.”
It comes as America’s most populous state has struggled to provide stable electricity for residents amid a heat wave, which saw the state asking residents to use less power and suggest the best times to use air conditioners or charge electric cars.
“This month has been a wake-up call for all of us that later is too late to act on climate change. California isn’t waiting any more,” Newsom said in a statement. “Together with the Legislature, California is taking the most aggressive action on climate our nation has ever seen.”
“We’re cleaning the air we breathe, holding the big polluters accountable, and ushering in a new era for clean energy,” he continued. “That’s climate action done the California Way—and we’re not only doubling down, we’re just getting started.”
In July, Newsom called for “bold actions” to combat climate change. He declared his climate-focused vision for California involves a push to achieve 90 percent “clean energy” by 2035, “carbon neutrality” by 2045, “setback measures” to target oil drilling, carbon capture programs, and to “advance nature-based solutions” to remove carbon from “natural and working lands.”
40 “Green” Bills
Newsom’s office said his sweeping package of measures will create four million new jobs over the next 20 years, cut air pollution by 60 percent, and reduce state oil consumption by 91 percent.
How this would be achieved was not explained in the governor’s news release.
The package of measures, the governor’s office said, will save the state $23 billion by avoiding damage from pollution. It further aims to cut fossil fuel use in buildings and transportation by 92 percent and refinery pollution by 94 percent.
The governor named a list of the 40 new green bills, which touch on things from the broad scope of the climate to more everyday matters such as community air quality, electricity supply, vehicle permits, and gas pricing.
Some of the bills, which were all named in the governor’s news release, include:
AB 1279: “The California Climate Crisis Act”
AB 1389: “Clean Transportation Program: project funding preferences”
AB 1749: “Community emissions reduction programs: toxic air contaminants and criteria air pollutants”
AB 1857: “Solid waste”
AB 1909: “Vehicles: bicycle omnibus bill”
AB 2075: “Energy: electric vehicle charging standards”
AB 2622: “Sales and use taxes: exemptions: California Hybrid and Zero-Emission Truck and Bus Voucher Incentive Project: transit buses”
AB 2836: “Carl Moyer Memorial Air Quality Standards Attainment Program: vehicle registration fees: California tire fee”
SB 1063: “Energy: appliance standards and cost-effective measures”
SB 1205: “Water rights: appropriation”
SB 1230: “Zero-emission and near-zero-emission vehicle incentive programs: requirements”
SB 1322: “Energy: petroleum pricing”
SB 1382: “Air pollution: Clean Cars 4 All Program: Sales and Use Tax Law: zero emissions vehicle exemption”
How the package of new green laws and regulations might impact, for example, standards required for cars to be permitted on Californian roads; how and when homes can be cooled; the source of electricity allowed to be supplied to homes; the manufacturing of everyday appliances and products, etc., were not outlined in the governor’s news release.
This latest pronouncement comes on the heels of Newsom enacting regulation to phase out sales of new gas-powered cars by 2035.
Johnathan Turley is a man who knows the law inside out. the article below is his article.
A filing by Special Counsel John Durham revealed that Igor Danchenko, who worked as a key contributor to the discredited Steele dossier funded by the Clinton campaign, was later put on the FBI payroll as an informant. The disclosure rocked Washington and raised additional questions of the FBI’s eagerness to pursue any allegations against Donald Trump despite being warned that the dossier appeared to be a vehicle for Russian disinformation.
Danchenko is facing five counts of lying to the bureau during that relationship. His trial is scheduled for next month in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia.
The filing states that “In March 2017, the FBI signed the defendant up as a paid confidential human source of the FBI. The FBI terminated its source relationship with the defendant in October 2020.”
The news shocked many of us who have closely followed the Russian collusion controversy for years. The FBI showed a zeal to investigate Trump and his campaign that seemed to border on the blind obsessive. It was not simply with the Steele dossier. On the baseless Alfa Bank allegations (also pushed by Clinton campaign through friends at the FBI) the supervisory agent for the FBI’s Trump-Russia probe, Joe Pientka, sent a note to FBI special agent Curtis Heide, stating: “People on the 7th floor to include Director are fired up about this server.” Pientka then messaged Heide: “Did you guys open a case? Reach out and put tools on?”That description of the apparent eagerness of then-FBI Director James Comey and others only magnifies concern over the bureau’s alleged bias or predisposition on the Trump investigation. It was the same eagerness that led the FBI to pursue the Russian investigation for years despite being warned early by American intelligence that the Steele dossier contained not just unsupported allegations but possible Russian disinformation.
Indeed, Danchenko’s possible connections to Russian intelligence have been raised as a matter of concern. The filing states “During his January 2017 interview with the FBI, the defendant initially denied having any contact with Russian intelligence or security services but later — as noted by the agents, contradicted himself and stated that he had contact with two individuals who he believed to be connected to those services.”
What is particularly concerning is that the FBI also had former British spy Christopher Steele, on its payroll. Steele then assembled his dossier under the funding of the Clinton campaign which repeatedly denied such funding to the media. This money was funneled through the law firm of Perkins Coie and the campaign’s general counsel, Marc Elias. (The Federal Election Commission (FEC) fined the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign for violating election rules in hiding that funding).
So the FBI cut off Steele as a paid source after he allegedly worked with the media to spread these unproven claims. It then turned around and hired his principle source for the dossier.
The filing also states that Danchenko discussed an interest in obtaining classified information for possible sale to the Russians.
“As has been publicly reported, the defendant was the subject of an FBI counterintelligence investigation from 2009 to 2011. In late 2008, while the defendant was employed by a prominent think tank in Washington, D.C., the defendant engaged two fellow employees about whether one of the employees might be willing or able in the future to provide classified information in exchange for money.
According to one employee (‘Employee-1’), the defendant believed that he (Employee-1) might be in a position to enter the incoming Obama administration and have access to classified information. During this exchange, the defendant informed Employee-1 that he had access to people who would be willing to pay money in exchange for classified information. Employee-1 passed this information to a U.S. government contact, and the information was subsequently passed to the FBI.
Based on this information, the FBI initiated a ‘preliminary investigation’ into the defendant. The FBI converted its investigation into a ‘full investigation’ after learning that the defendant (1) had been identified as an associate of two FBI counterintelligence subjects and (2) had previous contact with the Russian Embassy and known Russian intelligence officers.”
The “prominent think tank” appears to be the Brookings Institution. I have previously written about the prominent role of Brookings in spreading the Russian collusion claims and hiring an array of people who played critical roles in these investigations. That also included former FBI general counsel James Baker. For some, it seemed like not just friends but “friends with benefits.” It seems that everyone in this scandal was six degrees from Brookings.
Former President Donald Trump with Justice Samuel Alito. Alito briefly blocked a lower court order forcing the Biden administration to reinstate Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, giving the Supreme Court a few days to consider the case. Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images
By Michael Washburn for Epoch TimesSeptember 16, 2022
Democrats believe their best hope is to position themselves as the only alternative to Trump
In the coming midterms, Democrats believe their best hope is to position themselves as the only alternative to Trump and his brand of Republicanism, according to political strategists.
Democrat candidates and their supporters, they say, are hoping that the furor around former President Donald Trump’s alleged storing of sensitive documents in Mar-a-Lago, as well as his alleged role in the events of Jan. 6 will not abate even slightly between now and the November midterm elections, and will distract voters from the Democrats’ shortcomings, particularly with regard to the economy.
Even in battleground states where a variety of Republican candidates competed in this week’s primary elections, Democrats are acting as if their best bet is to paint all Republicans as nascent or actual extremists and to capitalize on some voters’ dissatisfaction with the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the strategists argue.
President Joe Biden and his party have come in for severe criticism for their handling of the economy and for an inflation report credited with bringing about the stock market’s worst day of 2022 on Sept. 13, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down nearly 1,300 points. Some economists view the highest inflation in four decades as a function of the Biden administration’s expansionist monetary policy, which they argue has led to too much money chasing too few goods. For fiscal year 2022 as a whole, the federal budget deficit is projected to be $1 trillion.
These dismal figures may motivate GOP voters as much as, or more than the court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization will drive Democrat turnout, strategists predict.
In this context, Democrats are quick to seize on any potentially bad news for Trump as good news for their embattled party. Indeed, for some Democrats, the ongoing investigation of Trump’s alleged legal and financial violations may help cast the midterms as a referendum not only on the current president and his economic performance, but on Trump and those Republicans who, they claim, fit the same mold. Given the severity of Biden’s problems, Democrats will do their best to exploit charges and allegations against Trump to their fullest political advantage whether or not the attacks have merit, strategists say.
“Every day brings the risk of more bad news about Trump, which splashes mud on every Republican. The Dobbs ruling is known and GOP candidates either get on the right side of the issue or shift to the economy, which is a bigger deal for most voters,” Keith Naughton, a political consultant and the director of Germantown, Maryland-based Silent Majority Strategies, told The Epoch Times.
Donald Trump arrives at Trump Tower in N.Y. on Aug. 9, 2022, the day after FBI agents raided his Mar-a-Lago Palm Beach home, in Fla. (David ‘Dee’ Delgado/Reuters)
A Double-Edged Sword?
Mark C. Smith, a professor of political science and Director of the Center for Political Studies at Cedarville University in Ohio, acknowledges Trump’s continuing prominence within the GOP and his popularity with many Republican voters. This has helped make the coming elections, in large part, what some voters in either party would like it to be: a Trump-Biden rematch as much as a spate of House, Senate, and gubernatorial races.
“Unlike other losing presidential candidates, Trump has maintained a strong presence within his party. He is endorsing candidates, raising funds, and holding rallies. This changes the dynamic of the midterm,” Smith told The Epoch Times.
“Interestingly, the Democrats are happy if Trump continues to headline for Republicans. While popular within the GOP, Trump is toxic for independent voters, and he runs poorly with college-educated white voters, as well as suburban women. In light of his recent legal troubles, Democrats are fine with Trump’s expanded role,” Smith said.
But given the severity of the economic problems and other factors, Smith does not believe that the Democrats’ strategy of decrying Trump’s alleged extremism, and that of “Trump-y” candidates in local issues, will succeed.
“If we consider the political climate, this should be a huge election for Republicans. A relatively unpopular president and a struggling economy, in addition to foreign affairs instability, should put the GOP in a strong position,” said Smith.
While the electoral math of midterm contests varies, it is possible to identify a statistical mean when looking at long-term trends, Smith argued.
“On average, the party out of power picks up around 26 House seats, and five or six Senate seats. To the degree this election is normal, it will be good for Republicans and they will take both houses of Congress,” he said.
While turnout in midterm elections is often low compared to presidential elections, Lonny Leitner, vice president of the government affairs firm LS2 Group, which has offices in Iowa and Minnesota, believes that the Mar-a-Lago raid has backfired and that its findings will not dissuade GOP voters.
“I spent a few days out at the Minnesota State Fair, and I can count on one hand how many times someone brought up the fact that they were concerned about the FBI raid, which tells me it is yet another failed attempt by the Democrats to end Trump once and for all. When will they learn?” Leitner told The Epoch Times.
It was far more common for people he encountered at the fair to voice serious concerns over inflation, fuel prices, out-of-control crime, and the crisis at the border with Mexico, Leitner said.
People shop at a supermarket in Montebello, Calif., on Aug. 23, 2022. U.S. shoppers are facing increasingly high prices on everyday goods and services as inflation continues to surge with high prices for groceries, gasoline, and housing. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images)
The Case of New Hampshire
To understand the Democrats’ approach, it is useful to look at one state in particular that has been fiercely contested in recent election years, namely New Hampshire, believes Andrew Smith, Director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center and an expert on elections and electoral methodology.
Smith believes that New Hampshire is not as politically conservative as its reputation and famous license plate motto (“Live Free or Die”) might lead some people to believe.
“New Hampshire’s electorate is divided between Republicans and Democrats. Democrats generally have a little bit of an advantage in presidential elections, but it’s not that big an advantage in midterm elections with a Democrat president,” Smith told The Epoch Times.
“It’s also a state with higher levels of education and income than most states, and it’s a suburban state,” he said, noting a large proportion of its population lives in the suburbs surrounding Boston. “In that sense, it’s similar to other suburban areas of the northeast that lean Democrat. It’s not a Republican state, that’s a myth,” he added.
Generalizations
In the GOP primary elections held in New Hampshire on Sept. 13, Karoline Leavitt won the race for the first congressional district against a field of rivals including Matt Mowers, Gail Huff Brown, and Russell Prescott, with 34 percent of the vote compared to 25 percent, 17 percent, and 10 percent respectively. In the second congressional district race, Robert Burns scored a victory with 33 percent of the vote versus 29 percent for George Hansel, 25 percent for Lily Tang Williams, and smaller numbers for other competitors.
In the Senate primary, former military officer Donald Bolduc, who hopes to unseat Democrat Senator Maggie Hassan in November, barely edged out his GOP rival Chuck Morse, winning 37.1 percent of the vote to Morse’s 35.8 percent.
In the GOP gubernatorial primary, incumbent Chris Sununu easily trounced all his rivals, winning 78 percent of the vote.
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu speaks during a ceremony in Manchester, N.H., on Sept. 2, 2020. (Scott Eisen/Getty Images for DraftKings)
The winning candidates come from a wide variety of backgrounds and have diverse views and ideologies. Leavitt is a former assistant press secretary in the Trump administration, Burns is an entrepreneur and former treasurer of a New Hampshire county, while Sununu has a reputation as a moderate Republican who helped secure funding for a cause championed by Democrats, namely state funding for full-day kindergarten.
While some in the media may wish to associate Bolduc with Trump, it is important to remember that he lost New Hampshire’s 2020 Senate primary to Trump-endorsed candidate Corky Messner, Smith said.
In spite of the eclecticism of these candidates and the impossibility of categorizing them all as strictly “Trump-y” figures, Smith argued, Democrats will treat the candidates in New Hampshire and other states as Republicans in the Trump mode in the hope of wooing the roughly 42 percent of voters in the state who register as independents. Smith said that the tactic put to use in New Hampshire is a microcosm of a broad political strategy.
“Democrats are going to use all these candidates’ connection with Trump—whether it’s there or not—as arguments to vote against them. But that’s true across the country. Democrats are running as if Trump is still in office,” he commented.
With the tricky position in which Democrats find themselves amid so much bad economic news, they place their hopes in controversies around a figure who remains powerful and influential within the GOP.
“All the Mar-a-Lago stuff, they’re praying that will go on until after the midterm elections, because they’re running at a moment when the president is not very popular, and that’s a difficult place to be, as we saw in 2010 and 2014,” Smith continued.
In the New Hampshire races in November 2010, Republican candidates won both the congressional districts contested in this week’s primaries, though they did not win the governorship, Smith noted. Looking at the 2010 midterm elections nationally, Republicans won a majority in the House of Representatives, which they held onto in 2014 in addition to winning majority control of the Senate.
President Joe Biden delivers a primetime speech at Independence National Historical Park Sept. 1, 2022 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Biden described “MAGA Republicans” as being extremists who posed a threat to democracy. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
The ‘Extremism’ Charge
Since the spring, when predictions widely favored the GOP in the coming midterms, Democrats have found more opportunities to try to paint Trump and the GOP more broadly as extremist and will rely heavily on this political strategy all the way through the elections, believes David Bateman, a professor of government at Cornell University.***
***According to his own words and published books and articles, Bateman leaves hard left. (Pro-abortion,anti-conservative values, etc) –TPR
This strategy does not come at the expense of, but rather goes hand in hand with, a strong emphasis on the Dobbs ruling and other issues of concern to Democrat voters at the local level, he argued. To a certain extent, voters will decide in accordance with the narratives crafted by the party leadership as Democrat spokespeople try to link congressional and gubernatorial hopefuls to the 45th president.
“Elections are never about one thing, whether that is a referendum on presidential leadership, national economic or other issues, or the local performance and responsiveness of the incumbent. And voters make choices not only on the basis of their priorities, but on the basis of the choices and narratives presented to them by parties. Democrats probably want voters to make a choice on the basis of local issues—which tend to favor incumbents—and then on the extremism of the GOP, as showcased by Trump but as embodied locally by GOP candidates,” Bateman told The Epoch Times.
Though predictions about the likely outcome of the midterms have swung since the spring and do not monochromatically favor GOP candidates as much as before, Democrats still play to what they see as their strengths.
“I expect Democrats’ basic strategy remains the same: have their congressional candidates highlight how they have delivered locally for their districts as well as the extremism of their GOP rivals, while the larger party apparatus and the president emphasize GOP extremism nationally. The abortion decision has helped Democrats a lot, as has the continued attention to Trump,” Bateman said.
The Epoch Times has reached out to the DNC for comment.
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