This Week: The Briefing, Vol. VII, Issue 36
Prime Minister 2019
Canada: Yes, it isn’t an American election, but next month’s Canadian federal election is connected to the U.S. via the Justin Trudeau blackface scandal. There are now three pictures of Trudeau wearing blackface, all later than 1990. Even if most Americans know little or nothing about Trudeau, this scandal, which has enveloped the international leader in political correctness, speaks volumes to the current culture war.
Where the Left hopes to inoculate its own prejudices just by showcasing the supposed tolerance behind its politics, the reality persistently turns out to be more complex. People act in horrible, bigoted ways regardless of their politics. Many conservatives are welcoming and friendly toward people unlike themselves, and many liberals act like insensitive, bigoted buffoons when given a moment of privacy.
Before the scandal, Trudeau’s incumbent Liberal Party was tied with the Conservative Party in national polls.
Shortly after Canadians make their choice, Virginians will vote for legislature, making their decision in part based on Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam’s klansman/blackface costume at medical school.
There is certainly no reason to think that only left-wing politicians do such things, but it is important that so many of them do.
President 2020
Biden scandal: “Doh! Walked right into that one!”
How many times have you seen a situation like this one, in which a political attack backfired so badly?
In the current instance, a whistleblower is supposedly accusing President Trump of demanding from Ukraine’s president an investigation into Hunter Biden’s shady dealings in Ukraine.
The idea behind the accusation is that Trump made an unethical demand as a condition for funding for Ukraine’s anti-Russia resistance. But the part that stands out actually has nothing to do with Trump. Rather, it is that Hunter Biden was engaged in shady foreign lobbying. And given that the whistleblower in this case did not even personally hear the conversation between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenzky, the Biden angle is now, by far, the most interesting part of the story.
According to the Younger Biden, he even discussed the lobbying with his dad at least once. That contradicts the elder Biden’s story. But suffice it to say that Hunter won contracts “consulting” for Ukrainian energy interests right when his dad, the vice president, was responsible for Ukraine.
So…surprise! Attempts to promote this story as a Trump scandal are hurting Biden, who has now fallen behind Elizabeth Warren in Iowa. They are merely bringing to the public’s attention the fact that Biden’s son was involved in sleazy lobbying regarding shady Ukrainian interests. If the goal is to help Warren get the nomination, then they are succeeding.
Senate 2020
Massachusetts: Of all the nice things you could say about Sen. Ed Markey, D, that he’s part of a rising generation of young leaders is not one of them. Yet that’s what Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said in endorsing him: “the generational change we’ve waiting for.”
At age 73, Markey is a left-wing fossil ala Bernie Sanders.
Voters in Massachusetts’ Democratic primary next September 15 will choose between Markey and Rep. Joe Kennedy III, a four-term member of the U.S. House who is also quite left-wing and 35 years Markey’s junior. The winner will almost certainly prevail in the general election that follows two months later.
But Markey is perhaps best known as the Senate sponsor of the Green New Deal. Although he looked somewhat foolish when he and all Democrats refused to vote for the Green New Deal when it came to the Senate floor, the gesture has guaranteed that the House woke caucus will gratefully back him against someone whose only real qualification is that he has a famous last name.
Warren, who was once Kennedy’s professor, has also endorsed Markey.
Nebraska: Although he has often taken issue with President Trump on various specific issues, Sen. Ben Sasse, R, has earned his endorsement for re-election. This will likely spare Sasse any kind of interesting primary. He is unlikely to face a difficult general election either way.
New Hampshire: Former 2016 Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski teased a potential Senate campaign over the weekend, pointing to his combative testimony before the House Judiciary Committee as a sign that he would be “a fighter.” He hasn’t committed to anything just yet. There is no polling and no political horse-sense argument suggesting that he’d be genuinely competitive, but an endorsement from Trump could carry him a long way toward the nomination anyway.
Lewandowski’s performance before the committee, which could be called hostile and ferocious in addition to combative, showed Democrats up as unprepared. By behaving like a boor, Lewandowski made them pay for the half-hearted, non-committal process they have begun to impeach Trump.
