Category: Executive Branch

Previously, we examined whether the culture war has been lost.  Yes, yes it has, as the commanding heights of our culture have been captured by collectivist/tribalist crypto-Marxists of the Left, who have expanded their reach into the administrative state and into the business world.

As an aside, I think we can safely count the major Christian denominations (with the possible exception of the Baptists) as having also having been captured by the Left. With the election of the Commie Pope,  even the Catholic Church has fallen.  The Long March through the Catholic Church would be an interesting article in and of itself, if anyone wants to volunteer.

Leftism requires coercion, which is generally the province of the government.  They cannot complete the desired destruction of  America as we know it without capturing the dominant American institution, the government, by taking the elected branches of government.

Trump was elected as a backlash candidate against the Left, and there are a number of Republicans (and possibly even a few Democrats) who are still opposed to the Leftists to some degree .  Could Congress and the Presidency keep Leftism in at least some semblance of control?

First, you could hardly find a weaker reed than elected politicians for, well, just about anything other than the preservation of the perks and opportunities for enrichment of elected politicians.  That aside, elected officialdom as a bulwark against Leftism only works if Leftists don’t win.   So its really a question of when, not if, the Left recaptures Congress and the Presidency.  Which will happen the next time the Democrats win the Presidency and control of both houses of Congress.  Such as, next year.

At the moment, there is a fair amount of optimism that Trump will win re-election, that the Repubs will hold onto the Senate, and even rumblings that they have a fair chance of winning the House, on the belief that the Democrats, currently fronted by their nutbar Presidential candidates and the odious “Squad”, have gone too far to the Left, too fast.  I’m thinking that optimism is unwarranted.

The Presidency.  Don’t discount the importance the Leftist major media.  Trump, despite presiding over no new wars and a healthy economy, has yet to break 50% in his approval ratings.  I think you can credit the relentless spew of Trump hatred for that.  And a drag on approval is a drag on votes.

But, you protest, the last time the Dems ran lefty candidates (McGovern, maybe Mondale), they lost in historic landslides.  That was a generation or more ago, before the Left captured the cultural institutions, many businesses, and had the opportunity to indoctrinate a generation.  I see little reason to believe that past performance in 1972 and 1984 will predict future results in 2020.

Trump won by swinging a largely uncontested Rust Belt by a narrow margin.  I cannot believe the Dems will make that mistake twice, so in 2020 the Rust Belt will be fought over like the swing states they are.  The voters that will ultimately matter are in the suburban “purple” districts.  You know, the ones that gave Congress back to the Dems last year.

Congress.  The Repubs lost the House in 2018, and while the Democrats’ ardent embrace of Leftism may be the underlying change in the political dynamic that needed for the Repubs to win it back, the events preceding their loss of the House (the Kavanaugh hearings, the weaponization of the FBI and DOJ) had the ugly side of the Left on full display.  Maybe the optics have gotten somewhat worse, so there may be some chance that the Repubs win the House despite what will certainly be a full court press by the Leftist media and Big Tech.

The Repubs hold the Senate by a mere two seats, and have nine more seats on the table than the Dems do in 2020.  I have not bothered to prognosticate how many Repub Senators are “at risk”, but on the most basic calculation, the odds don’t seem to favor the Repubs.

The real danger, though, comes from two places:  the assault by the Left on the machinery of voting, and the determination of the Leftist Big Tech monopolies to push the Left over the finish line.

The Machinery of Voting.   While this is probably a topic for a post of its own, I suggest you consider the following:

The Dems absolutely believe its not the votes that count, its who counts the votes.  In most states, elections are run by the Secretary of State, and the Dems have set their sights on capturing this seemingly nondescript office.  And, of course, there is the astonishing win/loss record of the Dems in recounts, often accompanied by the discovery of previously unknown ballots.  You can count on any sufficiently close contest being “won” by the Dems.

There are over a million more registered voters in California than there are actual eligible voters.  While California is likely the worst on this front, the voter rolls nationwide are notoriously, well, garbage.  There’s a reason why Democrat states are refusing to go along with any attempt to clean up the voter rolls.  I’m not saying its because every “excess” registered voter is an opportunity for fraud . . . well, actually, yes I am saying that.

Wherever they can, the Dems run “ballot harvesting” operations (for which those excess registered voters come in very handy).  I seriously doubt they have declined to take advantage of the open door these create for fraud.  While Martha McSally ran a pretty nondescript campaign in 2018 for Jeff Flake’s Senate seat, I believe her loss in what had been a pretty safe Red state to the explicitly pro-Left and anti-Arizona Krysten Sinema is due at least in part to the Dems’ ballot harvesting machine in Phoenix.  Mind you, that’s in a state nominally controlled by the Repubs, so its not just Dem-controlled states that are vulnerable to election fraud.

In short, there is less reason all the time to believe that the preferences of voters for candidates who are not anti-American Leftists will necessarily determine who actually wins elections.  The margin of fraud has been getting wider and wider over time, and Trump’s margins in key Rust Belt swing states are well within that margin.

Big Tech.  The power of Big Tech to control the information that is readily available to the voting public is immense, and these quasi-monopolies are overtly Leftist.  Beyond the various deplatforming pogroms of Twitter and Facebook, and Google’s manipulation of search results, there should be no doubt they are planning to put their thumb on the scales as hard as they can.  The information most Americans get is heavily mediated by the Big Tech monopolies via search results, ad placements, and simple visibility and ranking.  As they de-platform, de-monetize, de-rank, and even refuse ads from, anyone not a Leftist, their impact on the election will likely outstrip even the DemOp Media.

I don’t think any political movement in American history has ever had that kind of backing, and I can’t believe it won’t affect the outcome.

The Courts.  Ah, you say, but Trump and the Republican Senate are stuffing the federal judiciary full of non-Leftist judges.  Can the courts, which have certainly been expanding their ambit so that any federal district judge can set national policy, stand as some kind of limitation on the Leftist program?

One reason not to pin too much hope on the federal judiciary is that its jurisdiction is almost completely up to Congress.  While Article III of the Constitution has a seemingly healthy list of cases to which the “judicial power shall extend”, it also states that:

“In all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, and those in which a state shall be party, the Supreme Court shall have original jurisdiction. In all the other cases before mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make.”

The lower federal courts, I should point out, are creations of statute, and thus their jurisdiction is also subject to Congressional . . . revision.  If the newly Trumpist courts have the temerity to mount any kind of effective resistance to Leftism, a Leftist Congress and President can simply strip them of their power to interfere with the fundamental transformation of the country.  Recall, as well, that judicial review of the Constitutionality of statutes and government action is a creation of the courts and not the Constitution, and if push came to shove I see no reason why Congress could not strip this power from both the Supreme Court and the inferior courts.

Next Up:  Apres les Deluge, or, what happens when the TWANLOC Left succeeds in their mission of destroying, err, fundamentally transforming, America.