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TEN TRUE THINGS YOU CAN SAY TO IMPRESS YOUR FRIENDS AND CONFOUND YOUR RIVALS
1. Despite/because of this, from the Philadelphia Inquirer on Pennsylvania’s Republican Senate primary….
There were still thousands of votes waiting to be counted, including mail ballots, overseas and military ballots and provisional ballots….
It was unclear early Wednesday how quickly the remaining ballots would be counted. Any recount could take weeks to resolve.
….David McCormick will almost certainly be the Republican nominee because of this:
Unless some major counting error is discovered in an automatic recount (or Dr. Oz wages a protracted – and, somehow, successful legal war), McCormick’s dominance of mail-in ballots should put him back in the lead for good.
2. You can say that about 70% of Pennsylvania Republican Senate primary voters chose someone besides Donald Trump’s endorsed candidate – or you can say, more on point for understanding the Republican Party right now, that 100% of the voters chose candidates who ran as-MAGA-as-they-could-muster and after trying as hard as possible to be Trump’s endorsed candidate.
3. The shellackings suffered by problem solvers Conor Lamb (26%), Pat McCrory (25%), and Kurt Schrader (40%ish) demonstrate that the extremes still largely control the major parties right now, a/k/a extremism in offensive search of a congressional perch is not currently considered a vice but, rather, a virtue by primary voters.
4. Madison Cawthorn would have been better off shooting someone on 5th Avenue than doing all the stuff he did. Unpin that, fella.
5. The Republican Establishment in North Carolina, led by Senator Tillis, demonstrated that Donald Trump-backed candidates can be beaten if a posse has the determination, wherewithal, and courage to do the deed.
6. It is factual and not opinion to say many Republicans in Pennsylvania and DC who know a lot about politics generally and the Keystone State in particular believe that the gubernatorial nomination of Trump-backed Doug Mastriano makes it quite likely that Democrat Josh Shapiro (the Commonwealth’s current popular, aggressive, determined attorney general) will ascend to the governorship (even in the face of a massive Red Wave), potentially inflicting serious hurt on down-ballot Republican candidates and giving the Democrats’ 2024 presidential nominee a singularly important ally in that year’s general election fight for the White House.
7. As soon as a major officeholder or candidate acknowledges a significant medical issue, all serious news organizations should take their political reporters off of the story and assign aggressive, experienced medical reporters (ideally actual doctors!) to demand answers on behalf of the public interest.
8. If President Biden’s goals with his Tuesday remarks in Buffalo were to dominate the news cycle with a galvanizing message against hate and to unite the nation, the available data (the quality and quantity of coverage in the Dominant Media and the social media chatter) suggests he did not succeed on either front.
9. The failure of the left and the Dominant Media to understand the role illegal immigration (and the press coverage of illegal immigration) play in the psyches of many Americans is arguably the main reason Donald Trump got elected president – and arguably the main reason he is poised to return for another term (even as Rich Lowry inadvertently tries to help the Blues out with a column explaining it all).
10. Do not think for a minute that if the Pentagon knew all about the truth out there regarding UFOs that officials would just show up at a congressional hearing and admit it! How naïve do all y’all think we are!??!