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September 2020

Rasmussen Reports noticed something very fishy about polling By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/09/rasmussen_reports_noticed_something_very_fishy_about_polling.html

One of the most famous clues in a Sherlock Holmes mystery is what’s commonly referred to as “the dog that didn’t bark” or, as Holmes actually said, “The dog did nothing in the night-time.” Rasmussen Reports, which puts out a Daily Presidential Tracking Poll like clockwork, noticed that its competitors ceased barking (or, if you prefer, polling) after the two parties held their conventions. According to Rasmussen, which would know, this silence was unprecedented.

Rasmussen published a series of tweets on Monday openly snarking at its competitors for their silence. Moreover, whoever is writing Rasmussen’s tweets was not shy about identifying a reason for the other polling outfits’ unusual reticence: The narrative up until the conventions was that Biden was unstoppable; it’s now quite possible that he’s been stopped.

Joe Biden’s Craven Exercise In Blame Shifting

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/09/01/joe-bidens-craven-exercise-in-blame-shifting/

After a thug shot and killed a Trump supporter Saturday night in Portland, Democratic nominee Joe Biden suddenly got religion when it comes to leftist riots in our nation’s streets. The former vice president “challenged” President Donald Trump to “condemn violence,” then blamed Trump for “encouraging” it. Say what?

It goes beyond hypocrisy when Biden for months sat in his basement in near-total silence as his far-left supporters rioted, looted and burned U.S. cities, and his own party egged them on.

This same man chose as his vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris, who warned us all with a smile on her face during a television appearance that the protesting and rioting is “not gonna stop,” not even after the election.

Funny what a bit of bad polling will do.

For months, the 77-year-old Biden said and did nothing as Democrat-supported Antifa and Black Lives Matter followers violently protested across the country.

Said nothing, that is, until polls showed him losing major ground among voters after the hugely successful Republican National Convention, which focused on patriotic themes and roundly condemned the national violence.

Biden Awakens to the Threat of Urban Riots With polls tightening, he and his media allies give up on denial and look for a way to blame Trump. By Gerard Baker

https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-awakens-to-the-threat-of-urban-riots-11598894969?mod=opinion_lead_pos8

In a moment surely worthy of inclusion in some future edition of “Profiles in Courage,” Democrats seem to have decided it’s time to take a stand against the violence in American cities.

It has been a while coming. It’s true that Joe Biden has issued the occasional gentle bromide about the importance of nonviolent expression, but the louder message from him and Democratic leaders throughout the summer has been vocal support for the protests, even as they rained mayhem on America’s cities.

Following the latest escalations in Kenosha, Wis., and Portland, Ore., in the past week, Mr. Biden has called on all sides to desist—though it’s notable that he has decided that blame lies with President Trump and not the Democratic officials who have connived at the lawlessness in their cities.

The reason for this sudden assertion of the moral law seems not to be the casualty count or the misery into which so many lives have been plunged, but the verdict from opinion polls and focus groups. The lives of police officers and the hopes and dreams of small-business proprietors are a small matter to the ambitious pol, but nothing pierces his conscience more sharply than an unsettling conversation with a pollster.

Beijing’s Bullying Escalates Down Under The detention of an Australian citizen signals foreigners work in China at their peril.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/beijings-bullying-escalates-down-under-11598916533?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

Australia is the Western nation most exposed to China’s military, economic and diplomatic power, so their relationship bears watching as an indicator of how the Communist Party in Beijing wants to treat other countries. In the latest example of bullying, China has detained with no public explanation Cheng Lei, an Australian citizen and television anchor for a Beijing media outlet.

It’s becoming clear that foreigners work and travel in China at their peril. Australian writer Yang Hengjun has been held on vague “espionage” accusations since last year. And don’t forget the two Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, held in China since 2018 as hostages to pressure Canada not to extradite to the U.S. Huawei’s chief financial officer for violating Iran sanctions.

Australia has faced the brunt of Beijing’s ire since the spring for daring to back an independent inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus. A state media representative compared Australia to “gum stuck on the sole of China’s shoes” and in May China imposed tariffs on Australian barley and restricted imports of beef. Over the weekend China launched a new probe of Aussie wine exports, threatening another trade blow.

After Trump, the reckoning The election of Biden and Harris will not solve any of the problems that led to Trump’s election in the first place Daniel McCarthy

https://spectator.us/after-trump-reckoning/

As voters prepare to pass judgment on Donald Trump’s presidency in November, they might want to entertain a few counterfactuals. Imagine that Russia had annexed Crimea during the Trump years rather than while Obama was president. MSNBC and other left-wing media would have hawked claims that Trump actively conspired with Putin to let the Russian president dismember Ukraine. More sober outlets, some of them ‘conservative’, would have chalked up the loss of Crimea to President Trump’s basic incompetence and reckless defiance of the foreign-policy establishment.

Much the same narrative web would have been spun if, say, Otto Warmbier had been imprisoned by Kim Jong-un’s regime this year rather than in the last year of the Obama administration. The story would have been all about Trump and his characteristic faults, though we know from the way that history really did happen that these things were the fault of Obama and the foreign-policy establishment — the very entities the media holds up as paragons of excellence in contrast to Trump.

Now try an opposite counterfactual: suppose the coronavirus had arrived in 2012 as Obama was up for reelection. The media would have given his handling of the crisis every benefit of the doubt, even with death tolls in the hundreds of thousands. The virus and the measures taken to arrest it would nonetheless have put Obama’s reelection in greater jeopardy. Democrats and NeverTrump Republicans might deny this and insist that Obama’s response to the coronavirus could have made him more popular, by showcasing his ability to handle an emergency. With COVID-12 (as it would have been), it’s more likely the coronavirus would have dented Obama’s popularity and narrowed his margin of victory over Mitt Romney, even possibly tipped the 2012 election completely.