April 14, 2023
Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.
Biden still sagging in Democratic primary as 2024 decision looms, Kennedy up to 10 percent, poll shows
By Robert Romano
Could Robert Kennedy, Jr. shock President Joe Biden in the New Hampshire primary? Stranger things have happened in American politics.
Don’t look now, but President Biden is still sagging in Democratic Party primary polls, only garnering an average of 35.5 percent in the average of national polls taken compiled by RealClearPolitics.com, as Biden’s official decision to run in 2024 still looms.
Interestingly, almost all of the “candidates” listed on RealClearPolitics.com are not even running, with the standing assumption being that Biden will ultimately seek reelection. Biden rounds out the top of the polls with 35.5 percent, Vice President Kamala Harris (who won’t challenge Biden directly) is at 9.8 percent, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is at 9.3 percent, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is at 8.5 percent, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren is at 5.3 percent, Hillary Clinton is at 5 percent, New York Congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez is at 3.7 percent and California Governor Gavin Newsom is at 3 percent.
And then candidates who are running, like Robert Kennedy, Jr. and Marianne Williamson, are not listed because national polling organizations are largely ignoring their candidacies — perhaps out of fear of promoting any real challenge to the incumbent president.
Until one poll, Morning Consult, crossed the proverbial Rubicon, asking the question among Democratic primary voters on April 7 through April 9, and it shows Biden with seemingly comfortably lead ahead of Kennedy, 70 percent to 10 percent, with Williamson with 4 percent. 8 percent say they want somebody else.
But Biden’s 60-point lead in April is actually down from a 73-point lead in when Morning Consult asked the question March 3 through March 5, with just Williamson in the race, prior to Kennedy entering the race. Afterward, Biden went from 78 percent in the poll to 70 percent in the poll. And the share saying they support somebody besides Biden went from 13 percent to 22 percent — in a month.
That’s bad news. Really, really bad news for Biden.
While incumbent presidents rarely lose to opponents in competitive party primaries at the state level, it can happen. Usually the best place to start looking is New Hampshire — where incumbent presidents tend to go on to become one-term presidents.
1912, 1932, 1952, 1968, 1976, 1980 and 1992 all saw incumbent presidents with significant primary challenges. In every single case, the incumbent president either declined to seek reelection, as with Harry Truman in 1952, who lost the New Hampshire primary, and in 1968, when Lyndon Johnson barely beat Eugene McCarthy and then decided to withdraw from the race altogether.
In other cases, the incumbent president did win their party’s primary or national nominating convention only to go on to be easily defeated, as with William Taft, Herbert Hoover, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush. A solid record of defeat for the incumbent party.
In 1980, when Jimmy Carter similarly faced a primary challenge from Ted Kennedy, who ended up winning 12 states, it was absolutely an indicator of how poorly Carter was going to perform in the general election, where Carter lost 44 states in a landslide to Ronald Reagan.
New Hampshire, unlike other primary states, besides holding the distinction as the first in the nation, is an open primary, meaning you can vote in the primary if you are an unaffiliated with either party, that is, you are an independent. When independents in New Hampshire vote for somebody besides the incumbent president in the primary, what it signals is that independents nationally are saying it’s time for a change. Which is why it is so reliable at detecting weakness in incumbent presidents.
For this reason, Democrats in February moved the partisan South Carolina Democratic primary up to the front of the pack to favor Biden, for the first time making it the first in the nation primary — in the hopes of preventing New Hampshire from becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. But they are misreading what New Hampshire truly represents.
This is a proverbial middle finger to independent voters. Let’s see how that goes. But leaving that aside, Biden has good reason to be worried about New Hampshire. Besides the fact that he lost there in 2020 to Bernie Sanders — it wasn’t even close as Biden didn’t compete there — an Emerson poll in March prior to Kennedy’s entry to the race finds that only 29 percent of New Hampshire Democratic Primary voters want Biden. Sanders is still popular there, garnering 17 percent, Buttigieg is at 14 percent, Warren is at 11 percent, Harris is at 11 percent, Amy Klobuchar is at 7 percent and Gretchen Whitmer is at 4 percent—none of whom even appear to be running.
How will it look when the poll starts actually asking about real candidates like Kennedy? The truth is, Biden doesn’t even need to lose in New Hampshire. The question of an incumbent’s weakness with independents comes into play merely if the president simply does poorly in the primary. Both Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush won in New Hampshire in 1980 and 1992, respectively, but their challengers, Ted Kennedy and Patrick Buchanan, did surprisingly well, garnering 37 percent apiece.
In 2020, skipping New Hampshire made a great deal of political sense for Biden, who went on to win the nomination relatively easily after solidly defeating Sanders in South Carolina. But it’s different now. He’s the President of the United States. He doesn’t need to worry about losing his party’s nomination — presidents in modern history are usually easily renominated — he needs to worry about the general election.
And what New Hampshire does is test incumbents for weakness. And with sticky 5 percent inflation and the Federal Reserve projecting unemployment to rise to 4.6 percent in 2024 as inflation is now falling — as many as 2 million jobs could be lost in what is purported to be an imminent recession — Biden is absolutely vulnerable to a challenge in the general election by Republicans, with former President Donald Trump running for a third time and leading the GOP polls.
That could mean there’s going to be a Biden-Trump rematch, but a better question might be whether Biden even gets to the general election. Stay tuned.
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2023/04/biden-still-sagging-in-democratic-primary-as-2024-decision-looms-kennedy-up-to-10-percent-poll-shows/
U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson was right. Obama lied about illegal aliens getting ACA coverage.
April 13, 2023, Fairfax, Va.—Americans Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement blasting a proposal by President Joe Biden to offer health care coverage to illegal aliens under the Affordable Care Act, including Medicaid or the taxpayer subsidized individual insurance exchanges:
“When former President Barack Obama claimed while in office to the U.S. Congress that illegal aliens would not be eligible for Obamacare, U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson shouted two words that were heard around the world, ‘YOU LIE.’
“U.S. Rep. Wilson was pilloried for his audacity in calling out the former president’s politically motivated claim, but once again, he has been proven eerily prescient. President Joe Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services has announced that they are seeking to redefine the term ‘lawful resident’ via regulation to make illegal aliens who came to the U.S. as children eligible for the budget busting federal government health insurance plan. Biden, for his part, tweeted, ‘Today, my Administration is announcing our plan to expand health coverage for Dreamers, the thousands of young people brought to the U.S. as kids. We’re not done fighting for their pathway to citizenship, but we’re getting them the opportunities they deserve in the meantime.’
“Not surprisingly, none of the professional fourth estate defenders of the Obama-Biden assault on the laws of the nation have issued a public apology to Representative Wilson for his forceful truth-telling so many years ago.”
To view online: https://getliberty.org/2023/04/u-s-rep-joe-wilson-was-right-obama-lied-about-illegal-aliens-getting-aca-coverage/
Margot Cleveland: Manhattan D.A. Enlisted A Who’s Who Of Biden Admin Buddies For Trump Takedown
By Margot Cleveland
A New York City law firm with “strong ties” to Democrats and the Biden administration, and a big-time fundraiser for both, lent the Manhattan district attorney three lawyers to help him take down Donald Trump. This cohort included former Special Assistant District Attorney Mark F. Pomerantz, whose leaked resignation letter appears responsible for the Manhattan prosecutor’s decision to indict Trump.
Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg became the first prosecutor to bring criminal charges against a former president when he moved forward last week with the arraignment of Trump on 34 counts of falsifying business records. The pathetic, barebones indictment was quickly denounced by pundits on both sides of the political aisle. Then on Friday, the House Judiciary Committee raised additional concerns about the role Matthew Colangelo, the former No. 3 man in the Biden administration’s Department of Justice, played in the targeting of Trump.
While Bragg’s hiring of Colangelo to reportedly “jump-start” the investigation into Trump further indicates the indictment was politically motivated, the Manhattan D.A. office’s unprecedented use of outside, Democrat-connected lawyers to investigate Trump pre-dates Colangelo’s arrival by nearly a year.
A Pattern
In early to mid-February of 2021, Bragg’s predecessor, District Attorney Cyrus Vance, arranged for private criminal defense attorney and former federal prosecutor Mark Pomerantz to be a special assistant district attorney for the Manhattan D.A.’s office. Pomerantz, whom The New York Times noted was to work “solely on the Trump investigation,” took a temporary leave of absence from his law firm, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, where he had defended former Sen. Robert Torricelli, D-N.J., against alleged campaign finance violations. But even before being sworn in as a special assistant to the Manhattan D.A., Pomerantz had reportedly “been helping with the case informally for months…”
According to the Times, “the hiring of an outsider is a highly unusual move for a prosecutor’s office.” One must wonder, then, how much more unusual it is for the Manhattan D.A.’s office to receive the “informal” assistance of a private criminal defense attorney. The legacy news outlet, however, justified the hiring of Pomerantz based on the “usual complexity” of “the two-and-a-half-year investigation of the former president and his family business.”
A few months later, the D.A.’s office welcomed two more outsiders, Elyssa Abuhoff and Caroline Williamson, who also both took leaves of absence from the New York powerhouse Paul, Weiss to work on the Trump investigation as special assistant district attorneys.
For a law firm to lend not one but three lawyers to the Manhattan D.A.’s office seems rather magnanimous, until you consider Paul, Weiss’s previous generosity to Joe Biden. During Biden’s White House run, the law firm hosted a $2,800-per-plate fundraiser for about 100 guests.
The chair of the Paul, Weiss law firm, Brad Karp, also topped the list of Biden fundraisers, bundling at least $100,000 for the then-candidate. “As someone who cares passionately about preserving the rule of law, safeguarding our democracy and protecting fundamental liberties, I’ve been delighted to do everything I possibly can to support the Joe Biden/Kamala Harris ticket,” Karp wrote in an email.
Karp’s support of the Democrat presidential ticket isn’t surprising given that his fellow Paul, Weiss partner Robert Schumer is Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s brother.
Biden’s connection to the firm, however, dates much further back, with the former secretary of homeland security in the Obama-Biden administration, Jeh Johnson, also heralding from Paul, Weiss. Once elected president, Biden nominated Jonathan Kanter, a former partner of Paul, Weiss, to serve as the top antitrust enforcement official at the Justice Department. In fact, according to Bloomberg, Paul, Weiss has “emerge[d] as Biden-Era N.Y. Power Center.”
A Resignation
The three Paul, Weiss alumni sent to the Manhattan D.A.’s office to bolster the Trump investigations would all make news, but for different reasons. Pomerantz first garnered headlines when he resigned as a special assistant district attorney in early 2022, after Bragg became Manhattan’s D.A.
In his resignation letter, leaked to The New York Times, Pomerantz said that in late 2021, Bragg’s predecessor, Vance, had “concluded that the facts warranted prosecution, and he directed the team to present evidence to a grand jury and to seek an indictment of Mr. Trump and other defendants as soon as reasonably possible.” But after replacing Vance as D.A., Bragg decided “not to go forward with the grand jury presentation and not to seek criminal charges at the present time,” Pomerantz wrote, adding, “The investigation has been suspended indefinitely.”
What Pomerantz’s letter did not say, however, was that in late 2021, “at least three career prosecutors asked to move off the investigation,” reportedly “concerned that the investigation was moving too quickly, without clear evidence to support possible charges.” Instead, in his resignation, Pomerantz declared he believes “Donald Trump is guilty of numerous felony violations,” that “the public interest warrants the criminal prosecution of Mr. Trump,” and that “such a prosecution should be brought without any further delay.”
Pomerantz later rejoined Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison and authored a book about the Trump investigation.
Pomerantz’s letter and his claims that Bragg had suspended the Trump probe triggered a political firestorm, which the Manhattan D.A. sought to quell by telling the public the investigation was ongoing.
Criminal Charges
Meanwhile, the Manhattan D.A.’s office pushed forward in its criminal case against the Trump Corporation. A grand jury had indicted the Trump Corporation in late June of 2021 on charges it engaged in a scheme to avoid paying taxes on the salaries of high-level executives by instead funneling compensation through perks, such as luxury apartments and cars. A second Trump corporation would later be added to the criminal case that went to trial in late 2022.
The trial team that prosecuted the case included the other two Paul, Weiss attorneys on loan to the Manhattan D.A.’s office: Abuhoff and Williamson. Bragg borrowed a third outside attorney, Gary T. Fishman, from New York’s Democrat Attorney General Letitia James. Along with three regular members of the Manhattan D.A.’s office, the three “special assistant district attorneys” helped convict the Trump-related business entities in early December 2022.
After securing convictions of the two Trump corporations, Abuhoff and Williamson ended their “special assistant district attorney” relationship with Bragg’s office in December 2022 and went back to Paul, Weiss — a return that would be short-lived. Abuhoff rejoined the Manhattan D.A.’s office in February 2023, and Williamson returned the next month, but now both as regular members of the staff.
So short was their time back at Paul, Weiss, in fact, that one must wonder if the firm paid them bonuses following their departure from the Manhattan D.A.’s office. The Federalist posed this question to Paul, Weiss, but the inquiry went unanswered. Paul, Weiss also did not respond to questions concerning whether the lawyers received any compensation or Paul, Weiss benefits while on leave to the D.A.’s office.
Abuhoff and Williamson’s return to the D.A.’s office followed the news that in early December, Bragg had hired Matthew Colangelo from the Biden DOJ to “jump-start” the office’s investigation into Trump. Upon his inauguration, Biden had appointed Colangelo to serve in the No. 3 slot at the DOJ, showing the trust Biden has in the lawyer now charged with taking down his opponent Trump.
Colangelo had also previously worked in the Obama-Biden administration and as chief counsel and executive deputy attorney general in A.G. James’ office, where he and Fishman reportedly investigated Trump. As noted above, James would later lend Fishman to the Manhattan D.A.’s office, keeping with her campaign promise to “be a real pain in the -ss” to Trump. It’s no wonder House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan is concerned about Colangelo’s role in the unprecedented indictment.
Connecting the Dots
But the issue goes much beyond Colangelo, for it seems likely Bragg never would have hired Colangelo had Pomerantz’s resignation letter never been leaked to The New York Times. It’s outrageous that Pomerantz was reportedly “informally” advising the former Manhattan D.A. while working for the “Biden-Era N.Y. Power Center” law firm with extensive connections to Democrats. Equally outrageous is the fact that the same law firm lent the D.A.’s office three lawyers to bolster the Trump investigation.
It seems Bragg was swayed by New York politics to alter the communist boast of Joseph Stalin’s secret police chief, Lavrentiy Beria: “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.” The Manhattan D.A. had the man but couldn’t find the crime.
“Lend me your top attorneys to show me a crime,” is the new motto of the political machine New York Democrats built to purge the country, communist style, of Trump. That should horrify every American.
To view online: https://thefederalist.com/2023/04/12/manhattan-d-a-enlisted-a-whos-who-of-biden-admin-buddies-for-trump-takedown/