Wednesday's Final Word

hotair.com

Mike Mike Mike Mike Mike -- what tab is it? ...

Advertisement

Ed: Completely antithetical to the American experience, too. Always remember, the more government "solves" your problems, the fewer choices you have. This is the motto of serfdom, not of a free and independent people. 

===

NY Post: The voters spoke Tuesday night, and rather than reject Democrat extremism, they embraced it emphatically.

In New Jersey and Virginia, two fake moderates — high-test resume female candidates practically built in a lab by the party establishment, who nonetheless hold to extreme leftist views on social policy — cruised to victory, in line with polls and the expectations of the political elite. ...

The real lesson from this one, though, is that Democrats’ strategy worked, and Republicans continue to struggle without Donald Trump atop the ticket.

Ed: Maybe. I suspect that the shutdown did more damage in Virginia than Republicans expected. It seems to have fired up the federal workers and contractors that dominate Northern Virginia. 

===

In 2015, when Democrats initially won all 3 state Supreme Court races, as well as similar county contests in Luzerne, Erie, & Bucks, & were feeling giddy about their chances in the presidential and Senate races, it all collapsed in less than a year.

Advertisement

Ed: As I wrote earlier, there are good lessons to learn from a small-scale shellacking. And there is plenty of time to learn them as well. But there is no reason to panic either -- yet.

===

Jonathan Tobin at the Jewish News Syndicate: The real problem is the qualities that should have rendered Mamdani an implausible choice in the eyes of a majority of voters—and therefore unelectable—were no longer seen as disqualifying. Being a Marxist and a supporter of anti-Jewish positions should have relegated Mamdani to the margins of the political spectrum. But among Gotham’s Democrats, that’s no longer true. ...

The long march of progressives through American institutions over the past decades, during which they have made toxic ideas like critical race theory, intersectionality and settler-colonialism a new orthodoxy, has taken its toll on society. Along with their imposition of the woke catechism of diversity, equity and inclusion that exacerbates racial divisions and labels Jews and Israel as “white” oppressors, their conquest of not merely academia, but much of the nation’s political and cultural establishments prepared the way for accepting Mamdani.

American political liberals of the past century would never have accepted for a minute the idea that a Mamdani could represent them or their party. But if The New York Times is already routinely publishing antisemitic articles calling for Israel’s destruction and falsely labeling it as an “apartheid” state and guilty of “genocide,” it’s obvious that the Overton Window of acceptable discourse has moved to make Jew-hatred kosher in the public square. Why, then, would one expect an electorate dominated by contemporary political liberals to treat a mayoral candidate who did the same as out of bounds?

Advertisement

Ed: We have written about the long march through the institutions for years. Adam Baldwin and I used to discuss it frequently in our Amiable Skeptics VIP podcasts. Marxists have transformed American schools in both Academia and in compulsory education into indoctrination centers rather than institutions of real education. Tobin hits the nail squarely on the head in this essay, which is about much, much more than just one election. 

===

Ed: A very good point. However, we risk the same fate if we do not vigorously oppose and criticize the anti-Semites on our fringe. Democrats opposed them, then tolerated them, then recruited them. Let's not make the same mistake. 

===

Politico: Republicans say they are close to finalizing a package of full-year funding measures for select federal agencies — a critical piece of bipartisan negotiations over the terms for ending the prolonged government shutdown.

“The mini-package should be nearing completion, and that will be the vehicle” for the stopgap spending bill to reopen the government, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Wednesday after a closed-door GOP lunch. ...

There is growing consensus that a key to unlocking the ability to pass a continuing resolution to end the shutdown hinges on landing a deal to move forward on three appropriations bills packaged together in a “minibus”: Agriculture-FDA, Military Construction-Veterans Affairs and Legislative Branch. 

Advertisement

Republicans want to move these bills as a sign of good faith that they are serious about pursuing the regular-order appropriations process once the shutdown is over, and GOP senators are working with some centrist Democrats to quickly reach an agreement.

Ed: That would be a fair trade for a clean CR, especially given the short time frame left within it. The more of the budget that can immediately pass, the better off negotiations will be. Ag-FDA likely includes SNAP too, so that will be a nice carrot to dangle.

===

2) We need to focus on the home front. The president has done a lot that has already paid off in lower interest rates and lower inflation, but we inherited a disaster from Joe Biden and Rome wasn't built in a day. We're going to keep on working to make a decent life affordable in this country, and that's the metric by which we'll ultimately be judged in 2026 and beyond. 

3) The infighting is stupid. I care about my fellow citizens--particularly young Americans--being able to afford a decent life, I care about immigration and our sovereignty, and I care about establishing peace overseas so our resources can be focused at home. If you care about those things too, let's work together.

Ed: I get the big tent approach, but that doesn't mean you let every squatter in through the opening, either.  

Advertisement

===

William Otis at Ringside:  There are only a couple of lessons here, and I’m not enough of an expert in the field to be very confident of them. One is that Trump really does need to learn the difference between campaigning and governing. The latter, which is what he’s doing now, means that just getting mad at the status quo or the status quo ante doesn’t work like it used to. You are now in charge. You’re the President; you get held responsible, and you have to produce results. In Virginia especially, that hurt. Between DOGE and the more-than-a-month shutdown, legions of federal workers concentrated in populous Northern Virginia were anxious and unhappy. Virginia is the least far gone of the jurisdictions in play last night, but was also the most affected by the shutdown. Hence the possibly-winnable Miyares race was lost (as were a dozen seats in the state General Assembly).

One other, related lesson isn’t a big mystery either. Inflation and high prices — “affordability” as it’s now called — beat Joe Biden and they’ll beat Republicans too unless there’s visible progress. Trump’s reckless borrowing and spending this year will (and to a smaller degree, did) bring his party the same fate last night Biden’s similar performance did last year.

Ed: Cam Edwards insisted during our VIP Gold chat that the election was a real disaster in Virginia, and that Republicans can compete there. He rejects the idea that none of the races there were winnable for the GOP, and that they need to rethink their approach before the midterms come. 

Advertisement

===

Ed: Oh, socialist is still a dirty word. It has the dried blood of tens of millions dead and oppressed on it. Only moral idiots would revel in the term. It has the misery and poverty of tens of millions more on its hands at the moment, too. 

===

Coleman Hughes at The Free Press: It would seem a perfect time for Marxists to celebrate. New York City has elected a proud socialist as its mayor.

But if history is any guide, the celebration may be short-lived. Across the world—from the Soviet Union to Venezuela—the antidote to Marxism has always been experiencing Marxism. Indeed, some of the fiercest and most effective critics of Marxism began as Marxists themselves. This was true, for instance, of Robert Nozick, Irving Kristol, Robert Conquest, Paul Johnson, Deirdre McCloskey, Kingsley Amis, and Eugene Genovese and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese.

Of all the intellectuals that started out as collectivists only to become staunch capitalists, perhaps none is more famous than Thomas Sowell. Sowell was drawn to Karl Marx as a young man because, as he put it, the German philosopher explained so much of his “grim experience.” Sowell was born during the Great Depression in Jim Crow North Carolina. He was raised by his great-aunt in a small house on an unpaved street, where he spent his early years without hot water or electricity. As a teenager he lived for a time in a homeless shelter, sleeping with a knife under his pillow. Marxism seemed to explain why people like him had so little while others had so much.

Advertisement

What pierced Sowell’s bubble? He summed it up in one word: “evidence.”

Ed: Will evidence pierce the bubbles of the truly indoctrinated, however?

===

Ed: Rattlesnakes. Texas is full of 'em. Except when the state legislature is in session, when most of 'em flee to Illinois. I understand they get riled up by people from New York City most, but California is a close second. 

===

If we thought our job in pushing back against the Academia/media/Democrat censorship complex was over with the election, think again. This is going to be a long fight. If you're digging these Final Word posts and want to join the conversation in the comments -- and support independent platforms -- why not join our VIP Membership program? Choose VIP to support Hot Air and access our premium content, VIP Gold to extend your access to all Townhall Media platforms and participate in this show, or VIP Platinum to get access to even more content and discounts on merchandise. Use promo code POTUS47 to get 74% off your VIP membership!