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Today, your vote will make a difference in these 14 close Senate races

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Toss-up Senate races to be decided on Tuesday
Toss-up Senate races to be decided on Tuesday (Source: RCP)

I think it’s almost beyond dispute that the Republicans will lose the House of Representatives on Tuesday, but the Senate is still in the balance. Above is a list of the toss-up Senate races. If you are in one of these states then you really need to vote today.

Republican candidates (by state)

  • Arizona: Martha McSally
  • Florida: Rick Scott
  • Indiana: Mike Braun
  • Michigan: John James
  • Minnesota: Karin Housley
  • Missouri: Josh Hawley
  • Montana: Matt Rosendale
  • Nevada: Dean Heller
  • New Jersey: Bob Hugin
  • Ohio: Jim Renacci
  • Tennessee: Marsha Blackburn
  • Texas: Ted Cruz
  • West Virginia: Patrick Morrissey
  • Wisconsin: Leah Vukmir

When I look over this list, the names that really stand out to me are Ted Cruz and Marsha Blackburn – two conservatives with proven records on pretty much everything I care about. But there are also some interesting new candidates, especially John James. He’s in a tight race against Debbie Stabenow, a career politician.

John James is an Apache helicopter pilot and business owner
John James is an Apache helicopter pilot and business owner

Fox News talked about him a bit in an article about the 5 of the races where the underdog has a chance at defeating the entrenched incumbent:

Ahead of Election Day, Republican John James gained steam in his quest to unseat longtime incumbent Sen. Debbie Stabenow. The Michigan Democrat has held her seat since 2001 and led James by double digits last month — but recent polling reflects a tightening race.

Both an EPIC-MRA poll and a Mitchell Research & Communications poll from late October showed Stabenow in the lead by just 7 points. An Emerson poll had her up by 9 points. In comparison, an EPIC-MRA poll had Stabenow ahead by 23 points in September.

“John James is giving 43-year politician Debbie Stabenow the fight of her political life, and there’s zero question she’ll be running scared these final days,” Tori Sachs, James’ campaign manager, told Fox News in a statement.

Jake Davison, the editor of Inside Michigan Politics, told Fox News that James, an Army veteran, is “an absolute star” who has “the base really fired up.”

James has been endorsed by President Trump and multiple people in his administration have hit the campaign trail for the Republican candidate. The Ending Spending Action Fund super PAC, funded by GOP mega-donors, also launched a $1 million advertising campaign buy for James ahead of the election as strategists told Politico the race is closer than some may expect.

Fox News has ranked the race as likely Democrat.

If you’re in Michigan, you really need to make an effort to get this man elected on Tuesday. We rarely get rock star candidates like this, and we need to pull out all the stops to send him to the Senate.

Surprisingly, James isn’t the only pilot we’re running – we also have former squadron leader Martha McSally, who flew the A-10 Thunderbolt in combat. She’s running for Senate in Arizona. Her race is currently a toss-up, because her radically leftist opponent is pretending to be a Republican in spite of her hard-left record.

Patrick Morissey in West Virginia is also seeing a late surge against Joe Manchin, who voted against de-funding Planned Parenthood.

Why should you vote Republican?

Famous conservative Ben Shapiro, an orthodox Jew, listed 10 reasons why people should vote conservative, for Real Clear Politics.

His list:

  1. The Courts
  2. The Investigations
  3. Impeachment
  4. The Economy
  5. Foreign Policy
  6. Polarizing Culture Wars
  7. Attacks on Religious Liberty
  8. The Twisting Of Social Media
  9. The Democrat-Media Complex
  10. Mob Rule

The ones I care the most about are the courts and religious liberty. I do not want to be compelled by leftists (whose salaries I pay with my taxes) to act as if I am a secular leftist. I am not a secular leftist, and I want to be able to work and save without having to act like a secular leftist.

Let’s look at some of his points:

6. Polarizing Culture Wars. We’ve already seen the Democrats suggest that mob politics is the new normal. We’ve seen the Democrats capitalize on racial issues to polarize the country; we’ve seen them try to divide Americans by class and sex as well. With the platform of Congress, look for Democrats to attempt a series of divisive maneuvers intended to relaunch the culture wars in new and frightening ways.

8. The Twisting Of Social Media. Democrats have made a habit of threatening our biggest social media companies with investigations and regulations should they fail to crack down on conservative perspectives. Democrats, angry at Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss, blamed companies like Facebook for so-called “fake news,” and attributed Clinton’s utter incompetence to the impact of Russian bots. Democrats don’t believe any of that, but they’ve frightened social media companies into cracking down on free speech, as a leaked report from Google to Breitbart News showed this week. Social media companies are deeply afraid of Democrats punishing them for failing to target conservatives. Don’t be surprised if those social media companies escalate their efforts to do just that.

9. Radical Growth of the Democrat-Media Complex. We already know that the mainstream media institutions are dominated by Democratic supporters. And we know that those Democratic supporters will parrot any talking points the Democratic Party pushes. But with Democrats in power pushing every line of attack simultaneously, the media’s never-ending firehose of anti-Republican propaganda will merely widen the nozzle. If you’re worried about media bias now, wait until Democrats control the Congress and put President Trump in their sights.

10. Mob Rule. Democrats believe that they must lash out in anger in order to win in 2018. If they do win, they’ll double down on that anger, hoping it carries them to victory in 2020. Like the mobs invading the Senate and the steps of the Supreme Court? Enjoying top Democratic officials nodding and smiling at crowds harassing Republicans in restaurants? Get ready for much, much more. The only way to shut down the Democrats’ new mob rule strategy is to stop them cold at the ballot box.

Think about the way that things have been going in the culture. The secular left owns the public schools, higher education, Hollywood, hedge funds, the mainstream media, big government, the courts… they occupy all of the commanding heights of culture. If you think that they won’t use that power to coerce you, you’re mistaken. And you only have to look at what happens to Christians and conservatives in Europe, Canada and other countries where the left rules. Be sure that you take time to vote today, and share something on your wall to encourage everyone you know to vote as well.

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Ted Cruz crosses the street and confronts Trump mob in Indiana

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Ted Cruz meets voters at a campaign event
Ted Cruz meets voters at a campaign event

Everything you need to understand about the 2016 election is in one video.

First, the back story from the New York Times: (H/T Mysterious H.)

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas had a date with a waiting car.

It was the second of five stops on Monday, the eve of Indiana’s critical primary, and the event at a restaurant here had been billed as little more than a meet-and-greet.

When he got back outside, a half-dozen protesters who supported Donald J. Trump were waiting across North Washington Street, some holding signs.

“Vote Trump!” one shouted.

“Say something really funny!” a Cruz supporter replied.

“Ted Cruz is going to win!” a Trump fan in dark sunglasses shot back.

Then Mr. Cruz did something unusual: He crossed the street.

Then the video:

Here is the rest of the New York Times article, which has additional material about the confrontation:

With a phalanx of aides and reporters trailing him, Mr. Cruz approached his critics with a question.

“What do you like about Donald Trump?” he asked.

“Everything,” said the man in the sunglasses, who later refused to give his name.

When the protester mentioned the Second Amendment, Mr. Cruz said he had defended gun rights in front of the Supreme Court. The man appeared unimpressed.

When he mentioned immigration, Mr. Cruz was ready with a bit of opposition research.

“May I ask you something?” the Texas senator said. “Out of all the candidates, name one who had a million-dollar judgment against them for hiring illegal immigrants. Name one. Donald Trump.”

“Self-funding,” the man replied.

“O.K.,” Mr. Cruz said, “so you like rich people who buy politicians?”

The man asked Mr. Cruz where his “Goldman Sachs jacket” was, alluding to the employer of Mr. Cruz’s wife, Heidi, who took a leave from her job for the campaign.

Mr. Cruz responded that he had attracted more than a million campaign contributions, with an average of $60. He was interrupted sporadically by shouts of “Lyin’ Ted” from the protester’s peers.

“Sir, with all respect,” Mr. Cruz said, “Donald Trump is deceiving you. He is playing you for a chump.”

Mr. Cruz conjectured that Mr. Trump would not have walked over to meet the protesters.

“If I were Donald Trump, I wouldn’t have come over and talked to you,” he said. “You know what I would have done? I would have told the folks over there, ‘Go over and punch those guys in the face.’ That’s what Donald does to protesters.”

The catcalls of “Lyin’ Ted!” returned.

“O.K., stop,” Mr. Cruz said. “What word did I say was a lie?”

“About Donald telling people to punch people,” the man said.

“O.K., let me ask you, sir,” Mr. Cruz responded. “Just go home and Google ‘Donald-punched-in-the-face-protester.’ This is on national television.”

The man ignored him to make a conjecture of his own: “You’ll find out tomorrow. Indiana don’t want you.”

Mr. Cruz turned toward the cameras, as if making a closing argument in court.

“A question that everyone here should ask,” he began.

“Are you Canadian?” the man interjected.

“Do you want your kids,” Mr. Cruz continued, “repeating the words of Donald Trump?”

Mr. Cruz said he respected the man and believed in the people of Indiana to show good judgment. He started walking to his car.

A television reporter asked why he had bothered to engage.

“Because I believe in the democratic process,” he said.

[…]Moments later, when the cameras cleared out, the man strolled east, crossing railroad tracks with his peers in tow. He reached for a cigarette.

Mr. Cruz’s nerve had surprised him, he allowed, but failed to impress him.

“Anything that Donald Trump talks about,” he said, “that’s what I’m about.”

What you see in the video is a microcosm of this entire election.

Ted Cruz is a Princeton and Harvard educated Tea Party conservative who has a record of conservative achievements that runs all the way back to his days in high school, when he traveled around giving lectures on the Constitution and fiscal conservatism to different groups in his community. Ted Cruz has a 100% conservative record from Heritage Action and he has been endorsed by the National Right to Life because of his record of pro-life actions.  He defended the second amendment and religious liberty at the Supreme Court and won. And there are many, many more conservative achievements. Ted Cruz is a man who is confident in his views, and he believes that he can win over the average American voter if he is able to dialog with them, and compare arguments and evidence. He respects the American voter.

The Trump supporters know absolutely nothing about Senator Cruz’s career, and his record of going against the Republican establishment. And everything they know about Donald Trump’s record was what they saw when they watched him clowning around on reality TV shows and beauty pageants. In short, they know literally nothing about his past positions and past actions. They like him because he talked about his penis size in a national debate. They think that is “telling it like it is” and “not being politically correct”. They don’t know that he has always been a Democrat, and that he has always donated to Democrat causes. To them, entertaining words have more value than the patterns of past actions.

Trump supporters have done literally no homework at all in trying to look into the past actions and achievements of the candidates. The only thing they know how to do when confronted with Trump’s liberal record, and Cruz’s conservative record, is to try to drown out the truth with slogans that they obtained from the liberal media, or from their idol Trump himself. The reason why they support an airhead leftist con man like Donald Trump is because they are just not willing to invest the time to know what the candidates have done. They want to figure out who to vote for by watching television, not by researching or reading.

Trump supporters like Trump because they want to blame others for their own failure to grow up and achieve the American dream. America is a country where penniless first-generation immigrants who could not even speak English were able to come here and raise children who would later run for President, e.g. – Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. Unfortunately, America is a country where too many who are born here think that they are entitled to such success without having to do any work to earn it. But I suspect that this failure has more to do with an attitude that disrespects knowledge and dismisses hard work.

By the way, this isn’t a one-off video… this happens all the time. One previous example occurred in Iowa, where Cruz took time to talk with an angry Iowa farmer about why he opposed ethanol subsidies:

Donald Trump not only supports ethanol subsidies, he pandered to Iowans and offered to raise them – passing the costs of this vote buying on to other taxpayers.

If Ted Cruz loses this election, it will be because too many natural-born Americans abandoned learning about their own history and heritage. To learn those things, they would have to turn off the TV and do their own research. One thing is for certain – if you meet a Trump supporter, you can absolutely assume about that person that he knows literally knows nothing about the Constitution, economics, American history, foreign policy, or anything else that matters.

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Cruz continues to win delegates in Colorado and Iowa

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Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, and Heidi Cruz
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, and Heidi Cruz

Colorado doesn’t have a primary like other states. Delegates are elected at a convention. Colorado has 37 delegates in total, so let’s see what happened with them.

Leftist CNN reports:

Ted Cruz on Saturday clinched the support of every pledged delegate in Colorado, capturing all of the final 13 delegates who will go to the national convention in July and demonstrating his organizational strength in the all-important delegate race.

Even though voters didn’t head to the polls Saturday, Cruz’s strength here could help deny Donald Trump the 1,237 delegates that he needs to clinch the nomination.

Cruz’s victory Saturday, combined with delegates he had already earned, hands him 30 of the 37 delegates across the state who are legally bound to support him on the first ballot at the convention, along with four other delegates who gave him verbal commitments of support.

[…]In this first round for the GOP, Team Cruz once again proved its mettle — far outpacing the efforts of Trump and Kasich in the scramble for delegates at each of the congressional district gatherings this week.

How come Cruz gets all the delegates? Is he cheating?

CNN explains that he is not cheating:

In yet another sign of his airtight ground game, Cruz spoke before a huge screen displaying his slate of delegates for the final 13 spots, and he noted that his slate was also printed on the bright orange T-shirts that his many volunteers were wearing on the state convention floor.

Trump’s campaign, by contrast, initially distributed fliers listing the campaign’s national delegate candidates that were riddled with errors. The flier displaying the Trump slate is supposed to be the tip sheet that party members use to fill out their ballot. But on the first slate that the Trump campaign was giving out, more than a half dozen of their delegate candidates were listed with the wrong delegate number. At least one of the delegate numbers corresponded to a delegate supporting Cruz.

The Trump campaign reprinted the flier, but the second flier also included several errors.

I saw somewhere that the Trump campaign is accusing the Cruz campaign of stealing all the delegates, but the CNN report shows why that’s not true. Trump is losing the delegates because his campaign is not working as hard nor as intelligently as the Trump campaign.

What about Iowa?

Meanwhile, delegates were also being selected in Iowa on the weekend.

The leftist Des Moines Register reports:

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz captured 11 of the 12 national party convention delegates chosen at four party meetings held across Iowa on Saturday.

The near-sweep in Iowa’s four congressional districts is the latest evidence of a well-organized national effort by Cruz to secure support from the activists who will formally nominate a Republican presidential candidate later this year in Cleveland.

That support could be crucial in the event that no Republican candidate clinches the nomination before convention — an increasingly likely prospect as the race between Cruz, Donald Trump and John Kasich drags on.

Well, this time Cruz cheated for sure, how else can we explain his getting 11 out of 12 delegates?

The Des Moines Register says no, though – no cheating again:

The Cruz campaign’s successes on Saturday come at the expense of Trump, the Republican race’s putative front-runner, whose campaign had vocal groups of supporters at each convention but showed little organizational prowess and will send zero committed delegates to Cleveland.

Delegates’ supported candidate will not matter in the national convention’s first round of balloting, but it could be decisive in subsequent rounds, as delegates are unbound from the results of their states’ primaries and caucuses and allowed to vote their conscience.

[…]The Cruz campaign demonstrated a strong organization from the outset of Saturday’s contests, peppering convention attendees with pro-Cruz text messages throughout the day and handing out half-sheets of paper at all four convention sites identifying slates of Cruz-aligned candidates for national convention delegate, national convention alternate and the nominating committee.

And there are still more delegates to go, and the Cruz campaign is working on them as well:

Iowa will send a total of 30 delegates to the national convention — the 12 selected on Saturday, 15 “at-large” delegates elected as a slate at next month’s state convention and three statewide party leaders.

These delegates are not able to vote for Cruz in the first round, life the Colorado ones can. Still, if we end up with a contested convention, most of them will go for Cruz. I have to say, it’s nice to have such a smart candidate who is so organized. I like having the smartest person – it’s like having William Lane Craig in the debate.

It seems to me that the more “closed” the process is for selecting delegates – Democrats and Independents cannot cross the aisle to vote – the better Cruz does. The exit polls show that Trump does very well with people who are liberal on fiscal, social and foreign policy. If the liberals and moderates are not allowed to pick the candidate, then Cruz does really well. Maybe in 2020, we should have only closed primaries?