Florida’s Socialist Shocker. Ossoff Launches Attack on Barely Known White House Aide. Horrific Lindsay Clancy Murder Trial. Today Is Bill Clinton’s 80th. More
Florida was where the action was.
Socialists were kept at bay in two Florida House Democratic primaries but scored an upset in a Senate primary.
The Wall Street Journal report characterized Florida results as a socialist upset and far-right flops. The WSJ’s Sunshine state rundown:
A Democratic socialist won Democrats’ Senate primary in Florida, scandal felled a controversial GOP lawmaker, and insurgent far-right provocateurs were defeated. Also, Rep. Byron Donalds inched closer to making history as the state’s first Black Republican governor after notching a comfortable primary victory.
In a win for progressives, Democratic socialist state Rep. Angie Nixon upset retired Lt. Col. Alex Vindman in a special Senate Democratic primary. Nixon, who was significantly outraised by Vindman, campaigned on Medicare for All and a federal minimum wage of $25 an hour. Vindman had moved to Florida in recent years after being a central figure in Trump’s first impeachment. His twin brother, Eugene Vindman, serves in the U.S. House representing a district in Northern Virginia.
Vindman is a key figure in The Resistance, but this didn’t save him from “a brutal primary defeat.” Politico reports on the enormously outspent Nixon’s surprise win:
A state lawmaker and Jacksonville community organizer who recently joined the Democratic Socialists of America — but notably did not have DSA’s endorsement — Nixon ended up handily winning with more than 55 percent of the vote, surprising the state as she’s now positioned to campaign against GOP Sen. Ashley Moody, the former state attorney general appointed to the Senate by Gov. Ron DeSantis to replace Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
On Tuesday night, Nixon told supporters who gathered to hear her victory speech in Jacksonville that her win sent “shockwaves” to the Washington establishment.
Susan Crabtree plausibly suggests that the Nixon win gives the GOP a gift come November. National Review’s Noah Rothman agrees. His column is headlined “Florida Democrats Just Made the GOP’s Case for Them“:
But being anti-Zionist in what is arguably the most Zionist state in the Union is only the beginning of Nixon’s troubles. The nominee joined the DSA recently, but her platform suggests she’s been on board for a while. It includes Medicare for All, “free” childcare as well as family and sick leave, a national rent freeze and a moratorium on evictions, and a “universal jobs program with inflation-adjusted wages.”
Democratic Reps. Jared Moscowitz and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, former co-chair of the Democratic National Committee, prevailed in their primaries. Trump-endorsed Rep. Cory Mills, under investigation by the House Ethics Committee, lost his primary. Ryan Elijh, a former TV reporter, prevailed. The seat is no longer safe for the GOP. Rep. Randy Fine, backed by the president, won his primary against an influencer who called Mr. Fine “a fat Jew.” The opponent also cheered for Hitler.
Republican Byron Donalds, who will now face former Republican David Jolly in the race to replace term-limited Governor Ron DeSantis, won 47.8% of the vote in a field of ten. Donalds made no mention of President Trump in his victory speech, though he praised several Trump initiatives.
In Alaska, the fake Dan Sullivan on the ballot didn’t do damage to the real incumbent Senator Dan Sullivan, who is slated to face Democrat Mary Peltola in November. Here are the results for Alaska. In Wyoming, the reddest state in the nation, Republicans have a significant advantage in November.
Meanwhile, Georgia Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff, who is running for re-election in November, has hit upon a new “issue”: President Trump’s aide Natalie Harp. You probably don’t know her name, but I can tell you from my Georgetown liberal friend that Dems are obsessed with her. From The Hill:
The White House and Sen. Jon Ossoff are engaged in an increasingly nasty fight that intensified after the Georgia Democrat, a rising star in his party, invoked President Trump’s longtime aide Natalie Harp in his insults of the commander in chief.
Ossoff ramped up the feud Tuesday during a campaign event with Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), another possible Democratic presidential candidate, when he referred to Trump as “the draft dodging crook president who has plunged our nation recklessly into a war he knows not how to end or to win.”
Ossoff waxed incoherent when former Biden spokesman Jen Psaki tried to get him to explain the Harp attack. Aide-gate rated a Wall Street Journal profile of Natalie Harp.
How to Negotiate with Iran. President Trump just posted a map labeling the Strait of Hormuz as “new U.S. Territory.” But New York Post’s Michael Goodwin has a column that appears to dash hopes that dissident Iranians will overthrow the mullah tyranny: “Voluntary regime change in Iran appears to be a pipe dream — despite Trump’s efforts.”
“Only Fauci Knows – And He’s Not Telling” is the headline on a John Kass News piece. As you know, Dr. Fauci took the fifth rather than share what he knows about the origins of Covid with the public. Meanwhile, an adviser to Dr. Fauci pled guilty yesterday of plotting to conceal federal records related to research on the origins of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic.
Exit Poll. A polling firm has closed its doors after creating a fake poll on purpose as part of what it called “a social experiment”:
A polling outfit that admitted surveys it released on the Los Angeles mayor’s race and the Democratic gubernatorial primary in Wisconsin were fake is now out of business.
Median Strategies, the company that released polls indicating Democratic Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles and Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong leading their rivals by wide margins, announced this week that the surveys were a hoax and that it has closed its doors.
The fabricated polls by Median Strategies entered the political information ecosystem and were reported on social media, by some local TV newscasts and by online reporting outlets.
This should give us pause about relying overly on polls.
“She Killed Her Three Children. Is She Guilty?” That is the headline on Kat Rosenfield’s Free Press story on Lindsay Clancy, whose murder trial is grimly unfolding in court. The subhead for the Free Press story:
Those who defend Lindsay Clancy want someone else—the husband, or the medical system—to be responsible. It’s not that simple.
Rosenfield makes the point that the matter before the jury is not whether Clancy killed the children—she confessed—but whether she was sane enough to be held accountable. Did she know that what she was doing was wrong? The Federalist does know what it thinks: “‘Postpartum Depression’ Or Not, Lindsay Clancy Should Be Executed For Murder.” The subhead:
If you can’t understand that it’s evil to kill children, you are a mortal danger to the innocent and therefore not fit to live in a just society.
I can’t seem to find a story I saw that compared Lindsay Clancy to Medea, the mother in Greek mythology who strangled her children. It’s not very often that Ms. Must doesn’t have an opinion, but in this unspeakable instance, I don’t.
“Ketanji Brown Jackson and the Return of the Warren Court” in City Journal argues that Justice Jackson’s jurisprudence signals a revived skepticism of originalism and limits on judicial power. Let’s hope the author was smoking something:
The conservative critique of Earl Warren’s Supreme Court was twofold—that it ignored the original meaning of the Constitution and statutes and that it transgressed traditional limits on judicial power. The John Roberts Court is far from perfect, but its output tries to avoid these errors. Justice Elena Kagan, the most impressive of the Court’s Democratic appointees, works largely within this paradigm. She often argues that the Roberts Court is insufficiently textualist and not judicially modest when it overrules precedent.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has increasingly taken a more radical path by questioning originalism and textualism while adopting a selectively imperial view of judicial power, one that makes the Warren Court look modest and principled by comparison. She likely foretells the direction of future Democratic appointees.
Happy Birthday, Mr. President. Bill Clinton turns 80 today, and Politico says that our 42nd President is at an age that justifies a more searching look back on his life.
