I’m sorry: I haven’t sorted through all of the recent Comment of the Day candidates, and there are a lot of them. I expect that today’s open forum will add to the list. In general, my recognition of outstanding commentary is too haphazard, and I will try to do better. It is helpful when commenters flag responses that they think are COTD worthy.

One note from me: I really missed not receiving any loyal progressive or Democratic defenses of the Left’s “Democracy is on the ballot” fearmongering. I did find in personal conversations that even the smartest Democrat apologists had a problem fending off even mild rebuttals. For example, I asked one hysteric how she could excuse her party pouring millions into the campaigns of the very “election deniers” they claimed were clear and present threats to the Republic. The query shorted her out like one of the rogue computers or robots Captain Kirk used to make blow up on “Star Trek” by posing an internally contradictory question that overloaded the machine’s circuits.

The frustrating thing about ethics is that the best and most ethical decision can, though what my father called “the vicissitudes of existence,” result in very bad consequences, and, similarly, unethical conduct can have results that benefit us all. This is what gulls human beings into consequentialism, or the natural tendency to judge the rightness and virtue of human actions according how events turn out.

Democrats are cheering, even gloating, about the fact that the “Red Wave,” almost universally predicted to sweep their party far from the levers of power in the House and Senate, and render Joe Biden the crippled duck he ought to be, never materialized. Nobody seems to agree why; I’ve read many theories. Republicans are dispirited and disillusioned, even though their “Red Ripple” will surely be enough to eject Nancy Pelosi from the Speaker’s chair. Still, surely they did something wrong to fail to meet all historical precedents for mid-term elections when a President is in the dumps, and the economy as well.

But here’s the funny part: the GOP disappointment may have solved a massive problem for the party and the country that just a little while ago appeared beyond a solution. The election results are being widely, and I think fairly, blamed on Donald Trump. His hand-picked candidates lost races that should have been won. His endorsements were generally toxic. He allowed the Democrats and the media to make the election about him when it should have been about President Biden. Worst of all, he couldn’t restrain himself from slipping into bully mode to attack Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Trump’s most likely rival for the 2024 Presidential nomination, right before the election. Then DeSantis answered by scoring the biggest victory of the night.

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Now that (most of) the results are in, it several things are clear that perhaps should have been clear much earlier.

I have always thought that lowering the voting age to 18 was foolish and illogical (the fact that one’s body is mature enough to fight does not prove that one’s mind is mature enough to be civically responsible), but some Democrats have recently been advocating a lower age yet. This election showed why. Progressive ideology is ultimately rooted in the ethics of childhood (that is to say, not ethics at all): no consequences, no accountability, being taken care of by an authority figure, pleasure without pain. Fortunately, a large proportion of infantile progressives grow out of their delusions once they have to pay mortgages and support a family, but increasing numbers don’t. This is substantially due to our society ignoring the steady accumulation and eventual domination of socialists and communists in our educational institutions from pre-school all the way to the graduate schools.

The practical effect on elections of this trend has been minimized, to a great extent, by the fact that the voting age citizens from 18-25 generally have more pressing concerns that paying attention to politics, inflation, the supply chain, free speech, racial discrimination, immigration and such trivial matters. (My son has painless dealt with gas prices by using his motorcycle more often.) A large number of them live in their parents’ guest houses and basements, so their fiscal realities are skewed. If the usual level of younger voter apathy had been in play this year, the Republican “Red Wave” would have materialized as predicted.

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I continue to be awash with remorse for not coming up with a list of 2022’s “Dirty Dozen” to highlight the most unethical and unfit candidates for office. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, a New York Democrat representing the state’s 17th Congressional District, might even deserve to nudge out a member of The Squad. Well, probably not, but still: asked by an interviewer, “Hudson Valley residents are feeling pain at the pump and at grocery stores, what have you done, and what do you plan to do to help solve our inflation problem?” Maloney replied,

Yeah, well, I grew up in a family where, you know, if the gas price went up, the food budget went down. So by this time of the week, we’d be eating Chef Boyardee if that budget wasn’t gonna change. So that’s what families have to do.

Or they could try library paste, dog food, and maybe just eat the dog. Yup, that’s what families have to do when Pat’s party restricts pipelines, drilling leases and energy production while spending billions on specious climate change solutions for uncertain conditions that can’t be solved by U.S. policies anyway and at best might benefit Americans a hundred years from now. Or not. Whatever.

The Congressman’s answer isn’t just callous and demonstrative of voids in responsibility and analysis. It’s signature significance for an asshole of epic proportions. Fortunately, it looks as if Maloney is going to lose his seat, but it’s close.  How in the Wide Wide World of Sports could any sentient voter cast a ballot for such a jerk? Oh, right: to save democracy to be run by clueless morons. See, even Maloney is preferable to a Republican because, as Rob Reiner told MSNBC’s Joy Reid last week to no resistance at all, the members of that evil party

…are only interested in power. They are only interested, and they will do anything to get the power. And they are willing to kill, literally kill, to get the power.

And they probably don’t even like Chef Boyardee!

UPDATE: Somehow, I missed the fact that Maloney was also the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chair….which tells you something about the party, and it isn’t good.

That’s a screen shot from the video of a fight that broke out last week at a rally for New York Governor Kathy Hochul when some supporters of Republican Lee Zeldin showed up. That’s a white male Democrat with his hand on the neck of a black female Republican, but for some reason, the mainstream media has chosen to publicize it as they carry forward the message of Republicans being a threat to democracy….

Nevertheless, the flagship of the pro-Democratic Party bolstering media is apparently strictly heeding the talking points memos and going all the way with this narrative. Here was the New York Times’ editorial board’s explanation yesterday about “What’s at Stake in These Elections”:

Eight Republican senators and 139 Republican representatives sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election on the basis of spurious allegations of voter fraud and other irregularities. Many of them are likely to win re-election, and they may be joined by new members who also have expressed baseless doubts about the integrity of the 2020 election. Their presence in Congress poses a danger to democracy, one that should be on the mind of every voter casting a ballot this Election Day.

It will also be the first time that the U.S. electoral machinery will be tested in a national election after two years of lawsuits, conspiracy theories, election “audits” and all manner of interference by believers in Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election.

No, eight GOP Senators and 139 Representatives in fact voted to withhold certification of the 2020 Presidential election in a largely symbolic vote expressing doubts about the integrity of the vote and seeking further investigation, just as Democratic Senators and Representatives did so in 2000, 2004 and 2016. They did not “seek to overturn” the results—that’s not reporting or even honest punditry. It’s misleading spin from the Times editors, just like so much of their paper’s news reporting since 2015.

What voters really have an opportunity to do today is demonstrate the genius and vigor of the American system by signalling their bi-partisan disgust at the arrogance, ineptitude and undemocratic ways of Democratic governors and lawmakers, in their dictatorial pandemic response, their rejection of the rule of law, their embrace of race-based preferences, their climate change madness, and their attempt to demonize and criminalize political opposition. Not since the Great Depression has a political party so deserved to be shamed and ejected from power. (In fact, the Democrats deserve such a fate more than the post-’29 crash Republicans did, but that’s a discussion for another day.) One market research authority predicts the midterm loss for the Democrats will be 75 seats in the House of Representatives and 11 seats in the Senate, which would be glorious, and the stinging message the party has earned. Others prognosticators (like the Times) are being far more optimistic about the likely fate today of their allies. Either prediction could be the product of confirmation bias, wishful thinking, or missed signals.

We shall see. But up in Founding Father Heaven, I’m pretty sure who Tom, George, James, John (Abigail) and Ben are rooting for this time.

1. Integrity! The campaign of Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Democratic candidate for the US Senate and poster boy for brain-damaged politicians, filed a federal lawsuit yesterday claiming that mail-in ballots with an incorrect or missing date should be counted despite the recent Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling against them being included in the vote count, since doing so violates state law. The claim is that not counting the votes on the grounds of an issue with the date violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which states that election officials cannot deny someone the right to vote based on an error on the ballot that is “not material” to determining whether the individual is qualified to vote under state election law. Of course, there was very limited use of mail-in ballots in 1964; this is literally an effort to exploits a loophole in order to allow dubious votes to determine a close election.

The media has cast the GOP lawsuit that resulted in the ruling as an effort to infringe on voting rights. Yes, requiring voters to follow the minimal requirements of legal voting is so, so unreasonable—that’s the argument. It reminds me of the Democratic claim during the 2000 Florida recount that the pathetic voting attempt of an idiot who couldn’t figure out how to punch out a chad and wrote “I vote for Gore!” on the ballot should be counted. As I wrote at the time, “Why not just shouting out his choice near the polling place? How about tying a note to a rock and throwing it through a window?”

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Charen is another one of those former conservative pundits, like George Will, Bill Kristol, Max Boot and Jennifer Rubin, who was so repulsed by Donald Trump that she flip-flopped on all her previously held principles and became a Democratic Party shill. But channeling the late, memorable D.C. Marion Barry, a lovable rogue, is something new.

In 1989, then-Mayor Barry told a luncheon audience at the National Press Club. ″Except for the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.″ In the midst of a drugs and murder crime explosion, Barry’s comment was mocked in the news media from end to end of the ideological spectrum, because, after all, it was an incredibly stupid thing to say. But those were still the days when journalism, though already corrupted, biased and crumbling, hadn’t completely rotted away. Today, however, almost all of the mockery has come from the Right, while the mainstream media pundits have been largely silent—after all, Mona is just trying to save democracy.

One notable exception is left-leaning Washington Post columnist Helaine Olen, who wrote in reaction to Charen’s tweet, “I can’t believe this still needs to be said but ‘crime is down except for murder’ is not a winning or persuasive argument.”

Ya think?

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