Tag: democrats

To win in 2024, Biden and Trump must fight for our hearts

As an election year dawns, Republicans and Democrats should stop to reflect on why our politics seems so stagnant.

No one expects President Biden to earn a mandate even if he wins re-election — it won’t be a victory for Biden so much as a defeat for Donald Trump.

Progressives don’t see Biden, or Kamala Harris, as an architect for the future.

A second Biden term promises an older, ever less vigorous president facing a world afire and a nation divided to the point of political divorce — with big Republican gains in the 2026 midterms, if history is any guide.

But what if Trump defeats Biden?

In a nonconsecutive second term, Trump will be as old as Biden is now, and he too would likely find the next midterms devastating.

Trump is more spry than Biden and may still personify his party’s ongoing evolution.

He’ll also have a fresh running mate come November, which should help his ticket appear future-oriented.


Columnist Daniel McCarthy believes President Joe Biden and Donald Trump will have to fight hard for votes in 2024. AP/Morry Gash

But the “lawfare” that mostly blue-state and blue-city prosecutors have been waging against Trump will continue if he wins, and the same media that hyped conspiracy theories about Russian collusion in his first term won’t be more fair the second time.

Paralysis seems inevitable.

The reasons for this transcend the parties and their leading personalities — these reasons are rooted in Americans’ changing beliefs about expertise and competence.

In an age when much of rural America didn’t have access to electricity, Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal seemed like an expressway to the future.

From FDR all the way to Richard Nixon, presidents could rely upon Americans’ trust in technocracy.

It was a time when “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help” wasn’t yet a punchline.

But by the mid-1970s the federal government’s reputation for competence was in tatters, thanks to Vietnam, inflation, fuel shortages and monumental burdens imposed by rising taxes and overregulation.

The era of faith in federal competence thus gave way to an era of hope for a private-sector competence that would be unleashed if only government got out of the way.

This first took shape in the Jimmy Carter years, when a combination of blue-dog Democrats and Republicans in Congress pushed for deregulation.

Ronald Reagan’s presidency was the symbolic zenith of this new confidence in unleashing entrepreneurship, though just as Republicans like Dwight Eisenhower and Nixon testified to the epoch-defining influence of the New Deal mentality, Democrats like Bill Clinton would demonstrate, however reluctantly, the power of the new Reaganite dispensation.

Congress again played a leading role: Once the GOP won the House and Senate in 1994, sweeping reforms to welfare became possible.

By 1996, Clinton himself was announcing, “The era of big government is over.”

The truth is government expanded even as deregulation continued, but public confidence in federal expertise declined relative to faith in the possibilities of the “new economy,” represented above all by the telecommunications industry and the Internet.

But both parties soon changed their emphasis again.

George W. Bush didn’t campaign, or govern, as a slasher of red tape.

Instead his vision was one of competent collaboration between government and the private sector: what he called “compassionate conservatism.”

Barack Obama imagined much the same: Obamacare, after all, was about government creating rules for private insurance companies and their customers (who were, of course, forced to buy their products on pain of government-imposed penalties).

This new philosophy of government backfired spectacularly when instead of restoring faith in expert government, it exposed how incestuous the relationship between corporate America, both parties and higher education had become.

The result was the Tea Party — and Trump.

America was only partly industrialized when expert government first appeared capable of meeting any challenge.

And America was at the dawn of the information revolution when deregulation seemed to answer every question.

Today faith in expertise, public and private, is depleted — and as Harvard reels from its president’s plagiarisms, prospects for renewed confidence in the credentialed elite are bleak.

Instead of pretending to competence they do not possess, both parties would be better off learning to feel what other Americans feel.

Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, for all their differences, each sensed that empathy, not expertise, would be the key to victory.

Alas, Clinton’s empathy was only that of a seducer, while Obama’s elitism came to the fore as soon as he was elected.

Now the 2024 election hinges on Donald Trump’s emotional connection with the public — a balance of love and hate, trust and fear.

Biden is almost a bystander.

This isn’t a fluke, it’s the future: One way or another, the majorities of tomorrow will be built on emotional relationships, not new New Deals or retro-Reaganism.

The challenge, however, isn’t simply to win but to connect strongly enough to govern.

Daniel McCarthy is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review.

Twitter: @ToryAnarchist

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Louisiana Rep. Jeremy LaCombe switches from Democrat to Republican party

Democrats were dealt another blow from within their own ranks this week as yet another state lawmaker declared he was leaving the party.

According to a Monday report by The Advocate, a Louisiana-based newspaper, state Rep. Jeremy LaCombe announced he had left the Democratic Party and would be registering as a Republican.

It was not immediately clear what prompted LaCombe’s departure, however he is now the second Louisiana Democrat in less than a month to switch party affiliations, and the third nationwide after another state lawmaker in North Carolina did the same.

Last month, Louisiana state Rep. Francis Thompson gave Republicans in the state House a supermajority after he switched his party affiliation, and earlier this month, North Carolina state Rep. Tricia Cotham gave Republicans in the state House a supermajority with her switch as well.

The switches come as President Biden faces a near-record low approval rating among key groups, including women (43% now vs. 42% low), voters ages 45+ (41% vs. 39% low), suburban voters (41% vs. 39% low), rural voters (31% vs. 30% low) and Democrats (81% vs. 78% low) – Democratic men in particular (79% vs. 78% low), according to a recent Fox News poll.


On Monday, Rep. Jeremy LaCombe announced that he was no longer a member of the Democrat party and was switching to the Republican party.
Twitter/@LaCombe4LA

The Louisiana State Capitol building in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Getty Images

Rep. Francis Thompson recently switched political parties, from Democrat to Republican in March.
AP

Biden is also at a low mark of 41% approval among suburban women. 

Additionally, a separate recent poll found that only a third of Americans believed Biden deserved to be re-elected in 2024.

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Democrats in New York have a real problem with Asians

It’s sure starting to look like New York’s progressives are simply anti-Asian. 

Their latest cause célèbre, the “Good Cause Eviction” bill, aims to effectively bring some 2 million apartments in the city alone under a new statewide rent-control regime.

On top of being a sure housing-killer, it’s gotten the city’s Asian community rightfully up in arms.

Strongly represented among the city’s small-landlord community, they see this as yet another oblique attack on them by arrogant, far-off leftists.

Indeed, an association of Chinese landlords, the New York Small Landlords, has been fighting back against prog policies on eviction since the eviction moratorium — disastrous for smaller landlords — was declared in 2020.

But GCE is only the latest in a string of progressives efforts in the city and Albany that have hurt New York’s Asians. 

Consider the effort to wreck the Big Apple’s merit-based admissions policies to academically rigorous schools. 

The “problem” this aims to correct is precisely that Asian students (many from poorer backgrounds; many the children of immigrants) compete so effectively: 2021 saw them win 54% of freshman seats in selective high schools. 

Mayor Bill de Blasio did major damage to the system on his way out of office, banning competitive tests for most “selective school” admissions, but the new administration left it intact in most of the city.

Which leaves Asian-Americans increasingly looking to charters as a way to find excellence in public education.

But the progs hate charters, too: They’re leading the charge against Gov. Kathy Hochul’s bid to allow dozens more charters to open in the city. If the left succeeds, it means no new charters for Asian neighborhoods.  

Which explains the recent Asian American parents’ pro-charter rally.

Above all, there’s public safety. The left’s criminal-justice “reforms” helped power a massive rise in anti-Asian hate crimes. 

Like the 2022 murders of Michelle Go and Christina Yuna Lee. 

When New York’s Asian community raised their voices in response, all they got from the crime lovers in the Legislature and elsewhere was pabulum about “white supremacy” — and a total refusal to budge on the cause of the crimes, i.e. laws that leave murderous thugs free to walk the streets. 

It’s no mystery why the left’s policies are so profoundly anti-Asian. 

This minority group’s economic and educational attainments blow to smithereens the lies about America being incurably racist that serve as the basis for most progressive policies. 

But electoral results — with Asian voters swinging right in the governor’s race and New York’s legislative races — shows that Dems’ policies are driving this key demographic away. 

It’s an opportunity for the GOP — and thus for actual democratic rule in the Empire State — if Republicans can only seize it. 

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Congress dithered while US withered

A line from legendary manager Casey Stengel fits the moment: “Can’t anybody here play this game?” He was talking about his hapless 1962 New York Mets, but the damning question can be fairly directed to both political parties and Washington itself.

In one of the most worrisome signs of our era, the federal government has never been larger, richer and wielded more power over the lives of citizens. The size, debt and reach are astounding when compared to just a generation ago.

Yet that bejeweled behemoth is failing miserably at many of its most basic duties. Public safety, border security, stable prices and quality public education are in decline, leaving many Americans angry about their government and cynical about the people who run it.

With little regard to the party of the president, polls in recent years consistently show only about three in 10 respondents believe the country is on the right track. More damning, a large Pew study last year revealed an enormous trust deficit.

Just two in 10 Americans believe the federal government does what it should, a low point in a decades-long decline. When the question was first asked in 1958, nearly 75% said they trusted the feds to do the right thing all or most of the time.

It is hard to imagine those days ever returning, with events of last week vividly demonstrating that both parties are hellbent on squandering the little goodwill that remains.

House Republicans amped up their bid to make conservatism a punchline as their inability to promptly choose a speaker made history in all the wrong ways.

Tensions rose in the House Chamber when voting seemed to stall.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

What should have been a feel-good, routine process to kick off a new Congress turned into a bloody slog, with Kevin McCarthy needing 15 roll-call votes over four days to eke out a narrow majority.

When the end finally came about 12:30 a.m. Saturday, it felt more like a mercy rule conclusion than a victory, with McCarthy looking like he needs a vacation before starting work.

Wall-to-wall TV coverage captured the stomach-churning ways the sausage was made, with the process showing intraparty pettiness and anger that obscured some substantive disagreements over how power would be shared. Midterm voters who gave the GOP a narrow majority certainly didn’t believe they would get a civil war before a single vote was taken on their behalf.

Democrats made no effort to mask their pleasure, and why should they? They united behind their leader, Brooklyn’s Hakeem Jeffries, in every round of voting, turning GOP squabbling into comic relief.

Welcome WH distraction

President Biden is set to visit the border for the first time in two years on Sunday.
John Moore/Getty Images

Dems also understood that every minute Republicans spent on the shootout in a lifeboat was a minute stolen from any serious probes of the Biden administration. As it turned out, the GOP frittered away a week in an internal struggle that should have been resolved in the two months since the election.

One inadvertent effect is that the self-neutered GOP copied the House habits of the last two years under Dem control. As Republican James Comer of Kentucky said in a fiery Friday afternoon nomination of McCarthy before the 13th ballot, the House never held a single oversight hearing on the millions who illegally crossed the border or the chaotic and deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Nor did it examine the origin of COVID-19 or the Biden family’s foreign business. He pledged to probe all that and more as head of the Oversight panel — as soon as a Speaker was chosen.

The speech drew loud GOP applause, but failed to put McCarthy over the top. So the crucial probes remained on hold.

Although some of the holdouts demanded changes that smack of personal advantages and perks, others had more important concerns. Chief among these was fixing a corrupt budget-making process where leaders of both houses and parties jam virtually all spending into a gigantic bill, with members expected to vote yes without having time to read or debate it.

In his concessions to the holdouts, McCarthy sensibly vowed to end the practice, which is a major cause of the nation’s soaring debt.

Even before we know whether that and other changes will make a meaningful difference, we already know the speaker fights raised fresh doubts the GOP will accomplish anything significant. A four-seat majority doesn’t leave much margin for dissent and the wasted week reinforced the party’s image of being too divided to govern.

Hundreds of residents and activists marched in El Paso, Texas, on Jan. 7 ahead of President Biden’s visit.
Andres Leighton/AP

Meanwhile, the Biden White House proved again that it, too, doesn’t have a clue about good governance as it staged a series of strange events to draw sharp contrasts with the House hijinks.

The president, with Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell in tow, visited Kentucky to tout the bloated bipartisan infrastructure bill, a public relations coup for Biden that earned McConnell barbs from The Wall Street Journal editorial page and other conservatives.

Biden’s border bluster

On Thursday, Biden tried again to impersonate an active president by announcing a plan to deal with Cubans, Nicaraguans, Haitians and Venezuelans who come to the border. Under his order, they must apply for asylum from their home nation or a safe haven and he will admit 30,000 a month on a “parole” program.

As with Biden’s border policies for the last two years, this one is a head-scratcher. Hopefully, legal challenges will scuttle it as an overreach.

Besides, the Border Patrol reports that out of 234,000 November encounters with migrants, about 90,000 were from the four countries Biden cited.

What about the other 144,000 from other countries? And what about the hundreds of thousands of “got aways,” those who cross and disappear without encountering agents? Who knows?

Certainly not Biden, with a highlight of his remarks being another instance of his calling the vice president “President Harris.”

Biden speaks on Jan. 6 during a ceremony to mark the second anniversary of the Capitol riot.
Patrick Semansky/AP

The main point was to show he was doing public business while the GOP was eating its own, a point he will reinforce Sunday when he finally visits the border.

Biden was at it again Friday, too, holding a ceremony on the second anniversary of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. The ostensible purpose was to honor police and others for their conduct that day, but the real purpose was to remind the public about Donald Trump and what Biden calls an “insurrection” carried out by “MAGA Republicans.”

It was a hyper-partisan event, where the president repeated his false claim that defenders “gave their lives” that day. In fact, the only person who died on Jan. 6 was an unarmed protestor shot and killed by a Capitol police officer.

Such distortions highlight a cause of the decline in public trust. When officials of both parties speak in coded ways designed only for core supporters, there is no appeal to people not committed to a partisan camp. The result is the deep and bitter polarization that leaves little space for any American seeking both common sense and common ground.

Unfortunately, Washington offers very little of either these days.

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The left throws a tantrum as Elon Musk reverses censorship on Twitter

News that Elon Musk brought his 2-year-old son — one of 10 children — into key meetings at Twitter headquarters, after taking over the social media company in the fall, might make it less of a mystery to lefties why his “Priority #1” has been to banish child sexual exploitation material. 

Not that you need to be a parent to abhor child pornography, but for some reason the vile content effectively was given a free pass at Twitter before Musk arrived, so clearly not everyone in the company respected society’s last taboo. 

But, instead of applauding Twitter’s dedication to child safety and attack on degeneracy, leftist media has been decrying Musk’s attempts to restore free speech protections as if they are a threat to civilization. 

They are hopping mad that Musk is demolishing the left-wing censorship regime that saw a sitting president de-platformed, satirical site The Babylon Bee banned and the oldest newspaper in the country locked out of its account for two weeks before the 2020 election. 

Censorship hypocrisy 

Lamenting the explosion of free speech under Musk, Yoel Roth, the former head of “Trust and Safety” who was responsible for censoring The Post, delivered an implied threat to his former employer in an op-ed piece in The New York Times. 

Keep the censorship regime in place or Twitter will be thrown off Google and Apple’s app marketplace, he wrote, “making it more difficult for potential billions of users to obtain Twitter services. This gives Apple and Google enormous power to shape the decisions Twitter makes.” 

Roth claims he just wants to prevent “hate speech,” but why was it that everyone banned by Twitter was conservative? 

Former Twitter executive Yoel Roth claimed Twitter will be removed from Apple and Google’s app stores without censorship.

“Correct,” Musk replied to a tweet observing: “We don’t hear much about Democrats and leftists being let back on Twitter [because] they were never kicked off in the first place . . . Censorship has been deployed as a one-way operation against conservatives.” 

Musk already has reinstated Trump, The Babylon Bee, Project Veritas, psychologist Jordan Peterson, Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and the Libs of TikTok account that merely reposts absurd leftist clips from the video-sharing app TikTok. 

In response you would think Musk had launched the apocalypse. 

Dozens of top Twitter advertisers boycotted the platform in protest, reportedly including Merck, Pfizer, Kellogg, Verizon, General Mills, Musk’s Tesla competitor Volkswagen, General Motors and, ironically, Balenciaga. 

No sooner had the multinational fashion brand signaled its virtue, than Balenciaga had to delete its Twitter account after being bombarded with irate messages over its depraved advertising campaign featuring small children holding teddy bears in bondage gear. 

Other not-so-subtle pedophilia messages were embedded in the images, such as a sheaf of papers on a table which, on closer inspection, were court documents about child pornography. 

How do you explain that? You launch a $25 million lawsuit against the production company and pretend no Balenciaga executive signed off on the images. 

No wonder Balenciaga protested against a child-porn-free Twitter. 

Which raises the question a a lot of people on Twitter have been asking of Roth, the former head of “Trust and Safety”, after he, too, quit the company in protest. 

Why was child porn permitted on Roth’s watch for years and all but eliminated by Musk in a few days? It’s an important question, but the rest of the media is more interested in amplifying his threats against Twitter. 

The Associated Press tweeted a story claiming “online safety experts predict [Musk reinstating conservatives] will spur a rise in harassment, hate speech and misinformation”, yet did not quote a single expert and did not carry a byline. 

You would think AP might have been more careful about spreading unfounded nonsense after nearly starting World War III the previous week with a false report that Russian missiles had hit Poland. 

The Washington Post’s infamous “technology” reporter Taylor Lorenz penned a piece last week claiming that Musk was “opening the gates of hell . . . to the alarm of activists and online trust and safety experts.” 

At least she quoted some humans, even though they were far left hysterics and trans activist Alejandra Caraballo, who tweets obsessively as @esqueer to get conservatives kicked off Twitter and demand that the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe should “never know peace again.” 

Musk said his goal is to make Twitter a “forum for the peaceful exchange of views.”
Baron Capital via AP

Right on cue, Antifa accounts which previously were free to dox conservatives and organize violent riots, called for arson attacks on Tesla locations in response to being banned from Twitter. 

All the anti-Twitter “experts” agreed that the ultimate control of Musk will be for Apple and Apple and Google to remove Twitter’s app. 

Musk’s response was to declare he will just “make an alternative phone.” 

He is no right-winger. A libertarian who says he voted for Joe Biden at the last election, he responded to criticism by tweeting: “As a reminder, I was a significant supporter of the Obama-Biden presidency and (reluctantly) voted for Biden over Trump. 

“But freedom of speech is the bedrock of a strong democracy and must take precedence. 

“My preference for the 2024 presidency is someone sensible and centrist. I had hoped that would the case for the Biden administration but have been disappointed so far.” 

His goal is “a trusted digital town square, where a wide range of views are tolerated, provided people don’t break the law or spam. For example, any incitement to violence will result in account suspension . . . 

“Twitter will be a forum for the peaceful exchange of views.” 

In fact, since Musk took over and fired half the workforce, including most of the censorship — err, “moderation” — team, he has published stats indicating there are more users and less hate speech. 

‘Mistake’ to delete Don 

Musk also said banning Trump was a “grave mistake” since there had been “no violation of the law or terms of service. Deplatforming a sitting President undermined public trust in Twitter for half of America.” 

He gets it, but is now bracing for the mother of all attacks, because he is removing the censorship that has been a source of the left’s newfound power in recent years. 

“They won’t give up controlling the narrative easily,” he tweeted over the weekend. 

President Biden hinted at a future investigation into Elon Musk and his “cooperation and/or technical relationships with other countries.”
Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images

Remember Biden’s triumphal first press conference after the midterms? He issued a pointed warning to Musk that his administration would be investigating him. 

“I think that Elon Musk’s cooperation and/or technical relationships with other countries is worthy of being looked at whether or not he is doing anything inappropriate,” Biden said when asked by a useful reporter if the new Twitter owner is a national security threat. 

Putting aside the fact that the comment rather lacked self-awareness from someone about to be investigated by Congress over the inappropriateness of millions of dollars given to his son and brother by China and “other countries” which “paid to play” when he was vice president, it was an odd priority for the president’s first pronouncement after losing the House. 

Musk in return has promised he will make public all the details around The Post’s censorship by Twitter over the Hunter Biden laptop story. 

“This is necessary to restore public trust,” he tweeted last week. 

Amen and Godspeed.

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Kathy Hochul turns over turkey distribution to Democratic Party

Fowl play!

Gov. Kathy Hochul has farmed out the task of distributing thousands of turkeys to the state Democratic Party after deciding that the Thanksgiving tradition violates new ethics rules.

Last November, Hochul traveled across the state to personally participate in the annual turkey giveaway to the needy and noted the birds were donated by corporations and non-profits.

Some of last year’s donors included Amazon, Coca-Cola, MetLife, Geico, the Golub Family Foundation, UJA-Federation of New York and the China General Chamber of Commerce.

Hochul’s counsel, however, recently determined that the turkeys could be considered inappropriate gifts under new state ethics rules.

Instead, the state Democratic Party was asked to buy the turkeys and help distribute them, according to the Albany Times Union.

Republican Party officials were scratching their heads over Hochul’s move of turning turkey distribution into a partisan event.

Gov. Kathy Hochul has farmed out the task of distributing thousands of turkeys to the state Democratic Party.
XAVIER GARCIA
Last year, Hochul traveled across the state to participate in the annual turkey giveaway.
Robert Miller

“It doesn’t pass the smell test. Why hand off turkey distribution to the Democratic Party? If you’re going to that route, why not make it bipartisan,” said state Republican Party spokeswoman Jessica Proud.

She also said it’s laughable for Hochul — who has accepted tens of millions of dollars in campaign donations from entities and fat cats with business before the state and has been criticized for issuing a no-bid, $637 million emergency contract to a fundraiser to provide COVID-19 tests — to consider donations of turkeys a conflict.

“Hochul is worried about turkeys? She might want to take a look at the no-bid contracts,” Proud said.

Turkeys could be considered inappropriate gifts under new state ethics rules, according to Hochul’s counsel.
Getty Images/iStockphoto

NYC Council Republican Minority Leader Joseph Borelli said, “This is not the caper state ethics officials think it is. We should be happy that companies are donating turkeys to the poor. We shouldn’t impede people from giving out free turkeys.”

Hochul’s office declined to comment.

But state Democratic Party chairman Jay Jacobs confirmed to the Times Union, “The governor had asked us to put together the money and we purchased 4,000 turkeys.”

Minority Leader Joseph Borelli spoke out about the turkey matter.
J.C.Rice

“We’ve been distributing them. It’s been basically downstate this year because it was such a short window when we found out. We didn’t find out until two or three days ago.”

He noted that Democratic lawmakers volunteer in the handout of turkeys.

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Letters to the Editor — Nov. 19, 2022

The Issue: Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s decision not to run for a Democratic leadership position with in the House.

Someone should tell Rep. Nancy Pelosi, and all politicians in her age bracket, regardless of party affiliation, that it’s time to retire (“Nancy: I’m done leading Dems,” Nov. 18).

I’m a long-time retired 85-year-old executive and consider myself quite smart. However, age takes its toll. I don’t care who you are.

Your memory is not as good as it used to be, nor is the up-and-go energy still there. It’s time to pass the reins to our younger, brighter and more energetic young men and women who love this country and are ready and willing to take on the challenge.

P. Fletcher

Massapequa Park

Farewell, Madame Speaker. I cannot think of a better person than Pelosi to have been a counterpoint during the years of the Make America Great Again movement, and I’m glad she took a moment to praise President George W. Bush in her leadership retirement speech.

For all her progressivism and partisanship, she turned out to be one of the increasingly rare political leaders who put statesmanship and the appearance of patriotism ahead of political brawling. I will miss her.

Jorge Sierra

The Bronx

The fawning mainstream media reports that Pelosi “decided” to step down from House leadership. Not true. The voters decided.

Pelosi waited until after Republicans had officially secured the House majority, costing her the speaker’s gavel, before she “decided” to go.

Had the Dems held the House, she no doubt would have “decided” differently — despite her pledge that this term would be her last.

The media’s fawning over Pelosi would be embarrassing if they were real journalists. But as idolaters, they’re spot-on.

Mark Godburn

Norfolk, Conn.

When he closed the book on Watergate, President Gerald Ford declared, “My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.”

Now that Pelosi is surrendering her leadership role in Congress, cannot the same be said?

Michael J. DiStefano

Jamestown, RI

Pelosi not seeking leadership re-election? Thank, God! Hey, Pelosi: Why not just quit now?

Thomas Sarc

Central Islip

The Issue: Democrats’ call for Tickermaster to be investigated after chaos around Taylor Swift ticket sales.

I was glad to see leftist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez finally say something sensical for once (“Midterms? Nah, but for concert tix . . . AOC takes ‘Swift’ action,” Nov. 17)

I always wondered why the Justice Department allowed the merger between Ticketmaster and Live Nation, an obvious monopoly that did not benefit the customers.

Howard Mostovy

Whitestone

Poor Ocasio-Cortez is all in a dither about Ticketmaster’s monopoly and the fiasco about Taylor Swift’s concerts.

This requires all her energy — not the homeless, soaring crime and inflation that is affecting not just her district, but all of New York.

She’s dedicating her time to making sure Tick­­etmaster is fair and equitable. What a social-justice warrior.

Jacob Levine

Long Beach

Apparently, the Taylor Swift concert ticket snafu is a major issue for some of our representatives.

Ocasio-Cortez called to have the Ticketmaster/Live Nation union broken up. Rep. David Cicilline went even further, and demanded an investigation by the feds.

Are these the same feds who have been sitting on Hunter Biden’s laptop for three years? Now we know why the country is in such a mess.

Tom Vespo

Bethpage

Want to weigh in on today’s stories? Send your thoughts (along with your full name and city of residence) to letters@nypost.com. Letters are subject to editing for clarity, length, accuracy and style.

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Sen. Ed Markey tells Elon Musk to stop ‘Wild West’ Twitter

WASHINGTON – Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) is asking Elon Musk to stop Twitter from becoming the “Wild West of social media” after the billionaire changed his newly acquired social media site’s verification process to allow anyone with $8 to obtain the sought-after blue check mark.

“Your Twitter takeover, rapid and haphazard imposition of platform changes, removal of safeguards against disinformation and firing of large numbers of Twitter employees have accelerated Twitter’s descent into the Wild West of social media,” Markey told Musk in an official letter Friday.

Twitter, under Musk’s direction, began Nov. 5 to dole out check marks – which used to be reserved for accounts of notable companies, celebrities, politicians, journalists and others – to those who pay for the Twitter Blue service.

The monthly subscription plan also came with other benefits, such as an “edit” button for already posted tweets and fewer advertisements, but Musk highlighted the elusive checkmark to the package with his takeover.

“Blue checkmark: Power to the people. Your account will get a blue checkmark, just like the celebrities, companies and politicians you follow,” the company wrote in an announcement earlier this month.

“Your account will get a blue checkmark, just like the celebrities, companies and politicians you follow,” Elon Musk’s Twitter announced.
REUTERS
Sen. Ed Markey accused Elon Musk of “putting profits over people and his debt over stopping disinformation.”
AP

Some have been taking advantage of the new system, creating false accounts for companies and individuals. Last week, a Washington Post reporter set up an account under the handle “@realedmarkey” for a story showing how easily the system can be abused.

“The [Washington] Post reporter was able to accomplish this impersonation despite Twitter having previously verified my actual Twitter account under the handle ‘@SenMarkey,’” the senator said. “Safeguards such as Twitter’s blue checkmark once allowed users to be smart, critical consumers of news and information in Twitter’s global town square.”

Markey accused Musk of “putting profits over people and his debt over stopping disinformation,” posting his letter to Twitter over the weekend.

On Sunday, Musk snapped back: “Perhaps it is because your real account sounds like a parody?”

In response, the senator pointed out bigger issues Musk’s companies are facing, including the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s investigations into multiple Tesla crashes and the Federal Trade Commission’s investigation into a possible violation involving an obligation Twitter must comply with whenever it experiences a structural change, such as mergers and sales.

“One of your companies is under an FTC consent decree. Auto safety watchdog NHTSA is investigating another for killing people. And you’re spending your time picking fights online,” Markey said. “Fix your companies. Or Congress will.”



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Democrats’ generic ballot lead for midterm elections shrinks: poll

A new poll finds that Democrats’ lead over Republicans in a generic congressional ballot has dropped threefold since August in yet another sign of the GOP’s momentum advantage with less than a week to go until Election Day. 

The Yahoo News/YouGov survey has captured the downward spiral of the Democratic Party since August, when Democrats led by 6 points in the generic congressional ballot. In late September, the same poll saw Democrats’ lead slip to 4 points. And now in the final Yahoo News/YouGov poll before the Nov. 8 midterm elections, the Democrats’ lead is down to 2 points. 

The survey released on Thursday found that among 1,641 registered voters, 46% say they will vote Democrat and 44% say they will vote Republican. It’s effectively a tie, as the poll’s margin for error is 2.7 percentage points. 

Among those who have already voted or say they will “definitely vote” on Election Day, 49% said they would vote for a Democrat, and 47% said Republican.

The poll also found that voter enthusiasm is favoring Republicans despite more early voting participants saying they voted for Democrats. 

Vice President Kamala Harris, Gov. Kathy Hochul and Secretary Hillary Clinton rallied potential voters at Barnard College yesterday.
Debra L Rothenberg/Shutterstock

Among registered Democratic voters, 74% have either already voted or say they will “definitely” vote. The number is 7 points higher for registered Republicans, with 81% saying they’ve already voted or will definitely vote.

Other recent polls have also shown Republicans surging and overtaking Democrats on the generic congressional ballot. 

The latest Yahoo News/YouGov poll was conducted from Oct. 27-31.
Getty Images

A Wall Street Journal poll released on Tuesday found Republicans leading by 2 points and a Suffolk University-USA Today poll from last week showed the GOP up by 4 points.

The Yahoo News/YouGov poll also measured what issue voters care about the most, and like numerous other surveys, inflation was cited as the top issue by 38% of voters.  

Also spelling trouble for Democrats, a full 63% of voters said that inflation is “getting worse,” and only 17% said that it’s “getting better.” Republicans also beat Democrats by a wide margin, 43% to 34%,  on the question of which party would do a “better job” on inflation.

The poll was conducted from Oct. 27 to Oct. 31.

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Seriously, can anyone name a well-run Democratic city?

As we draw closer to polling day, there is really only one question anyone needs to have in their head. Are things better or worse than when America last went to the polls?

The problem is that you can answer that differently state by state. A lot of people who fled California in the last couple of years, for instance, can say that their lives have improved by moving to Tennessee, Florida or Texas.

So let me narrow the question down a bit. Can anybody in any Democratic-run city honestly say that their lives — and city — have improved over the last couple of years?

That’s a slightly easier question. As New Yorkers go to the polls it is also a slightly devastating one to ask. Because it has a devastating answer.

I dare even the most die-hard, dyed-in-the-wool Democrat to say, “Oh, New York has never been better. In fact, it’s just getting better and better.” Does anyone really believe that? Is there a single person out there who can really say that with a straight face? As they survey the crime in our city, the homelessness, the waste and rats. And I’m not even talking about the incumbents of City Hall. Does anyone think that this great city has become greater in the last two years?

The stats in New York speak for themselves. Ignore the nightmare year of 2020, and just look at the increase in crime during the last year. Between July 2021 and July 2022 shooting incidents in New York increased by almost 14%. The number of murders increased by almost 35%.

Of course, most of us are lucky enough not to get shot. So it’s easy for some people to be lax in their judgments. But the same figures exist in almost every other area of crime. A 41% increase in grand larceny. A 37% increase in robberies. A 26% rise in burglaries. All just in the course of a year.

NYPD investigating the scene of a shooting in Brooklyn on Nov. 1, 2022.
Robert Mecea

Though it’s not as if you need the statistics to tell you that. Walk almost anywhere in our city and you can see it for yourselves. There is the homelessness, the people shooting up in the street, the clearly insane people shouting around on the streets. Of course, it’s worse in the outer boroughs. But it is just as clear in the center of the city, too. A couple of weeks ago I was proudly showing some out-of-towners the delights of Midtown when we walked out of the building to find a homeless man shooting up in the street with a needle and then howling down the street as mothers and children hurried by.

Democrats pretend that this is a nationwide problem. But it isn’t. It’s a Democratic-run city problem. Occasionally Democrats like to play a nasty little game on this serious issue. They pretend, for instance, that crime stats like those to do with shootings are the same in red states and blue states. What they fail to note is that it is blue cities that are the problem. Even if they are in red states.

For instance, if you go down to Austin, Texas, you will find a city that is booming, for sure. But you will also find all of the same problems you find in New York. You will see all the same homelessness, the drug addiction, violence and lawlessness.

That is what is so strange about the experiment that Gavin Newsom and other Democrats have played on this country in recent years. It doesn’t matter whether it is San Francisco, New York, Austin or indeed the nation’s capital. Look at the state of Washington, DC, these days, with its homeless encampments greeting you from the moment you leave Union Station. You don’t have to wonder about the politics of the people who run this city. Of course, the Council of the District of Columbia is Democratic-majority. Because they have the same problems that every other Democratic city has.

Shootings in New York City have increased by almost 14% from July 2021 to July 2022.
J.C.Rice
A homeless encampment in McPherson Square in Washington, DC.
Shutterstock

By now you would have thought that people would be onto this. After all, everywhere they get into power the Democrats try the same tricks: bail and other criminal-justice “reforms,” attacks on the ability of police officers to do their jobs and much, much more. The results are there for everyone to see. Have the policies worked anywhere? No. But still the Democrats keep putting them in place wherever they can.

Indeed that is Newsom’s main achievement. He rolled out a set of policies that further wrecked San Francisco while he was mayor. As governor, he rolled out the same policies — with the same disastrous effects — across California. If he ever makes it to the White House, as he and much of his party hope he will, he’ll try to roll this out across the country.

So again, show me one place where these policies have worked? They’ve worked for the criminals. They’ve worked for the people who’ve never put anything into the system but spent a lifetime taking out. But have they worked for the rest of us? People who pay sky-high taxes and get ever fewer returns on that investment? Of course not. It´s something to think about when you go to the polls. Name just one place where it’s worked.

Tat’s on you, lady!

Yesterday, The Post reported the strange case of Melissa Sloan from Wales. Ms. Sloan has spent recent years tattooing every single inch of her body. In fact, there’s less available space on Sloan’s body than there is in Manhattan.

Now the 45-year-old is complaining that no one will employ her. The tattoos, many of them done at home, “prison-style,” by her boyfriend, cover her face. And the truth is that if you have a face covered in tattoos, you are likely to scare off the customers.

Now Sloan says that she can’t even get a job as a toilet cleaner. I feel sorry for her. Not just because she has made a mess of her body, but because she has made a mess of her life. And because, like so many people today, nobody close to her thought to stop her.

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