On September 30, 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain arrived back in England after signing the Munich agreement with Germany.   Adolf Hitler had signed an agreement saying the following:

“We are determined to continue our efforts to remove possible sources of difference thus to contribute to assure the peace of Europe.”

Neville Chamberlain said the following:

We, the German Führer and Chancellor, and the British Prime Minister, have had a further meeting today and are agreed in recognizing that the question of Anglo-German relations is of the first importance for two countries and for Europe.

“We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again.

“We are resolved that the method of consultation shall be the method adopted to deal with any other questions that may concern our two countries, and we are determined to continue our efforts to remove possible sources of difference, and thus to contribute to assure the peace of Europe.”

“My good friends this is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honor. I believe it is peace in our time.”

Winston Churchill was less than impressed:

I do not grudge our loyal, brave people, who were ready to do their duty no matter what the cost, who never flinched under the strain of last week – I do not grudge them the natural, spontaneous outburst of joy and relief when they learned that the hard ordeal would no longer be required of them at the moment; but they should know the truth. They should know that there has been gross neglect and deficiency in our defences; they should know that we have sustained a defeat without a war, the consequences of which will travel far with us along our road; they should know that we have passed an awful milestone in our history, when the whole equilibrium of Europe has been deranged, and that the terrible words have for the time being been pronounced against the Western democracies:

And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.

Now, President Barack Obama with the help of John Kerry is once again announcing peace in our time.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/iran-nuclear-deal-reached-5th-day-talks-20993376

Today, that diplomacy opened up a new path toward a world that is more secure – a future in which we can verify that Iran’s nuclear program is peaceful, and that it cannot build a nuclear weapon.

John Kerry tweeted from Geneva:  “Agreement in Geneva”  “First step makes world safer.  More work now.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not impressed:

https://www.facebook.com/OfirGendelmanpmo/posts/504665979640236

“What was achieved last night in Geneva is not an historic agreement; it is an historic mistake.

The Iranian regime is committed to the destruction of Israel and Israel has the right and the obligation to defend itself, by itself, against any threat. As Prime Minister of Israel, I would like to make it clear: Israel will not allow Iran to develop a military nuclear capability

I pray they got this right.  I fear that is very unlikely.  We are depending on firm negotiating skills from two men who have never demonstrated such skill in the past.  We are depending on Iran keeping its word regarding a subject for which it has been notoriously untrustworthy.

Perhaps it is just me, but right now Barack Obama looks a lot like Neville Chamberlain and Benjamin Netanyahu looks a lot like Winston Churchill.  I really hope I am wrong, because the consequences of Iran getting a nuclear weapon could result in even more carnage than World War II, as unimaginable as that seems.

TDM

Harry Reid may have set off an unprecedented constitutional crisis Thursday with his decision to allow the Senate to approve judicial nominees without 60 votes. A little historical background is in order.

When Reagan was President, Democrats vowed to block any Reagan appointment to the Supreme Court on the principle that no one acceptable to Reagan would be acceptable to them.  They did block the nomination of Robert Bork.  Reagan was forced to choose “moderates” because Democrats would never have confirmed a true conservative.

Republicans, however, did not block liberal Supreme Court appointments when Clinton was President.  That is how we ended up with Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer. Neither candidate was considered acceptable on ideological grounds by Republicans, but Republicans acknowledged that elections have consequences.  They decided that in spite of what Democrats did when Reagan was President, Republicans would allow Clinton to appoint anyone who was legally qualified.  Republicans could have blocked those appointments without resorting to a filibuster, because they had majority control of the Senate.

When George W. Bush became President, Democrats immediately began to block nominations on ideological grounds again.  Apparently liberals believe that elections have consequences only when a liberal is elected.  Republicans received zero credit for confirming Bader and Breyer.  Democrats were determined to block both John Roberts and Sam Alioto.  That is when Republicans considered the “nuclear option.”   Then Senator Obama and Senator Harry Reid were outraged at the thought of this and gave angry speeches about how changing the Senate rules would be a threat to democracy.  Ultimately Roberts and Alioto were confirmed after John McCain organized the gang of eight to by-pass the filibuster.

What makes this different and particularly dangerous is that Obama wants to fill three slots on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.  There are current 11 slots with eight of them currently occupied.  Obama wants to fill the three open slots.  Republicans believe the court is adequately staffed for the current workload.  They do not see the need for additional judges.  Currently the court is evenly balanced with 4 Democrats and 4 Republicans.

This court is extremely important because it handles the initial legal challenges to regulations and executive orders. That obviously includes ObamaCare.  If President Obama is able to add three new judges, there is a very good chance that the judges making the initial ruling on critical decisions will be likely to rubber stamp the administration’s position.  In other words, Obama is trying to stack the court and Harry Reid just helped him do it. This also stopped the filibuster by Lindsay Graham that was forcing this administration to answer questions on Benghazi.   The following article in The Hill explains this:

Senate poised to tip regs court in Obama’s favor

This happened once before.  FDR was frustrated because the Supreme Court had a bad habit of ruling that much of his “New Deal” legislation was unconstitutional.  At first Democrats tried to argue that congress could just over rule the Supreme Court.  Democrats don’t like courts telling them no.  Even FDR realized this wouldn’t fly, so he tried to add six new judges to the Supreme Court to tilt the balance in his favor.  The following article describes this in detail:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125789097

Ultimately FDR’s great plan to stack the court fizzled.  In part this was because he managed to get some of his legislation approved by the existing court.  But the point was that a Democratic President, with the cooperation of a Democratic congress set about to change the rules by stacking the court.  Now we have a different day and a different set of issues but the same strategy.  By changing the rules in the Senate, Democrats are once again trying to stack the courts.

There are two questions here.  The first question is whether or not this is legal.  We don’t know the answer to that one yet.  The second question is whether or not this is ethical.  The answer to that is a resounding no.  One of the principle things that have kept us free for all these years is the separation of powers between the legislative, the executive and the judiciary.  This is a deliberate attempt by one part of the legislature, the Senate, to coordinate with the President to change the judiciary.  This may be the single most dangerous thing President Obama has ever done.

It appears as though both President Obama and Harry Reid are going on all in on ObamaCare.  That seems incredible when there is so much evidence that ObamaCare is self-destructing.  The plan seems to be to jam this through during the next 12 months without regard to the consequences so that repeal will become impossible.  This looks and feels desperate.

It was interesting to note the scathing response of John McCain.  Republicans in the House are furious with Senate Republicans, like John McCain, for throwing them under the bus with regard to the debt ceiling.  This is the reward those Senate Republicans got for cooperating with Harry Reid.

I do not know what to predict, but this could go almost anywhere.  Republicans were publicly slapped in the face when Democrats passed ObamaCare without a single Republican vote in either the House or the Senate.  Now, when ObamaCare has turned out to be a disaster, Democrats in the Senate have resorted to the nuclear option in a desperate attempt to save it.  I can’t imagine anything that would infuriate Republicans more.

It is hard to predict where we go from here.  Almost anything is possible.  We have not seen this type of hostility between political parties in congress during our lifetime.  In effect, Republicans are forced to acknowledge that Democrats are at war with the Republican Party.  Don’t be surprised to if Republicans start to fight back.  The main thing that has happened here is that by this action President Obama and Harry Reid have unified the Republican Party and filled it with a terrible resolve.  History shows us that war seldom ends well.  Expect major casualties on both sides…

TDM

When I was attending flight school we had an instructor no one could tolerate.   I will call him Fred, but that obviously was not his real name.  Fred was very quick to ridicule people and was extremely arrogant.  One day Fred crossed the line and really made us mad, so the “secret committee” took things into hand.  I of course will never acknowledge whether or not I was personally a member of the secret committee, but I was very aware of what went on.  A strategy was developed to teach Fred a lesson.

It started with the phantom noise.  We were being trained on cutting edge electronic equipment.  One of our guys had an uncanny ability to make this high pitched noise without moving his lips.  It sounded like the worse kind of electronic feedback.  At random intervals he would make the noise and then the rest of us would act shocked and look around.  We would ask Fred for help.  It was hysterical.  Fred, who was incapable of admitting he didn’t know how to fix the problem, would go through a complicated procedure to adjust the equipment and eliminate the feedback.  Of course the sound would increase or decrease whenever he adjusted anything, so he thought he was making progress.  Eventually he thought he had it fixed.  But, as soon as he got up, the “hum” returned.  Sometimes the “hum” would go away for several hours, even a complete day.  Then, at the most inopportune moment it would start up again.  The biggest problem the rest of us had was avoiding the giggles as Fred went crazy trying to fix this.

Then attention was turned to Fred’s car.  Step one was to put a small rock in his hub cap.  This of course made a lot of racket and sounded scary.   This worked better than we expected, because incredibly Fred asked us for help.  We were all glad to offer advice.  One guy took the car for a test ride.  As soon as he got out of sight, he removed the hubcap and put the rock in his pocket.  Then he returned the car and said he couldn’t hear anything wrong.   Fred took his car around the block and miraculously the noise was gone.  He was very relieved.  But while Fred wasn’t looking, another guy took a different hub cap off and put the rock back.  This went on for weeks.  Sometimes the rock was there, sometimes it wasn’t.  The sound moved from one side of the car to the other and even moved from front to rear.  Finally one of our guys offered to fix the problem for $50.  He took the car, drove out of sight, pulled over and took out the rock.  Then he picked up the rest of us and we spent the evening spending that $50.  When Fred got his car back the next morning, he was thankful that the problem was fixed and considered the $50 well spent.  We actually agreed on that.

The secret committee probably would have left Fred alone, except that someone heard Fred on the phone talking with his girlfriend.  Fred mentioned that he was going to try a fuel additive that was supposed to increase gas mileage.  The secret committee voted to help.  The first time he filled up, someone waited until his tank was half empty and added an extra gallon.  Fred bragged about the improvement in gas mileage.  The next week someone added two gallons of gas.  Fred was ecstatic.  He bragged about his gas mileage to anyone who would listen.  This of course could not continue, so the secret committee voted to stop adding gas.  Fred was depressed.  That is when the secret committee wondered what would happen if a gallon of gas was siphoned off.  Now Fred was really concerned.  As the final touch, the decision was made to siphon off two gallons of gas.  Now Fred was near tears.   Once again he asked us for help, so someone suggested it was time for a tune-up.

Fred got the tune-up and his car was running great.  That, of course, was not acceptable.  So the secret committee came up with a new plan.  A spark plug was pulled and the top of the plug was covered with scotch tape.  Naturally that sparkplug wouldn’t fire anymore, so the car started to miss.  Fred didn’t seem to be concerned enough, so the decision was made to up the ante.  This time two sparkplugs were disabled.  Now his car ran just plan awful and it was hard to start.  Fred was totally depressed and talked about selling his car.  Once again he asked for our help.  The car was taken for another test drive.  Once again, as soon as the car was out of sight, the driver pulled over and took the tape off the spark plugs.  Fred was thrilled that his car was running great again, but worried about this happening again.  That is when someone suggested that the whole problem was probably just bad gas, so the suggestion was made that Fred switch from Texaco to Shell.  Of course the only Shell Station was way on the other side of town, and it was more expensive.  Fred became a life-long fan of Shell gas.

At this point we were pretty much done with our training, so we moved on.  To the best of my knowledge Fred never figured out we were messing with him.  Perhaps the best part of this story is that Fred was much nicer to us while all this was happening, because he appreciated all the help.

There is no point to this story, other than I thought it might be a nice break from ObamaCare.

TDM

In the midst of all the fuss about ObamaCare, many people are ignoring a very important story.  Republicans have issued subpoenas with regard to Fast & Furious.   Up until this point, Attorney General Eric Holder has played the slow walk, filing appeals with the Federal Court so that he can delay turning over these documents.  He just lost that battle.  Not only did the Judge deny his appeal, she prevented him from immediately appealing to a higher court.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2013/11/judge-wont-allow-holder-appeal-now-in-contempt-case-177796.html

The judge also made a very interesting comment:

“While the Court agrees with defendant’s characterization of the matter as significant, that is not the test,” 

Keep in mind that Watergate was a minor scandal, until a House committee started to subpoena documents and a court ordered the White House to comply.  Erik Holder is now in a serious legal pickle.  If he continues to refuse to comply with the subpoenas the House can take legal action against him.  When you combine that with a political climate where the President has lost all credibility it becomes toxic.  “He lied to us about ObamaCare, how can we possibly trust him?”

Don’t be shocked to discover that Fast & Furious is far more serious than anyone thought.  Watergate was only about a third rate burglary of the DNC.  Who really cared about that?   No one cared, until documents were released that provided evidence of a cover-up.  It wasn’t the burglary at the Watergate Hotel that did in Richard Nixon.  He probably didn’t even know about that.  What did him in was the cover-up.

History has a nasty habit of repeating itself.  Will that happen here?  Probably not, but it is a lot more likely to happen now than ever before because of this court ruling.  At a minimum, there has been some turning of the screw and that is going to put incredible pressure on Eric Holder.

TDM

If you visit London today you will probably notice the statute of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square.   He is widely regarded as the greatest Prime Minister in the history of Great Britain.  But during the 1930s, Winston Churchill was scorned by members of his own party.  His warnings about Nazi Germany were ignored.  The political establishment in his own party thought that Winston Churchill was a joke.  They humored him only because he did have what they perceived to be a small but dedicated political following.

Winston Churchill was loud, arrogant and stubborn.  He often argue for his case long after it was clear that he had lost in the court of public opinion.  No one in the cultured elite wanted him around.  He simply never knew when to give up.  He was on no one’s short list for the next Prime Minister.

But then things began to change.  It became increasingly obvious that Winston Churchill had been right all along.  When Britain finally declared War on Germany, Churchill was appointed to the cabinet as First Lord of the Admiralty.  Ultimately, the situation got so bad that in absolute desperation, the British parliament turned over power to the man they despised.

Now, when we listen to a recording of Churchill speeches from the 1930s we are stunned by the eloquence and the insight.  If only someone had listened, really listened to what he had to say.  Perhaps at least some of the carnage of World War II could have been avoided.   But, obviously, few people listened.  Unfortunately, great leaders are seldom appreciated until the situation becomes more than desperate.

When Abraham Lincoln was elected President his own cabinet was appalled.  They believed he was totally unqualified for the job and they determined to lead the government in spite of him.  History now shows that it was Lincoln who was manipulating them.    The scorn and ridicule lasted long after his leadership had been well established.  Just recently a Pennsylvania Newspaper published a retraction of their contemporary report on the Gettysburg Address.

http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/11/14/pennsylvania-newspaper-retracts-bad-review-of-gettysburg-address-from-1863/

Here is what they wrote:

“We pass over the silly remarks of the President. For the credit of the nation we are willing that the veil of oblivion shall be dropped over them and that they shall be no more repeated or thought of.”

I must admit that this gives me no small amount of comfort.  It is comforting to note that the editorial writers in 1863 were just as stupid and biased as the ones working at places like the Sacramento Bee or the San Francisco Chronicle today.   We may think that bias in the media is worse than ever, but history shows us it has always been this way.

Things are very bad.  They are going to get worse.  ObamaCare is worse than you can imagine.  The damage will be difficult to repair.  Our foreign affairs are in shambles and our economy appears to be in permanent stagnation.  We have a President who lies to the American people and then ignores the constitution.  Many people wonder if our country will ever recover.  It will.  We have been in far worse shape than this.  One could argue that it is a miracle this country even got started.  In 1776 the Revolutionary War was not going well.  The Continental Army had been driven out of New York and was retreating through New Jersey.  Many of the troops were just deserting the cause and going home.  Thomas Paine wrote “The Crisis” with the following lines:

These are the times that try men’s souls.  The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country, but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.   

Great leaders do not happen by accident, they are always the result of great crisis.  None of our greatest President governed during good times.  Look around you.  There is a new breed of leader that is ready, willing and able to take on the political establishment in both parties.  Like every great leader, these people can expect vicious resistance by the political establishment.   They can expect nothing but scorn from the cultured elite and the main stream media.  But all of us should remember the lesson of Winston Churchill and Abraham Lincoln.  Great problems create great leaders.  Sometimes, it really is darkest just before dawn.

TDM

Several years ago we lived in Novato, California.  One day we looked out and there was a turkey vulture sitting on our back fence.  We were used to seeing turkey vultures circling up above, but this was the first time one actually stopped by for a visit.  A few minutes later another one showed up.  The next thing we know the entire back fence was covered with turkey vultures.  We soon discovered that there was a dead raccoon in our back yard and they were all there for the meal.

ObamaCare is now officially dead.  There is zero chance it can survive what has already happened.  What slim chance of salvaging something ended today when Obama stepped in it on national television.

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2013/11/14/obama-tries-to-regain-americas-trust-by-declaring-insurance-is-complicated-to-buy-n1746635

The following statement is so bad that the editors had to add two additional comments, in parenthesis, so that it made any sense at all.

“It [the fix] allows us to be able to say to the folks who received these notices that I as the United States [and Obamacare] are not going to get in the way of you shopping for the insurance you used to have.”

Let me paraphrase.  “This is totally the fault of those bad apple insurance companies, so I am going to back off and let them handle it, so you can’t blame me.”

I should have predicted this, because it is the dumbest possible solution.  There is zero chance the insurance industry is going to reinstate those plans.  Even if they wanted to, it would take them months to prepare.  In the meantime there are going to be more uninsured people and no one available to provide health care coverage.

ObamaCare is dead.  We are still waiting for the official death certificate but it is dead.  The vultures are circling.  Some of them have already landed.  The rest are on their way.

TDM

President Obama apparently intends to issue an executive allowing health insurance companies to extend coverage for up to a year.  Following is from CNN:

The fix will be only for people who received expiration notices. It will call in part for insurance policies to be renewed for existing policyholders with insurance in the individual market who got cancellation notices. They would get one-year extensions.

Also, insurance companies will be required to notify policyholders of alternative coverage and what benefits they would be losing by keeping an existing plan.

This is an act of desperate and it borders on insanity.  There is a strong possibility that he will turn disaster into catastrophe.  It is doubtful that he even has the authority to do this.  He is directing insurance companies to ignore a law passed by congress and signed by him and replacing it with unworkable guidelines.   This is beyond astonishing, when a little more than 30 days ago he was willing to hold the entire government hostage to prevent such a delay.  He does not have the authority under the U.S. constitution to arbritarily change the law.

Neither Congress nor the President has the authority to order insurance companies to sell insurance or anything else.  The Supreme Court DID NOT UPHOLD OBAMACARE it actually ruled that the government did not have the authority to order people to buy insurance or anything else.  What was upheld was the individual mandate, but only as a tax.

This is an “Al Haig” moment.  Al Haig made a statement after Reagan was shot saying he was in charge.  He was wrong.  Under the U.S. Constitution the man in charge was George H.W. Bush and Al Haig’s statement was just plain stupid.  Now Obama is arrogantly giving Congress the finger with his own arrogant “I’m in charge” speech.”  They are not likely to be amused.

There is a strong possibility we are headed for a constitutional crisis.  The man responsible for the worse administration of a government program is desperately clinging to the controls.  There is no chance this ends well.

TDM

The White House spent most of the week trying to explain why the President didn’t say what he said.  Then they tried to explain that the problem was that people listened to what the President actually said rather than what the President was actually saying.  That didn’t work either.  So now the President said that he apologized that people lost their healthcare because they foolishly believed he meant what he said.  Or, at least I think that is what he said.  You can’t make this stuff up.

I am pretty sure a whole lot of Democrats are now scratching their heads asking one simple question.  “How could we have been so stupid?”  It is probably similar to how all those investors reacted when they learned the truth about Bernie Madoff.  All the warning signs were there.  The truth was out there for all to see, but they couldn’t or wouldn’t see.  They thought all those Republican complaints about Obama were just politics.  Now they know better.  But what can they do?  They can’t continue down this path because they know there is no chance it ends well.  There is no chance that Obama will come up with a solution.  There is also no realistic chance of getting rid of Obama for at least three more years.

The following article in Vanity Fair exposes the real Obama:

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2013/11/barack-obama-loner-self-reliant-closed-off

It is an ugly picture.  The following quote proves that many supporters have known about Obama for a long time.   Now, this is so obvious that no one can continue to ignore it:

 It is impossible to know whether Obama’s go-it-alone approach is instinctual or learned, but he comes by it honestly—and painfully. From a far earlier age and to a far greater degree than is generally understood, Obama has always been alone. He was abandoned not only by his black African father, whom he later met just once at age 10, but also by his white American mother, who left him as a teenager with her parents in Hawaii to pursue graduate fieldwork in anthropology in Indonesia. At an age when most adolescents are grappling with how to break away from their families, Obama’s had crumbled away from him.

But even Vanity Fair totally missed the point:

Give Obama credit for figuring that out, and for rising beyond even the wildest imaginings of his self-reliant youth. If he had chosen to be a novelist or neurosurgeon, an airline pilot or an atomic engineer, the very qualities of self-sufficiency that even some of his strongest supporters find so frustrating would be an unalloyed asset. But in a politician—above all, in a president—such qualities are confounding and, at times, crippling.

The problem with this analogy is that is assumes that Obama is a brilliant man who would have been wildly successful at anything he tried.  The opposite is true.  Obama has zero real accomplishments, other than being pushed by others into positions he did not earn.  Upon attaining these positions he did absolutely nothing to effect real change.   His performance, at every level, was mediocre at best.  Obama has coasted through life fueled by his own sense of entitlement.  Substitute extreme narcissism for self-absorbed and you get a clearer picture of the man.  Obama lives in his own world, created by his own psychological needs and nothing is likely to change that.  He probably couldn’t change if he wanted to.

Obama can’t admit he lied because then he would be admitting that he lied.  He never accepts responsibility for his own actions and obviously that includes his own words.  This is remarkably similar to the man who was asked if he had ever made a mistake.  He said yes:  “once I thought I was wrong, but I wasn’t.”  Obama is the man who never was and no longer is.  I don’t believe Obama thinks he lied.  Obama lives in a world of his own creation.  Even when confronted with video tapes where he deliberately lied he can convince himself that he wasn’t actually lying.  I believe that if Obama was given a polygraph test asking him if he lied, he would say no and he would pass.

When I wrote this, I wondered if this was really possible.  Then I read the following article.  Chuck Todd interviewed Obama and he apparently reached the same conclusion.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2013/11/09/chuck-todd-obama-does-not-believe-he-lied

A lot of people are legitimately concerned about a President who lied so deliberately with such devastating results.  But it is a much bigger problem if this President is so detached from reality that he doesn’t even recognize the truth.

Sad!  I actually feel sorry for Obama.  But I feel even sorrier for the rest of us.

TDM

We used to say that close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.  But sometimes it is also true in politics.  Ronald Reagan lost to Gerald Ford in 1976.  Ford, the Republican Establishment candidate went on to lose to Jimmy Carter.  But the fact that Ronald Reagan came close to beating an incumbent President during a primary election set the stage for the Reagan revolution four years later.

Cuccinelli lost in Virginia, which is a bad thing.  It is hard to imagine a worse Governor than Terry McAuliffe.  But to people who study this objectively, this was a very bad result…for Democrats.  McAuliffe outspent Cuccinelli $34 million to $19 million.  In addition, by all accounts, Cuccinelli ran a terrible campaign.  He didn’t even know enough to respond to the endless personal assaults by McAuliffe.  In addition McAuliffe flew in all the Democratic heavy hitters to push him over the line.  This included Bill and Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Barack Obama.  It should not have been close.  But McAuliffe didn’t even get a majority of the vote.  He only won because an Obama bundler funded a “libertarian” candidate to syphon off votes from Cuccinelli.

What turned this around at light speed was ObamaCare.  Cuccinelli started to make this a referendum on ObamaCare over the last couple of days and the results were dramatic.  Against all odds, he almost pulled it off.  McAuliffe won by the skin of his teeth.  If the election had been delayed a week, McAuliffe probably would have lost.  Contrary to what you may read in the newspapers or hear on television every qualified Democratic strategist understands this.  Unless things change around overnight, Democrats are going to start deserting Obama at a pace that will stagger the imagination.

The disaster called ObamaCare has set off a political tsunami that came very close to sweeping Terry McAuliffe out certain victory.    That tsunami is growing stronger and wider every day and the devastation on the American political landscape will be beyond imagination.  Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, with one exception.  Sometimes, in politics, it matters very much indeed.

TDM

I do not know how to speak Russian.  I do know that “Do svidaniya!” means goodbye.  But then they say something else that I really don’t understand.  So I came up with the phrase Do syvidaniya! Virginia Sneaky.  I doubt that this is close to accurate, but it sounds good to me.  Please keep in mind that I am also hard of hearing so my chances of hearing anything correctly are rather marginal.  I do believe that ‘Virginia Sneaky” actually is a pretty good description of the governor’s election in Virginia.

Democrat, Terry McAuliffe will probably win by a big margin.  For one thing he has outspent his opponent by several million dollars.  In addition, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden have traveled to Virginia to campaign for him.  Democrats have been running the traditional smear the Republican campaign against his opponent, Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli.  Democrats are convinced that once again the abortion issue will trump everything else.

Even the Republican Establishment is rooting for Cuccinelli to lose, because it fears a victory by him will inspire Tea Party Candidates to take on RINO Republicans.  The Republican establishment remains convinced that compromise is the pathway to victory.

As recently as this weekend, all the polls showed McAuliffe leading by a big margin.  A couple of recent polls have shown the race tightening “within the margin of error” but that almost always means the Democrat still wins.  So, it would be foolish to predict that Cuccinelli pulls this off.

But, recently, Cuccinelli has been running solely on the issue of ObamaCare.  He points out, correctly, that McAuliffe wants to expand it and as Attorney General Cuccinelli sued the federal government to try and stop it.

He has only been doing this for about six minutes, so this is the ultimate political “Hail Mary” pass and is unlikely to work.  But what if it does work?

This is one election where Republicans have everything to gain and nothing to lose.  If McAuliffe wins it will only show that money and a well-coordinated smear campaign can still win elections.  McAuliffe is the odds on favorite.  He is expected to win.  But if Cuccinelli wins it will send a shock wave throughout the country.  No one really expects Cuccinelli to come close.  It will tell every Democrat who voted for ObamaCare that they are in serious trouble.  It will send the same message to every RINO Republican in congress.

Seismic political events of this magnitude are impossible to predict because they are very rare.  I am hardly predicting it now.  But at soon, the disaster of ObamaCare will be so obvious that no one can ignore it.  At some point every Democrat who voted for this will pay a steep price.  We are not there yet, but we are getting close.  What Virginia will really tell us is “how close.”  It Cuccinelli somehow pulls this off, it will be proof positive that this is already happening and people will be stunned at the speed of the transformation.

TDM