The Freedom Fighter's Journal: "No Pressure"

A new ad shows us that the environmentalists have already imagined their dictatorship, in all of its gory details.

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Commentary by Robert Tracinski

1. Tsunami

We've seen the boats bobbing up and down on the horizon. We've seen the water begin to recede from the shoreline. And now, hey, what's that dark line on the horizon, building taller and taller? It's the incoming wave of the tsunami, now visible from shore as we enter the last weeks of an election that will sweep the Democratic Congress out to sea.

Jack Wakeland writes: "Monday's Gallup generic ballot poll predicts an epic 100-seat defeat for Democrats; but at this point all other polls contradict Gallop's result. The results of this poll should be used with caution. Getting a poll wrong is easy. Getting it right is hard. With that caution noted, Gallup may be measuring something in the likely turnout estimates that other pollsters—even Rasmussen—are missing."

John Fund explains the poll numbers, notes how Democratic operatives are pointing to Rasmussen's numbers in order to dismiss the Gallup results, then conclude that "it's a strange political year when Democrats start consoling themselves with Scott Rasmussen, whose polls they have long disparaged as being biased towards Republicans."

Dick Morris notes that the Gallup results depend on how many voters are likely to turn out, and he then notes the reason why Republican voters are much more likely to go to the polls.

The Democrats are without a theme, a message or a positive reason to go vote....
Republicans realize that our entire way of life and national idea is at stake in the 2010 elections. The radicalism of the Obama agenda and the mindless complicity of House and Senate Democrats who didn't even read the bills they were passing have left a sense that America as we know it is on the line.

This is the fundamental explanation for the tsunami, and it is the reason why I'm not hedging my predictions of big Republican gains. I think this basic ideological factor is the most powerful factor in the race, and that it will be significantly under-counted by traditional statistical and polling methods.

That's also why I think there might be a good opportunity for anyone with a mind to bet a little bit of money in the Intrade Prediction Markets. Jack notes that "Intrade's 50% bid/ask line is for a GOP gain of somewhere around 47 to 49 seats. If I were a betting man, I'd be putting my money on the plus-55-seat or plus 60-seat line and hope for the best."

"There are things on the ground that might hurt the Democrats more than the smart money bettors realize:

"1) Not only are the Republicans outspending the Democrats, but they're spending their money more effectively.

"2) Reports on Democrat wins in the Northeast have traditionally boosted Democrat morale before polls close on the West Coast and in the Western states—and that won't happen this year.

"3) Some of the Democratic candidates are saying truly stupid, arrogant, and evil things while closing out their campaigns with attacks on their opponents.

"Intrade is usually right, but I'm still looking for the GOP to gain as many as 55 or even 60 seats."

The article in the main link below mentions a startling statistic: there are now 66 Democratic incumbents who are below 50% in the polls, which means they will lose if the remaining undecided voters break against them, which they usually do. As I once heard Dick Morris put it, if you ask a man whether he will still be married a year from now, and he replies, "I'm not sure," that's a bad sign. (And Morris ought to know.) The same thing applies to asking people whether they want to keep their incumbent congressman.

So there's no doubt about it. The big wave is coming, and the only remaining task is for us to do our part to make it as big as possible.

"Democrats' False Optimism," Josh Kraushaar, National Journal, October 6

House Democrats have begun sounding an optimistic note that they will avoid a midterm wipeout as the base starts tuning in, campaigns engage, and President Obama travels the country reminding voters of the stakes....
But when you look at the national polling metrics and the race-by-race picture in the House, there's little evidence of any Democratic comeback. If anything, Republicans are in as strong a position to win back control of the House as they have been this entire election cycle.
Much of the newfound glimmer of hope comes from a misinterpretation of polling data released by Democratic campaigns and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Many of the polls aren't all that encouraging for Dems, but have been spun to present a misleadingly optimistic picture.
In a House race, where many voters are unfamiliar with challengers until the very end, it's not nearly as instructive to look at who's winning as it is to see whether the incumbent is winning a majority of the vote. Traditionally, most of the undecided vote breaks toward the challenger—especially in a wave election. It's not uncommon for a congressman to be up "double digits" but still be in serious trouble, given the anonymity of the opponent.
And a staggeringly high number of Democratic incumbents are below the 50 percent mark, including members in much of the polling conducted by Democratic firms released to counteract the GOP narrative. House Race Hotline editor Tim Sahd compiled an invaluable database of all the House race polling conducted this cycle and found 66 Democratic incumbents sitting below that magic 50 percent number....
The fundamentals of this midterm have been troublesome all year for Democrats, and as the election draws closer, the gloomy national numbers are translating into seemingly safe members facing the fights of their political careers.

2. All Politics Is Local

Item #1 above looks at the general, national-level statistics. But all politics is local, as they say, and so we should also look at individual races—which tells us the same story.

Michael Barone discusses the Gallup poll numbers but also looks at the likelihood of Republican gains in the traditionally Democratic districts around Lake Superior. We can also see the same trend in West Virginia, where blue-collar conservative Democrats—the kind who used to be called "Reagan Democrats"—have turned toward the Republicans.

In Nevada, Sharron Angle, who was supposed to be too much of a far-out, wacky radical to win, is now inching ahead of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, despite the distraction of an independent challenger who makes a dubious claim to the Tea Party mantle. (We have similar problem here is Virginia's Fifth District.)

And here's the scary part. In Michigan, a new poll shows Democrat John Dingell—after 27 terms in the House—trailing his Republican challenger. Now that is the sign of a big wave. I mean, it's like finding out that they just voted a Republican into Ted Kennedy's seat in Massachusetts.

Oh, wait, they did.

Which brings us to Massachusetts. When Scott Brown was elected to the Senate early this year, I noted that he won a majority in the House district represented by far-left eternal incumbent Barney Frank. So it's no surprise to discover that Frank now faces a credible challenger who is closing in on him in the polls. And Frank is not alone, raising speculation that Massachusetts—the home turf of the Northeastern Liberal—could be turning toward the Republicans, too.

"Red Bay State," W. James Antle, III, American Spectator, October 6

Just over the past few weeks, there have been signs that the Democratic Party cannot necessarily take the homeland of Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, and Michael Dukakis for granted.
Consider: The polls show Republican gubernatorial nominee Charlie Baker closing in on Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick. At least one survey shows Patrick's lead within the margin of error. Independent gubernatorial candidate Tim Cahill has lost his Republican running mate and campaign manager, possibly paving the way for Baker to consolidate the center-right vote....
Fourteen-term Democratic Congressman Barney Frank isn't in Deval Patrick territory yet, but he's clearly running scared. He has already had to call Bill Clinton into Massachusetts to campaign for him. Republican Sen. Scott Brown carried his congressional district in January's special election. A mid-September poll showed 35-year-old political neophyte Sean Bielat trailing Frank by just 10 points....
State Rep. Jeff Perry is receiving national Republican support in his run for the open seat in Massachusetts' tenth district, meaning the party sees it as a prime pickup opportunity....
[T]here is a constituency in Massachusetts willing to contemplate two-party government, but no one has stayed around long enough to cultivate it. The Republican Party as it exists in the Bay State is in no shape to offer much of an alternative to the Democratic status quo.
Could that be changing? A center-right majority can be assembled in this Democratic state. Weld, Cellucci, Romney, and Brown showed that. It isn't a huge majority—except for Weld's reelection, they all polled in the low 50s—but it is enough to win elections. When statewide races get close, Democrats tend to lose.

3. One Nation, Unionized

Another indicator of the ideological momentum in America is the failed October 2 counter-rally in Washington, DC, in favor of the Democrats and the administration.

The organizers hoped to at least match Glenn Beck's August 28 rally, which was held in the same location, but the aerial photos show a huge difference. And the Beck rally was much smaller than last year's 9/12 rally, which was the Tea Party movement's big show of strength.

The people who did show up at the rally were a combination of outright Communists and union slugs who came for the free lunch, left before the event was even finished, and couldn't be bothered to clean up after themselves—a marked contrast to the Tea Party rallies, which are known for leaving a venue cleaner than they found it.

The most interesting part about this rally is that, although it was backed by the unions, which have a huge organizing capability, so few people showed up—well under 100,000, by my guess. But of course, the actual rank-and-file of the unions are in fact, regular blue-collar Americans, of the kind who voted for Reagan—and in this election, they've flipped to our side.

"At 'One Nation' Rally, a Unionized Show of Unity," Byron York, Washington Examiner, October 3

Organizers of Saturday's "One Nation Working Together" rally at the Lincoln Memorial are proud of their diversity. Before the event, they predicted it would be the "most diverse march in history." It turned out they were right. Looking around the rally, there were Teamsters Local 311, Service Employees International Union Local 1199, Communications Workers of America Local 2336, American Federation of Teachers Local 1, United Auto Workers Amalgamated Local 171, Transport Workers Union Local 100, and representatives of many, many other unions. That's a lot of diversity....
The union presence was so ubiquitous and so organized that it made for a kind of color coding in the crowd. Looking around, there were large groups of people bunched into separate areas, all wearing the same color T-shirts to mark their union affiliation. There were groups wearing the purple SEIU shirt, others wearing the red CWA shirt, others wearing the blue AFT shirt, and still others wearing green shirts and yellow shirts and so on.There were long rows of tables where union workers sat waiting to get people connected to their groups and their buses. There were thousands of union-printed signs....
But when it came to complaints about the current administration, one unhappy note sounded more than any other. By and large, this crowd hates the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq....
There were plenty of other extreme elements, too. The Communist Party USA took part. The War Resisters League. The Freedom Socialist Party, and several others. If the main organizers of the rally wanted to keep the kooky parts of their coalition away from public view, they didn't succeed....
"One Nation" was scheduled to last from noon until 4:00 pm, but a lot of people headed for the exits well before the last speakers took the stage. By 2:45, when [NAACP head Ben] Jealous himself was at the microphone, they were streaming for the buses. As they walked, organizers herded people in the right direction. "OPEIU movin' out! OPEIU movin' out!" shouted one man, an organizer with the Office and Professional Employees International Union. The unions came, and then they left.

4. Contempt for the Governed

Given the political tides that are moving against them, the Democrats desperately need to motivate their "base" to vote for them on November 2. So how are they going about doing that? According to the article below, they're doing it the same way they've tried to convince the rest of us to back their agenda: through high-handed condescension, the presumption that the people are too stupid, venal, and ignorant to realize the genius and nobility of their rule.

The "base" is finally beginning to discover that the Democratic leadership's contempt for the governed extends to them, too.

"The White House Will Scold Democrats Until They're Sufficiently Excited About Voting," Dan Amira, New York magazine, September 28

The relationship between President Obama and a hard-to-please progressive base has been prickly and sensitive for a long time now. The frustration this state of affairs breeds in the White House was most famously expressed by Robert Gibbs in August, when the press secretary mused that those who compared Obama to Bush were probably on drugs and that the "professional left" wouldn't be happy until "we have Canadian healthcare and we've eliminated the Pentagon." Among Obama supporters, the feeling that palpable, noticeable change has so far failed to materialize was epitomized by Velma Hart, the self-described exhausted town-hall participant who told Obama of his promised change, "I'm waiting, sir, I'm waiting. I don't feel it yet."...
The growing realization that Democrats might just not vote on November 2nd is clearly starting to rattle Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, who have embarked this week on an interesting new motivational strategy. No, not passing legislation that would actually please Democrats (and particularly the so-called "professional left"), like a repeal of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans—scolding Democratic voters as if they were spoiled, ungrateful children.
At a fundraiser in New Hampshire yesterday, Biden reminded the "base constituency" to "stop whining and get out there and look at the alternatives." And in a Rolling Stone article released today, President Obama is described as walking back into a just-ended interview with Jann Wenner to deliver this message "with intensity and passion, repeatedly stabbing the air with his finger."...
The idea that we've got a lack of enthusiasm in the Democratic base, that people are sitting on their hands complaining, is just irresponsible.
Now go to your room! And don't come out until you're excited about voting! And I better not hear that PlayStation or you can forget about a repeal of the Bush tax cuts ever!

5. "No Pressure"

In the past few years, environmentalists have shown an increasing willingness to advertise their viewpoint by confirming the worst fears of their critics. And so we get ads, for example, that show drivers being pulled over at police-state-style checkpoints and arrested for driving gas guzzlers, while those with approved "green" cars are waved through.

But the latest green ad, for an initiative to get people to volunteer to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions, takes this as far as it can go. Watch it here; it has to be seen to be believed. The ad shows various people—schoolchildren in a classroom, employees in an office building—being asked to "voluntarily" join the program. Those who refuse are told that there is "no pressure"—and then the person in charge pushes a button and the dissenters are literally blown to pieces, with their blood spattering all over the people around them.

It doesn't quite seem adequate to describe the makers of this ad as eco-fascists. They're more like eco-psychopaths. They are fantasizing about the gruesome public murder of global warming skeptics.

I've never seen anything like this, at least not in the modern world. I mean, did the Nazis make newsreels in which they actually showed the Jews being gassed? For a precedent, you have to go back to the darkest hellholes of the Middle Ages—maybe back to Vlad the Impaler—when a spectacle was made of public killing as a warning to others.

I agree with the article in the main link below, that the most horrifying part about this ad is that the environmentalists who made it apparently regarded it as funny—and not a single person in the production process apparently found anything wrong with it.

Leftists are often thought of as starry-eyed "idealists" who are working for a naïve "utopia" whose actual, concrete details they have not projected. But what this ad tells us is that they have already imagined their dictatorship, in all of its gory details, down to the concentration camps and public murders of dissidents. There is no need to project that letting environmentalists have political power will lead to mass murder. They are telling us that this is what their doctrines mean.

And that outcome is much closer than you may realize. One of the goals of the Obama administration is the imposition of a "cap and trade" system that will give the EPA total power over the economy—all the power they need to impose a green dictatorship. This is already being done by executive fiat, and only opposition from a strong Republican majority in Congress can stop them. So now we know what is at stake in next month's election.

Vote Republican. No pressure.

"Green Fervor, Red Blood," Jonah Goldberg, National Review Online, October 8

By now you may have heard that the man behind such heartwarming chick flicks as Bridget Jones's Diary and Four Weddings and a Funeral has come out with an environmental snuff film.
Leading environmental organizations in Britain, with the backing of numerous major corporations, recruited British screenwriter Richard Curtis to produce a video for the "10:10" campaign, which seeks to cut carbon emissions by 10 percent every year for ten years....
Each time someone resists the idea of getting with the program, the response is swift, bloody execution.
The video's defenders argue it's all a big joke, lighten up....
This isn't a joke for the benefit of you and me. No, this is a knee-slapper for those already committed to the cause. The subtext is, "Wouldn't it be awesome if we could just get rid of these tiresome, inconvenient people?" That's why they're blown up without anyone trying to change their minds. That's the joke: "Enough with these idiots already."
How else to explain the fact that this thing went through the entire pre-production and filming process, was undoubtedly screened by any number of people—most likely including sponsors and PR people—and none of them said, "Are you nuts? We can't go public with this."
That's the outrage here: not that they thought normal people would find it funny, but that the producers and sponsors clearly did think it was funny. It's like one of those ugly inside jokes high-school cliques share that instantly become horrendous when outsiders find out about them....
Meanwhile, you can be sure that the green Left will only grow more frustrated with the ignorant masses, and that more such "jokes" will be forthcoming. Let's just hope Shakespeare was wrong when he wrote, "Jesters do oft prove prophets."

6. Terms of Surrender

I wrote a couple of days ago about the potentially disastrous effects of President Obama's foreign policy, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan. But in looking back, I realized I should put that into the correct context: the total, pathetic weakness of the enemy, which allows us a lot of leeway to get away with errors in our war strategy. That's a good thing, because we're going to need the leeway.

So I'm glad to be able to post the story below, indicating that what we have been doing in Afghanistan is putting the Taliban on the ropes, causing them the worst damage since we first descended upon them just after September 11.

That is undermined, however, by the news that the Karzai government is now engaged in peace talks with the Taliban leadership, which raises the prospect of a negotiated "peace" agreement which allows the Taliban to survive, to put some of their agents into high level positions in the government in Kabul, and then gives Obama political cover to withdraw all US troops—leaving the Taliban free to undermine the Afghan government and resume the war.

As I said when we were negotiating with the Awakening Councils in the lead-up to the "surge" in Iraq, negotiations with some of the enemy's supporters is the most delicate stage of counter-insurgency war. If you do it right, you are negotiating the enemy's terms of surrender. If you do it wrong, you're negotiating our terms of surrender.

We did it right in Iraq. But in this case, the biggest problem is that Karzai is negotiating with the Taliban leadership, including Mullah Omar. Those guys are never going to agree to a deal that is consistent with our interests. The only legitimate negotiations are with lower-level Taliban supporters, tribal leaders who have interests other than religious fanaticism that can serve as a legitimate basis for cooperation with the Afghan government.

And in any case, the most important condition for victory is precisely what Obama has refused to do: to make it clear that we are committed to staying around in Afghanistan, that we are not rushing for the exits. That is the context in which we can say, to lower-level Taliban: Yes, we'll let some of you live and join the government and put yourself into the political process—so long as we're there to supervise you and hold you to the terms of your surrender, which is your peaceful acceptance of a quasi-liberal form of government.

(Incidentally, I don't have overly ambitious standards for how progressive and enlightened the Afghan government has to be. It is a nasty, backward part of the world, so we shouldn't expect a perfect republic. We should expect something that is much better than the Taliban, and a system that will make it possible for more enlightened Afghans—and they do exist, in significant numbers—to survive, to encourage the spread of education, and eventually to modernize the country over a period of decades. In short, we shouldn't insist on reforming them all at once, but we should create the conditions that will allow them, over the long term, to reform themselves.)

So the big picture is that we're headed toward an ending similar to what is going on in Iraq: we can win on the battlefield, but we have to worry that an anti-American administration will throw away that victory through a diplomatic surrender.

"Taliban on Verge of Collapse, NATO and Afghan Officials Believe," Anthony Loyd, London Times via The Australian, October 8

The best Taliban commanders are dead or captured. Their men are harried and subject to constant attack and betrayal. They are under-equipped, overwhelmed and demoralised. In a word, the Taliban are losing.
In Britain and the US there may be doubt and confusion over the future of the Afghan war, but in southern Afghanistan the description of the Taliban insurgency by senior figures at the forefront of the fighting is bold and unequivocal.
The troop surge is working, they say. The Taliban is at breaking point and an Iraq-style watershed, when momentum is shifting in a favour of the NATO coalition, may be nigh. It amounts to a ray of hope for NATO aims as the war begins its 10th year today.
"The Taliban are getting an absolute arse-kicking," said one top-level Westerner deeply involved with Operation Ham Kari, the latest big push by US and British forces in Kandahar. "It's been their worst year since 2001-02. We're taking them off the battlefield in industrial numbers. We're convinced that the initiative has really shifted."...
Ham Kari, the focal point of the US surge strategy and critical to the overall outcome, began in the spring and aimed to seize the initiative from the insurgents in their southern heartland. Now in its final phase, the operation is intended to break the insurgency's back in a conclusive enough fashion to prove "irreversible momentum" in favour of US and NATO forces before mid-term elections in America, the NATO summit in Lisbon and President Barack Obama's December appraisal of the surge strategy....
Though at various times during the past decade individual NATO commanders in Afghanistan have claimed to have had a decisive effect upon the insurgency, which they have usually later recanted, this time the evidence of a widespread Taliban collapse appears detailed and convincing. It has been illuminated by an overwhelming significant intelligence breakthrough that officials claim has penetrated the Taliban insurgency in the south from top to bottom.
"We see an organisation that looks like any other army in reverse," said the official. "They say that their higher headquarters don't get it, that they haven't got the people, they haven't got the equipment. No ammunition. No detonators. Suicide bombers are failing to show up. Locals no longer agreeing to bury their dead or help the wounded to aid stations. Their leadership and logistical train has broken apart. The organisation is so chopped up that we are seeing mailroom guys trying to run the corporation."