“In 2000, Democrats had an easy if unsatisfying answer to why they lost the election: Republican chicanery in Florida. In 2004, they were more adrift, worrying that the party’s cultural liberalism was making them unelectable in red America. The growing unpopularity of the Iraq War solved that problem. In 2016, there was widespread Democratic agreement that Hillary Clinton blew the election, another candidate would have won it, and a party that excited working class voters again would win a new majority. There’s no consensus about what would have worked this year, other than ‘don’t be the incumbent party when people are angry about inflation.'” (11/06/24)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“Ever since I discovered libertarianism in the late 1970s, I have witnessed conservatives every four years exclaiming, ‘This is the most important presidential race in U.S. history,’ as they attempted to exhort people to elect a Republican to the presidency. The 2024 presidential race, of course, is no exception. But the periodic elections of Republican presidents has never brought us the free society — not in the genuine sense of the term. At best, they have brought ‘freedom-leaning’ conservatives appointed to federal positions to help manage the welfare-warfare state, managed/regulated-economy system under which we have all been born and raised. For conservatives, that is sufficient. They would be happy to go to their death beds with a Republican president and ‘freedom-leaning’ conservatives in charge of the welfare-warfare state and regulated/managed society. But it’s not sufficient for me and some other libertarians.” (11/06/24)
“Conducting a thorough autopsy on the cadaver of Kamala Harris’s campaign will require the scalpel of voting data not yet sharpened. Two things, however, are obvious. Democrats should have remembered the ancient axiom ‘be careful what you wish for.’ And they should have remembered the warning attributed to their hero Franklin D. Roosevelt (regarding Gen. Douglas MacArthur): ‘Never underestimate a man who overestimates himself.’ … Enough has been said about the Republican Party’s eight years of self-degradation. More needs to be said about the Democratic Party’s self-sabotage, via identity politics (race, gender), that made Harris vice president. And then, via Democratic Party high-handedness, foisted her on the nation as the party’s nominee.” (11/06/24)
“You can’t comply your way out of tyranny. This principle – central to the American Revolution – has been almost totally forgotten and ignored. And it was also forcefully repeated and reiterated a century later by Lysander Spooner. The following are the top quotes and principles that make up this essential foundation.” (11/06/24)
“We observe a strange phenomenon that does not only affect America but currently looks especially virulent in that country. (Before the fall of the Soviet empire, it was more noticeable in Europe.) When an election is coming, each of the two main competing sides shouts that if the other 50% (plus 1% or 2% or 3%) wins, catastrophes will happen. The phenomenon has gradually intensified. Each of the two sides seems right: the government has become so powerful that it can seriously harm the interests and lifestyles of either side’s members. Nobody seems secure in his liberty and security.” (11/06/24)
“What just happened? Donald Trump ended his first term in disgrace, hit with a second impeachment after his supporters stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The 2022 midterm candidates he endorsed — Herschel Walker, Mehmet Oz, Kari Lake — all went down in flames. In 2023, he was declared guilty of sexually assaulting the writer E. Jean Carroll in a civil case. This past May, he was convicted in a Manhattan court on 34 felony counts for improperly reporting hush money payments. Overall, he has faced 116 indictments. Even now, the New York State attorney general is trying to punish the Trump Organization with nearly $500 million in fines, claiming that he unlawfully inflated the value of his properties. And yet here he is: America’s 47th president. How did he do it?” (11/06/24)
“The old saying is that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing twice and expecting a different result. So what do you call it when you fail, get a better result by doing something different, then go back and repeat the thing that failed the first time anyway? The Democratic Party had two real-world tests for what works in an election against Donald Trump. One campaign famously succeeded; the other infamously failed. Mystifyingly — going into an election it kept saying was ‘the most important election of our lifetime’ — it decided to rerun the one that failed.” (11/06/24)
“While the presidential election wasn’t called until early Wednesday morning, by midnight the overwhelming evidence was that the Democrats were heading for a catastrophe on par with 2016. Donald Trump was already leading in all the battleground states; Republicans were poised to win the Senate, and the House of Representatives remains agonizingly close. There is a real danger of a Republican trifecta once the last votes are counted. It also appears that Donald Trump has won the popular vote, something he failed to do in his first two runs for the presidency. Trump is now in a position to do enormous damage during his second term in office.” (11/06/24)
