Democrats are about to be reacquainted with the term ‘Pyrrhic Victory’. It’s the kind of short-term win that sets someone up for catastrophic losses that follow.
Before we can make the case for why the Midterms might turn into a Pyrrhic Victory that could set them up for future failure, we need to list what went into the wins they were so proud of just a few short weeks ago.
Team Biden had been comparing these Midterms to JFK or FDR, who were, they claimed, the last Presidents to break even or gain seats in the Senate. (They forgot to count Trump’s midterm senate pickups, apparently.)
Amazing what you can do when you control a narrative, isn’t it?
But the victory of keeping control of the Senate took a lot of shortcuts to pull off. For example, Biden sacrificed our strategic oil supply to artificially lower prices at the pump so people wouldn’t use that against him.
Joe ran on a jobs record that was not merely questionable, his boasting was entirely based on fraudulent numbers.
The Biden administration vastly overstated its estimate that employers created more than 1 million jobs in the second quarter of this year, claiming historic job growth when in fact hiring had stalled, according to a new estimate.
Job growth was “essentially flat” in the second quarter with only 10,500 jobs added, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia said.
Republicans are accusing the administration of lying about the employment data in an election year and are demanding answers.
The Philadelphia Fed’s new assessment shows that employment numbers in 29 states and the District of Columbia were significantly lower than the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported for the March-through-June period.
The BLS, a division of the Department of Labor, estimated net job growth of 1,047,000 jobs in the second quarter. The Philadelphia Fed now says its data shows that 10,500 net jobs were created in that period. — Washington Examniner, Dec 16
It was a talking point regularly repeated by Democrats and their (media) supporters as a counterweight to Republican accusations of a poorly-performing economy. And it was a lie.
The TwitterFiles proved that our own three-letter agencies have been leveraging Big Tech to manipulate elections for years — always in favor of the same party.
All of these issues, and others like them, will be fair game for the coming election.
The big one
Joe may yet have to pay the piper on some of these issues. But the really big one will hit him in the wallet.
The one advantage that put Dems over the top in 2022 was political donations. Democrats were KILLING Republicans in campaign spending… sometimes spending several times as much as the Republican candidate in the same campaign.
That fact could REALLY come back to bite them on the backside. You may remember that the Biggest Billionaire Democrat donor NOT named George had a spectacular crash-and-burn with the failure of the crypto company FTX.
All of the money Sam Bankman Freid was shoveling into Democrat political campaigns was never his to give. The REAL owners of that money want it back. And they just might get it… with interest!
FTX, the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange founded by Sam Bankman-Fried, has started trying to claw back payments made by its former management to politicians, celebrities and charities, as it continues to progress through bankruptcy proceedings in the US.
FTX “intends to commence actions before the bankruptcy court to require the return of such payments, with interest accruing from the date any action is commenced”, the company said, sharing an email address – FTXrepay@ftx.us – that recipients could use to voluntarily return money.
“Recipients are cautioned that making a payment or donation to a third party (including a charity) in the amount of any payment received from a FTX contributor does not prevent the FTX debtors from seeking recovery from the recipient or any subsequent transferee,” FTX added in a statement.
… In criminal charges filed in the state of New York, the Department of Justice has alleged that the donations were the result of criminal money laundering, since the money was effectively taken from customer accounts.
The charges also allege campaign finance violations, arguing that Bankman-Fried “and others known and unknown” broke donation limits by making contributions in the names of other people.
Clawing back payments made to politicians and charities is likely to be one of the easier parts of the bankruptcy process.
Under US law, payments or transfers made within 90 days of bankruptcy are presumed to be preferential if they result in a creditor getting more than it would have been entitled to at the end of the bankruptcy process, and a “clawback” can attempt to recover the difference in the payments. — TheGuardian
The criminal indictment against Bankman-Fried made some serious allegations about the money those politicians (mostly Democrats) benefited from.
The campaign finance violations detailed in a 14-page indictment are numerous and varied. Prosecutors from the Southern District of New York accuse Bankman-Fried of conspiring with others to make and receive illegal campaign donations, hide those donations, misuse corporate donations and of improperly using a conduit to hide the donations. Bankman-Fried “and others known and unknown” also allegedly gave money under other people’s names and exceeded limits on political contributions, according to the indictment.
While prosecutors don’t name Bankman-Fried’s co-conspirators, they said he worked with “others, known and unknown, (who) knowingly did combine, conspire, confederate, and agree together and with each other to defraud the United States” to intentionally skirt campaign finance laws, according to the indictment. Prosecutors are reportedly looking at former FTX director of engineering Nishad Singh, the co-CEO of FTX digital markets Ryan Salame, as well as contributions by Alameda Research and FTX, The New York Times reported. Bankman-Fried, Singh and Salame, combined, contributed at least $70 million toward the 2022 midterms, according to data from nonpartisan campaign finance watchdog OpenSecrets. — CNBC
Here’s a small sampling of what his donations looked like.
Bankman-Fried poured $28 million of his 2022 election cycle political giving into his hybrid PAC, Protect Our Future PAC, to ostensibly boost candidates prepared to prevent future pandemics. But critics told POLITICO that Bankman-Fried’s political giving was an excuse to ingratiate himself with lawmakers weighing crypto regulations. (FTX did not respond to requests for comment, and Protect Our Future PAC declined to comment.)
Bankman-Fried gave $6 million to House Majority PAC – the fourth biggest individual contribution this election cycle to the hybrid PAC aligned with Democratic House leadership – and an additional $500,000 to the Senate Majority PAC.
FTX’s Bankman-Fried and Salame were also the biggest donors to the nonpartisan, pro-crypto super PAC, GMI PAC. Bankman-Fried gave $2 million, and Salame gave $1.5 million.
Back to that Pyrric victory
King Pyrrhus of Epirus (281 BC) took his army (including elephants) to defend Greek-speaking forces against the Romans. They won the battle, but took heavy losses, and could not replace their number so far from home. Romans, meanwhile, had plenty of recruits to restock their ranks.
The king’s initial victory over the Romans came at such a high price it guaranteed future losses.
Remember when Hillary won the primaries? One reason she took over so easily may have been the financial state the DNC had been left in. Obama spent them into oblivion in his own election campaign and left their finances in shambles.
The argument is, that financial weakness gave an opening for Hillary to exploit for her own political gain.
Here’s a story we wrote back in 2018 about the shady too-close cooperation between Hillary and the DNC. Was money donated to the DNC supporting the party or was it supporting the candidate? Speaking Of ‘Campaign Finance Laws’ — Where Are The Networks On Hillary’s Laundered $84 Million in 2016?
If FTX does claw back those donations, what does that mean for the party?
It depends how much gets clawed back. Some estimates are that he donated some $40 million dollars. Elon (and others) have openly speculated it could be as much as a billion.
What kind of impact could that have on the 2024 cycle?
It could be a double-whammy.
The first-order consequence is the obvious one. If the party and the PACs are digging their way out of debt, even if they raise boatloads of money, they won’t be able to dump it into campaigns.
But there’s a second-order consequence, too. Seasoned candidates (and incumbents) might see the writing on the wall and sit this cycle out. The other option is to risk getting jackhammered in an election where the party can’t bail you out because they are already bleeding red ink. Lesser candidates will have to take their place.
In a Senate election where Dems will already be playing defense, this is a big deal.
Psalms of War: Prayers That Literally Kick Ass is a collection, from the book of Psalms, regarding how David rolled in prayer. I bet you haven’t heard these read, prayed, or sung in church against our formidable enemies — and therein lies the Church’s problem. We’re not using the spiritual weapons God gave us to waylay the powers of darkness. It might be time to dust them off and offer ‘em up if you’re truly concerned about the state of Christ’s Church and of our nation.
Also included in this book, Psalms of War, are reproductions of the author’s original art from his Biblical Badass Series of oil paintings.
This is a great gift for the prayer warriors. Real. Raw. Relevant.
