A glimmer of hope from latest Dem defeat as national media call Trump a serial liar

Cartoonist Dave Granlund suggests Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican who is the majority leader in the U.S. Senate, is conning the American people again with the latest version of a bill to replace the Affordable Care Act.

Cartoonist Adam Zyglis of The Buffalo News in New York State calls the bill a shell game that will end health-care coverage for 23 million people.

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

Democrat Jon Ossoff's loss in a Georgia run-off election was billed as a referendum on Donald J. Trump's early months in office, but voting data tell a far different story.

Unlike other races, most notably the Nov. 8 presidential election, "it wasn't because Democratic voters didn't show up," according to Politico.com:

"More than 259,000 votes had been tallied as of [last] Wednesday afternoon, considerably more than the 193,000 in the first round of voting in April.

"In fact, turnout was much higher than for other off-year special elections in recent history," typically between 100,000 and 225,000 voters.

"John Anzalone, Ossoff's pollster, said the Democrat's campaign succeeded in turning out votes -- but they were swamped by Republicans who came out in numbers that ended up dwarfing previous high-profile special elections..." in a district that has favored GOP candidates for decades.

The sky-high turnout drove Karen Handel, the GOP candidate, to a nearly 4-point victory [last] Tuesday, "despite most pre-election surveys showing Ossoff with a small-but-shrinking lead." 

So, even though Ossoff lost, his campaign offers a glimmer of hope for future elections.

He showed Democrats can be motivated to turn out, and not get snookered as they did when polls predicted Hillary Clinton couldn't possibly lose to a racist, con artist and tax dodger who boasted of molesting women.

Trump's lies

On Friday, The New York Times Opinion section published the "definitive list" of Trump's lies since he took office.

But they won't stick, just like The Washington Post's Fact Checker hasn't made much of a dent in Trump's image among his supporters.

In fact, as a counterpoint to these lists of lies, national TV reporters continue to interview white people who voted for President Trump, and still show up at his rallies, and none of them have any second thoughts.

No surprise. They were delusional then, and they remain delusional.

These TV reports continue to ignore that Trump was swept into office by a tide of racism and misogyny unlike anything we have seen in modern American history. 

Another weird edition

The Sunday edition of The Record of Woodland Park is another weird one.

The lead Page 1 story reports the so-called millennial generation prefer city life, so does that mean North Jersey traffic congestion has reached its peak and we might actually find a seat on a rush-hour bus or train?

What appears to be a local front-page story about a Hackensack man actually discusses "crime and corruption in Georgia state prisons."

A sports column about a baseball player named Judge runs at the bottom of Page 1.

Roger Stone

On Saturday's front page, that position was taken up by a long, meandering Mike Kelly column on "political dirty trickster" Roger Stone, Trump's former adviser.

The column went on and on, and sounded like a rewrite of other pieces that have appeared in the last decade.

For example, "The Dirty Trickster" was the headline on a New Yorker profile of Stone way back in the June 2, 2008, issue.

The two photos of Stone in The Record show him wearing a custom-made suit, shirt, tie and shoes, and either laughing or smirking, as if he doesn't have a care in the world.

You'd never know Stone is a "person of interest" in the investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

2016 election

During the presidential campaign, Kelly, who has been banging out his column for about 25 years, interviewed unemployed factory workers who appeared to favor Trump, and in the process, the reporter took several pot shots at President Obama's record.

He has a second column on the front of today's Opinion section under this headline:

"Why the Democratic Party is such a mess"

His first paragraph refers to Ossoff's loss in Georgia, but the column is actually about "Shattered," a book he read about the Democrats, whom he calls "the once inspiring party of FDR, JFK and LBJ" (1O).

Kelly calls Hillary Clinton "a bitter loser, incapable of admitting her mistakes."

Many other observers say Clinton lost because the news media allowed Trump, Governor Christie and other Republicans to demonize her over everything from Benghazi to her emails.

And while GOP racists and misogynists went to the polls in large  numbers, many registered but apathetic Democrats stayed home on Nov. 8, throwing the election into the antiquated Electoral College.

Still, how can Kelly call Clinton "a loser"? Remember, she won the popular vote by nearly 3 million, even though so many Democrats stayed on the sidelines.