ABC News Calls Indiana Senate Race for Republican Over Democrat Incumbent

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ABC News has called Indiana’s Senate race for the challenging Republican, Mike Braun, over incumbent Sen. Joe Donnelly, in the first Republican Senate seat conversion of the 2018 midterms.

Braun is a relative unknown in the state and does not have a particularly compelling public speaking style nor a strong public record. Indiana was also an early and huge Donald Trump state in 2016. So it’s fair to wager voters here turned out more for Trump and against Democrats than for Braun specifically. Trump returned the love, visiting the state repeatedly, including just yesterday for a rally of an estimated 20,000 people in the largest stadium in Fort Wayne, Indiana’s second-largest city.

People who had arrived several hours before Trump was due managed to get seats, but a line some 300 yards long still snaked into the parking lot when the stadium reached capacity and outsiders were turned away. Similarly, polling places across the city and state were packed to levels precinct workers said they’d never seen in years of working election days, surpassing even the 2016 record-setting surge. . .

(Read more from “ABC News Calls Indiana Senate Race for Republican Over Democrat Incumbent” HERE)

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When I Was Born in the United States to Non-Citizens, America Did Not Owe Me Citizenship

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Scholars infinitely more qualified than I have arguments on both sides of both issues, and I won’t delve into that thicket. But, as a profound beneficiary of “birthright” citizenship, I do have a view on the aspect of jus soli citizenship that we have come to deem a “birthright”: it doesn’t exist.

I was born in California to Indian parents on student visas. My dad was enrolled in a PhD program, while my mom was working to support our family. My birth on American soil about halfway through my dad’s program automatically meant I was eligible for U.S. citizenship.

My parents’ Indian citizenship meant they had a choice: I could be an Indian or an American, but I couldn’t be both, since India didn’t recognize dual citizenship. For them, it was a no-brainer — I would be the first American in my family. But I never had a “birthright” to be one. . .

My American citizenship, however, was an altogether different story. I had no natural right nor owed claim to citizenship of a country just because I was born within its geographical boundaries. Nor did my parents have the right to bestow upon me a citizenship they did not possess.

In fact, they had been allowed entry into the United States after satisfactorily convincing its government that they would only be visitors in a foreign land. In the eyes of everyone, including their own, they were temporary visitors in a country not their own. My birth to my parents, therefore, only gave me access to the rights that they had to pass on to me — rights of Indian citizenship. (Read more from “When I Was Born in the United States to Non-Citizens, America Did Not Owe Me Citizenship” HERE)

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In an America This Ignorant, It’s No Wonder We Struggle to Stay Free

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Americans are suffering from a knowledge gap about what American freedom is about, and it’s one of the most important underlying factors in what divides Americans today.

If you are immersed in the 24/7 news cycle, you can’t help but reflect on the wide and wild political divide in America. Just as surely, as a reasonable American, you are asking reasonable questions: Why can’t people just live and let live? What’s with all of the agitation, the mindless street theater and street violence, the harassment of people in restaurants and in their homes? . . .

Today’s collective dementia of so many Americans didn’t just happen out of the blue. The knowledge gap has been growing for generations. Decades of a steady diet of distortions, dishonesty, and government largess, coming from so many of the American elites — academia, media, and political leaders who don’t believe in the merits of the very system that allowed them to flourish — have eroded the faith that Americans have in their own system of governance. . .

This long march through all of the institutions of American life has long since overtaken public education. Basic content knowledge, including broad knowledge of civics, has been withheld from generations of students by our public schools. Instead, students have been fed — both in K-12 and in our universities — a steady diet of increasing resentment for American principles of freedom, tolerance, and constitutional self-governance. The radicalization of American education has been going on for decades.

This cannot be an accident. Those who claim that more government control over our lives will somehow “make us free” — the elites, the ruling classes — are committed to making the rest of us ignorant of what was actually at play in the American Revolution: an awareness that too much power in the hands of too few people is a bad thing. If such knowledge remained common, it would be bad news for the control freaks of the world. This is why they are committed to cultivating ignorance in youth, and then programming them to vote for the ruling class. (Read more from “In an America This Ignorant, It’s No Wonder We Struggle to Stay Free” HERE)

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GOP Keeps Key Kentucky Seat

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By Townhall. U.S Rep. Andy Barr, and Republicans, can breathe a sigh of relief. For now. The incumbent has held off Democratic congressional candidate Amy McGrath in Kentucky’s sixth congressional district race, according to NBC.

Barr was elected to Congress in 2012 and is a member of the Financial Services Committee. One of his biggest accomplishments, which he lists on his campaign site, was establishing the Sixth District Veterans Coalition, and fighting for reforms at the Veterans Affairs agency. . .

Democrats need to pick up 23 Republican seats tonight to retake control of the House.

(Read more from “GOP Keeps Key Kentucky Seat” HERE)

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Republican Marsha Blackburn Wins Tennessee Senate Race, Beating Democrat Phil Bredesen

By The Federalist. Marsha Blackburn, a Republican congresswoman, was elected to the U.S. Senate on Tuesday night. Blackburn defeated former Democratic Gov. Phil Bredesen in a hotly contested race that was viewed by many analysts to be a toss-up heading into election day. Fox News called the race for Blackburn at 9:04 p.m. Eastern time.

The race between Blackburn and Bredesen was neck and neck, with Bredesen even leading in multiple polls, up until the battle over the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh took center stage. The September fight to confirm Kavanaugh significantly boosted Blackburn, who took her first lead in the RealClearPolitics polling average in early October. (Read more from “Republican Marsha Blackburn Wins Tennessee Senate Race, Beating Democrat Phil Bredesen” HERE)

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Jersey Trash: Sleazy Bob Menendez Wins Re-Election

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Well, it looks like Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez is projected to win re-election. The Jersey trash Democrat was engulfed in a major ethics scandal, in which he was accused of taking lavish gifts from Dr. Salomon Melgen in exchange for political favors. Melgen was recently convicted and sentenced to 17 years in prison for health care fraud. The months-long trial dented Menendez’s approval numbers, but it ended with a hung jury—and the Department of Justice declined to retry him.

Republican Bob Hugin was said to have run an excellent campaign against Menendez, hitting him with endless attack ads. With no real competitive House races in the Garden State to help turn out key areas of Democratic support—party insiders were worried that their base wouldn’t turn out. These fears were complicated by the fact that Menendez’s approval ratings are in the toilet, with Democrats depressed over the ethics fiasco.

(Read more from “Jersey Trash: Sleazy Bob Menendez Wins Re-Election” HERE)

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You Won’t Believe the Technical Issues These Schools Had When People Showed up to Vote

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Technical issues are often hard to avoid, especially come election time. Faulty machines and old equipment cause headaches for county officials trying to organize and run their local voting booths. But, Anderson Livsey Elementary School in Snellville, GA may have just won the award for most embarrassing technical glitch yet. Voters were prevented from casting their ballots because, according to the school, the machines ran out of batteries and power cords.

. . .

Okay. I know I said earlier that the Snellville polling station may have had the worst excuse ever for inoperable voting machines. But then Detroit said hold my beer. Voters who showed up at Martin Luther King Jr. High School to do their civic duty Tuesday were turned away because…election workers could not locate the voting machines.

There have been other voting glitches reported across the country. In South Carolina, voters said their votes were being changed. Officials admitted their equipment was pretty dated. In Chandler, Arizona, election workers were informed that the building they were going to use had been foreclosed overnight. They were eventually moved to a nearby site. Meanwhile, New York City has been plagued with dysfunctional scanners. Voters in Tennessee had to fill out paper ballots because of a power outage. But officials could hardly be blamed for that. Storms had swept through the state. (Read more from “You Won’t Believe the Technical Issues These Schools Had When People Showed up to Vote” HERE)

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The Award for Best Election Day Ad Goes to… Delta Air Lines?

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The best Election Day ad, far and away, came from an entirely unexpected and non-political entity. Delta Air Lines released a new commercial Tuesday, on Election Day, saying that there is more that unites Americans than divides us.

“When you rise above the noise, the tweets, the talking heads, what you hear and what you see are two different things,” a narrator says.

“You hear about how ‘we’re a nation divided,’ yet from where we sit, we see no such thing.”

It’s a needed message of unity. Thank you, Delta. (For more from the author of “The Award for Best Election Day Ad Goes to… Delta Air Lines?” please click HERE)

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Watch: Undercover Sting Appears to Show Electioneering by Poll Workers

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James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas released a second undercover sting video on Tuesday from a polling station in New Jersey that appears to show poll workers encouraging people to vote a certain way.

At one point in the video, poll worker Corrine Haynes appears to suggest to Project Veritas’ undercover journalist that she should vote in a certain way for a ballot measure pertaining to whether school officials are appointed or elected.

“So, at the end of the vote, it’s what school type you want,” Haynes said. “Type 1 is appointed. Type 2 is elected. Elected, of course, because this is a democracy.” . . .

When the journalist later seeks to clarify Haynes’ comments, Haynes replied: “We want democracy. That’s what Democracy look like. Elected.” (Read more from “Watch: Undercover Sting Appears to Show Electioneering by Poll Workers” HERE)

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The Key Senate Races, All the Latest Results

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Heading into the election, polling data gave Republicans a decided advantage in maintaining control of the U.S. Senate, while Democrats enjoyed a slightly stronger likelihood of taking the House. According to Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight on the morning of the election, Republicans had a 4 in 5 chance (80.9%) of maintaining control of the Senate and were likely to end up with 52 seats, a net gain of one seat and one more than they need for the 51-seat majority.

Real Clear Politics’ average of the key polls Tuesday morning gave Republicans 49 seats that polling data indicates are highly likely to go their way, including two that “lean” heavily in Republicans’ favor (North Dakota and Texas), one (Mississippi’s special election) that is “likely” to go to the GOP, and 46 that are fully “safe” or not up. RCP gives Democrats a total of 43 seats that are very likely to go their way (five that “lean,” two that are “likely,” and 37 that are safe or not up).

If RCP’s averages of the polls are correct, that means that just eight Senate seats are truly in play: Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, Tennessee, and West Virginia. Other races that have garnered a lot of attention include North Dakota and Texas. Below is the final polling data for each of these key races and the latest updates on vote counts. . .

The contest for the traditionally center-right Arizona seat left empty by retiring Republican Jeff Flake is one of the Democrats’ best hopes of picking up a traditionally red seat. Polling data has consistently shown a very tight race between Republican Rep. Martha McSally and Democrat Rep. Kyrsten Sinema. RCP’s average of the latest polls gave McSally a razor-thin 1-point advantage, a statistical tie. The final Gravis poll showed McSally up by 1; Emerson gave Sinema a 1-point edge; HarrisX had McSally up by 3; ABC 15/OH Predictive Insights gave the Republican a 1-point edge; and Trafalgar Group gave McSally a 2-point lead. . . .

Incumbent Democrat Sen. Bill Nelson has found himself in neck-and-neck contest with Republican Gov. Rick Scott for the Florida seat, though most of the polls have given Nelson the edge. RCP’s averages of the most recent polls gives Nelson a 2.4% lead over Scott. Quinnipiac’s final poll showed Nelson up by 7 points; HarrisX found Scott leading by 2; Emerson gave Nelson a 5-point advantage; St. Pete Polls gave the incumbent a 4-point lead; and Trafalgar Group showed Scott with a slim 2-point edge. (Read more from “The Key Senate Races, All the Latest Results” HERE)

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Watch: Texas Poll Worker Tells Undercover Reporter They’ve Allowed ‘Tons’ of DACA Recipients to Vote

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James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas released an undercover sting video on Tuesday from a polling station in Texas that appears to show an election official saying that they’ve had ‘tons’ of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients voting in the election.

Project Veritas’ undercover journalist, posing as the girlfriend of a potential DACA voter, visited a polling station in Travis County, Texas to ask election officials if he could vote. . .

“Right. It doesn’t matter that he’s not a citizen?” the PV journalist replied, adding that she had heard on the internet that he could not vote. . .

Another woman, who appeared to be an election official, said that there was not an issue with DACA recipients voting, saying, “we got a lot of ’em.”​

(Read more from “Watch: Texas Poll Worker Tells Undercover Reporter They’ve Allowed ‘Tons’ of DACA Recipients to Vote” HERE)

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