DV Journal

President Joe Biden fired a salvo this week, releasing a new 2024 campaign ad.

Called “For You,” it’s part of a $30 million campaign targeting voters in battleground states, including Pennsylvania. The spot begins with Biden talking directly to viewers and touting his accomplishments as president. In the ad, Biden seems like a friendly father or grandfather.  He talks about what he’s done and claims former President Donald Trump lacked achievements during his term.

In the commercial, the 81-year-old Democrat highlights his age and experience as helping him get things done in Washington.

“Y’all want to talk about age? Let’s talk about age,” said Michael Tyler, communications director for the Biden-Harris campaign. “At 77, Joe Biden beat Donald Trump. At 78, he led us through the COVID crisis, put us on a path to creating nearly 15 million new jobs since the day he took office, and passed the bipartisan infrastructure law to repair our roads and bridges and expand access to broadband internet to every community.

“At 79, he got us the most significant gun safety legislation in a generation and became the first president to beat Big Pharma and cap the cost of insulin at $35 for seniors. At the same time, he made the single largest investment in history to combat climate change – all before his 80th birthday. Meanwhile, the only helpful thing Donald Trump did for the American people in four years was lose the 2020 election to Joe Biden – and it’s the one thing he won’t take credit for,” said Tyler.

“Now, Joe Biden is 81, and he’s going to beat Donald Trump again because he wakes up every single day fighting for the American people while Trump wages a campaign of revenge and retribution focused on himself. Trump may be four years younger than Joe Biden, but his ideas are old as hell, and they’ve already been rejected by the American people. Joe Biden is running to make sure we reject them for good.”

An Axis/Pennsylvania Energy Infrastructure Alliance poll from Feb. 25 to 27 had Biden ahead with Pennsylvania voters by 1 point. The poll had Biden at 40 percent, Donald Trump at 39 percent, Robert Kennedy Jr. at 8 percent, Jill Stein at 2 percent, and Cornell West at 1 percent.

However, a Morning Consult/Bloomberg poll taken Feb. 12 to 18 showed Biden at 36 percent, Trump at 45 percent, Kennedy at 8 percent, West at 1 percent, and Stein at 1 percent.

“Biden could put millions more behind this ad, and he’d still be missing the mark,” said GOP consultant Charlie Gerow. “He doesn’t even address the mess he’s created at the southern border, which is on every voter’s mind. Nobody is buying that we have the strongest economy in the world while they struggle to pay for their groceries. He can’t get around the age issue because it’s about much more than age. The American people can see that he’s failing. Telling them they’re wrong won’t work.”

“The close is cute, but cute doesn’t cut it,” Gerow added.

The six-week ad run will air on national and local broadcast and cable television in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and North Carolina. The ad campaign will target audiences in the key markets of Detroit, Flint, Grand Rapids, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay, Phoenix, Atlanta, Las Vegas, and Raleigh, focusing on voters of color and young voters.

The ad will be shown on popular entertainment and sports programming on stations like ESPN, TNT, FX, Adult Swim, and Comedy Central during high-viewership moments like the NCAA March Madness Tournament. It will also run digitally across platforms – heavily emphasizing Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.

“Joe Biden is burning cash gaslighting Pennsylvania voters, but they aren’t buying his lies,” said Rachel Lee, Republican National Committee spokeswoman. “Keystone State families and workers know that his failed agenda has driven up prices, threatened their safety, waged a war on American energy, and exacerbated the opioid crisis in the commonwealth. With Biden underwater in Pennsylvania, voters are enthusiastic to support President Donald J. Trump and restore American prosperity once again!”

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First-grade teachers use Venn diagrams to teach students about comparing and contrasting different data sets. For example, you can draw one circle around different words to describe Batman and another around words to describe Superman. Then, overlay the circles to separate their similarities and differences.

Superman has superpowers and can fly. Batman has no superpowers and drives the Batmobile. Those characteristics would not overlap in the circles.  However, both have secret identities (Bruce Wayne/Clark Kent), wear capes, and fight evil. So, those traits overlap in an easy-to-understand visual.

Apparently, Vice President Kamala Harris believes the American people only enjoy the comprehension level of a first grader because when she is not cackling about jokes only she can understand or offering confusing word salads such as “Community banks are in the community,”  she prattles on about her love of Venn diagrams. Perhaps she should use her favorite tool to analyze whether her ideas for America are truly nonpartisan and for all communities, as she loves to claim when she blunders her way through public appearances and her approval ratings tank.

Last week, Harris led her second meeting of our country’s “Voting Rights Leaders,” which her press release described as “on the frontlines of protecting voting rights.” Harris specifically talked about “promoting voting access for all communities.” In reviewing the list of “leaders” who participated in the meeting, perhaps Harris should have had a first grader draw a Venn diagram for her to confirm that the leaders spoke for all communities, as she insisted.

The first grader would have gone back to her and said, “Vice President Harris – you have created an echo chamber of far left-leaning groups, so I can only draw one circle. If you truly want representatives of all communities, perhaps you should include organizations like the Heritage Foundation, Public Interest Legal Foundation, or the Federalist Society so you can round out the viewpoints.”

Alas, it appears Harris thinks we are all nincompoops and morons devoid of critical thinking skills because she purposely stacked her group chockablock with leftist ideologues. In that regard, she takes her cues from President Joe Biden, who shamelessly issued an Executive Order on Promoting Access to Voting soon after he took office, claiming that “people of color” confront significant obstacles to voting, including “difficulties with voter registration, lack of election information, and barriers to access at polling places.”

When the far left makes these kinds of statements, they never provide concrete examples, likely because none exist. After all, in Pennsylvania, you can register to vote many different ways: online, by mail, in person at your county registration office, or at a plethora of government agencies, including the DMV. How exactly does this system exclude people of color? Spoiler alert: It does not.

What else can the government possibly do to get its citizens to register – show up at their homes? Well – as a matter of fact, that is exactly what Harris proposes – using your tax dollars. She now wants the federal government to pay college students to register as voters. Locally, Montgomery County Commissioner Neil Makhija (D), a member of the vice president’s exclusive voting group, let the cat out of the bag in a recent podcast, when he talked about mobilizing the students to go to “nursing homes” to “serve many people at once.” Who picks the nursing homes? How do we make sure we are reaching people of all political persuasions? Can anyone truly think these constitute altruistic “non-partisan efforts?”

If we must use tax dollars on students, I would rather pay them to work in their college libraries where perhaps they could put down their phones and avail themselves of books on world history. College students might learn about the work of Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda for Nazi Germany. He channeled Hitler’s own words: “…all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan.”

With the constant, incessant drumbeat harping that our taxpayer funds must “remove barriers to the ballot box,” the left banks on the public not realizing that what Democrats are doing is simply adding what they hope are more like-minded voters to their rolls. If their ideas will not win elections, perhaps registering more Democrats will do the trick.

When Democrats start talking about helping people in nursing homes and hospitals to register and vote, Americans should think about whether we want our government officials intruding on our most vulnerable citizens. Anyone who has sat by  a loved one’s bedside in a hospital knows the focus is on treatment and healing.  In the worst scenarios, families gather to say their goodbyes.

Similarly, nursing homes and care facilities keep their residents safe and comfortable, many of whom suffer from diminished mental capacity due to age or infirmity. If those people want to vote and are able to make that decision, they can do so without a taxpayer-funded college student, whom they have never met, intruding on them while they are at their most defenseless. After all, who wants to chat up a college student while in bed with only a hospital gown to protect your modesty? Even worse, being a taxpayer-funded agent of the Biden-Harris administration would give these students the imprimatur of some type of government authority such that our ill and elderly Americans might feel a compulsion to cooperate.

Ronald Reagan famously said that the nine most terrifying words in the English language are, “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” If he were here today, I am sure he would also add: “…and I am here to register you to vote and retrieve your ballot.”

Ballot harvesting of our most defenseless citizens will likely not be easy to stop in time for this year’s elections. If you see it happening, call the authorities and report it to the administrators of the homes and hospitals. But the real solution is to get these Democrats out of office.

Many people who fail to vote say they were too busy with other responsibilities and just could not find the time. That attitude assures that we will be perpetually in the grip of the left’s lunacy. If Republicans turn out in high enough margins, we accomplish two goals: (1) Diluting leftist tomfoolery and malfeasance; and (2) Electing leadership who will pass laws to make our elections more secure. When Harris draws the Venn diagram of the 2024 elections, I hope all Republicans are in the circle representing voters who responsibly cast their vote to retire the Biden-Harris administration.

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In a recent podcast interview, Montgomery County Commissioner Neil Makhija, who chairs the county Election Board, discussed participating in a voting roundtable hosted by Vice President Kamala Harris.

Harris said the federal government is going to make it easier to register to vote. One change is to hire college students through the work-study program to register voters.

At a “meeting with Voting Rights Leaders to Discuss the Fight for Voting Rights and Other Fundamental Freedoms,” as the White House labeled it, Harris touted the administration’s “work to promote voter participation for students.”

“For example, under the federal work study program, we now allow students to get paid, through federal work-study, to register people and to be nonpartisan poll workers,” Harris said.

The new policy is part of President Joe Biden’s 2021 “Promoting Access to Voting” executive order. On Monday, the Department of Education issued an advisory explaining how federal tax dollars can be used to pay students to register other students to vote. The money will be drawn out of Federal Work Study (FWS) funds.

“Voting is fundamental to our democracy, and our schools and colleges play an important role in helping our students become active participants in our democratic society,”  U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a statement.

Voter turnout in Pennsylvania is up because of voting by mail, said Makhija, a lawyer who taught election law at the University of Pennsylvania.

But “there are a lot of concerns about the right to vote and voter suppression,” said Makhija. A Department of Justice task force will train local election officials in security.

People who interact with the federal government human services, Social Security, and parks will be given material about how to register to vote in their state.

“The final piece that I’m really excited about is they changed the federal work study guidelines so that if you’re a student, and you’re on work study, you will be be able to get paid for working as a poll worker or working in a capacity registering voters. So this is great. Because we want young people to vote and we want young people to participate early,” said Makhija.

“We in Montgomery County are going to take extra steps with our 20 or so colleges to encourage young people and even get paid for it through work study, to participate, to serve as poll workers and to really be part of that bedrock of our Democratic process.”

Some of those students will be getting federal tax dollars to help create even more registered voters in  Democrat-dominated towns.

DVJournal asked Makhija about fears that partisan politics may be at play in the bid to pay college students to register voters. DVJournal noted the Swarthmore precinct where the students cast their ballots voted 85 percent for the Democratic presidential candidate in a state that the president carried by 1 percent.

“So, a Democratic White House is going to use taxpayer’s dollars to have college students register voters and work at the polls?” DVJournal asked.

Makhija said it will be “a whole of government process to enfranchise everyone…fighting for voting rights for everyone. We want to make sure that people in nursing homes (and) people with disabilities have a chance to vote by mail. All of these steps we can take to make sure that everyone has a chance to make their voice heard.”

Not everyone thinks paying college kids to register new voters is a good idea.

“While we support involvement in the political process, we do not support taxpayer-funded electioneering. This is another example of Democrats trying to stack the deck because they know they are playing a bad hand,” Pennsylvania House Minority Leader Bryan Cutler (R-Lancaster) said.

“If Democrats, both nationally and in Pennsylvania, stopped obstructing comprehensive election reform changes, they would be encouraging more people to voluntarily participate in the election process rather than improperly expending taxpayer resources to cajole unenthusiastic participants to work for their electoral benefit,” said Cutler.

In nursing homes, residents are vulnerable to voter fraud, such as in an instance where a woman who never voted before suddenly cast a mail-in vote from her Delaware County nursing home. And while many officials like to downplay the possibility of voter fraud, especially with mail-in ballots, a recent Heartland Institute poll showed one in five people who they asked admitted taking part in some variation of mail-in voter fraud.

In Chester County, a group of citizens double-checked the voting rolls, finding a plethora of people who were registered to vote but had moved or given the address of an office building or other improbable location.

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