In all but one of the last seven presidential elections, Republicans lost the popular vote. George W. Bush and Donald Trump won only by capturing narrow majorities in the Electoral College.

Hence the grand strategy of the left: to enlarge and alter the U.S. electorate so as to put victory as far out of reach for national Republicans as it is today for California Republicans, and to convert the GOP into America's permanent minority party.

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In its lede editorial Wednesday, The New York Times called upon Congress to amend the National Emergency Act to "erect a wall against any President, not just Mr. Trump, who insists on creating emergencies where none exist."

Trump "took advantage" of a "loophole" in the NEA, said The Times, to declare "a crisis at the border, contrary to all evidence."

The Times news desk, however, apparently failed to alert the editorial page on what the top story would be that day.

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As President Trump flew home from his Hanoi summit with Kim Jong Un, Mike Pompeo peeled off and flew to Manila. And there the Secretary of State made a startling declaration.

Any armed attack by China on a Philippine ship or plane in the South China Sea, he told the Philippine government, will be treated as an attack on an American ship or plane, bringing a U.S. military response.

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"Politics stops at the water's edge" was a tradition that, not so long ago, was observed by both parties, particularly when a president was abroad, speaking for the nation.

The tradition was enunciated by Sen. Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan in 1947, as many of the Republicans in the 80th Congress moved to back Truman's leadership in the Cold War against Stalin's empire.

The tradition lasted until the mid-1960s, when the left wing of the Democratic Party turned viscerally, and even violently, against the war in Vietnam and President Lyndon Johnson.

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Having embraced "Medicare-for-all," free college tuition and a Green New Deal that would mandate an early end of all oil, gas and coal-fired power plants, the Democratic Party's lurch to the left rolls on.

Presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren both called last week for race-based reparations for slavery.

"Centuries of slavery, Jim Crow, legal discrimination and segregation, and discrimination that exist today have led to a systemic wealth gap between black and white Americans," Harris told The New York Times. "I'm serious about taking an approach that would change policies and structures and make real investments in black communities."

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