Before March of this year, the Democrats had only a few things to run on against Donald Trump, and none of them had much to do with policy or the day-to-day conditions of the average American family:
- The economy was historically strong.
- The unemployment rate was unprecedentedly low.
- Wages were up across all sectors, especially for middle and low-income Americans.
- ISIS had been defanged.
- Trump's policy toward NATO and our European allies was showing great results.
- NAFTA had been scrapped and the USMCA had taken hold as its superior replacement.
- China had acquiesced on the first stages of a trade deal and was moving toward the next steps in that complicated process.
All the Democrats had to go against Trump was his somewhat abrasive personality and their impeachment fantasies that had been destroyed and left in ashes by mid-February.
Then, along came the coronavirus.
Democrats and their willing allies in the media pushed and prodded and cajoled and shamed and threatened and demanded that governments across the nation call for quarantines and economic shut-downs.
Trump reluctantly went along with a "15 days to flatten the curve" policy that he hoped would be lifted by Easter (mid-April). When he suggested that, the Democrats and the media went insane.
They demanded we keep everything in the country under shut down indefinitely.
When states like Florida, Georgia and Texas began loosening restrictions, Democrats demonized those governors and screamed that Republicans were killing innocent people.
When the science showed that children were barely affected by the virus and it appeared that schools could re-open this fall, Democrat-controlled teachers' unions (or do the unions control the Democrats?) refused to return to work "Until it's safe" without showing any science, data or explanation as to what was "unsafe" and what conditions would constitute a "safe" environment. They just insisted that every child in every major city of this country be relegated to at-home instruction, thus inconveniencing millions of parents and diminishing the educational opportunity of millions of children those same teachers claim to care about.
And yesterday, in her first appearance as Joe Biden's running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris revealed the strategy behind it all.
She, Biden and the Democrats are using COVID-19 as their number one political asset. They need the coronavirus... without it, they've got nothing.
"The president's mismanagement of the pandemic has plunged us into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression," Harris proclaimed in her debut remarks.
Powerful.
Too bad it's a total lie.
Kyle Smith at National Review has a great take-down on this one:
The pandemic and its associated lockdowns, not the president, are responsible for the economic contraction. Donald Trump is not the president of the euro zone, which suffered through an even more dire economic contraction in the second quarter: minus 40.3 percent, on an annualized basis, as against minus 32.9 percent in the US. The U.K. suffered a contraction of 59.8 percent, also on an annualized basis. Donald Trump is not the prime minister of the United Kingdom. The U.S. economy did slightly better than Germany’s in the second quarter. And it’s questionable to compare the current crisis to the Great Depression, which was not only deep but lasted more than a decade. The U.S. added 1.8 million jobs in July and Goldman Sachs predicts 25 percent (annualized) GDP growth in the current third quarter, which would mark an end to the U.S. recession after two quarters.
She then tried to compare the COVID-19 global pandemic that has crippled the economies of the majority of nations in the western world and across the Pacific rim to Ebola.
"Six years ago, in fact, we had a different health crisis," Harris said. "It was called Ebola. We all remember that pandemic."
Sadly for Harris and her speechwriters, we do remember Ebola, and the most important thing we remember about it was that it was not, in fact, a pandemic.
Words still matter. They mean things. "Pandemic" is a very specific word that is defined by the World Health Organization for very specific reasons. It's so we don't confuse ourselves by comparing apples to oranges. It's so lying political hacks don't use a virus to attack their political foes and mislead a populace to think that a politician is responsible for negligence when he is not.
Finally, Harris threw out the most egregious and despicable lie of them all. "Just look where they've gotten us: more than 16 million out of work; millions of kids who cannot go back to school..."
Trump has been imploring school systems to bring children back to school. The CDC has been begging school systems to return to normal. Parents across this nation have been demanding that their children be allowed back in the classrooms.
But Democrats and their minions in the teachers' unions are standing in the schoolhouse doors barring children from entry (just like Democrats during school segregation).
And now, it's clear why.
They want you unemployed. They want the economy destroyed. They want baseball canceled. They want college football canceled. They want Broadway shut down. They want Disney parks closed. They want beaches closed. They want you miserable. They want you depressed. They want you angry. They want you desperate.
It's their strategy.
The coronavirus is their single, greatest political asset this year. It's all they've got. And they gladly accept the gift presented to them by the communists in Beijing who have indicated that they want to defeat Donald Trump.
The Democrats are just fine colluding with their ideological cousins in the Chinese Communist Party if it means destroying Donald Trump and retaining power.
And Kamala Harris' ham-handed, politically opportunistic speech just revealed it.
Now, what are you going to do to stop them?
