The battle liberals have secretly hoped for is finally enjoined. Their “secret weapon” now deployed, they are convinced that the long-promised blue wave is now an inevitability.
Ironically, similar to election night in 2016, when they sat befuddled at losses in state after state that they had assumed were theirs for the keeping, a game now unfolds that I believe leads to a second late election night loss in a row.
So how will that happen?
Easy: the lodestars!
As I sat in the green room at Fox News on Friday waiting for my hit on Outnumbered Overtime with Harris Faulkner it felt like a surreal time-warp. It reminded me of the days when I would be waiting in the green room to go on Megyn Kelly’s daytime show on Fox News—the exact same hour of the day. The exact same President was speaking on the green room video monitors: Barack Obama.
I had to keep checking my watch to see how long before I needed to make sure I was out of make-up in time to be on set.
But there droning over my shoulder was President Trump’s predecessor, breaking precedent and going after his successor in full throated, self-focused hubris that marked his presidency in large measure. On Friday he referred to himself 102 times.
But it’s not his self absorption that causes most people to judge his time in office as being so different than the current administration. In reality it was his lackluster, unimpressive performance in the arena of public policy.
If ever there were two polar opposites in personality, policy, and performance, these are the two presidents that define such contrast.
For all of the “public decorum” that President Obama is supposed to exhibit, his polices—the part of his presidency that actually impacted people—had seriously negative effect. And for all of the supposed lack of “decorum” President Trump is reported to exhibit—his policies have done many things Obama’s policies never could.
Neither of these two men are on the ballot in November, yet this election is the biggest heavy-weight fight of the political modern era—and in some way dwarfs 2016.
Yes I said “dwarfs.”
For whatever success she had in stalling out Bernie, and making her second—and very much (in her mind)—entitled run for office, the Hillary vs. Trump match-up wasn’t the fight liberals in America wanted to see. They wanted Obama vs. Trump—man on man. They wanted to have Obama make the case that his socialist leanings were the enlightened path for tomorrow, and that the dingy “Make America Great Again” hat wearing rednecks would finally be put to pasture.
They needed Obama to go public and explain his bizarre theory (which he repeated on Friday & Saturday) that “progress takes time.” They needed someone with “great ‘people’ skills” to lull the masses back to sleep with syrupy words, flowing phrases, and sophisticated theories that the American people had to trust and believe would make the world better. This is the same person, the greater multitude of white hairs aside, who spoke from the University of Illinois podium on Friday.
They believe that if they simply “turn back the clock” (Obama’s words not mine) that the pining for the old days when a “well spoken, nice man” would go quasi-black-preacher and “call people home.”
They believe that Trump’s candor, crassness, and willingness to characterize his opponents in a form of “punching back” that few are used to seeing in the public space would be such a contrast that Obama would of course have to win just on his merits of style.
The only problem there is Trump’s policies have unleashed one of the greatest seasons of economic “new beginnings” one may never again see in a generation.
Progress didn’t take time, it has taken work. Trump works something like fifteen hours a day. His drug of choice is making progress. He came into office feeling a desperation of the American voter who had all but lost hope that their country would ever return to the leadership place it deserves in the world community. Trump made progress by rolling back what is turning out to be thousands of Obama dictates. Dictates that had seen devastating slowdowns on American industry, energy, and enterprise. Once deregulation got rolling, economic reforms, tax system overhauls, and removal of the Obamacare mandate helped businesses explode. While Obama never oversaw a day in the markets where even one “all time high” occurred. President Trumps has seen “all time highs” occur on 99 of his first 600 days in office. The truth is, the markets and economy had adjusted to Obama’s overbearing regulations. They had figured out work-arounds. But when Trump took off the handcuffs the thoroughbred of our economic engine bolted, and really has yet to look back.
But economics were only part of this battle of the lodestars.
In foreign policy, Obama told the American people he was right, enlightened, and within his appropriate authority to give our enemies in Iran $750 billion dollars, and more or less allow them to write an agreement in relationship to nuclear pursuits that we more or less rubber stamped. Trump has torn up that agreement and not a dime of American dollars has flowed to the terrorists since he has.
On national security Obama couldn’t seem to stop ISIS. Trump has scrubbed their operations from the face of the earth. On immigration Obama’s Justice Department allowed the drug cartels to smuggle guns from the U.S. that ended up being used against his own border guards—killing them on more than one occasion. Trump—needless to say—has handled the border in a more common sense manner. In insisting that we know who is coming here, and making it harder for people to cheat, it is clear to see, how American citizens are better off (especially families of our border guard.) North Korea “perplexed” Obama. Trump scares North Korea. Obama refused to stand by our ally in Israel. Trump did what no President has had the guts to and moved our embassy to their national capital and recognized it as such. Obama apologized to world powers. Trump has told them to “pay their share.”
Obama was fine with letting more jobs flow overseas, and showed zero interest in reviving American manufacturing (formerly a core component of the Democratic message.) Trump not only talked about bringing the jobs back, we’ve watched as a nation as these factories are re-opening, and new ones are being built.
Obama speaks like a white collar elitist, but affects his delivery from midwest farmer to inner city preacher depending on the changing expectations of his audience.
Trump speaks like a regular person, feeling real feelings about the condition his nation has fallen into over the past several decades and why he works fifteen hours a day to fix it.
Obama hid his radical socialism enough for church-going union households in the past to look past it. Trump’s fair market contrast demonstrates such white hot difference in the two theories that it exposes everything for what it is, as it is.
So the battle is enjoined.
Obama’s vision of a progressive America—government controlling everything from home temperature to your car tire’s air pressure, forcing you to believe in sexual practices you may find offensive, and getting you to pay for all of it with increased taxes at every turn—is being cast once again by the man himself.
Trump’s version of a strong America—fair markets, free markets, greater religious freedoms, lower taxes, a safer world, and better deals for our workers—has actually accomplished more “fundamental transformation” of the American experience in 600 days than Obama did in 8 years.
Neither are on the ballot. Yet this midterm election is very clearly a fight to the rhetorical death between the two.
America will decide in November.
And liberals…
Will lose.