If you thought 2019 was crazy, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
As radical as Democratic candidates and elected officials were last year, this year it will get worse. As droolingly insane and violent the liberal mob was last year, this year it will be worse. If they acted that way in an off year, just imagine what they’ll do with everything on the line.
As much as it may seem like the radical fringe of the party has absorbed the whole thing, the rest of the party still exists. They’ve just made a calculation, a bet, that there are enough dedicated lunatics willing to crawl out from under their rocks to more than make up for any lost voters who might recognize how far over the edge the party as gone. Are there? There are a lot of them, but enough?
The anticipation and desperation of the left will grow as the election approaches. There won’t be any legislative accomplishments to brag about. The odds are high that the economy will still be rolling along, and we’re unlikely to be in a new war. That severely limits their ability to run on anything traditional.
What they will run on is that they impeached the president. They won’t spend a lot of time talking about what they impeached him for, bragging about charging him with “obstruction of Congress” and “abuse of power” lose their momentum the more people realize those aren’t real charges. They’re simply what liberals scream as they wake up from their night-terrors.
That’s a problem for Democrats. “We made up things to charge him with” has limited appeal, and they’ve already got the support of voters who aren’t bothered by making things up to hurt “Orange Man Bad.” But relying on people who will tattoo the date of the impeachment vote under their AOC tramp-stamp won’t change the minds of people who like the fact that more Americans have jobs now more than ever before.
“It’s the economy, stupid,” worked because the economy was in recession, but we aren’t. “Too many people have jobs” doesn’t have the same impact. That leaves them with very few options for a strategy.
Democrats will be forced into the unenviable position of having to convince people things aren’t really that good. “You don’t know how bad you have it,” doesn’t really make for a catchy bumper sticker or t-shirt.
The problem is people have it pretty good right now. It’s not perfect, it never is, but trying to convince people the key to making it better is more government and higher taxes is a pretty tough sell when fewer government regulations and lower taxes are how things got this good in the first place.
Still, they will try. The Washington Post’s resident bridge troll, Jennifer Rubin, who still tries to pretend she’s some sort of conservative, wrote a piece New Year’s Day fretting about how bad things are under the surface, which makes sense when you live under a bridge.
Rubin cites Steve Rattner, Obama’s “Car Czar” and “economic analyst” for Morning Joe, as the source for reasons for concern. Rattner was often cited by the left, the Paul Krugman is, because he says what they want to be true. Like Krugman, what Rattner says is rarely true.
On the morning of the 2016 election, Morning Joe’s “economic analyst” told the wanting ears of the hosts and audience, “if the likely event happens and Trump wins you will see a market crash of historic proportions, I think.”
That obviously didn’t happen, it didn’t come close to happening, but you’ll never go broke telling your audience what they want to hear. All you have to keep doing is changing the timeframe. “Sure, the economy hasn’t collapsed YET, but all indications are it soon could.” A few well-placed qualifiers to hedge your bets along with an infinite timeline (kind of like the climate change crowd) and your contract is renewed! You don’t have to be right, you just have to be useful.
And the left is lousy with useful idiots in the media. The Democratic Party is now the media’s farm team, so any Wally Pipps not sufficiently toeing the line has a string of Lou Gehrigs willing to take their place.
That will be 2020 – one hysterical outrage after another, one lie after another. The only thing crazier than a liberal with power is a liberal out of power trying to obtain it.
Derek is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!), host of a daily radio show on WCBM in Maryland, and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and