Here we are, one year past the elections of 2020, and familiar themes are being struck.
“The Democrats have no winning message, and Republicans should fare well this year and next.”
Democrats, having been given one year of complete power in Washington DC, appear a shambles. Their moderates have lost most battles with their fringe extremists. They have no legislative wins to brag about. They’ve exposed their true anti-American agenda. They’ve been caught red-handed lying to the American people, as well as lying under oath to the United States Senate. They are implementing authoritarianism at the city, state, and federal government levels. Inflation is sky-rocketing. They bungled the worst exit we’ve ever conducted from a theater of war. They literally gave the same terrorists we’ve been attempting to keep at bay for two decades their own sandbox to go back to training in. They ended our energy independence, killed ten of thousands of jobs for pipeline workers, and denied our right to a pipeline, all while doing the opposite for the Russians. The *President is owned by China—our most lethal and destabilizing threat. They are denying therapeutic cures for the pandemic that have ended other nations’ new cases of CoVid19. They are telling parents we have no right to stop public educators who have simultaneously promised to teach racism to our children. They’ve even labeled as “phony culture wars” the objections of parents who don’t want their daughters raped in school bathrooms by skirt-wearing boys—even AFTER it has happened. They are doubling down on mandates, and more.
That’s quite a list and it barely scratches the surface.
In one year.
Over the course of the last year those of us who warned that such change would be ushered in with a Biden/Harris/Rice/Obama administration still would not have believed that they could have done this much, that quickly.
So with that as backdrop my attention is turned to news reports, breathless political analysts, and heads of parents’ groups that declare that the nation should watch very carefully the results of Virginia and New Jersey this year. The words “bellwether” and “harbinger” are used on repeat.
The only problem is — I’m not sure their enthusiasm is merited.
Coming out of the laughable elections of 2020, where a literal dementia patient, who has bathroom accidents while visiting the pope, supposedly toppled the most successful single term President in history, there was only one focus that Americans should have had electorally before the next round of votes were taken: election integrity.
The codified election engineering that gambled with fringes of legality under the guise of a pandemic had to be put to an end.
In the last week, I’ve spoken to six former members of the Trump administration—including several who were long time veterans of elections—to ask them their satisfaction that clean elections are now in place.
Not one of them answered in the affirmative.
Former press secretaries Sean Spicer and Kayleigh McEnany have new books out this fall, neither spoke confidently as to the certainty of better outcomes process-wise. Former assistant press Secretary Hogan Gidley has been a wrecking ball for the cause thus far but he quietly affirmed, “we’re not there yet.”
Pulitzer-worthy Mollie Hemingway of the Federalist has in her classic style done a deconstruct/reconstruct of everything that happened in the 2020 elections in her new book titled RIGGED. Her response to the same question was hopeful but far from confident. Adding quickly how important it is not to sit on the sidelines but to become even more engaged. A position I strongly support.
Even the former President’s faithful advisor and watch dog economist Peter Navarro—who authored three in depth reports immediately following the elections that identified the literal hundreds of ways the rules were twisted in 2020. Even he admitted to me that while some progress has been made, “we are far from where we should be.” His new book In Trump Time details much of what he uncovered in the aftermath.
As you’ve watched the bizarre campaigning of Terry McCaulliffe in Virginia, and the absurdly awkward Phil Murphy in New Jersey, one begins to realize that neither of them are campaigning as though they are in the political fights of their lives.
They seem almost bothered by this formality of having to ask for people’s votes.
And they’ve gone as far as to make pretty stringent plans against their voters following a win on Tuesday.
I’m not sure that Tuesday will be a bellwether predictive of what will happen in 2022.
I know this much, based on the read of the electorate currently, the Democrats should be wiped out in 2022. It should be scorched earth. There should be none left standing.
Unless of course, they’re playing a completely different game—with a completely different set of rules—than those trying to earn the goodwill of voters.
Hence the anxiety in my mind, and the fire in my belly.