Democrats have been at the center of a circular firing squad since the November 5 election and the innumerable attempts to analyze what went wrong for them. Adding to the woes of liberals is an ideological whiplash following the murder of UnitedHealthcare Chief Executive Officer Brian Thompson.
Liberal women who just a few weeks ago announced they were swearing off men in protest of Donald Trump’s victory are now showering adoration on 26-year old Luigi Mangione, the man accused of killing Thompson on a New York City sidewalk on December 4. The response of women to Mangione hasn’t reached the level of BeatleMania but there’s no shortage of them on social media professing their desires for Mangione. It’s a 180-degree turn from the angry liberal females pledging to forswear boyfriends and husbands.
Female attraction to dangerous bad boys is nothing new. Mass murderer Ted Bundy and cult leader Charles Manson both received plenty of love letters from women enamored of them for whatever reason women do that. But these feminine proclivities are now amplified by social media exhibitionists who feel the need to tell the world of their romantic yearnings for Mangione. I have not yet seen any TikTok videos by women who now regret having shaved their heads to make themselves unattractive but I should not be surprised to know they’re out there.
Adding to this stunning U-Turn on attraction to men is the apparent condemnation of Obamacare, one of the left’s signature achievements of this century. There’s a growing volume of evidence that Mangione was dissatisfied with the state of healthcare in America, an aspect of Thompson’s murder that caught the attention of Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.
“The visceral response from people across this country who feel cheated, ripped off, and threatened by the vile practices of their insurance companies should be a warning to everyone in the health care system,” Warren told a reporter for the Huffington Post. “Violence is never the answer, but people can only be pushed so far.”
Health care providers and insurers work within the structure of the law. That would be Obamacare. Nobody is saying United Healthcare is breaking the law yet according to Warren, the state of health care today is bad enough that some people might be “pushed so far,” as to respond violently. It’s possible she was trying to make the case for socialized medicine when she called Thompson’s murder a warning to other people who work in healthcare. Instead, she correlated violence with the failures of Obamacare.
These striking reversals of opinion in the wake of Thompson’s murder - one cultural, one political - demonstrate the intellectual inconsistency of so many liberal policies and those who espouse them. We’ve seen the same thing with the politics of sexuality in recent years. Not so long ago, we were told that sexuality was innate, that people with same-sex attractions were born that way. Today, we’re told that sexuality is fluid, that humans are capable of being one thing one day, and something different at a later date.
Similarly, we were told that Obamacare was the answer to what ails the American healthcare system. Today, it’s a warning to those working in it. Last month, women were embracing the 4B movement of no dating men, no marrying men, no sex with men, and no children with men. Today, many are lining up to express their affections for the man accused of killing Thompson.
Not all such reversals are done for silly or unwise reasons. Look at New York City, a sanctuary city for illegal aliens for many years. Now, Mayor Eric Adams says he wants to help with their deportation. “Those who are committing crimes in our city must be addressed, and we should change the current sanctuary city law to address that issue,” said Adams.
But a reversal on illegal immigration policy in New York may not be a done deal. Some people are so wedded to their position on this issue, the notion of Adams even thinking about deportation was called “despicable.” Adams will likely face blowback from the left for helping deport criminal illegal aliens. Then again, doing so might help him win reelection next year. A Siena College poll this week showed that most New Yorkers support deportation, including 38% of Democrats and 54% of independents.
The odds of Democrats reversing course are often pretty long. Rather than examining whether their policies might not be popular with people, they tend to focus on how to better communicate their ideas, as if better talking points would make more people support taxpayer funded sex change operations for incarcerated illegal aliens. We’ll see. The political fortunes of Democrats will hinge on whichever course they choose. It all depends on whether they listen to the people they hope to represent.