We’re hours away from the polls closing for the 2022 election cycle. Some liberal pundits are hoping for the best, praying for a “red mirage” when all indicators say otherwise. It’s not like they didn’t have the time to turn things around. Democrats had 18 months to govern and failed miserably, bogged down by intraparty squabbles. When serious economic woes arose in the past year, Democrats ignored or dismissed it entirely as a right-wing myth. Their voters were concerned about abortion, global warming, and January 6, which no one had cared about for months. Inflation was hammering American working families, and we’ve noted here that women were the first to see the inflation missile nuke their home budgets. These ladies balance the books, and The Wall Street Journal poll showing a 26-point shift among suburban white women away from Democrats bears that out.
The economy, inflation, and crime were the top issues for most Americans, and the Democrats’ gross indifference has leeched into reliable Democratic voting blocs—it explains why 17-21 percent of Black Americans are backing Republicans. Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell knows why Democrats could get torched tonight—and she summed it up with one word: denial (via WaPo):
Democrats appear to be heading toward painful losses on Tuesday, in one if not both houses of Congress. What went wrong will be debated for months, perhaps years.
Much of the problem can be summed up in one word: denial.
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…if Democrats do some soul-searching, as a growing chorus of loyal allies is urging, they might come upon another reason for their weakness this cycle.
For nearly two years, Democratic leadership has often pushed aside politically inconvenient developments rather than facing them head-on. They have often told themselves stories they want to believe instead of stories that are true — and that might motivate them to change their messaging or policy direction.
Inflation offers one illustrative example.
Early in 2021, there was reasonable disagreement about whether above-average price growth would linger or whether it was driven by “transitory” forces that would soon fade. As the year wore on, it became increasingly clear that inflation was persisting. Yet many Democrats continued to deny it was a major cause for concern.
First, they declared the problem was exaggerated, if not wholly invented, by the media — both mainstream and, especially, right-wing — despite some internal Democratic polling suggesting inflation was a growing worry among voters. Democrats also told themselves that lower-income households were benefiting from progressive decisions to keep stimulating an already-“hot” economy, and were therefore insulated from inflation. (This turned out not to be correct.) Some progressive commentators even mocked news stories about struggling families.
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Meanwhile, any non-right-wing experts who warned early on that inflation could become a serious problem were accused of being cranks, attention-seeking contrarians or, sometimes, even traitors (if they happened to be former Democratic administration officials, anyway). Tough love was perceived as disloyalty.
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They’ve downplayed voters’ concerns on crime, violent protests, school closures and rising recession risks. These are vulnerabilities that Republicans have exploited during the campaign (while offering no solutions of their own, of course).
Democrats have also convinced themselves that pet policies beloved by left-wing Twitter activists will be broadly “popular” even when polls suggested public opinion is mixed at best. Such is the case with President Biden’s massive student debt forgiveness plan. The issue has been featured more often in Republican campaign ads this cycle than Democratic ones, according to AdImpact.
Even now, polling data — whether released by nonpartisan news sources or left-of-center, Democratic-aligned organizations — is often treated as suspect by the progressive peanut gallery, at least when the findings don’t flatter Democrats.
She cites Ruy Teixeira, a liberal academic cast out from the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank, for not kowtowing to the will of woke leftists. He noted that liberals are often caught in the “Fox News fallacy,” where if liberals see this right-leaning network expound on a particular issue, it must not be accurate.
Months later, inflation is still wrecking working families. Crime is spiking, with voters very much receptive to issues relating to enhancing public safety. Democrats are bad for Americans’ bank accounts. That’s the bottom line this year. It’s not abortion, which Democrats wasted excessive time on in the election's closing weeks. It’s not global warming or a little Capitol Hill riot. Democrats gave the impression to voters that they didn’t care about the issues impacting them. There’s some truth in that, given the Left’s insufferable self-righteous persona.