Less than one year ago, the Democrats were reveling in their enormous +13 generic ballot favorability. Democratic strategists were highly enthusiastic about the possibility of a truly enormous blue wave that would wipe out Republicans in the House and Senate, leaving them to pack their desks and office memorabilia into small corrugated cardboard boxes and head home. That presumed national progressive sentiment, however, ticked down to +9…+5…+4…then to just a one-point lead with Democrats leading Republicans 43 percent to 42 percent, according to a report from The Hill.
Things are looking up for both President Donald Trump and the Republican Party as the Democrats now think their chances of taking back the House are no better than the flip of a coin.
The Democrats have run on resistance this year: resistance to lower taxes, resistance to private-sector healthcare, resistance to the president – as they are now making their whole national midterm election campaign focus on impeaching Trump. Unfortunately, for Democrats, they have not yet realized that one cannot govern on resistance.
Not one Democrat voted for the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, because their agenda is to resist everything the president does. The Republican-led tax overhaul helped hundreds of companies doll out employee raises, hire more people, invest in new areas, and even raise minimum wages – all without forcing companies to pay their workers more. For a party that is “running on the economy” this year, they will have to wildly spin their “repeal the tax cuts” rhetoric to gain favor with the American public that has seen bigger paychecks.
After shutting down the government in January, because of resistance, of course, the Democratic leadership panicked then surrendered when they balked at a chance to make a deal on border security and a solution to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) measure. President Trump gave the left side of the congressional aisle until March to come up with a solution for 800,000 undocumented immigrants; however, because of their resistance, they missed their chance and came away with nothing. They proved their party agenda isn’t about helping the under-represented and downtrodden, but forwarding their own self-interest.
Some claimed that Democrats would share the brunt of the blame from the “Schumer shutdown,” and they did. Since that monumental failing, the Democratic Party has begun to turn on itself, returning to, as The Week calls them, “simpering, pragmatic dealmakers.”
There were dozens of House Democrats that voted in favor of the $1.3 trillion omnibus bill in late March. It wasn’t too long before Republicans introduced, via prodding from the White House, a “rescission” package that would cut $15 billion in federal spending that had not yet been spent. The measure passed, drawing party lines, with Democrats voting in dissent.
Interestingly, as well, 17 Senate Democrats have voted to roll back key provisions of the Obama-era Dodd-Frank law, which placed restrictions on large banks and sought to prevent another 2008 unraveling of the financial sector. Both Virginia Senators, Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, joined the GOP in handing President Trump a “win” for his agenda, causing Democrats to question, chastise, and attack their own senior delegation.
Aside from the institutional battles between the Democrats and Republicans, the progressive left has continuously winged that Trump will usher in the beginning of World War III, with fire raining down from the sky, and that every armament in the world will be pointed at the U.S. – all because of the president’s Twittersphere. Yet, the world continues to turn, the sun comes up, goes down again, with the talking heads of the liberally-biased media still shouting war cries.
Democrat strategists say that the party faithful must recapture their “gung-ho crisis” attitude from 2017. They are beginning to remind midterm candidates that the country is seemingly in the midst of a potentially democracy-ending crisis. But, as this occurs, Democrats are attempting still to “run on the economy” and drifting further and further left-of-center in an attempt to resist anything from the Republicans in Congress or the Trump Administration, even if it is, in the end, a good deal for Americans.
The Democrats are fully out of touch with reality. They have let their hatred of one man cloud their judgement and logic.
