Democrats can’t generate voter enthusiasm for a man who barely clocks in at room temperature.
So instead, they’re opting to gin up voter anger.
Spoiler: it will backfire.
So instead, they’re opting to gin up voter anger.
Spoiler: it will backfire.
Except for the news media, not many voters are all that excited at the prospect of a Joe Biden presidency. The lack of voter enthusiasm among traditionally Democrat voting blocs is hard to miss at this point. And while bitter members of the Resistance might strut around bragging about a Blue Wave, they are hard-pressed to disguise how forced their bravado has become.
So what are the Democrats to do?
They can’t create out of thin air some semblance of voter enthusiasm for a man who barely clocks in at room temperature.
So instead, they’re opting for ginning up voter anger.
If you can’t get your voters excited, then get them really, really angry.
If you can’t fire them up, then rile them up.
Right now, voter anger is all they have to go with. And they will keep going to that well hoping it never dries out.
But voter anger is a piss-poor substitute for voter enthusiasm. What’s more, rage is impossible to control.
Democrats really thought the death of George Floyd and the subsequent riots would generate the voter anger needed to propel Joe to the White House.
But, as I said, rage is impossible to control. And as result the riots backfired on them.
They got voter anger, all right. Only voters were angry at the Democrats which drove them to Trump rather than Biden.
At the Democratic convention, they tried to stoke the flames further – attacking Trump, attacking America, attacking police, and of course, accusing Trump and his voters of being White Supremacists and racists.
The overall message was “Aren’t you angry about what Trump has done to this shitty country?”
But then the Republican convention came along. The positive, uplifting messages of freedom and opportunity stood in stark contrast to the Get Out the Angry Voter drive from the Democrat convention. The Republican convention succeeded in doing what the Democrat convention couldn’t. It revved up voter enthusiasm even higher.
So now the Democrats are doubling down.
Which isn’t very bright. Especially when you consider that every ounce of mud they’ve thrown at President Trump slides off of him like he’s been Scotch-Guarded – or worse, bounces off him and hits the Democrats dead between the eyes.
But they won’t shift gears. Getting voters enthusiastic about the decrepit old coot at the top of the ticket is one hell of a hard sell. Whereas stoking fury and rage is easy with people who have been stewing in non-stop fury for the last four years.
That’s what behind this anonymously-sourced Atlantic story that broke Thursday.
Trust me. The objective of this “four anonymous sources with knowledge of the incident” story isn’t to sway voters or change minds. The people who distrust the media will dismiss it as yet another anonymously-sourced hit piece. And the people who hate Trump with every fiber of their being will instantly believe it.
But it is that latter group the Democrats are targeting with this hit piece.
Without voter enthusiasm to drive voters to the polls in November, the Democrats are doomed – and not just Biden, but down-ticket Democrats as well.
They need that latter group good and angry – angry enough to fuel rage voting.
Think of rage voting as the electoral cousin of the revenge f*ck.
Rage voters don’t have anything invested in the guy they’re voting for. But they are willing to go to the polls and vote for him just to spite the guy they hate.
The Atlantic hit-piece was part of a well-coordinated Get Out the Rage Vote operation.
And it was completely coordinated between the Democrats and the news media.
Which explains why, less than twelve hours after the Atlantic story hit, there were ready-made commercials based on its contents airing on MSNBC. It explains why, in Biden’s hastily arranged, soft-ball press conference yesterday the first “reporter” called on was the one from the Atlantic.
This was a planned attack – not to sway the undecided or current Trump voters, but to fuel the anger of the Resistance in hopes that their rage over the story propels them to the polls.
In fact, like several others, I suspect they pulled the trigger on this hit piece far earlier than they had intended. More than likely, this was in the hopper for closer to the election.
But then President Trump had a gangbuster week, and his polling numbers began to rise.
His trip to Kenosha was extremely well-received. Then there were his well-attended campaign events in North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Plus the outstanding jobs numbers showing that the self-inflicted economic damage from the pandemic response was turning around faster than expected (or hoped for if you’re a Democrat). Then the week ended with amazing news about the Kosovo and Serbia agreement.
All-in-all this week was a big win for the President.
On the Democrat side meanwhile, this past week was an unmitigated disaster. Unlike Trump, Biden’s trip to Kenosha was a complete and utter flop. This after Biden’s staged “speech” in Pittsburgh dropped dead at the starting gate.
And, lest we forget Nancy Pelosi’s SalonGate. Sure, Democrats and the media are pretending it wasn’t a big deal. But it was a big deal. Especially because Nancy’s response was to blame the salon owner while putting a target on her back.
SalonGate, like the BLM/Antifa riots, resulted in voter anger all right. But once again, the anger was directed at the Democrats.
So the Democrats and the media needed a diversion, and they needed it quick. So, rather than wait until closer to the election to deploy that garbage Atlantic piece, they were forced to release it right before a holiday weekend (which is never a good time to deploy a smear campaign).
And I’m not the only one who thinks this is the case.
I imagine they have a number of hit pieces in the queue for release in the intervening weeks before the election. All of them carefully coordinated between the press and the Biden campaign. And every single one of them is intended to make up for the lack of voter enthusiasm by getting their voters good and mad.
And here’s the thing. They know this Atlantic hit piece is absolute garbage. The fact that it has been completely debunked by people who were actually there – including John Bolton who isn’t exactly a Trump fan – means nothing to the Democrats or the media.
As “Disaffected Liberal” and new Trump voter Tim Pool put it yesterday, “This smear is cartoonishly bad. Trump calling WW1 veterans losers? Claiming he didn’t know why the US fought with the Allies??! It’s like Trump derangement syndrome fan fiction written by a 15 year old.”
But this smear isn’t about reporting facts; it isn’t about the truth. It is absolutely fan fiction the sole purpose of which is to generate rage among the Resistance.
And those same people who flew into a rage over the RussiaGate fan fiction will gobble this up with a spoon.
For four years now the Resistance has been in a state of perpetual anger – eager and willing to vote Trump out in 2020. And the best the Democrats could give them for Trump’s opponent is a 77-year-old man in the throes of dementia. No wonder they’re not enthusiastic.
This election cycle has been extremely dispiriting for the ResistanceLOL. And dispirited voters are less likely to vote.
The only hope the Democrats have is to inject a new supply of rage in hopes that it drives the Resistance to the polls in November.
The Atlantic hit-piece is all about preaching to a completely unenthusiastic choir. If Democrats can’t fire up these voters with excitement for their nominee, they’ll happily settle for exploiting their Trump derangement.
But like their embrace of the rioting BLM/Antifa, this will backfire on them too.
These kinds of scurrilous slanders that are so easily debunked will not only make Trump voters even more fired up about November, it’s very possible that undecideds will get so disgusted with the clownish nature of these smears that they too cast their votes for Trump.
In other words, the media and the Democrats’ craven embrace of violence coupled with these coordinated hit-pieces may very well inspire rage voting all right, but not for Joe Biden.
