Shortsighted Democrats Harm Voters—Especially Their Own
A hallmark of adulthood is thinking ahead. Since the year 2000, Democrats have refused to think ahead, and it’s been the cause of the country’s most pressing problems. Although Republicans are favored to carry the coming midterms, suppose they don’t. Should Democrats gain just two more seats in the Senate and keep control of the House, leftists will think they have achieved their dream but, in truth, they will wake up into a nightmare.
And the country will get more of the calamities shortsighted Democrats have already caused.
Consider the contested 2020 election. Democrats started the modern practice of contesting elections. They have sought to throw out electoral votes for every Republican elected president since 2000. When 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton lost to President Donald Trump, she called his win “illegitimate.” Then she helped convince two-thirds of her voters that she lost only because Russia hacked voting machines.
Had Democrats thought ahead, they might have foreseen that Republicans would react in kind and contest the election of the next Democratic president. But Democrats didn’t care. They treated our institutions as a frustrated toddler treats an uncooperating toy.
Consider also the seditious riots Democrats encouraged during the summer of 2020—arguably the most destructive and widespread in over half a century. At least 25 people died. Citizens pleaded for help. The White House came under attack.
Democrats responded by calling the protests just, the police racist, and all efforts to quell the riots fascist. Joe Biden slinked into his basement. And Kamala Harris helped bail rioters out of jail.
Had Democrats thought ahead, they might have foreseen that Republican voters would react with a protest of their own—and that it might get out of hand, just as the election protest at the Capitol did. But Democrats didn’t care.
Shortsighted Democrats caused the country nightmares. Now, Democrats plan to cause nightmares for their own voters. To make up for the moderates fleeing a Democratic Party intoxicated on bizarre philosophies and agitating to censor and suppress those with mainstream views on race and sex, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris seek to gin up votes along their leftist flank. They are promising leftists that Democrats will break the Senate supermajority rule, also called the filibuster, to pass two laws that only leftists want: one to guarantee no-reason mail-in voting and another to guarantee no-excuse abortion up till birth.
Leftists thinking ahead should see that the Democrats’ foolish plan will bring them only crushing defeats.
Democrats first started banging away at the filibuster nine years ago, when then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) threw a tantrum over some judges Republicans refused to vote for. Few remember the judges Reid muscled onto lower federal courts. But, everyone remembers Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett who followed. Leftists especially.
It didn’t have to be that way. Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), now the minority leader, told Reid what would happen: once Reid rolled back the filibuster for some judicial nominations, Republicans would roll it back for the rest. Reid didn’t care. Then, when McConnell led the Senate, Justice Antonin Scalia died. McConnell held Scalia’s seat open because without the filibuster, the 2016 election was to be an all-or-nothing gamble on who would pick Scalia’s successor. Trump and McConnell won. Reid had banged his toy on the floor—and it broke.
The filibuster is now gone for judicial nominations, but it remains for ordinary legislation. That includes all the awesome power Congress can exercise. The Civil Rights Acts. The Voting Rights Act. The Social Security Act. The filibuster protects such legislation from repeal and ensures that future legislation of such importance is popular enough to garner a supermajority of votes.
Yet, for the sake of just two ordinary bills, Democrats now promise to roll back the filibuster. McConnell already told Democrats what they’ll get instead: bills on unions, on abortion, on guns, on immigration—all written by Republicans alone. That means a wall, a ban on federal dollars going to abortion mills, a nationwide ban on abortion after some commonsense number of weeks’ gestation with an exception only for a mother’s life. All these laws would be popular enough with most Americans, but they’d be nightmares for leftists.
And for what? Roe v. Wade might still be law today had Harry Reid thought ahead in 2013. Yet abortion—which only a tiny sliver of women ever seek—is still legal in the most dire situations in every state, most cases in most states, and all cases in several. Everyone with the right to vote can vote. Leftists have nothing to gain and everything to lose—and sooner than they may realize. In 2024, nine vulnerable Democrats are up for reelection in the Senate while at most only one Republican is, and neither Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, nor any other potential Democratic presidential nominee is likely to beat President Trump or Governor Ron DeSantis. Betting markets show a Republican being the next president. Leftist wins from breaking the filibuster will be reversed, and a cavalcade of crushing defeats will follow.
“Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point,” Ebenezer Scrooge wailed out to the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, “answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be, only?” That’s a question leftists should ask Joe Biden and Kamala Harris about the Democrats’ childish filibuster plans. It’s a question adults should answer on November 8.
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