The Democrats Face a Rendering of Their Own Making in 2022 Elections and Learned No Lessons in the Process
In today’s midterm 2022 elections, the Democrats are looking at dwindling prospects, and they have no one else to blame.
With today’s vote upon us, the only real mystery concerning the result is, “By how much?” All indicators – literally all worth focusing on – show a healthy GOP performance. As just one of the many indicators, in Florida, it is already looking like a romp. Traditionally the state sees a big number of Democrats in preliminary returns, with a strong Republican presence on voting day. In a never-before-seen result, the early voting already shows a greater GOP turnout ahead of tomorrow, including an edge in the deep blue county of Miami-Dade.
Nationally, races thought to be assured are now looked at as toss-ups, as the Democrat Party is seen spending money in areas it previously had not planned, including a blue New York district Biden took by 20 points just two years ago. Some studies have blacks voting with Republicans this year at a rate doubling their vote tally in 2020. How have the Democrats squandered things while controlling Washington, in just two years?
Smug confidence while ignoring their constituents is the generalized explanation, but there are specific areas and actions the party has adhered to all while ignoring evidence and data that should have alerted them to trouble. That these signals were disregarded while maintaining their course down dead-end policy avenues is both amazing to have watched and unsurprising to see leading to an assured demise tomorrow. They behaved like they were holding pocket-2s and pushed all their chips in before seeing any other cards.
Here is a collection of factors at play in the Democrats’ impending losses.
January 6 Obsession
The aftermath of the riot at the Capitol saw Democrats setting up what they certainly felt was an ironclad issue they could exploit for numerous elections. Well after the event, they made this a primary story and the press played along, all behaving as if this would register with voters for years, if not a generation. Instead, they came off like unsettled obsessives. This continued with the formation of the January 6 Committee, where they rigged the formation and blatantly behaved in a biased fashion.
As became evident, the public was both unimpressed and soon tired of it completely. Polls have long shown diminishing concern over the riot and over time fewer and fewer people held Republicans responsible for the violence. The Democrats were undeterred, continuing to beat the drum of this being the worst political event ever witnessed. The end result: January 6 rates low on lists of issues voters cite as a primary concern, with one poll actually showing more people now consider Democrats a greater threat to democracy than Republicans when asked.
Diminishing the Impact of Inflation
Primary in that tabulation of voter concerns is the economy. Inflation, gas prices, a recession, and other economic challenges are all top of the mind for voters. For well over a year now, Democrats and the press have been busying themselves with either telling people how things are going just fine or attempting to sell us on the concept that sometimes inflation is a good thing, or a recession is ultimately good for a healthy economy. Blaming Putin for gas prices or growing grocery bills on pandemic effects comes off sounding like the President and party are throwing up their hands in carefree fashion, all while trying to tell people they should focus on an event from two years ago.
Perhaps the best representation of this attitude comes from a CBS News report on a Virginia House race. Elaine Luria is on the January 6 committee and surprisingly finds herself in a statistical tie with Republican Jen Keggans. Scott MacFarlane, himself an ardent Jan. 6 obsessive, asks Luria if there is a risk in being one of the faces of the committee. Her response: “Honestly, I don’t care.” After his report, there was a panel discussion, and the pundits all seemed dismayed when MacFarlane detailed that in the district, voters were talking about their economic issues and no one was concerned over January 6.
Taking the Latino Vote for Granted
This year, another prevailing indicator of a Red Wave has been the reality of a significant number of Hispanic voters showing a trend to support the Republican Party. This has been a move now for a number of elections, and the Democrats appear to be in some form of denial. After counting on Hispanics for generations, the party leaders never regarded them as a collection of diverse ethnic groups, as the GOP has been addressing them independently. Issues of interest to Mexicans may differ from Venezuelans, and Puerto Ricans might focus on other issues entirely.
As this trend has been growing, the response from Democrats has not been to repair the issue; instead, they have hurled insulting excuses. Claims have been that these voters had been duped by misinformation, or they fell for QAnon theories on Spanish language radio, demeaning Hispanics as easily duped and not savvy enough to know better. The latest explanation is also insulting – the trend to declare that Latinos voting for Republicans have become white supremacists.
All of this comes down to regarding Hispanic voters as a very weak-minded set of people. If they stray from the accepted political support and think for themselves, suddenly they are easily influenced individuals prone to be swayed by QAnon conspiracies, nefarious media types who dupe them with lies, or they give in to base racist instincts. Any Latino who thinks “incorrectly” is not in their right mind.
Defeating MAGA Fascism
While long a Dem talking point, this messaging launched to a new stratosphere with Biden’s infamous Red Sermon Speech in September. Jose Biden tried to demonize the Republican Party entirely by attaching every member to Donald Trump, election deniers, insurrectionists, and all other manner of imagined right-wing extremism. The Democrats and the press stressed that this was the ultimate danger to our nation and we were facing down a vile threat of violent upheaval in the country.
This effort then was completely neutered by the Democrats’ own actions when it was revealed they had been funding advertising campaigns in support of GOP candidates who were Trump devotees and election deniers (in the effort to put up perceived weak candidates for Democrats to run against) the very people deemed the highest threat in the country. Once it was exposed that Democrats could not be overly concerned with the plight of our future when they were doling out millions to back the very threat they were pointing at, the dramatics were undone by their own cynicism.
Fear and Doom to Vote Correctly
One of the most risible arguments this election season has been that Republicans are the party of fear. What elevates this to the level of hilarity is almost in the same breath, we hear how this election could be the death of our democracy. Also, we are promised that women will be cast into a social purgatory on par with “The Handmaid’s Tale,” every social program is at risk of being dismantled, and minorities will have almost every right stripped away because The Party of Fear wants these results. Hell of a platform to run on.
What unspools this melodramatic reading of things is that in selling this nightmare scenario, they have to insist that by executing your democratic right to vote you are at risk of…losing this right to execute your vote. Basically, goes their argument, our very democracy is hanging by a thread if you use your right to vote but vote incorrectly while doing so – somehow.
What has to go unrecognized in this is while selling us that this doomsday scenario is the Republican agenda for this election, it is leading to one of the biggest GOP swings in a midterm election.
Maybe voiding social programs, erasing the races, enslaving women, and bringing about THE DEATH OF OUR DEMOCRACY should have been the party platform for generations. The Republicans would have ruled the nation for decades!
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