I often say that the greatest political miracle in of all American history is that the Democrats somehow managed to survive the Civil War. They did, however, have to wait until 1884 to win a national election when New York governor Grover Cleveland defeated James G. Blaine. Four years later Cleveland lost to Benjamin Harrison -- whom he then defeated the next time around. Sound familiar? Should Trump win this year, he’ll be only the second person to ever win, lose, and then win the presidency back again. Also, Cleveland was probably way to the right of even most of today’s Republicans.
In addition to Joe Biden’s obvious lack of popularity and the serious lack of credible replacements, the Democrats are also suffering at the local level. Crime, filth, rising taxes, vagrancy, and the obnoxious nature of many of the Democrats’ agenda issues -- such as messing with the sexual development of young, naïve, and innocent children are provoking ordinary, usually passive people to look for more comfortable choices.
Enter Donald J. Trump, the most conspicuous bull that ever wandered into a political china shop. He broke the longstanding stalemate, putting everything up for grabs. It’s not ideological to just let it become easier for plain folks to prosper. It is, however, goofball ideology that urges government functionaries to inhibit the creation of new wealth… especially because of contrived, pseudo-scientific expectations of approaching catastrophic weather conditions. Weather? Really? Can’t help but think of legendary King Canute who intentionally embarrassed his annoying sycophants by trying to command the tide to go out -- while it was coming in.
We can then throw in exacerbated ethnic sensitivity. You know, “racial” bias. This has long been just about the most productive implement in the Democrats’ toolbox… thus far. Trump’s commonsense approach to economic reality noticeably improved the American standard of living -- especially for folks in the lower echelons of the wage scale -- who used to be traditional Democrat voters… until now.
One harmful policy to which the Democrats still adhere is the unrestrained expansion of the money supply. Back when they were still proud of being the party of Jim Crow, they also embodied the Free Silver movement, which pushed for abandoning the gold standard in favor of using vastly more abundant silver. This form of populism was typified by William Jennings Bryan and his oft-referenced Cross of Gold speech. The intention was to make more money available to folks at the bottom. Economic illiteracy, however, allowed them to confuse money with wealth. Wealth is real stuff such as food, fuel, automobiles, and real estate. Money, at least according to Democrats, is just paper and ink. It takes a lot more effort to create wealth than to print money… or stamp out coins. Just FYI, in the early days of our republic, government-issued money was both scarce and of questionable value. Foreign currency, such as pounds, gilders, and marks were fairly commonplace, along with tobacco, a commodity in much demand.
It can be said that there are many voters who will always vote Democrat, no matter how badly they can be shown to have screwed things up. Ronald Reagan showed that there really weren’t as many of them as previously thought. Also, it is reasonably suspected that corrupt media outlets have continued to prop up Democrats above and beyond their actual deserved popularity while unjustly slandering Republicans at the expense of much of their own dwindling credibility. And, considering dwindling credibility, the old adage: You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time -- comes to mind. With so much information (and misinformation) flowing all around us in this modern age, it’s hard to establish a monopoly on any of it. God knows they’ve tried. The recent revelation that Hertz is dumping about 40% of its electric vehicle fleet because people don’t want to rent them and they’re about twice as expensive to maintain as gas-powered vehicles -- somehow got past the guardians of correct thought (a.k.a. censors).
Perched on top of this unpleasant revelation is the other current story about the record cold weather affecting the northern Midwest and Northeast. Seldom is an NFL game ever rescheduled because of weather, but the Bills-Steelers game was postponed due to extreme cold. Go figure. Concurrently, the credibility-challenged media are continuing to vomit up revelations of 2023 being the warmest year “on record.” Not mentioning at all that we’ve only had thermometers for 300 years. The earth is a lot older than that.
Should trends continue, the Democrats will likely still survive, but with much less political influence. They’ll cling to their urban and suburban strongholds as Greens -- affluent, overeducated vegan tree huggers -- or as Pat Caddell called them “…an elite gentry.”
The Republicans are, of course, not immune to serious problems either. Let’s start with the RINOs. Actual Democrats started calling themselves Republicans in order to skirt around powerful political machines. Legendary New York mayor Fiorello LaGuardia was one. Nowadays, however, many career politicians will do whatever is necessary to hold on to their exalted positions… except what is often best for their constituents. The voting public is catching on to this, and it may well explain why Mitt Romney is passing on trying for a second term as senator (from Utah -- after being governor of Massachusetts).
There is also an internal tension rising within true Republican ranks. It has to do with ramping up competitive muscle and winning more elections. Rather than ideology, the focus is on organization. In many ways they want to take pages out of the Democrat playbook. It’s just that Republicans are different from Democrats -- they’re not obsessed with politics to the same degree. They have mortgages instead of roommates; jobs instead of trust funds; and ethical considerations rather than just letting the end justify the means.