Democrats are in full panic mode a little more than three months before the midterm elections. Joe Biden’s approval numbers are still in the low thirties and the public blames him and fellow Democrats for the high inflation plaguing the country.
Their radical social policies are proving to be very unpopular, parents are rebelling against Democrats’ radical education policies, and the radical agenda of Joe Biden on race, religion, and sex has caused a massive political realignment in the nation’s suburbs.
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So the radical Democrats have hit upon a brilliant scheme: why not portray Republicans as election-denying, democracy-killing “extremists”?
When radicals try to portray their opposition as “extremists,” you know they’re in a “wing and a prayer” mode.
In races for governor, Senate, attorney general, House and state legislatures, the goal is to win over the prototypical suburban, college-educated, generally female, swing voters — like those in Virginia who were solidly for Biden in 2020, but largely drifted to Republican Glenn Youngkin in the 2021 governor’s race. But it’s also to appeal to Republican voters who see Donald Trump and Trumpism as toxic, despite the former President’s return to Washington on Tuesday in the run-up to an expected new campaign announcement.
As one top Democratic strategist working on House races summed up the argument after reviewing internal focus group data which shows a stronger and more lasting than expected resonance to recent Republican moves, particularly around abortion policy: “I understand that you’re frustrated, everything sucks — but that person thinks that you can’t get pregnant from rape, that person believes in QAnon. … I know you don’t like Democrats — but do you actually want to vote for that person?”
The problem for Democrats is ludicrously simple: Donald Trump is not running for any office. And the QAnon bogeyman isn’t on the ballot, either. Voters tend not to vote for hysterics, and Democrats warning of an “end to democracy” and “political extremism” need to check their radicalism at the door.
Anyone who believes it isn’t radical to allow men to use a woman’s bathroom or boys to compete in girls’ sports competitions doesn’t get out much — at least in the two-thirds of the country where those policies are opposed. Democrats can use their apocalyptic rhetoric about democracy’s end until election day, and it won’t wash away their numerous cultural sins that have enraged the majority of the electorate.
The Democratic National Committee is coordinating with state parties on ads and local press tours built around words like “dangerous” and “threatening,” and highlighting what they call “MAGA Hot Mic” moments around Republican officials making hardline comments about abortion, democracy and guns. Democratic groups have also primed a barrage of opposition research to release on GOP candidates on everything from once-obscure bills introduced in state legislatures to long-ago Facebook comments, while allied groups highlight features like a Center for American Progress study that found “at least 104 MAGA Republicans have used guns and other deadly weapons in campaign ads.”
This is all cosmetic and not based on political reality. That reality is that by election day, America will be in a deep recession and inflation will still be high. And no amount of Democratic name-calling will alter those simple facts.
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