To get Democrat voters to show up for the midterms, candidates will “have to scare the crap out of them” with lurid warnings about Donald Trump, according to one Democrat-friendly analyst.
Appearing on this week’s Deadline: White House on Wednesday, MSNBC’s John Heilemann described the “dark” strategy that some prominent Democrats are considering for the upcoming campaign season.
Donald Trump’s going to be in the spotlight … Let’s take Donald Trump, take that [Jan. 6] committee, the threat he poses to democracy, make [Trump] … the face of the Republican Party.
The reason is simple.
Heilemann’s frank assessment of Democrats’ chances in November is that Dems “can’t motivate [voters] on the basis of hope or their pocketbooks or any of these accomplishments.”
In other words: Everything sucks and voters are correctly pinning the blame on the party in charge.
“Inflation,” he said, is “psychologically the most devastating thing politically,” and I’d add that it’s one of the top issues on voters’ minds.
Last week, Gallup revealed that 17% of Americans said that inflation was the country’s most important issue. That’s the highest it’s been since 1985 when inflation was running at 3.8% — or less than half of the current rate.
47% of Americans are worried about their energy bills, according to that same survey, whether it’s to heat the house or fill up the tank.
After inflation, Americans’ top concern was the economy in general. 63% of Americans disapprove of Biden’s handling of the economy.
A whopping 57% of Americans disapprove of Presidentish Joe Biden’s handling of the border crisis he himself created. The border crisis is expected to get a whole lot worse now that Biden has rescinded (starting next month) Trump’s Title 42, which made it easier to deport illegal aliens — or even stop them from coming in — who test positive for COVID-19.
Getting rid of Title 42 is so unpopular — even before the deleterious effects kick in — that five Democrat senators joined the GOP this week in an effort to force Biden to reinstate it.
Biden still garners decent marks for his handling of the COVID pandemic, however. “Only 37 percent of Americans name the virus as one of their top five priorities for the government to address in 2022.”
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According to another Gallup poll, crime rounds out our top concerns, and “for the first time since 2016, a majority (53%) say they personally worry a ‘great deal’ about crime” while “27% report they worry a ‘fair amount,'” meaning crime is now “near the top of the list of 14 national concerns … behind only inflation and the economy.”
Democrats as a whole poll very badly on crime and public safety.
“Donald Trump will destroy our Democracy!” is nowhere to be seen on any list of Americans’ top concerns, and yet that’s the stratagem Democrats might rely on for the midterms.
Instead of addressing our real problems, Democrats may try to frighten their base into showing up with scare stories about Trump.
What are Democrats going to scare people with? A return to low inflation, strong wage growth, peace in Europe, and two-dollar gas?
It isn’t difficult to imagine a whole lot of Democrats thinking that they could deal with the return of mean tweets if it meant a return to some kind of normalcy on almost everything else.
But what else have they got to run on?
On every single issue that matters most, Democrats are so deep underwater that they’d all die of the bends if they came back up too quickly.
But they’ve got to try something, so “DONALD TRUMP WILL EAT YOUR BALLOTS AND YOUR TRANS BABIES!” will have to do, I suppose.
That flapping sound you’re hearing is numerous top-level Democrats desperately flailing at reality.
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