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American Politics Is Changing
For decades, Democrat politicians have based their campaigns on the idea that capitalism was mean to poor people. Trickle-down economics doesn’t work. Poverty and inequality can be cured only through socialism. The only reason for you to complain that your taxes are too high is if you hate poor people.
Now that Democrats are in charge, and are implementing their preferred policies, we are seeing their impact in real-time. Particularly on poor people. Inflation bothers rich people like me, but it’s devastating to those trying to live on $50,000 a year. Voters are starting to wonder if perhaps, just perhaps, centralized control systems are less humane than Democrats have claimed. Bernie Sanders is responding to this as one might expect, by demanding expansions of Social Security and Medicare. But other Democrats are reading the tea leaves differently.
I think that all Democrats can do, at this point, is double down on racism and global warming: “Ok, our fiscal policies are horrifying. But if you elect Republicans, they’ll kill black people and destroy Mother Earth! Do you hate black people? Do you hate our planet? No? Well then, you have no choice but to vote Democrat. Never mind the economy, the border, European wars, or all those other petty complaints. You vote on the side of the angels!” This is an interesting, but fundamental, change to our national discussion. But wait – there’s more!
Because Democrat policies were obviously destructive, Americans have long been hesitant to put too many Democrats in power. Bill Clinton was a “New Democrat”. Barack Obama was a saintly figure above earthly politics. Joe Biden didn’t campaign on anything – in fact, he didn’t campaign at all. No Democrat could win running on Democrat policies.
But the Democrat party continued our leftward surge with two institutions: the media and the Supreme Court. The media did their best to promote leftism, and the Supreme Court wrote new laws that Congress could never pass. This worked fairly well, for a long time.
But the internet has created problems for the old media. Fox News was the first crack in the dam, but The Daily Wire, Powerline, Ricochet, and many others have provided a source of alternative viewpoints that didn’t exist until recently. Not just conservative viewpoints. But alternative viewpoints. People started to think, just a bit.
And the Supreme Court has changed. It has recently developed an interest in the U.S. Constitution. Which is obviously a very serious problem for Democrats.
So I look at the Democrats being forced to change their message from hope for a better day, to simply avoiding mean tweets. And I look at alternative forms of media gaining a foothold. And I look at a new Supreme Court which seems more interested in our Constitution.
And I think to myself, “The Democrats have a very serious problem, here…”
Of course, my optimism is based on the idea that America selects its leaders via elections. If that is no longer true, then never mind – forget I said anything.
But if elections resume in the future, then perhaps the Democrats have a problem, and perhaps America has hope.
What do you think?
Are these changes as significant as I suggest?
Is there hope that America can climb out of the hole that we have dug for ourselves?
Perhaps things are changing. Perhaps there is hope.
What do you think?
Published in General
People seldom become that self aware. Good for him. There would be less public policy if people only knew how little anyone knows about it.
I could get by with permitting it if we would just stop celebrating and promoting it.
And teaching it to young children in school…
Extremely well said.
They start forcing everything around. Then they start forcing everything around to fix what happened when they forced it around the first time. Then people start thinking this is the way it is. Feedback loop of doom.
The Democrats are like sharks that have to keep moving. They need problems so they can invent more non-public goods. It feeds back on itself, and the Republicans really don’t interdict it.
Then the next level is you need to use the system to steal from your fellow citizen otherwise you are stupid.
The Jan 6th Trial gets all the O2 and coverage, while the corruption of Biden is totally suppressed and ignored. They win the message over and over.
Crime is up. Inflation is up. Illegal violence is up. And so called conservatives are cheering these show trials. Conservatives with influence and power, not just nobody Ricochet posters like me, but people with power.
The leaders of our own side are against us.
If the Democrats successfully steal the next election, which they will attempt and, unlike last time, it will be more obvious, what do we do? Do folks think there will be a future for the Republic? We think separating will be too difficult, we’re too mixed up and diverse, etc. but do folks understand that would be the end of Republican government, on earth? We’d fix it in the future? Well, yes, after collapse, perhaps war, a massive decline in population from starvation and war, so we get to start over after the Chinese rot, which of course will happen. Isn’t there a better way? Does planning for an alternative make relatively more honest election more likely? I don’t have a clue. The bunch who run us are totalitarian and deeply influenced by the Chinese who want to destroy us. The fools who run our giant corporations will Continue to do very well, the decline will be lower down and it will be fast, but they’ll do fine, or most of them. To defend themselves there’ll need a little more power and so the top will shrink and tighten. That’s how it all comes to an end. Are there any historical exceptions?
It’s striking that Democrats are not even making the slightest course correction, but are continuing full-steam ahead with their disastrous agenda. It’s like they know it won’t matter because the fix is in.
There’s always hope. American voters are a fickle bunch, but the current level of pain is forcing many to realize just what they voted for (or against) in 2020. There was a “Do you regret voting for Biden” poll a few months after he took office. I’d really love to see one now.
But back to the voters. Fickle as many are, they cannot deny things were better under Trump, even during COVID. The current economy demonstrates to all just how lousy things get when Democrats control both the White House and Congress. Biden’s approval is no longer in the toilet; it’s flowing down the sewer pipe to the treatment plant, e.g. the mid-term elections . . .
They don’t want the states to decide because states might not decide “correctly.” Only what they want is “correct.”
i.e.
Our local environmental lobbyist is in Europe right now. lol
The Minneapolis choo-choo train system which they are building by no-account force is having horrific fiscal metrics and crime.
I think the lefties have already gone too far.
The inflation and gas prices are already obvious to any undecided. The Fed will be ringing in a recession and unemployment that inevitably accompanies it. The Misery Index will be back.
I don’t know who it is that believes Russia, Russia, Russia, but I haven’t met one. Even enthusiastic greenies are getting walloped at the pump by utility bills. (I think they should have to pay for my increase in gas prices too, but that’s a separate gripe.) And the enthusiasm for brownouts just isn’t there.
The crusaders for trans rights and abortion rights are not in the same category as abolitionists. Americans are generally tolerant and generous of spirit but most people know these are policy preferences, not human rights.
The open border will affect ordinary Americans in the form of crime. A long ER wait, a county needing a new school to accommodate all the shiny new residents. Everybody will eventually know somebody who died of fentanyl.
Even pretty lib moms are not going to be cool with sexual lifestyle discussions of any kind with their kids. Month after month we see new cases of serious problems that changing genders cause. And the very idea that teachers and counsellors will be withholding serious information from them will not sit well.
I think it was Reagan who asked if voters were better off four years ago. Every Republican who steps in front of a microphone needs to lay this at Brandon’s feet and only two years ago. Non stop. This is what you get when you elect Democrats.
You stole my line, Stad. I’m not going to make any predictions about the elections. I hope that Republican candidates make goods arguments and persuade many independents that free market capitalism works and government-directed economies do not. But there is always the fickle factor. A substantial percentage of voters cannot remember any news story more than a week old. We can make predictions about how people would vote if the election were tomorrow, but something that is politically insignificant to most of us could pop up a week before election day and move the needle in or against our favor in a close race.
Harsanyi is a treasure. Too bad National Review lost him.
He has a mind like a steel trap and he’s an excellent communicator.
Better formhim.
NR deserves to lose him. They deserve to go under.
Or less . . . : (
Just like they were against Reagan.
But what is he motivation of the pseudo-Right? Are they really a second-tier party? Are they really vassals of the Left?
If one car company has an effective monopoly on the market, doesn’t this produce competition to be number one? Would every party like to be the biggest and most powerful party in the US?
Or is their second-tier status only an appearance for a game they are playing. We hear people refer to the Uniparty. Are both parties sharing sufficiently in the great rewards of power? And are elections merely a game of 3 card monty or a shell game? “Look here! The pea you are looking for is under this shell, right? No. Look! There is no pea.”
Exactly. And they’re not moving to the center before the election, but moving to the fringe. Fearless. (Except for the barbed wire around the Capitol).
One possible “excuse” for that is that they know they’re going to get pounded, and they want to pass as much as they can before losing power in January. Knowing that even if Republicans could pass bills to undo it, Biden would veto.
And how do they know they’ll get pounded? Because they did in 2020 and had to pull out all the stops to win a crucial election. And I bet they know that they’ll lose to Trump if he runs in a fair election, so they (1) won’t hold a fair election, and therefore they (2) don’t care about courting voters, and (3) no longer care about the appearance of fair and legal elections.
That’s possible too. Although if that’s the case they might as well wait until after the election, since being less crazy now would make that “victory” more credible.
But remember that Obamacare passed after many of those who voted for it, had been defeated in the mid-term election, but before they actually left office and were replaced by people who would not have passed it.
That’s just my point #3. They don’t care about appearance or credibility anymore.
But that could be because they know they’re going to get whipped, and they’re trying to gin up courage etc to do what they can in the time they have left. As I recall, the same thing happened with Obamacare.
That’s not a pea. That’s a black pill.
If what you describe is the case, then there’s no way out. The only solution is dissolution.
Occam’s Razor: When stupidity is a sufficient explanation, there is no need to have recourse to any other.
I think a plausible explanation for the current Democratic intransigence is that the left has boxed itself in. They enjoyed having useful idiots in media and the institutions pushing all sorts of progressive narratives, but now it’s gone too far and they’ve discovered that they can’t change direction without their ridiculously extreme base turning on them.
We got hints of this last election cycle, with a few sensible Democrats observing that they had to move away from “defund the police” and any mention of “socialism,” and that the “summer of love” stuff wasn’t working for them. But one thing the progressive left does well — perhaps the only thing — is protest: no one chants and screams and riots like true-blue leftist activists.
I don’t think they have a secret plan. I think the Democrats are going to get crushed in November, that they’ll lose the House and the Senate, and that we’ll then have a couple of months of Biden doing what Biden does, which is effectively nothing, while the bureaucracy keeps doing what it does — regulating beyond its mandate — in an increasingly hostile judicial environment and despite an increasingly frustrated electorate.
I read this morning that the NY state legislature has passed onerous new gun possession laws in a special session (already signed by the governor) to do everything possible to avoid any changes due to the Bruen decision. QED.
It is not being stupid. They are actively evil.
Henry, you are just blind to that truth, no matter how many times they show it.