It may not matter that the Democrats are incompetent.
They aren’t selling competence. They are selling revolution.
The Democrats didn’t promise to make things work right, they promised to break them. They promised to tear America down.
And that’s what they’re doing.
You can’t have a new world until you destroy the old. And 10 months into complete Democrat control of the federal government, they’ve made pretty good progress.
And while conventional elections punish bad economic news and social instability, this isn’t a conventional electorate. The Democrats were empowered by a coalition that wants to defund the police, condemn American prosperity, end the criminal justice system, decrease U.S. energy consumption, reject capitalism, denounce American history and heritage, and redouble indoctrination efforts in the country’s schools and colleges.
And they’ve gotten their money’s worth from the Democrats.
While Republicans see horror and failure in the Democrats’ stewardship thus far, the progressives see a big win – a period of unusual success in achieving their goals. Those voters won’t be discouraged by Democrat muddling, they will be energized by it.
From the progressives’ standpoint, it has been a year of unparalleled success: A doubling in the price of gasoline; natural gas prices expected to be 40% higher this heating season; historic inflation and supply chain collapse reducing American consumerism; a weakening of the American military and the nation’s security; sporadic regional electricity shortages; increased disengagement from the workforce; the near collapse of the healthcare system; increased obstacles to law enforcement and criminal prosecution; opposition to progressive propaganda in the classroom defined as “domestic terrorism” by the federal government.
It’s been a great year for Democrats.
And tomorrow they could have a good day.
Because the old rules don’t apply. Prosperity, in the mind of progressives, is not something to seek, it is something to destroy. Cheap, affordable energy is not the goal, it is the enemy. Plentiful, affordable food and consumer items aren’t desirable, they are detested. When law and order are denounced as buzzwords of white supremacy, rising homicide rates are proof of the revolution’s success in upending the courts and opening the prisons.
The further down the country goes, the higher up Democrat satisfaction rises. Using whatever weapon presents itself – from vaccine mandates to executive orders – Democrats have been at war with American institutions – from hospitals to schools – with unsparing ruthlessness.
Chalk it up to: Promises made, promises kept.
Gender is fluid, cops are evil, prosperity is bad, strength is weakness and weakness is strength. You’ve got to lower your expectations, and be cold through the winter so that you don’t contribute to climate change.
That’s what the Democrats are offering, and that’s what they’re delivering. And tomorrow we find if it’s still what America is buying.
More hopefully, we’ll find out if up is still up and down is still down.
We’ll find out if the progressive revolution was a fad or our fate. We’ll find out if Joe and Betty America want to follow the Democrats off the cliff.
The impact will be immediate. If the Democrats hold the line, if the indicators point their way, the president’s big welfare and green energy bill gets bigger and more woke, and it passes easily. But if the Democrats get their lunch handed to them, the president is going to twist in the wind and you’ll see far fewer Democrat fists in the air going forward.
And you might see the Democratic Party go to war with itself.
Because the progressive movement is an all-or-nothing affair, and at some point, you kind of wonder if the average middle-class Democrat is going to keep going along with it. Intersectionality requires someone who believes in one piece of the Democratic Party to be all in on every aspect of it. If you’re concerned about global warming, you’re also obligated to be toe the party line on the police, gender, taxes, race, socialism, guns, abortion and any number of other absolutist positions that don’t really seem to have much to do with climate change.
And tomorrow we find out if Democrats and others are cool with that, or if it rubs them the wrong way. They will either vote the Democrat line up and down the ticket, or they will defect. But each vote will be a message – whether for local judge or town board, county legislator or commonwealth governor – for or against the progressive revolution.
You either want to throw the country away, or you don’t.
And you either want to vote for the party working on throwing it away, or you don’t.