By Steve BermanFor four years, Democrats ran on one unified platform: To get rid of Donald Trump. In this, they succeeded, sort of. If I were to ask any of you who got rid of Trump, I think most would answer “Trump.” If not for himself, he’d be comfortably serving a second term. Even then, it was a close thing.
Joe Biden is the political equivalent of unflavored yogurt. He was calculated by the Democrats to have the least negatives, in order to maximize the “get rid of Trump” voter motivations. Nobody had to ask “why should I vote for Biden?” for more than 15 seconds; even many former Republicans, disgusted at their party’s lurch into populist xenophobia, unhinged fringe conspiracy, and cultist worship of Trump, weren’t frightened enough of Biden to prevent them from voting for him. Even then, it was just enough. Democrats have won no mandate to do anything.
Yet media headlines are pushing the Overton Window to include long-time leftist adolescent pin-up dreams like a national $15 minimum wage, nationalizing all elections, doing away with needed guardrails against fraud, opening the border to admit as many illegal immigrants as can cast illegal (but accepted and counted) ballots, and continuing their push to marginalize the Constitutional right to exercise free speech, freedom of religious conscience, while crafting a dystopian society built on “equity” and shut-the-hell-up on debate.
For example, the regular as clockwork HR-1 legislation, which is offered to every Congress (as Erick Erickson noted), and never passes into law, is celebrated as “House passes sweeping voting rights bill over GOP opposition.” Pure propaganda. Meanwhile, in Georgia, the legislature is pushing several bills to narrow mail-in voting, that are being cast as some kind of Jim Crow. The NAACP ran a full-page ad in the Atlanta Journal Constitution threatening local business, and urging these companies to support HR-1, which will never pass the Senate.
In an AJC op-ed today, a group of Emory and Grady doctors wrote that eliminating no-excuse absentee voting is a health hazard, and a kind of “poll tax.”
We are disheartened to see the dozens of legislative proposals that seek to end no-excuse absentee ballots, curtail early voting, and generally make it more difficult for Georgians to cast their ballots.
As the election reforms in Georgia wind their way through the legislature, and undoubtedly some will end up on Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk, watch the level of hyperbole and rhetoric reach the stratosphere. Watch Disney once again claim it will leave the state, like it did along with Netflix when Kemp signed a fetal heartbeat bill in 2019. Listening to this is like hearing a bad employee telling the boss his grandmother died for the fifth time as an excuse for not coming to work.
Yeah, right.
Meanwhile, Disney seems immune to China’s iron fist, and I don’t hear Emory or Grady doctors complaining about Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s wholesale slaughter of nursing home residents while covering up the evidence so Trump couldn’t use it to make political hay. What’s a few thousand lives to taking back the White House?
Cuomo is a caricature of the New York politician. He is so much like Trump, except he couldn’t close the deal by saying what he wanted to say in his fake mea culpa announcement Wednesday. Cuomo wanted to say “f-em if they can’t take a joke.” Trump would have said it. He pretty much did say it, when he mercilessly mocked disabled reporter Serge Kovaleski, a man with whom was well acquainted and didn’t much like. Cuomo is that kind of guy, but being a Democrat in a state filled with people like himself running politics, he couldn’t pull it off. He had to fake an apology so badly that acting schools will use the video as a “don’t do this” example.
Democrats do not possess the moral high ground. California Gov. Gavin Newsom is going to get tossed in a recall by voters who saw him dine in elegance at The French Laundry while locking down their beaches, stores, restaurants, and churches.
But this is not about advancing legislation. Democrats prefer to rule by edict anyway. It’s about moving the Overton Window, and narrowing certain topics to be “beyond debate.” Like Dr. Seuss books. No, libraries and schools aren’t removing all the Seuss, but they’ll use the opportunity to go after Huckleberry Finn and other good literature they deem to fail their woke test.
It doesn’t bother me that Congress gets radical bills every session. Things like congressional term limits, balanced budget amendments to the Constitution, and outright gun bans go through Congress and most are killed in committee every session. But now HR-1 burst onto the floor, into the Senate, and liberals are acting like they have a mandate and high ground, when they have neither.
What bothers me is that the constant drumbeat of selling sizzle and not steak will continue to dampen and suppress debate on real issues that Congress, and state legislatures, need to take up. Immigration reform is really needed. Healthcare reform is badly needed, because Obamacare sucks (pardon the word). COVID relief is really needed, but not attached to a liberal dream sheet. I’m even becoming more convinced that a real energy policy, with provisions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions worldwide and invest in green technology, is needed, but what we get is the New Green Deal and caveman politics from ignoramuses like AOC.
Democrats should be glad they got rid of Donald Trump. That was their goal. But now they are high on their own supply, and can’t stop huffing the wet ink.
Follow Steve on Twitter @stevengberman.
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