As always, traditional news media are covering this year’s midterm election campaigns simply as traditional horse-race contests among people competing for access to a $174,000 congressional salary.
That’s the easiest method, the one that takes the least work, the one that relies on ephemeral passing polls that no one remembers for long and hides what’s really at stake.
Voting actually begins in less than one month. Be careful what you believe these days!
The immediate stakes are much larger than simply which party controls which chamber on Capitol Hill for two years, as media would have us believe.
What’s at stake this time is actually the fate of the balanced two-party system that has effectively ruled our nation’s political fates for more than two centuries. Specifically, the fate of the Democrat Party, the country’s oldest and, currently, sickest.
Both parties have had ups and downs. Although the Republican Party is the youngest, it has produced the most presidents in its shorter lifespan, 19, beginning with Abraham Lincoln, who presided over the end of slavery, while Democrats claim 17.
For a time, that issue split Democrats into two parties, allowing the GOP to rule for most of the late 1800s on the crest of abolishing slavery, maintaining the Union, and combating the Klan.
After the disastrous and divisive Vietnam War that was ignited and enlarged by Democrats, Republicans won four of the next five presidential elections, then Democrats took five of the next nine.
Both parties have endured and morphed into new political creatures by absorbing uprisings and their causes. Nineteenth-century Democrats would have suffered strokes to see Lyndon Johnson sign the Civil Rights Act in 1965.
Prompted by the GOP’s ongoing White House exile during Barack Obama’s reign of error in 2010, the Tea Party outburst flushed new energies into the GOP. Now, the far left is attempting the same spurt during Democrats’ exile.
Trump’s injection of outsider energies during his two separate terms, enhanced by the contrasting senile paralysis of Joe Biden’s tenure, has left Democrats in an enduring toxic fog.
The party’s hopeless attempt to sell sentient Americans on four more years of his dazed days was followed by the substitution of empty-vessel Kamala Harris, who left her party burdened by what had been.
Leadership of the party of alleged diversity is held by two men from Brooklyn, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries. They have been feckless, even appealing to violence, vowing revenge on Trump supporters, and devoid of any ideas beyond “Trump Bad.”
All of this has created an enormous vacuum for ultra-leftists to occupy, masquerading as “socialists.” Which is pre-election code for communists. Their goal is not to influence the party. Their goal is to take it over, plain and simple, and squeeze out the opposition.
Recent election wins by socialists are many – in Florida and in Michigan.
That’s what socialism does. It cannot survive in a free political space judged on results. Socialism, the precursor to communism, has never succeeded at anything anywhere. It simply can’t because, while it might sound good walking through the door, it goes against human nature.
As hurricanes gather strength and force by passing over warm waters, socialism feeds off the discontent of aggrieved people unaware of history. Free city buses. Free childcare and babysitting. The wealthy pay too little in taxes.
In a stunningly perverse way, the only way socialism can survive is through failure. Remember how you could keep your doctor and healthcare plan while saving $2,500 with ObamaCare? The failed reality is that deductibles have doubled, and premiums have almost tripled.
So, what’s the leftist answer? We need Medicare for everyone. Oh, and more government regulations.
Mamdani aides are now talking about seizing privately owned housing.
Biden’s open border scheme in reality purposely allowed – actually, invited and facilitated – entry into the country by in excess of 10 million illegal aliens. Now, since they’re here and obviously can’t all be deported (the left claims), we need to let them vote and abolish ICE and, of course, bestow citizenship (so they can vote for the folks who provide the freebies).
Or take public education: Mayor Mamdani’s New York City spends about $44,000 per student per year. That’s 2.5 times the average U.S. per pupil cost. Recent academic tests, which were the best in a decade, show that more than 40 percent of New York City students are non-proficient in reading or math.
The socialist response is that even more spending is necessary to fix what excessive spending failed to fix. Remember, that was the forever mantra about the broken public welfare system; since spending more and more had not worked for 50 years, spending more will surely work.
Of course, that means more taxes on citizens, which means more people leaving, which spreads costs among fewer people (See Gavin Newsom's California), which enables the predictably inevitable decline of socialism, which prompts its tighter restrictions to maintain power.
Such demands will only grow if progressives and socialists gain congressional control in November and beyond.
Besides single-payer healthcare, free college tuition, universal childcare, and public ownership of essential services, the DSA platform includes abolishing the Supreme Court and Senate, plus drastically reducing defense spending while restoring an expensive green agenda.
Other demands include reducing funds for police and prisons with the ultimate goal of ending incarceration. And, of course, terminating capitalism, which isn't fair to everyone.
In case anyone thinks this sounds ridiculous, a Gallup Poll last year found support for capitalism faltering. Support stood at barely a majority (54 percent), down ten percent in four years. Almost 40 percent now view socialism positively.
Another poll by Issues & Insights found 42 percent agree with the principles of socialism, especially among younger voters and those fresh out of university indoctrination centers.
They wrote:
Today’s Democratic Socialists think they’re the avatars of a new America — one that can come about only by destroying the America of today. They call it ‘socialism,’ because that polls well, but the truth of what they’re aiming for is something different: communism.
Here's the problem for today’s enfeebled Democrat Party: Trump Republicans have captured its traditional working-class supporters and a majority of Democrats are dissatisfied with the current party’s ineffective positions. So, is the historic antipathy of midterm voters toward an incumbent president’s party still sufficient to win control of Congress?
Hakeem Jeffries is scheduled to become Speaker if Democrats win a House majority. At least for now, before voting, Jeffries says he rejects the DSA agenda.
That's supposed to reassure us. This despite several of his caucus members, like Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, already being DSA members and several other primary victors likely to join them. It augurs growing division within that congressional caucus.
However, their struggle for party control is an opening for all Republican candidates. Instead of simply labeling them socialist or communist, make all Democrats defend the extreme DSA positions or disavow them and risk losing those votes.
Tie them relentlessly to Mamdani, the DSA platform, and Abdul El-Sayed, the far-left Muslim Senate candidate in Michigan. Trying to smooth his hard-left edges, he’s even wrapping himself in the music of the notoriously apolitical Dolly Parton to imply support for his cause.
As it so often does, the Babylon Bee perfectly captured the absurdity: "El-Sayed Forces Democrats To Take Stance On Whether Terrorism Is Good."
The point is, as socialism continues its takeover, it leaks into mainstream media as the natural, even acceptable alternative to Republicans. They must be as relentless and ruthless on the attack all this fall and beyond.
You know media will not hold their tempting promises to account. In fact, many of them probably agree.
That movement is tapping into Democrat thinking much more organically than the stale Trump antipathy.
As always, everywhere else in history, socialism gains its strength from fear and uncertainty, the economic pressures and uncertainty of the moment, and the tempting rainbow promises of the ambitious, who know they will not be held to account.
This socialist surge among progressives and potentially others is serious – and no feint.
