History is full of patterns and American politics is no different. This especially applies to the Democrat Party who has a number of arrows in their quiver and they rotate them out quite often.
While Democrat tactics are often situational, many are conveniently situational. For instance, it’s highly convenient that Black Lives Matter finds a martyr every election year, even if said martyr is someone you wouldn’t want your son and daughter emulating or would want to be around in your personal life due to criminality or instability. Racial issues always seem to elevate to their peak before elections and always dip dramatically soon after.
The racial angle didn’t seem to help much in the fight for control over Virginia and New Jersey. Republicans conquered seats both big and small despite the left’s best attempts to paint their opponents as the second coming of Donald Trump who we were told was the second coming of Hitler.
The left had leaned into the “like Trump” attacks on their opponents since they invested so much time and effort into painting Trump as the worst guy since the last guy. But regardless, the old standby was the accusation of racism, which didn’t stick this time since it was clearly racism that the left was trying to push on children in the form of critical race theory, a thing the left is now claiming doesn’t exist.
Except it does and the left was all for it before they were suddenly against it.
The left also likes to make a big deal about guns in this country and how they’re the worst thing ever created but seeing as how this isn’t really the right time they’re going to keep very quiet about it. More Americans own guns than ever and that’s partly thanks to the pandemic, the Black Lives Matter riots, and the election of Joe Biden, the latter two of which the Democrats created. Pushing guns would be political suicide at this juncture, and the last high-profile shooting was done by one of their biggest mouthpieces in Hollywood.
So what’s next? Republicans are slaves to big corporate interests?
Hard to sell that given big tech is firmly on the side of Democrats. They could try to attack big oil again, but people are already pretty furious whenever they have to go to the pump.
Environmentalism? That’s good for a short-term boost but once all the hoopla has died down, it doesn’t really move the needle too much. Ironically, energizing the base takes more than wind and solar.
So what’s left?
As midterms draw ever closer, my guess is that you’ll see the left reach for an issue that always seems to outrage and consolidate, and that’s sexual assault.
Here’s how I see this going down.
Republican candidates are going to come out in force this year and many of them will be pretty squeaky clean. They’re going to be armed with a playbook that has proven to work as evidenced by Glenn Youngkin’s victory in Virginia, and the Democrats are going to effectively watch helplessly as their own attempts to force control over the country come back to haunt them.
Since their favorite weapon, racism, has been rendered useless and their ideas don’t really survive the light of day unless prettied up and misrepresented, their only recourse will be to find an instance of sexual assault (whether true or not) and use that to kickstart another movement based on the abuse of women.
A myriad of conversations will spill forth from this dam being breached, be it the sexualization of women or their unfair treatment in society. Pay gap issues will once again arise, angry stories about passed-over promotions due to sexism, and demands that there be more representation of women in media will dominate the airwaves.
To be sure, this will draw quite a few people in and Democrats will increase their standing with women for it.
I’m calling it now. Sexism will play a major part in the coming elections. History tells us that it’s a go-to when there’s nothing else to go to for Democrats.
