So Democrats have dragged a corpse across the finish line in our presidential election. Hate did the heavy lifting, together with fear and threats, all time-tested tools of the Democratic party. Credit for an assist goes to the media for its dishonesty and to local officials in key states for their corruption. Though the Left will do what it can to pretty up the spectacle for the history books, historians beyond their reach will rightly judge it not to have been our finest hour.
This wasn’t a policy-based election. Donald Trump proposed repeating post-reelection what he had done before COVID, after producing a vaccine and treatments for the disease. Since those actions had been quite successful, his opponent quickly plagiarized the parts that had wide appeal and added the usual Democrat “soak the rich” boilerplate. Biden then confused the issue by promising to rejoin the Paris Climate Accord, raise taxes, ban fracking on Federal Land and play nice with China, contravening his “working-class” gambit. No matter; his sole argument was always “Trump Bad.”
Democrats were so driven by their hate for President Trump that they undertook every measure to ensure that he would lose – even to the extent of changing rules governing ballot security and evaluation while voting was underway. In many states, ballots were mailed out like advertising flyers and minimally scrutinized on return. In Democrat-machine-run areas like Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County, Philadelphia or Nevada’s Clark County, election fraud is a historic fact, so refusing to share overall ballot numbers; painting out windows used to watch counting; excluding even court-ordered observers and more did nothing to increase confidence in the process. Add the open animus of many Democrat officials; the extended time to determine a winner; wildly inaccurate pre-election polls and hyper-partisan coverage. It all creates the impression that this election was far from the fair, square and open process the American electorate deserves. Which matters, because in the end the winning candidate must convince the losing side not only that he won, but that the victory was legitimate. But due to the chaos designed into the process to make it easier to thwart a Trump win, this will be quite difficult. And Democrats have only themselves to blame.
Not that any of that matters to those dancing in the streets like Munchkins singing “Hi, ho, the Witch is dead.” But it should, because in their exuberance they will be sorely tempted to help wrench the country further Leftward, as the party’s real power – Kamala Harris, AOC and the rest of the Wokester crowd – take control, pushing the putative president-elect to the sidelines. They don’t care that half the country doesn’t agree with them, or why it doesn’t. The appearance of legitimacy matters not a whit. Bad Orange Man is gone, so it’s time to wipe out his accomplishments and punish his followers. To the guillotine with them!
No one they read, watch or listen to will tell them facts which should give them pause. Donald Trump got about 5 million more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016. He drew more support from Latino voters than any Republican in the past 60 years. He increased his support among black voters. There is fertile ground for Republicanism here, and that party has Donald Trump to thank for it.
Democrats gleefully anticipated a “Blue Wave” election which would gain them the Senate and increase their numbers in the House. Instead, Republicans gained seven House seats as of this writing, and still control the Senate. Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell are still there, despite $150 million-odd dollars being spent to unseat them. When it’s all said and done, Democrats may gain a single net Senate seat. Republicans also took another state Governorship and a state legislature. They now completely control 29 state legislatures and 21 state governments. With their losses, Democrats control only 19 legislatures and 15 state governments. These failures will enlarge fractures in a party which apparently can’t decide whether it wants to follow Thomas Jefferson or Nicolàs Maduro.
Now it’s up to Joe. President of a divided country by an election widely seen by his opponents as suspect; leader of a party as divided as the country, some of whose power brokers itch to replace him with his vice-president; prisoner to his own contradictory promises; heir to a plague and a tricky economy; he now has to “bring us together” as he promised.
Somewhere, Donald Trump is smiling as the shoe slips onto the other foot.
