Democrats

Welp, so much for the blue wave. That towering electoral tsunami, which was to deluge the midterm races in a soggy detritus of worn masks and Planned Parenthood pamphlets, has given way to a stark reality: 2022 is a Republican year. It was always a Republican year, as some of us have been pointing out. Voters simply weren't about to prioritize third-trimester abortions over rising crime and the price of beef. So it was that Jill Biden this week was dispatched to campaign in Rhode Island. Rhode Island. And while she no doubt made a pitstop at Brown to hobnob with her fellow doctorates, she was mainly there to campaign for endangered Democrats. In Rhode Island. A Democratic congressional PAC, meanwhile, is dumping money into deep-blue New Jersey.

Last night’s debate between Pennsylvania US Senate candidates Republican Mehmet Oz and Democrat John Fetterman, was, as The Spectator’s own Ben Domenech described it, “political malpractice.” Watching Fetterman mumble, stumble, stutter, and glitch his way through answers made Joe Biden on a bad day sound like FDR delivering his stirring “Fear Itself” speech. But stroke or no stroke, Fetterman has no record to laud, and the policies he promotes are indefensible. Fetterman showed why he is unfit to serve right off the bat when the moderators (the real stars of the show) asked the candidates, “What qualifies you to be a US senator?” Both Oz and Fetterman seemed to confuse this basic question with “Why are you running?

Braddock, Pennsylvania Americans concerned about the economy — once again voters’ top priority — are turning their backs on the left. “Democrats’ momentum stalls amid economy worries,” reports CBS. “Republicans Gain Edge as Voters Worry About Economy,” echoes the New York Times. The Democratic platforms on policies that affect people personally — crime and public safety are other major concerns — are not winning. And there’s no one worse at delivering, and delivering on, the left’s failing messaging than John Fetterman, Democratic candidate for Pennsylvania’s US Senate seat. I’m a Pennsylvanian and have never understood Fetterman’s appeal. At all.

Democrats head into the midterms praying that abortion-rights supporters will reward them for failing. If the Democratic Party has stood for anything over the past half-century, it has stood for the right to end a pregnancy. All the party had to do was to defend the status quo established by Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. But it proved unable to do that, despite the two-term administrations of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, despite controlling the Senate from 2007 to 2015 and again from 2019 until now, and despite the virtual monopoly Democrats enjoy on the sympathy of the news and entertainment media. With all these advantages, Democrats could not safeguard a right that their voters consider fundamental. Now Democrats expect voters to trust them to regain what they lost.

Besides the 13 mentions of “MAGA” and how it represents a threat to our democracy, I’d say President Biden’s speech on Thursday night was a real kumbaya moment for the country. With the hellish red lights drenching the stage, two Marines positioned behind him and his old man face taut with rage, Biden railed against his political opponents in a taxpayer-funded tirade. While this was undoubtedly the strongest example yet of Joe’s divisiveness, it was only the cherry on top of months of disgraceful statements made by the Unifier-in Chief. Fueled by desperation and a myriad of disasters, Biden is ramping up his attacks on anyone who might question the left’s progressive plans to radically transform America.

“I became a Democrat because I am sincere.” So insisted Florida gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist while campaigning earlier this year. Crist is so sincere, in fact, that he is the only person in American history to have run for state-level elective office as a Republican, Democrat, and an independent. He has lost at least once in all three guises. Crist has been pro-life and pro-abortion. He has opposed and supported LGBTQ rights. He has opposed tax increases and raised taxes. He has been for and against gun control. He has wanted to repeal and to maintain Obamacare. As Buzzfeed accurately put it the last time Crist ran for governor in 2014, “there is almost nothing Charlie Crist hasn’t flip-flopped on.

Earlier today, I went outside and threw a frisbee at a tree. Then I came back inside and the chyron on CNN read: "VIRGINIA MAN'S FRISBEE GAMBIT COULD BE GAME-CHANGER IN MIDTERMS." Yes, it is political silly season, which is to say election season, which is to say any one of the four seasons. Pundits have been hyperventilating about the 2022 midterms since approximately 1922, so what a delight that we're finally a mere seventy-seven days out. At least this cycle isn't being trumpeted as THE MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION OF OUR LIVES, a moniker that's been applied to every presidential contest since the delightfully sleepy Clinton/Dole showdown of 1996. Think of it: back then, MTV was actually worried about voter apathy! Don't ever tell us '90s kids we have nothing to be nostalgic for.

Amid a Senate primary season that's seen wins by a number of inexperienced candidates with serious question marks, the attitude of the Republican consultant class in Washington has been straight out of Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: DON'T PANIC! Yes, the argument goes, these candidates are not ideal; yes, it's going to take some effort to hold the seats of key retiring Republicans with so many new faces; and yes, the gubernatorial candidates in some key contests aren't doing the GOP any favors. But overall the attitude remained positive, at least through the first six months of the year. Now, all of that has changed.

Someone once asked Johnny Depp about the secret of good acting, and he replied: “I pretty much try and stay in a constant state of confusion just because of the expression it leaves on my face.” Okay, maybe Depp’s not someone to hold up as a sage on the human condition. But I think we can at least agree that he knows what he’s talking about when it comes to projecting the sort of halfway engaging befuddlement that earned him a reported $90 million as Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. I mention all this only in so far as it applies to seventy-one-year-old Patty Murray, Democrat from Washington state. Murray won her primary election on Tuesday ahead of what could be a sixth consecutive term in the US Senate.