There is thinking inside the box.
Then there is living inside a bubble.
And then there is thinking inside a bubble which is in a box in a cage in the basement tucked behind the furnace with a giant sign “Beware of the Leopard!” draped across it (apologies to Douglas Adams.)
In politics – as in so many aspects of life – it’s always handy to know where your enemies are. In this case, the D.C. Democrats are right there, which is right where we want them.
From the utterly oblivious nonsense coming out of Nancy Pelosi – inflation and crime are not big issues this November – to the inability of any major Democrat to even hint about being open to any limits on abortion (well, they may get Cartman’s mom from “South Park” vote at least) – to doubling down on “climate change” as people are facing utility rate hikes and power grid instability, the tone-deafness is astonishing.
But why is this happening – why are the Democrats focusing on what, the polls clearly state, are not the major concerns of voters?
One possibility is that they are true believers and absolutely mean everything they say and believe they are making the world better and are just fighting an honest and truthful fight.
Mm-hmm.
Another possibility is that they are rock paper stupid, but there is a difference between intellectual dishonesty and intellectual deficiency and it would seem the former, not the latter, would make more sense.
Then there is the knowledge that they can win because the game is so rigged by the media, voting systems, and the power to shame away from polite society anyone or thing that would dare to ask for better explanations of the whys and wherefores of their policies, let alone disagree with them. This confidence that they can run a hamster on a platform of giving each and every tweaker in the nation a bag of cash and a machete and still prevail definitely plays a role in the Democrat mindset. Look at New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Portland, Seattle, etc., and it’s pretty much what they’ve been running on locally and winning, so it seems to work.
Of course, a major difficulty with running on the issues voters care about is that the voters care about them because the Democrats caused the problems – inflation, crime, energy instability, etc., can all be appropriately laid at their feet
But it may be a combination of all four things plus one extra very important fact: they are only talking amongst themselves.
Imagine a conference room full of Democratic operatives strategizing campaign themes and one says “hey, maybe we should lay off the Jan. 6 stuff and focus on issues that the vast majority of everyday Americans really care about?”
The first sound heard in response would be crickets. The second sound would be of a pink slip hitting the table. The third sound would be the revocation of a building security clearance. The fourth sound would be the pinging of cell phones as the entire room simultaneously engages in ritualized contact info removal.
In other words, many Democrats are engaged in campaigns that are not being run by people who are – first and foremost – interested in winning but by people who are deathly afraid of saying the wrong thing, being socially ostracized, and seeing their future careers instantaneously evaporate in a woke cloud of revenge.
It’s one of the reasons why excuses for the upcoming midterm bloodbath are already coming out – it wasn’t us or our ideas but it was the Saudis and the oil companies conspiring to raise gas prices – and Trump is a liar and people are stupid and evil. MSNBC’s execrable Joy Reid tweeted “It’s terrifying how many Americans will choose literal fascism, female serfdom, climate collapse and the reversal of everything from Social Security & Medicare to student loan relief bc they think giving Republicans the power to investigate Hunter Biden will bring down gas prices.”
It’s also the reason for this:
For those unaware, Allan Fung is a Republican who may very well take – it’s a toss-up, maybe even leaning his way, right now – a congressional seat in deep blue Rhode Island. This race has gained the attention of the House Majority PAC – which was created by Pelosi as part of her effort to indenture to herself every other Democrat in Congress by controlling huge amounts of campaign cash – that has just begun airing the above advertisement on the state.
A short breakdown of the ad (do watch if you have 30 seconds): It begins by invoking Charlottesville (really?) kids in cages (again, really?) and Jan. 6 (no surprise there), then has Trump inciting a riot “resulting in the death of five police officers” (huh? are they counting Ashli Babbitt?) to overturn the election, and finishing with the obligatory “Fung is too loyal to Trump, too extreme” boilerplate.
The most fascinating part of the ad is the photo the Democrat creators chose to end the spot with – Fung happily standing with two people; their faces were pixelated but one is a woman wearing an American flag scarf and a man dressed as a Revolutionary War soldier, complete with tri-corner hat and red, white, and blue uniform. That means that someone specifically chose to represent evil Trumpian fascism with the flag and Independence Day.
Seriously.
Locally, Fung is running ads about inflation and heating oil price increases and opposing tax hikes. Pelosi – and Fung’s opponent Seth Magaziner – are running things like the above and commercials about abortion and the standard “Kevin McCarthy will end Social Security” claptrap.
Yes, Rhode Island is “blue” but, more importantly, it’s pretty blue-collar (outside of Brown University, East Greenwich, Jamestown, Barrington, and half of Newport, of course, and only one of which is in the district) so the disconnect between potential Democratic voters and existing Democratic politicians and strategists is all the more glaring.
The fact that failed campaign managers – see Steve Schmidt, who went from Meg Whitman’s malpractice of a California gubernatorial campaign to the Lincoln Project grift and Donna Brazile, who ran Al Gore’s 2000 poorly targeted effort and after still got a number of sweet gigs – can go on with their lives as long as they can blame something else for losing is a well-known fact in D.C. circles. As long as you keep the consultanocracy and media establishment well and truly oiled.
This fact is obvious to the folks behind Katie Hobbs’ desert disaster, Kathy Hochul’s “empire strikes back” campaign, and Nevada’s Sisolak betting on the hard way.
And, staying in Nevada, there is the issue of rank incompetence caused by the groupthink political blinders. The House Majority PAC has run an abortion-related ad against April Becker, the Republican running in the 3rd Congressional District.
The ad features Dr. Adam Levy, intoning against “botched, back-alley abortions … far too many women died…” etc. The problem with the ad, beyond the obvious, is that Dr. Levy not only has himself caused the death of a patient during a botched abortion but was also charged with sexual assault of a minor under 16 years old and lewdness with a child under 14 years old, eventually entering an “Alford” plea to lesser charges of abuse and neglect.
Here is the ad:
And here is the easily available background information on Dr. Levy (see license/incident details under “documented deaths or serious injury”), and here is the story that broke the news.
But if you don’t play along and actually try to win by ignoring the hivemind obsessed with identity politics and Trump and abortion and Trump and Jan. 6 and Trump and suggest trying – somehow – to connect on issues that matter to typical voters?
Adios, sayonara, goodbye, and never darken our doors again.
And it’s very very cold outside the bubble. And the leopard might still be there, too,
Thomas Buckley is the former mayor of Lake Elsinore, Calif., and a former newspaper reporter. He is currently the operator of a small communications and planning consultancy and can be reached directly at planbuckley@gmail.com. You can read more of his work at: https://thomas699.substack.com/
Mr. Buckley is correct in pointing out the hive mind of the Left that requires adherence to a canon pf lies that has been developed and nurtured for decades. “Tax cuts for the rich”, “Dirty air and dirty water”, “Ten years to save the planet!”, “Conservatives is literally Fascism”, “Wants to end Social Security”, and “Back alley abortions.”
Per the last one I’d first like to ask if any has ever seen a FRONT alley? Secondly, if one looks at the recent history of abortion (unwanted/unplanned pregnancy has always been an issue…), there certainly were times when women underwent risky abortion procedures in ‘unapproved’ facilities, and some did die or suffer terrible injuries. But note that many of these occurred in the era before The Pill. Since then (the early 1960s) available;ability of birth control pills increased drastically, and with Roe happening in 1973, terminating a pregnancy became a fairly routine procedure – albeit still risky. I’m assuming that the incident in which a woman died at the hands of Dr. Levy occurred in a medical facility, not a back (or front) alley.
What I’m getting at is that the “back alley abortion” trop has been profoundly (and increasingly) dishonest for basically 60 years. The GOP needs to finally come up with a trope or 2 of their own to finally counter the lies that have been thrown at them seemingly forever.
Ditto for “climate change”, funding for Social Security, “assault weapons”, etc.
Democrats have been this way for as long as I can remember. Listening to Rush back in the mid-90s, it was plainly evident that the Dems outright hated their own voters, let alone anyone who dared stand up to them. Time hasn’t been kind to them, since the strangehold on information has been ripped from their fingers. Republicans were the ones that had to scrape, tooth and nail, to find any bits of “truth” or “facts” to win arguments. Twitter, Facebook, all combine with the remaining dinosaur media to trap Dems into their own bubblewrapped echo chamber. I pity them in the morning but realize they choose their own reality.
One more reason is when they lose, they don’t really lose. None of the Democrats responsible for what we are enduring now and have for the past 3 years expects to be held accountable in any way other than being relieved of their elected office and transferred to a cushy Beltway “consulting” or media or academic job where they will make just as much and not even have to show up. Nothing in their personal lives will deteriorate as long as they remain loyal to the establishment that created and sustains them, and the tone deafness is actually a demonstration of that loyalty. If they start backtracking and wondering out loud that they might have been wrong just to save their own seats that loyalty may be called into question, and that is what will cost them.