Democrats Never Learn
The Left is already repeating many of the same mistakes that gave them Trump.
If you've listened or read any conservative media in the last 5 years, you've probably heard the following phrase uttered repeatedly: "This is how you got Trump." Apparently, the Democrats have not heard this phrase before, despite the fact it is often directed at them. There is no shortage of reasons for why Donald J. Trump, the eccentric, loud-mouthed New York billionaire became President, but for the purpose of this article I'd like to focus on 3 of the biggest reasons: Immigration, Taxes and the Economy.
The Democrats are quick to chalk Trump's election up to "racism" or “sexism”. The evidence of such claims is dubious at best, but that’s never stopped a liberal. If facts were important to them, they wouldn’t be liberals. Furthermore, another foreign concept to the Left is accountability. They are never to blame for their own problems. Their personal shortcomings are always the work of “the patriarchy” or “white supremacy”. Obviously, these are perfect people who have never made a single mistake in their (meaningless) lives, so outside forces must be to blame.
Well… Spoiler Alert: Democrats have no one but themselves to blame for Trump’s election. In addition to the reasons I will list below, they also picked the most unlikeable, most dishonest, “crooked” possible opponent for The Donald. They were so blinded by the prospect of a female President, and thought the country shared their irrational exuberance, that they let a reality TV show host topple their agenda. Bottom line: “They aren’t sending their best.”
The first lesson the Democrats didn’t learn falls into the category of immigration. Trump built his campaign around a tougher stance on immigration. The concept of a wall at the southern border was ever-present at his campaign rallies. His calls for the end of catch-and-release policies shined a light on a real problem which stems from open borders policies. People were not only entering the country illegally, but they were being let into the interior of the country where many of them disappear and never return for their court dates. Any country that takes their national security seriously, never mind the lives of their citizens (like Kate Steinle) cannot allow such a practice to continue. This makes sense to anyone who isn’t a liberal lunatic, and it resonated with voters. Weirdly enough, the Democrats attacked the barrier as “racist” when they had voted for a fence at the southern border just a decade prior. Is a fence less racist than a wall? It’s certainly less effective. Perhaps this is the core of their issue with Trump’s wall… they weren’t smart enough to think of it themselves.
This brings me to modern day. Joe Biden has undone many of the Trump Administration’s immigration policies, including the Stay-In-Mexico policy which allowed migrants to apply for asylum without letting them into the interior of the country. If these asylum claims are legitimate, then surely the immigrants have nothing to be concerned about. The Democrats disdained this policy, calling it cruel. Why? Because they know many of these asylum claims are not legitimate and they don’t care. They want these immigrants in the country no matter what. Again, why? Because they believe these immigrants will become Democratic voters once a Democrat President decides to amnesty the 11-20 million illegal immigrants that currently reside in the U.S.
Unfortunately for Sleepy Joe (and our country), the Biden Administration's new approach to the border is an abject failure. We are seeing a record-setting surge at the border. Recently, ABC’s Martha Raddatz interviewed an incoming migrant who told her point-blank that he was trying to enter America because Biden was elected. Many migrants have been spotted wearing shirts with messages to the President. The Democrats are so anxious to let people into the country, they aren’t even screening some of them for COVID-19. While many American citizens can’t go to church or eat indoors, these illegal immigrants can come and go as they please. It’s this sort of hypocrisy that will eventually turn voters against the Democrats, or at least make them indignant to the election process as a whole. Ironically, the problems at the southern border are so bad, the Biden Administration is considering building more sections of the uber-racist Trump wall.
I didn’t forget about the “kids in cages”, by the way. The most overused plea from the Left during the Trump Administration was in regards to the “kids in cages”. It is clear to most sentient beings at this point that Biden helped build the cages in the first place, and there are more kids in cages now than at any point during the Trump era. The tears of the entirely-emotional blue checkmark brigade on Twitter have suddenly dried up. After all, the problem was never the kids in the cages; It was the person who was assumed to be responsible for those kids being in cages, because he was orange and bad or something. If the Dems continue down this road, they may very well be setting themselves up for another 4 years of therapy, starting in 2024.
Our second lesson is about taxes. I’ve often spoken about the political brilliance of Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (on The Right Opinion podcast). The particularly genius part of it is that the individual tax reductions will expire in 2025, putting them front and center in the 2024 Presidential race. The media and the Democrats can huff and puff all they want about how the rich don’t pay their own share, which is a laughably false claim that they continue to spew as if it has any basis in reality. Alternatively, they can talk about how Republicans gave their buddies in the big corporations tax breaks. How’s that working out for them? (See: Google, Twitter, Disney, Major League Baseball, Netflix, Amazon, Coca-Cola, etc. If you’re under the delusion that these are pro-GOP companies, I have some snake oil to sell you.) The bottom line for the 2024 election will be about… the bottom line. Americans can genuflect at the altar of wokeness for a while, but eventually when real financial consequences set in, I don’t think they’ll be as open minded.
The dirty little secret about Trump’s tax cuts is: It helped the middle class more than any other group. They received a higher percentage of their earnings back than the rich. This is irrefutable. Look at the tax brackets in 2017 vs 2018. The middle class received a tax reduction of 3-4% while the wealthy received a break of about 2.5%. People at the bottom of the income spectrum already pay very few taxes, so there was only so much that could be cut. Some don’t pay any income tax at all. Even the New York Times had to admit defeat on this one. They released an article entitled “Face It: You (Probably) Got a Tax Cut”. But that didn’t stop the narrative from spreading. Some in the media, in this case Former-Vox writer Matthew Yglesias, even patted themselves on the back for the stellar “messaging” they put forth to dupe the American people. Mr. Yglesias has since deleted the tweet in question. Gee! I wonder why.
So, the Democrats find themselves in a pickle. Do they wait until 2025 and allow the TCJA to simply expire, but risk losing the 2024 election over it? Or do they try to raise taxes now through reconciliation and hope that the fervor over tax hikes while Americans are just getting back to work will be forgotten by the next election cycle, whether it be 2022 or 2024? Perhaps, they see the writing on the wall in regards to a red wave in 2022 and are willing to bite the bullet now, and regroup for 2024. Regardless, it does seem a bit ridiculous to reach into the pockets of the American people just as we are emerging from an economy-crushing pandemic, which resulted in millions of lost jobs. If you want to repeat the errors of the Obama Administration when it comes to putting a knee on the neck (I think I’m officially the last person in the country to use this overly-used, hypercharged metaphor) of the economy during a recovery, it will likely see similar results: a Republican reclaiming the White House.
Speaking of which… This brings me to our final “this is how you got Trump” cause: the economy. When Barack Obama took office in 2009, he inherited a mess from the prior Administration. This is without dispute. The 2007-2008 market crash was not an ideal starting point. However, despite starting with a low bar, he still managed to stifle the economic comeback at every turn. ObamaCare, staggering regulations, nonsensical bailouts and higher taxes on working people were all implemented at a time when the economy should have been rising from the ashes. Instead, we saw the slowest recovery since WWII. Obama would not let the American economy bounce back. It was a curious decision, but in hindsight, it was obvious that Obama was going to get re-elected, so why wouldn’t he use the economic struggles of the nation as a means to implement his big government agenda? Never let a good crisis go to waste, right?
Again, we see the Biden Administration attempting to duplicate the Obama Administration's poor performance, this time in terms of the economy. In fairness to Creepy Joe, his colleagues made this bed for him in a lot of ways. His Democratic friends in various governorships across the country tanked their local economies with their ineffective lockdowns (a.k.a. power grabs). They allowed rioters to destroy the few businesses that remained standing in a litany of metro areas across the country, resulting in at least $2 billion in damage. They continue to lie to the American people about the evils of corporate tax cuts, even though those tax cuts resulted in incredible job growth and wage increases for the middle class.
Don’t even get me started on the patently absurd “modern monetary theory” we appear to be currently implementing via the massive spending bills (both passed and proposed) by current Democratic lawmakers. Whether it is their intended purpose or not, Democratic policies will result in a slower return of jobs for middle class families, who will then be taxed more if the Dems can reverse Trump’s Tax Cuts. As if that wasn’t enough, by printing money like a Hasbro factory, they have weakened the dollar through inflation, which means the middle class has less buying power than they did even a year ago, even during the pandemic. But the Democrats want you to believe they are in it for the little guy. Puh-lease!!! Only someone as misinformed as a liberal could put all of that together and see a net-good for America, because they see government control over every aspect of our lives as a good thing. A very strange sentiment from people who refer to themselves as “the resistance”. What are they resisting exactly? Freedom and prosperity, it appears.
Unfortunately, conventional, rational political thought is on life support, so for all I know the mainstream media’s efforts to gaslight the American people will be successful again, as it was in 2020. However, I believe every word of what I’ve written here, and think that a post-pandemic world is going to open a lot of eyes about which party has your best interest at heart. The sad truth is that neither does, but when the Democrats have power, they let you know it. Republicans tend to stay out of your way (because they were usually too busy starting unnecessary wars). Trump was the obvious exception to that paradigm. He cut your taxes, reduced regulation and fought for your God-given individual freedoms right up until the end. All the while avoiding any new military conflicts and attempting to end old ones. But the media, Hollywood, academia and, yes, big corporations called him a fascist. They must have learned about fascism at the same “institution of higher learning” where they learned about economics. Most likely, Clown U... or Harvard. What’s the difference these days?