Where Are The Democrat Moderates?

The 2020 presidential campaign has officially kicked off and there are already at least nine Democrats, about half of whom you may have heard of, who have tossed their hats in the ring to compete for a chance to unseat Donald Trump. So far, the Democratic primary is shaping up to be a veritable freak show with one candidate who falsely claimed to be an American Indian, another who was endorsed by Klansman David Duke for her anti-Israeli politics, and a third who has advocated eliminating the entire private health insurance industry. The burning question for many Americans is, “Where is all the moderate Democrats?”

Even though the public face of the Democratic Party leans sharply left, that isn’t necessarily true of Democratic voters. CNN exit polls show that in the 2018 midterm elections, Democrats not only won nine of ten liberal voters, they also won almost two-thirds of moderate voters, the largest share of the electorate. If that weren’t enough, in what might be described as the Trump effect, Democrats won 16 percent of the conservative vote. Other polling supports the idea that Democratic voters are not as liberal as their party leadership. FiveThirtyEight notes that almost half of the Democratic Party (47 percent) identify as moderate or conservative. In 2016, at least a quarter of Democratic primary voters said that they were moderate or conservative. Despite their success with other ideological groups – or more likely because of it – liberal Democrats now feel that the time is right to put forth a radical agenda of tax increases, government expansion and attacks on farting cows.

What this means is that the Democrats on the verge of repeating the same mistake that President Trump made. This also happens to be the mistake that Barack Obama made that led to Trump’s election.

The misconception made by both parties is that a rejection of the other party does not constitute an embrace of your party’s most radical ideas. The rejection of Hillary Clinton’s continuation of the Obama Administration was not a blank check for the Trump Administration to enact an unfettered right-wing populist agenda. By the same token, when voters fired the Republicans in 2008, they did not intend for Democrats to enact a far-left wish list. This is especially true considering that Barack Obama campaigned as a post-partisan moderate.

If Democrats want to build on their success in 2018, the smart bet would be to back a candidate who would have broad appeal. Instead, the candidates who have generated the most interest so far are all fire-breathing champions of far-left ideas. These ideas may be popular in the liberal enclaves along the West Coast and in the Northeast, but they are unlikely to gain much traction with voters who are representative of flyover country.

The good news for those who don’t want to see Democrats nominate a far-left candidate in 2020 is that it is unlikely that the current crop of nine hopefuls will be the only Democrats running. Joe Biden, the potential candidate who consistently leads preference polls of Democratic voters, has not declared his candidacy yet but seems likely to do so.

Biden has run for president twice before in 1988 and 2008 but stepped aside for Hillary Clinton in 2016, a decision that he almost certainly regrets. Hillary was eventually shown to be such a weak candidate that Biden could probably have won both the Democratic nomination and the presidency. Since 2016, he has engaged in a war of words with President Trump that kept him in the news. In addition to being one of the more moderate voices in the Democratic Party, Biden is a proven quantity with elder statesman status. After two presidential campaigns and two vice-presidential campaigns, there are unlikely to be any hidden skeletons in Biden’s closet. It is also worth noting that Biden performs best in head-to-head polling with President Trump.

If Biden decides against running, there are other possibilities for a moderate Democratic nominee as well. In fact, there are already moderates in the race, you just probably haven’t heard about them. One is Pete Buttigieg is the mayor of South Bend, Indiana and a former naval reserve officer who served in Afghanistan. Buttigieg attracted the attention of David Axelrod when he campaigned for the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee in 2017. A second moderate already in the race is John Delaney, who was a congressman from Maryland until he retired this year.

Another moderate generating buzz is Amy Klobuchar, a Democratic senator from Minnesota. Klobuchar has a reputation for reaching across the aisle and is one of the most conservative Democratic senators. Klobuchar apparently has other candidates concerned. A preemptive attack on her candidacy was launched this week with allegations that she was verbally abusive to her staffers.

The “other” Democratic hopefuls from 2016 may also return for another try. Lincoln Chafee, a former governor of Rhode Island, Jim Webb, a former Virginia senator and Secretary of the Navy, and another Marylander, former Governor Martin O’Malley, would also appeal to moderates. Chafee, Webb and O’Malley may be waiting to see what Biden decides for launching their own campaigns.

It will be tempting for liberal activists to look at Donald Trump and think that the time is ripe to push forward with a radical candidate and agenda. Given the president’s weakness in the polls, a radical candidate might be successful at defeating Mr. Trump, but the safe bet would be to nominate a candidate with broad appeal. It would be easier to expand the Democratic voter base with a positive pitch than to win an election with the message that our candidate isn’t great but Trump is worse.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Democrats Decide Superdelegates Are Undemocratic

The Democratic Party is continuing to at least make token reforms after its 2016 Hillary Clinton debacle. The Democratic National Committee decided over the weekend that the party would jettison its longtime system of superdelegate votes in primaries.

In the Democratic primary, 712 superdelegates to the convention are free to vote for whichever candidate they want, regardless of how their state votes. The superdelegates, who are typically members of the party establishment, make up about 15 percent of delegates to the Democratic convention and could swing a close primary.

Last Saturday, the DNC voted to eliminate the role of superdelegates in the first round of balloting at the convention. If no candidate is selected on the first ballot, then superdelegates would be allowed to vote on subsequent ballots.

The change was pushed through on a voice vote by DNC Chairman Tom Perez. The measure was largely popular with DNC members, but a vocal minority argued that it would disenfranchise party elites.

The Democrats have used superdelegates since the early 1980s as a way to balance the party’s populist and establishment sides. Prior to 1970, party bosses picked the party nominee. In These Times noted that Hubert Humphrey won that year despite not competing in a single primary. This outraged supporters of the antiwar Eugene McCarthy and threatened to split the party. The solution was to rewrite party rules in favor of primary elections.

After George McGovern and Jimmy Carter lost two of the next three elections in landslides, Democrats went back to the drawing board. The creation of superdelegates, which were first used in 1984, was intended to temper the Democratic voters’ preferences for radicals and unknowns by giving some control back to party elites.

Fast forward to 2016 when more than 92 percent of superdelegates supported Hillary Clinton over the populist sensation, Bernie Sanders. The superdelegate system performed exactly as intended in preventing a grassroots insurgent from defeating an establishment favorite, but the contest left the party divided. Contrary to popular belief, Clinton would have won even without the superdelegates, but the one-sided nature of the battle for the superdelegates made the system seem, well, undemocratic. There is also the deep-seated belief among many Democrats that Bernie Sanders, who did not carry Hillary Clinton’s massive amounts of baggage, could have beaten Donald Trump.

Sanders expressed approval for the change in a statement quoted in The Hill. “Today's decision by the DNC is an important step forward in making the Democratic Party more open, democratic and responsive to the input of ordinary Americans,” Sanders said.

That could be translated to mean that the change could help Democrats nominate an even more transparently radical leftist. The party has become more radical and accepting of socialists since 2016 so the new rules could lead to the nomination of the most radically left candidate that American politics has ever seen in a mainstream party.

Before Republicans prematurely celebrate the nomination of an “unelectable” candidate, they should remember that the last two presidents were both considered unelectable until they were, in fact, elected. The American electorate has whipsawed between extremes in past elections and, given Donald Trump’s persistent unpopularity, it is within the realm of possibility that, if the Democrats nominated a socialist like Bernie Sanders, America could elect its first socialist president.

For better or worse, the change remakes the political landscape for the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. The election of 2020 is shaping up to be an interesting one to watch, even if the candidates may be the most unpopular and uninspiring nominees since… 2016.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Can Democrats Win Back Trump Voters?

When Donald Trump won the election in 2016, it was not because he turned out the Republican base. Although important, that was not enough to sweep him to victory. This is illustrated by the fact that Mr. Trump lost the popular vote. What made the difference was that Trump was able to win just enough Obama voters in the right places – Florida, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – to eke out an Electoral College win. The question for 2018 and beyond is whether Trump can retain his hold on these voters or whether Democrats will be able to woo them back.

Elections are normally won by the voters who care least about them. Even though political parties often focus on turning out the base, neither party has a majority of voters. Even including “leaners,” the most recent Gallup polling shows Republicans at 39 percent and Democrats at 49 percent. Although the percentages vary by state, the dominant party in every state must win some independent voters to carry the election.

It’s difficult for political junkies to believe, but many of these independent voters are not even thinking about the upcoming election yet. In a New York Times piece today that interviewed people who voted for both Obama and Trump, one of the scariest quotes to the politically tuned-in comes from 28-year-old Sharla Baker of Ohio.

“Honestly, it hasn’t crossed my mind really at all,” Ms. Baker said, when asked about the upcoming midterm elections, which are just six months away.

What Ms. Baker is telling us is that the crucial demographic that decides most races, the late-deciding independent voter, has not even begun to think about who they will vote for. These voters can be swayed by late-breaking “October surprises,” flashy ad campaigns and the roll-of-the-dice that is the daily news cycle in 2018. Any polling at this point should be taken with a grain of salt and an eye toward the percentage of undecided voters.

The 38 voters in 14 states interviewed by the Times is not large enough to form a statistically valid sample, but their comments do provide insights. The group almost uniformly did not like Mr. Trump as a person, but many did like his policies. In particular, tax reform and attempts at curbing illegal immigration were popular.

“Only a few regretted their vote,” the Times notes in a sentence that must fill Democrats with foreboding.

The voters said that they still liked Obama, but did not want to vote for Hillary Clinton. In fact, many voted for Donald Trump for the same reason that they voted for Barack Obama: A desire for change.

Charlotte Griffin, of Bear Grass, N.C., said that Trump was the first Republican she had voted for in 50 years. Her vote was based on anger at both political parties and frustration at the government’s inability to get things done.

“Did I really like Trump? No. I still don’t,” Ms. Griffin said. “But at least I thought we might move. We were in a stalemate. We were at dead center zero. We were just sitting there spinning our wheels.”

She added that Trump’s behavior is “severely testing my sensibilities.”

Sharla Baker was disappointed that Mr. Trump had not raised the minimum wage and forced companies to expand employee benefits. “He’s not there for the poor and the middle class,” she said. “I thought he would be, but he’s not.”

Brad Ziegler, a 68-year-old retiree from Warren County, Ill., regrets his vote for Trump, who he says he thought would be “contained” by his advisors. Ziegler, who seems representative of the middle-of-the-road voters who feel alienated by President Trump, is open to voting for Democrats, but complains that the opposition party has moved too far left.

“The Republicans are about money and big business and the Democrats have lost their way,” he said. “They are not taking care of that core group they know is out there.”

Some of the voters say they intend to vote Democrat this fall while others plan to cast their ballot for a Republican. Most are undecided.

Many Trump voters are open to Democratic candidates and, while they don’t like Donald Trump on a personal level, do like the extra money from the tax reform that he signed. While President Trump’s character isn’t going to be enough to push these voters into the arms of the Democrats on its own, it does provide Democrats with an opening. Republicans who claim that voters don’t care about Trump’s erratic behavior are wrong, but voters may look past Trump’s foibles to consider the Republican record of accomplishment.

Democrats need a positive and not-too-radical agenda to pair with President Trump’s unpopularity. For their part, Republicans have a record to stand on that includes more money in people’s paychecks, but must balance loyalty to the president in the primary with distancing themselves from his behavior in November.

President Trump remains unpopular outside the GOP, but his unpopularity may not be enough to win back Democrat Trump voters. The Democrats are in danger of blowing what could be a monumental midterm election by assuming that dislike of Trump is akin to embracing far left political positions. It isn’t.

Where Democrats have succeeded in special elections is where they have run competent candidates with moderate political views. Conor Lamb, the Democrat who won in a red Pennsylvania House district, disavowed the unpopular and extreme Nancy Pelosi and did not throw mud at President Trump. A successful national strategy could include working with Republicans on popular reform bills, but also holding Trump accountable for bad behavior, something most Republicans have been hesitant to do.

Congressional elections and presidential elections are different, but the 2016 status quo would favor Democrats by default. Since Donald Trump won with a minority of the popular vote, Democrats need fewer gains than Republicans to win the next elections. This is a goal that could be accomplished simply not running Hillary Clinton.

In contrast, barring a repeat of Trump’s unlikely Electoral College victory, Republicans need to flip more voters than the Democrats do. There is little evidence that is happening.

The midterms are currently shaping up into yet another election in which voters without a political home will have to decide which party they dislike less. It frequently seems that both parties are doing their best to push voters in the opposite direction. Considering the up-and-down news cycle of 2018, the unpopularity contest may go down to the wire.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Democrats Are Their Own Worst Enemy

Democrats assumed that taking on Donald Trump would be easy. That has not turned out to be true. Once it seemed that the Democratic opposition was assured of at least taking control of the House in this year's midterm elections, but the result now seems increasingly like a tossup. There are several reasons for this, but looming large among them is the Democrats' own tendency to overreach and make unforced errors.

The Democrats' first miscalculation was on DACA. Democrats forced a shutdown over DACA in January even though President Trump offered them a sweetheart deal. In the end, Democrats rejected the deal and eventually caved, allowing the shutdown to end with nothing to show for it. It was an ignominious defeat similar to the 2013 Republican shutdown over Obamacare.

In their surrender, the Democrats lost a chance to please their base and split the GOP at the same time. Instead, Democratic leaders angered both progressives and Dreamers. In a stunning turn of events, some DACA recipients have even protested against the Democratic National Committee.

Of course, the risk in accepting the deal would have been to hand Trump a victory on immigration and the possibility of losing their grip on the Hispanic vote. The best course for Democrats would have been not to force a shutdown in the first place while continuing to press for a DACA deal.

The second Democrat error of 2018 was their overreach on gun control. When President Trump extended an offer to help Democrats with their gun control effort, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) literally jumped for joy and the party jumped at the chance.

What emerged from behind the closed doors of the Democrat caucus was a bill that included a laundry list of gun control measures that will likely mobilize gun owners to get out the vote in November. Chuck Schumer's (D-N.Y.) bill includes an “assault weapons” ban, expanded background checks and gun violence restraining orders which would allow family members to get a court order to prevent dangerous individuals from getting a gun. A second bill, introduced by Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.), would ban the “sale, transfer, production, and importation” of 205 semi-automatic rifles, pistols and shotguns that can hold more than 10 rounds.

While President Trump might have embraced a more modest gun control bill, these Democratic bills have almost no chance of becoming law. With Republicans in control of Congress, Democrats would need 11 Senate Republicans to defect in order to get cloture. That won't happen without significant arm-twisting from President Trump, which is unlikely.

The third Democrat error was unveiling a new plan to raise taxes if they win control of Congress. The Democrat plan is a multi-faceted approach with an increase in the top marginal income tax rate, increasing the corporate tax rate to 25 percent (tax reform cut this rate to 21 percent from 35 percent), bringing back the alternative minimum tax (AMT) and restoring the standard deduction for the estate tax (i.e. the “death tax”) to its pre-reform level.

The Democrats' gamble here is two-fold. First, they assume that tax reform has remained as unpopular as it was before passage. In reality, as companies announce expansion plans and employee bonuses in the wake of tax reform, the new tax law is increasingly popular. The New York Times found that a majority of Americans currently approve of the Republican law.

The second gamble is that voters will favor the Democrat plan if it is cloaked in the guise of “soaking the rich.” The proposal seems specifically designed to not directly affect the average voter, but to target “other people's money.” Few voters are in the top income tax bracket or have estates worth more than $5.5 million.

A platform of tax increases and gun control may please progressives, but it is unlikely to inspire the moderate and independent voters needed to sway an election. In fact, the Democrat agenda seems more likely to send Republican voters to the polls with an attitude of “at least they're better than the Democrats” than to win new converts. Paired with the disillusionment of immigration voters in the Democrat base, the results could be disastrous for the opposition party.

A better strategy for Democrats would be to appear nonthreatening and positive, a sane and rational alternative to President Trump. Instead, the current plan seems to be to convince voters that Democrats are coming for their guns and money. That may play well with the Democrat base in deep blue districts, but it will be less effective in the purple heartland areas that Democrats need to win in order to take control of Congress.

To be fair, Republicans, led by President Trump, also seem to be actively trying to avoid becoming too popular with voters. The new tariffs and potential trade war may undermine pent-up economic growth that is already starting to result from tax reform.

With both parties making errors and advocating for unwise policies on a daily basis, a reliable forecast for the midterm elections is impossible. In the end, the outcome of the elections may depend on the news cycle when voters go to the polls.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Democrats Don't Realize That Trump Can Make Their Wishes Come True

Trump derangement syndrome (TDS) is real malady and Democrats have it bad. Democrats are so invested in Trump hatred that they don’t comprehend that they are on the cusp of realizing much more of their agenda under Donald Trump than they could possibly have accomplished under Hillary Clinton.

The first sign of hope for Democrats was the Republican failure to reform Obamacare. The tax reform bill repealed the individual mandate and that was enough for President Trump to proclaim Obamacare “essentially repealed,” leaving the vast majority of the health law untouched. The GOP has gone silent on further attempts to repeal, reform or replace the Affordable Care Act. Republicans fought for six years under President Obama to repeal Obamacare, but President Trump has apparently stifled the repeal movement.

Next, President Trump turned to immigration and infrastructure, two subjects near and dear to liberal hearts. The president proposed a deal with Democrats to extend DACA and unveiled a $1.5 trillion infrastructure plan. In keeping with the Trump-brand philosophy of doing things in a “YUGE” way, Trump’s proposals were even bigger than the programs enacted by his predecessor. President Obama’s DACA program enrolled about 700,000 participants. Trump’s version would expand that to include an additional 1.1 million. President Obama’s 2009 infrastructure bill had a price tag of $787 billion. Trump’s plan is twice as hefty at $1.5 trillion.

CNBC editorialized that “Democrats would be crazy to reject Trump's DACA deal,” but reject it they did. Were they crazy or were they merely deranged?

But wait, there’s more. A promise kept by candidate Trump was to engage in protectionist trade policies. In 2016, Trump said that his views on trade were “very similar” to those of Bernie Sanders. Trump withdrew from the TPP, is renegotiating NAFTA and has enacted several tariffs. Protectionist Democrats should be ecstatic.

Democrats have spent years calling for a gas tax in the name cutting carbon emissions. President Trump recently endorsed the idea of a twenty-five cent gas tax as well. The Trump tax would not be intended to stop global warming and would instead be used to generate revenue for his infrastructure spending, but will Democrats really want to quibble over the purpose when they can soak auto owners, save the planet and blame a Republican president?

To top it all off, President Trump today signed a memo that instructed the attorney general to propose regulations banning “devices that turn legal weapons into machine guns.” That’s right. President Trump is not only enacting the first significant gun control legislation since 1994, he is using his executive authority to bypass Congress to do it. What liberal cannot celebrate a new gun control law that isn’t subject to the congressional stalemate?

In fact, President Trump’s progressive proposals are more likely to become law than anything Hillary Clinton would have proposed. Hillary’s agenda would have been DOA with Republican majorities in both houses of Congress. On the other hand, Trump can probably deliver enough Republican votes to pass the Democrat wish list into law… if the Democrats can get over their TDS to form a bipartisan coalition.

On the other side of the aisle, there has been remarkably little furor as President Trump moved to the left. Immigration and deficit hawks have been largely silent as Trump acceded to “amnesty” and a trillion-dollar deficit. Thus far, there has also been little reaction to his bump stock ban even though conservatives have traditionally had zero tolerance for new gun control measures.

Apparently, Trump Derangement Syndrome is a bipartisan epidemic.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Trump Is Repeating the Obama Administration's History

A wise man once said that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it definitely rhymes. That seems to be the case these days in politics as both parties stumble along, making the same mistakes as their predecessors.

The Republicans began 2017 with a majority in both houses of Congress. Nevertheless, much like the 2009 Democrats, they were able to accomplish little. Democrats enjoyed a brief Senate supermajority that allowed them to eke out victories on healthcare and financial reform before the Republican wave of 2010, but accomplished little else.

For their part, the fractious GOP coalition could not muster together 51 votes to reform Obamacare, but they did manage to score a win on tax reform. Although opinions were initially unfavorable, the Republican tax overhaul is proving to be more popular than the early Democratic legislation.
Both presidents, Obama and Trump, quickly became unpopular and divisive figures. Rather than being coalition builders, both men practiced identity politics. Obama championed the traditional Democrat constituencies while Donald Trump rides a wave of anti-immigration and protectionist sentiment. Their partisan rhetoric makes it difficult to achieve bipartisan majorities to enable legislative victories.

Both presidents have spending proposals that match their oversized egos. Obama led off with a $787 billion infrastructure stimulus and a new healthcare entitlement. President Trump has proposed an infrastructure bill that costs $1.5 trillion, almost exactly twice as much as Obama’s spending bill, as well as new family leave entitlement.

Both presidents increased the deficit dramatically. President Obama presided over the first trillion-dollar deficits, which were later pared back by the Republican House. President Trump’s budget also calls for deficits in excess of a trillion dollars annually.

Both presidents also favored the use of executive authority to bypass the stalemated Congress. President Obama is known for his Iran deal and his executive creation of the DACA program while President Trump has issued a plethora of Executive Orders on everything from abortion to immigration.

Both presidents were also plagued by scandals. President Obama had the ATF program that allowed the shipment of guns to Mexico, Solyndra, the IRS harassment of conservative groups, his dealings with Iran and the  Benghazi cover-up. So far, Trump has the Russia scandal, the firing of James Comey, numerous personnel problems in the White House and his daily Twitter feed.

Obama’s excesses led to the Tea Party waves of 2009 and 2014. There are indications, including a wave of Republican congressional retirements, that 2018 may yield similar good fortune for the Democrats. That depends, however, on whether Democrats can break the mold of another historical lesson from the Obama years.

Throughout the Obama Administration, Republicans believed that Obama was so unpopular that all they had to do was be anti-Obama and anti-Obamacare. That worked to some extent, but it failed to win the White House for Mitt Romney. Democrats may be making the same mistake now.
Democrats assume that if they play to their anti-Trump base, they will be assured of victory in 2018 and 2020. That may not be a good assumption.

Polling for Republicans is improving in the wake of the tax cuts and attacks on Trump seem to be yielding diminishing returns. If Democrats, mirroring the Obama-era Republicans, choose to run as anti-Trump rather than championing a positive agenda, they may be disappointed and disillusioned once again in November.

Disappointment for Democrats would continue the parallels between the Trump Administration and the Obama Administration. After all, Republicans spent eight years in the wilderness as they blamed one another for their defeats. Republican rage grew until they finally reached a point where they would rally behind someone -anyone- who would carry the fight unapologetically to the leftist elites, conservative principles and character be damned!

If the pattern of mirror image rhyming of history continues, the next six years will be a wild ride.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Ted Cruz: Dems Told Single Moms 'Tough Luck' on Tax Reform

When the Republicans need a fiery orator to make a point, the most obvious senator that comes to mind is Ted Cruz (R-Texas). The staunch conservative typically pulls no punches and that was the case this week when he delivered a blistering criticism of Democrat opposition to the tax reform bill on the Senate floor.

Cruz pointed out that the bill doubles the child tax from $1,000 to $2,000, a provision that would particularly help single parents, yet “Every single Democrat in this body is going to say to the single mom ‘tough luck. We aren’t cutting your taxes,’” Cruz said. He also noted that his amendment to the bill includes an expansion of educational savings plans to allow parents to spend the educational IRA money on K-12 schools.

The senator called out the Democrat claim that the bill would make taxes go up for most Americans. “In January, take a look at your paystubs,” Cruz said. “The Democrats are claiming, wildly falsely, that somehow your taxes are going to go up. Let me tell you, for virtually every American taxpayer in the country, your taxes are going to go down.”

To prove his point, Cruz noted that “every single income tax bracket is going down.” He also pointed out that the standard deduction is being doubled.

“There is one subset of people whose taxes will go up,” Cruz conceded, “Rich people in high tax Democratic states.”

Cruz urged voters to look at their paystubs in January and, “if they weren’t telling the truth, if you’re paying less taxes, you ought to stop and ask yourself, ‘Gosh, why did 48 Democrats in the Senate all tell me something that was false?’”

After noting that Democrats have crossed the aisle to vote with Republicans for tax relief in the past, Cruz answered the question of why the current Democratic caucus voted in lockstep against the reform bill.

“Because they can’t stand the President,” Cruz said. “They’re angry at the President. That’s fine. If they’re angry at the President, stand up and yell at the President, but don’t take it out on kids who are homeschooled. Don’t take it out on kids with disabilities.”

The tax reform bill passed on Wednesday with a party line vote. Despite providing tax relief for the middle class, the bill was largely unpopular among voters. FiveThirtyEight pointed out that the tax cuts were even less popular than some tax increases have been.

The responsibility for the bill’s unpopularity lies with media misrepresentations of the bill based on Democratic falsehoods, but Republicans who did not adequately defend and explain the legislation share the blame. If every Republican spoke as strongly in favor of tax reform as Sen. Cruz, public opinion would be very different.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Two Quotes That Show How Much The Parties Value Character

The past week laid bare the deepest motivations of many people in American politics. While both parties claim to be the champions of morality and virtue, people paying attention were disabused of the notion that either party is more concerned with character than votes.

On Friday, Kate Harding, a self-described “feminist and the author of a book on rape culture,” wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post offering a partisan defense of Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.). Harding doesn’t defend Franken’s bad behavior. Instead, she defends his political affiliation.

“It would feel good, momentarily, to see Franken resign and the Democratic governor of Minnesota, Mark Dayton, appoint a senator who has not (as far as we know) harmed women,” Harding writes. “If I believed for one second that Franken is the only Democrat in the Senate who has done something like this, with or without photographic evidence, I would see that as the best and most appropriate option. But in the world we actually live in, I’m betting that there will be more. And more after that. And they won’t all come from states with Democratic governors and a deep bench of progressive replacements. Some will, if ousted, have their successors chosen by Republicans.”

Yes, you heard that correctly. Harding is openly admitting that the only reason that she doesn’t want to see Franken punished is that it would set a precedent in which other Democrats, ones who might be replaced by Republicans, might also be forced to resign.

Harding’s position is obviously partisan and hypocritical, particularly from a feminist in the party that five years ago claimed that Mitt Romney and Republicans were waging a “war on women.” What is shocking is how blatant Harding’s hypocrisy is. In her world, political affiliation means more than justice for women who were harassed or abused by Democrats. Republicans rightly denounced the political calculations of Democrats like Harding.

But wait, as they say, there’s more!

The very same day, at the same moment that Republicans were denouncing Kate Harding’s hypocrisy, the Republican governor of Alabama was making a remarkably similar statement. “I believe in the Republican Party, what we stand for, and most important, we need to have a Republican in the United States Senate to vote on things like the Supreme Court justices, other appointments the Senate has to confirm and make major decisions,” Gov. Kay Ivey (R) said on AL.com. “So that's what I plan to do, vote for Republican nominee Roy Moore.”

At the same time, Ivey acknowledged that the allegations made against Moore were credible. “I certainly have no reason to disbelieve any of them,” she said. “The timing is a little curious. But at the same time, I have no reason to disbelieve them.”

Ivey says that she believes in what the Republican Party stands for, but what does the party stand for if it refuses to condemn a man who is credibly accused of molesting a 14-year-old girl and harassing numerous others? It seems that what the new Republican Party stands for is electing Republican candidates at all costs.

Republicans and Democrats finally have found something that they can agree on. They both believe that party politics trumps concerns about character. Unfortunately for the rest of the country, the point of agreement found by the two parties will only serve to further divide the country.

Democrats and Republicans stand united in their hypocrisy. Both seem only too willing to compromise their core beliefs in order to support politicians that represent what they purport to hate. Any man who forces himself on a woman would be rightfully condemned by the left… as long he isn’t a Democrat official. The right would be ready to castrate a 30-year-old man who cruised malls trying to pick up teenage girls… as long as he wasn’t a Republican candidate.

In a perfect world, our politicians would be held to a higher standard than the people they govern. In the real world, the two parties excuse their own members by pointing to the bad behavior of those on the other side. It is a race to the bottom in which both sides claim, “Your pervert is worse than ours.” The truth is that when feminists back misogynists and Christians support an alleged child molester, they have already lost, regardless of whether their candidate wins. 

Originally published on The Resurgent

New Democrat Analysis Shows Economics Led To Trump Win

I recently spent some time with Joel, a friend from Oregon who had voted for Barack Obama twice. He said that he had not supported Trump in the 2016 election, but could understand why many people had. Portland had been a thriving port, but the decline of the timber industry had led to an economic slump in the region. Plans to revitalize the area with a natural gas shipping facility languished under President Obama and would presumably continue to do so under Hillary Clinton. In the end, he didn’t vote at all.

Joel and others like him are the subject of an internal study by the Priorities USA PAC detailed in the Washington Post. What they found hearkens back to the Bill Clinton’s basic rule: “It’s the economy, stupid.”

The study focused on voters that switched from Obama to Trump as well as “drop off” voters like Joel who stayed home. The polling found that Obama-Trump voters were largely working-class whites who were skeptical of Democrat economic ideas. Drop off voters were largely anti-Trump, but not swayed by the message of the Clinton Democrats. Many drop off voters were in “communities of color” while “struggling exurban families” often pulled the lever for Trump.

Other findings about the Obama-Trump voters include:

·         50 percent said their incomes were falling behind the cost of living

·         Another 30 percent said that their incomes merely kept pace with cost-of-living increases

·         42 percent said that Democrat economic policies favor the wealthy vs. only 21 percent who thought Trump’s policies favored the wealthy

·         30 percent said that their vote was a vote against Clinton rather than for Trump

When a focus group was asked what the Democratic Party stood for, Obama-Trump voters answers showed that the Democrats have lost touch with blue-collar voters. Focus group members answered the question with phrases like “The one percent,” “The status quo” and “They’re for the party. Themselves and the party.” Many voters see the Democrats as representing the elite and the establishment after two terms of Barack Obama.

Some of the problems result from Clinton’s unlikability, but Guy Cecil, chairman of Priorities USA said the problems go deeper. Since many of the problems are linked to Democrat policies and their effectiveness over the past eight years, the problem is much more difficult to resolve that just finding a more charismatic candidate.

Blue collar voters put their faith in Obama and were rewarded with a lackluster economy and diminished purchasing power. When faced with more of the same from Democrat presidential and congressional candidates, they voted for Donald Trump, the current candidate of hope and change. While the study doesn’t address other potential Republican candidates, it seems likely that Clinton would have had the same or worse problems against other Republicans with fewer negatives than Trump.

With much of the modern Democrat strategy emphasizing identity politics and knee-jerk “resistance” to Donald Trump, the party is currently ill-prepared to mount a comeback. Cecil’s first solution is to attack traditional liberal bogeymen such as Wall Street, pharmaceutical companies and for-profit colleges.

His second solution is more substantive. “The second part of the argument must include a real, forward-looking economic plan that does more than rehash the same four policy proposals from the last 20 years,” he says. “How do we deal with automation and huge company mergers? What do we do to address opportunity deserts in rural and urban areas where real investment is almost impossible to find?”

The lesson in the study for Republicans is that parties that promise recovery and prosperity need to implement policies that can deliver. There is a window to win traditionally Democrat blue-collar voters to the GOP as Ronald Reagan did with the Reagan Democrats in the 1980s, but it may close quickly if President Trump and congressional Republicans prove themselves incapable of governing and forging bipartisan alliances to advance their agenda.

A rule of politics is that voters vote with their wallets. 2016 was no different. 2018 won’t be either. 

Originally published on The Resurgent