PrintWhat's at stake in the midterm elections?
It's six months until Election Day. Democrats are in a difficult position because their policies have failed. It's too late to change policies to correct the failures. Events could still dramatically affect the election, so don't count the Democrats out. They are famous for taking advantage of a crisis, even if they cause it.
James Carville famously said, "It's the economy, stupid." The condition of the economy is a predictor of elections. GHW Bush lost in a down economy in 1992, as did Carter in 1980, McCain in 2008, and Trump in 2020. Those were presidential election years. No single candidate is on the ballot this year whom the voters can hold accountable for today's problems, but in 2020, Joe Biden promised he would return the country to normalcy. It's unlikely the people will accept the current state of the Union as normal.
The government reported a GDP decline of 1.4% in the first quarter of this year. Two quarters of GDP decline indicates a recession. This problem is compounded by a March inflation rate of 8.5%. A remedy for recession is a reduction of interest rates by the Federal Reserve (Fed), while a remedy for inflation is an increase in interest rates. The economy is at a crossroads. The traffic signal at the crossroads shows red and green simultaneously. An astute president with a clever Fed chairman might solve the problem. The incompetent Biden administration has little chance of achieving the much ballyhooed "soft landing."
The Democrats might choose to reduce inflation by encouraging oil companies to expand production to reduce gasoline and diesel prices. They could reduce government spending (cue laughter). It is highly unlikely that the Democrats will do either, leading to stagflation or a stagnant economy with inflationary pressures.
In 2021, Republicans made significant gains in Virginia's statewide election. Democrats underestimated the people's desire to provide a good education for their children. Teachers' unions, school boards, Democratic operatives, and activists consider America's public schools a propaganda mill in which they will change the nation's culture by indoctrinating children in Critical Race Theory, sexual orientation, and other woke concepts. Terry McAuliffe, already once the governor of Virginia already, stated, "I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach." The people of Virginia disagreed. Glenn Youngkin is now their governor.
President Biden agrees with McAuliffe, telling an audience of teachers at the White House, "They're not somebody else's children. They're like yours when they're in the classroom." The Democrats and teachers' unions have drawn a red line between parents and children to create a generation of woke activists. This plot has been unfolding for decades on college campuses. Proposed legislation would begin schooling in nursery school, enabling woke indoctrination via nursery rhyme.
Many issues confront Americans. The most important issues are local, and the most important elections may be for school boards. The country has no chance to dominate this century as it dominated the last without well educated children who succeed as adults. Republicans are hoping to wrest control of the House and Senate from the clutches of Democrats. Winning congressional elections won't matter if liberal factions succeed in washing children's minds so they can engrain racial idolatry and gender stratification.
Open borders are an affront to the security of the American people. The borders are overwhelmed because of Biden's policies. Illegal aliens take Americans' jobs, reduce wages, and absorb state and federal benefits. Open borders also leave the country defenseless in an opium war with China.
Britain and France fought China in the Opium Wars in the mid-19th century. The U.S. was too preoccupied discovering itself to be involved in the wars. Today, China has introduced a new opiate, fentanyl, to confuse and kill Americans. The Chinese government oversees bundling and safe passage of an abundant flow of drugs to Mexican cartels, who smuggle it across an open border. If Americans want open borders, reduced wages, and cheap opiates, they should vote for Democrats.
The contentious issue of abortion may motivate liberals to turn out their base this November. Will Republican Senate candidates in purple states lose to enraged abortion activists? If the Supreme Court does overturn Roe v. Wade, the cultural divide will become a psychic chasm so deep that it will rival the Royal Gorge. Or will it?
Perhaps strange notions will permeate the noggins of many Americans. They don't have time to contest culture conflicts. They are too busy earning a living in a tough economy, filling their cars with expensive gas, stretching their grocery budgets, and worrying about the nonsense their children are being taught. Perhaps they've forgotten the woke color code ascribed to them by liberal factions.
When they turn on their televisions, they see rampant crime, violence, and death. They turn off the TV and review their checkbooks. Despite government stimulus checks and tax credits, they are struggling to make ends meet. There is no free money, no free lunch. Before they go to bed, they check on their kids, kiss them goodnight, wonder what their dreams are and what kind of country they will live in.
Woke elitists would forever alter the American dream. They would replace equality, liberty, and justice with equity, disinformation governance, and redistribution. What you thought was yours will be theirs. Your property, your freedom, even your children, will be theirs to do with as they please. Society and culture will be a social experiment bent to accommodate the whim of any party ever offended. The whole scheme is so garbled and dysfunctional that future generations will have to research words like "individual," "liberty," and "justice" to understand what a great country America was.
It's six months until Election Day.
