If Democrats do well in the 2018 midterm elections, it won’t be because of the Trump tax cuts. Democrats’ hyperbole notwithstanding, voters are not going to vote against Republicans for putting more money in their pockets. There may be other reasons to vote against Republicans, but if President Trump can somehow keep from making himself the issue and the 2018 election is mostly about peace and prosperity, Republicans may have a chance of holding onto the House and Senate majorities.
Democrats have somehow deluded themselves into thinking that Republican tax cuts are akin to what they did in 2010 in passing Obamacare. But, no — taking away somebody’s health plan, often denying them the doctor of their choice and compelling them to buy something at the government’s insistence while simultaneously killing jobs and raising the cost of health care is not the same as letting Americans keep more of the money they earn and giving a lift to the overall economy.
The Democrats’ spin has gotten wildly out of control. Surely, the more reasonable, thoughtful and less-committedly socialist members of the party know it. Just ask yourself: How many Democrats in competitive House and Senate seats will be running in November 2018 on the promise to reverse the Trump tax cuts? Answer: Probably none. I will be eager to see which Democrats make undoing the Trump-era economy in favor of something like the Obama-era economy a key component of their campaigns.
The fact is, Democrats don’t have much to say. Those running in competitive races have been reduced to mostly hoping that the economy goes bad, that maybe there will be a foreign fiasco and that the natural midterm cycle leads to their election without exposing them as mindless minions of House and Senate Minority Leaders Nancy Pelosi, D-California, and Charles Schumer, D-New York, respectively.
While we are at it, it will be interesting to see how active the Clintons are on the campaign trail next year and how many Democrats will publicly be wistful about what might have been. Seriously, if Hillary Clinton had been elected, what exactly would we be celebrating today? An expansion of the global Paris climate accord? A new round of labor regulations? Illegal immigrants flooding our borders? What would be happening that might make the United States more prosperous?
While Clinton thought of Trump supporters as deplorables, just imagine the parade of self-righteous, smug and condescending insufferables who would be filling her administration right now. Speaking of that, when it comes to comparing Trump’s version of peace with Clinton’s, a glimpse of what could have been was revealed Wednesday in The New York Times when former Obama administration national security adviser and Clinton ally, Susan Rice, criticized Trump’s National Security Strategy as a “dramatic departure” from the mission of “expand[ing] prosperity, freedom and security.” Well, exactly where in the world does Rice think the Obama-Clinton foreign policy expanded “prosperity, freedom and security”? I can’t think of any place. The amnesia among Democrats is remarkable to witness.
Anyway, it is easy to take shots at Trump’s foreign policy. Much of the criticism is well-deserved. But would President Hillary Clinton, aided by an uninhibited and expanded Clinton Foundation, somehow serve the United States better? I’m not so sure.
So, as we approach 2018, all Democrats have going for them is hyperbole, amnesia and the historical cycle of midterm elections. But their hyperbole on tax cuts is failing and amnesia won’t attract independents. Their only strategy now is to ride the wave of the historical cycle and hope that what is supposed to happen does.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
