Red Undertow

Just a few months ago, the Democrats and their trained hamsters in the media proclaimed that the 2018 mid-term elections were to be a progressive triumph. A "blue wave" was coming and it would wash away the GOP and provide a path to a new era of progressive governance. The House would be solidly Democrat and the Senate would follow. As a consequence, Donald Trump and Brett Kavanaugh would be impeached (never mind that there are absolutely no grounds for doing that), and a slew of "investigations" (launched by Dem stars like Gerald Nadler and Adam Schiff) would excoriate everyone and everything in the Trump administration—all "for the good of the country," of course.

In 2020, an unnamed "democratic socialist" would win the presidency and we'd be a step closer to the utopia that leftists always seem to promise but never, ever deliver.

It is true that history is on the side of the opposition party in all mid-terms. And history is always on the side of the Dems, isn't it?

All of this stuff could happen. In fact, it's likely that some of it will, but ...

... that was before the Dems and their trained hamsters in the media decided that Trump Derangement Syndrome would define their every decision; before they decided that differences in judicial philosophy justified viciously destroying a good man's reputation based on a 36-year old sexual accusation* that was so thin that not a single piece of corroborating evidence could be found; before 'guilty until proven innocent' was the guiding philosophy of certain Democrat Senators; before "shut up" was the operative demand levied against an entire gender, and before ugly mobs (yes ... 'mobs' is the right word) accosted conservatives in restaurants and other public places and in the halls of congress.

Many observers (including a few nervous Dems) believe the Dems have gone too far, and as a consequence, the blue wave has gone from a Hurricane Michael 30-footer to a ripple that might occur when an frog falls into swamp water. The Dems may still win a house majority (after all, history is on their side for mid-terms) but it won't be as "awesome" as predicted. There is almost no chance they'll take the Senate and may in fact lose seats there.

But what if current trending accelerates, and a non-trivial percentage of African Americans, Latinos and independents express their general displeasure with the Dems' psychodrama coupled with their general support for a Trump economy that is "awesome" by voting red rather than blue. And wait, the reliably Democratic Labor Union cohort is now as likely to vote Red as Blue. OMG—a Dem nightmare!

Kim Strassel comments:

After 2016, but especially after Kavanaugh, Democrats should be asking whether an increasing focus on identity politics is actually enlarging their coalition. The more explicitly you target specific identities, the more likely you are to alienate the identities against which they're implicitly framed. As Nate Cohn of the New York Times wrote in 2016, one way to think about Trump's victory was that white working-class people started voting like a minority group — and were 40 percent of the electorate.

And one way to think about the Red Undertow is that while women make up half the electorate, so do men. If something runs up the women's vote but threatens the other half of the country, it's likely to be at best an electoral wash. Or worse, if some of the women in the electorate think of their brothers and fathers, husbands and sons, whose fortunes are inextricably tied to their own.

Funny thing about an "undertow." If you know how to manage it, you can navigate its dangers easily. But if you don't, you drown. A "red undertow" has begun to effect this election cycle, but instead of handling it with wisdom, the Dems swim against it, and if they tire and begin to go down, they have already developed a strategy that is heavy on excuses but very weak on understanding their actual weaknesses.

If the Dems fail to gain majorities, "It'll be "gerrymandering!" claims The Huffington Post in a tweet. It's also a certainty that the validity of the election will be questioned, or maybe the Russians (or the Chinese) will be blamed once again, or possibly it'll be the fault of the deplorables who have the gall to vote for red candidates in the midwest. I honestly think that the Dems believe that Leftist rule is manifest destiny and any denial of that destiny is impossible, unless evil forces are at play.

Based on what we've seen in recent months, along with a veiled threat of violence and extreme derangement, there may, in fact, be evil forces at play. They're just not coming from the source that Democrats are far too quick to identify.

FOOTNOTE:
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* In what is just another example of the breathtaking hypocrisy of the Dems, their trained hamsters in the media, and the #MeToo movement, it's worth noting the silence associated with a legitimate, corroborated accusation of sexual harassment levied against DNC co-Chair (and serial anti-Semite) Keith Ellison. The accusation against Ellison is current—not 36 years in the past. There are corroborating text messages and veiled threats, there is a medical report, there are three witnesses who state that the victim mentioned the attack to them, there is the victim's son who also said he was aware of the attack at the time. Now, it's entirely possible that Ellison is innocent of the charge, but 'ya gotta believe the woman,' right?

Where are the #MeToo protesters? Where are the outraged Dem politicians? Where are the crazed women accosting Ellison along the campaign trail (he running for -- wait for it -- AG of Minnesota) telling him he's ruined their childrens' lives? Where are the broken windows and paint stained walls at Ellison campaign headquarters? Where are the creepy red burka'd Handmaids standing watch over Ellison's speeches?

They have all magically vanished because—Ellison is in the right political party and fits the right identity politics profile—intersectional and all that.