My sister emailed me last night and wondered whether the attack on Paul Pelosi won’t be the Democrats’ October ‘surprise.’ After all, even Ted Cruz called the assault ‘horrific’ and wished the victim well.
But guess who didn’t say anything about the attack? You got it! Not a word from Trump, who is now sitting there anxiously waiting to learn whether Elon Musk will open up his Twitter account again.
Now, what the Democrats need to do is connect the beating of Pelosi to January 6th, then remind everyone of the alleged connections between January 6th and Trump, and then promote the idea that if the GOP takes control of Congress, that violence against elected officials and their families will continue to occur.
And the more I think about it, the more I think that making themselves – the Democrats – out to be the party of peaceful political debate and casting the GOP as the party of political violence is an argument that could move a bunch of votes from red to blue in some swing districts and swing states.
Don’t forget that last week, three men were convicted in Michigan of having been part of the right-wing militia group that planned to kidnap Governor Whitmer, another public figure who was high on the list of ‘enemies’ mentioned on social media by Trump.
How did the Trump media operation respond to the Pelosi event? I’m talking about Fox News, of course, which in its first report about the incident explained it as just another example of how crime is skyrocketing in cities controlled by the big, bad, blue political machine.
This is the same political machine, of course, which mounted a nationwide effort to steal the 2020 vote. This is the same machine which is controlled by a Socialist-Communist Jew like George Soros and his gang that runs the Deep State. This is the same machine that will completely disarm America if Congress remains in Democratic hands – at least that’s what the lead editorial said in the NRA’s American Rifleman magazine which arrived in yesterday’s mail.
You see, the real issue isn’t that the GOP pushes its governance plan through appeals to violence. The real issue is that the Democrats are afraid to clamp down on the violence sweeping down inner-city streets, because violent crime is what happens when you promote the idea of defunding the police.
Okay - take a breath, sit back, slowly read and then think about what I’m now going to say.
As of yesterday, we were running an average of 350 Covid deaths every day. In the year previous to the 2020 election, the daily average of Covid deaths was 1,035 – three times higher than this year. The average price of a gallon of gasoline in October 2020 was $2.15. Now it’s $3.75.
If the price of gasoline in 2020 versus today’s price was as high as the average daily Covid mortality for those two dates, we would be paying about $6 bucks a gallon or maybe more.
I’m not saying that people haven’t been hurt by inflation over the past year. I’m not saying that people aren’t worried about their financial situation even though it does seem that everyone these days has a job.
What I am saying is that if you had told me one year ago that I could walk into a big Kohls outlet like I did yesterday and not see anyone except me wearing a mask, I would have said that you were out of your mind.
What impresses me about this country is not how stable it is but how things seem to have returned to a normal state of affairs in what is really a brief period of time.
And the result, politically speaking, about this normal state of affairs, is that there aren’t any real issues that need to be decided on November 8th.
So, given the lack of anything to worry about, the minority party in the off-year election will probably win and become the majority party for the next two years, because that’s what happens in just about every mid-term election, no matter which party is in charge.
In the 21 midterm elections held since 1934, only twice has the sitting President’s party gained seats – 1934 and 1990. That was it.
What I’m suggesting is that the Democrats turn this mid-term exercise into a plebiscite about politics and violence, a contest which the Democrats, thanks to the nut job who invaded the Pelosi home, can certainly win.