As Americans head back to work after the Labor Day weekend, the pressing question is whether the country will fully engage with the sharp choice awaiting voters in November’s midterm elections.
With only two months until Election Day, voters will decide whether the Trump administration can press ahead with its free-enterprise agenda, which supporters credit with fueling an economic boom, and continue pushing back against the woke cultural politics they argue have damaged countless lives — or whether Democrats, cast by critics as big-government socialists, will stall that momentum and drag Washington into another bruising cycle of impeachment battles.
History and much of the political commentariat suggest a blue wave — perhaps even a tsunami — could overwhelm the Trump agenda. But Donald Trump, backed by a well-funded political operation and an aggressive roster of administration officials, is preparing for a serious fight, one Democrats may struggle to match if conditions on the ground carry the weight Republicans believe they do.
The dividing lines in the midterm campaign are increasingly unmistakable.
Wrong on issues
Last week, House Democrats voted against a resolution condemning socialism, a move that fit neatly into Newt Gingrich’s argument that the election presents voters with a choice between “big government socialism and weird values” and a Republican Party he says is centered on “creating a better future for every American.”
By contrast, the GOP’s first midterm convention in Dallas this week will attempt to showcase the successes of the first half of the second Trump term that thus far have been muted by successful media nay-saying, clumsy messaging and a president distracted by war.
We will soon tell from Trump’s two bookend speeches in Dallas whether he is in the mood to stay on message.
He ought to be motivated by the fact that the midterms will be a referendum on his presidency at a time when his approval ratings are in the toilet.
Meanwhile, Democrats are assisting greatly by shooting themselves in the feet with weird policies and even weirder candidates,
Whether it’s rejecting voter ID, abolishing prisons, defunding police or allowing men to play in women’s sports, they seem to be on the wrong side of popular opinion on just about everything. All they have on their side is Trump derangement and the increasingly implausible ruse that they represent a “return to normalcy.”
We heard that about Joe Biden, and his presidency was the opposite of normal. No doubt Dems and their street militias are planning the sort of color revolution chaos that worked so well for them in 2020’s “summer of love.” Then, Biden offered the illusion of relief from the chaos he falsely blamed on Trump. But Americans are unlikely to be fooled twice.
Islamo-leftists Zohran Mamdani and Abdul El-Sayed, the Michigan Senate candidate, and their campaign buddy, the odious dog-torturing Twitch-streamer Hasan Piker, are symbolic of the off-putting anti-American weirdness that has gripped the Democratic Party.
Mamdani and El-Sayed have both been trolling 9/11 families on the eve of the 25th anniversary this week of al-Qaeda’s terrorist attack, with both politicians having previously downplayed the atrocity as just “3,000 [people] died” and being less sad than the foreign lives lost in the subsequent war on terror.
Not content with downplaying the attack, Mamdani insists on turning up at the Ground Zero commemorations on Friday even though 9/11 families and the Port Authority’s retired cops have told him to stay away.
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‘Lulu Lenins’
And last Friday, he went one step farther, during a signing ceremony of executive orders related to 9/11 commemorations, when he virtually spat in the faces of the dead. After signing the papers, he handed the honorary pen to Ramzi Kassem, his chief counsel and the lawyer who represented an al-Qaeda-linked terrorist.
His grotesque flex was even worse because he made a clearly uncomfortable NYPD Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch pass the pen to Kassem.
You can imagine the snickering and high-fiving in Gracie Mansion: Hasan will love it, bro!
The Turkish-raised Piker has said America deserved 9/11 and that he hates this country, and he proudly displays a framed front page featuring the burning Twin Towers in the background of his Twitch live stream — yet all his Democrat buddies can do is say he’s irrelevant.
El-Sayed, meantime, chose to spend the weekend before the 25th anniversary at an Islamic convention alongside various 9/11 conspiracy theorists and anti-Israel obsessives, where he railed against what he claims is a growing anti-Muslim sentiment across the country.
Great timing. The upside is that this very un-American malice scares normal voters outside the DSA bastion of New York City, where the “Lulu Lenins,” as Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) describes Mamdani and his trust-fund comrades, have given Democrats a terrible name.
The Democratic Party’s frantic efforts to rebrand itself as “normal” for the midterms are hilariously doomed, considering the reality of its policy priorities. Beyond impeaching Trump, Democrats have no agenda to create prosperity and ensure happiness for Americans.
It’s all about entrenching their power and making life miserable, whether it’s stacking the Supreme Court, creating two new Democrat states, abolishing the Electoral College, “Medicare for all” illegal migrants, abolishing ICE, defunding the police, and on and on.
By contrast, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent did a great job last week at the G20 presenting the grown-up alternative of economic growth along with facts that show the Trump economic agenda is paying dividends.
He pointed to “4.7% wage increases [for the] bottom 25% on the income ladder” that come from Trump’s restructuring of the economy away from government jobs to the private sector. He said “regulatory certainty, tax certainty and energy certainty” have made the US the world’s energy superpower. By 2028, we will have 80% of global computing power, making America the world’s “AI superpower, and we are pulling away,” he told Fox Business’ Larry Kudlow.
Iran in a chokehold
Bessent also painted a picture of Iran’s dire economic situation as he moves to “economically asphyxiate” the regime. He has been busy ferreting out assets the regime elites have hidden around the world, and now Europe has agreed to join in. Just last week, two luxury London penthouses linked to Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei were put up for sale, The Sunday Times reported.
Tehran is reportedly worried it has overplayed its trump card of the Hormuz Strait, as the US blockade of Iranian ships has left the regime with only “about 30 million barrels of Iranian crude oil left that China hasn’t bought” says Bessent, while our Navy helps friendly tankers get through.
“In two years, the Strait of Hormuz will be . . . a worthless piece of water,” he told Kudlow, as oil “will be going on pipelines across land” instead.
As well, reports last week that China President Xi Jinping publicly snubbed Iran President Masoud Pezeshkian by refusing a formal meeting at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit suggest that Tehran’s partnership with Beijing is fraying under the pressure.
There is a lot of good news for the Republicans to tell, if only people will listen.