Commentary: The Democrats' Trump Obsession Will Do Them In

by David Catron

In 2020, despite gaining control of the White House and the Senate, the Democrats suffered a net loss of 13 seats in the House and a comprehensive down ballot drubbing. This was hardly a mandate for radical change. Yet, upon taking office, President Biden immediately reversed former President Trump’s successful energy policies and incentivized illegal immigrants to invade our southern border. Meanwhile, congressional Democrats collaborated with Biden to pass inflationary spending bills and embarked upon an unconstitutional crusade to convict Trump of fictitious crimes against the state.

This ongoing effort to destroy Trump and all his works has long since taken precedence over any policy initiative that would benefit voters. Consequently, Biden’s job approval rating has now dropped below 40 percent in several major polls and the Democratic Party is losing the support of Independent and Latino voters. An obvious manifestation of the latter phenomenon was the victory of Texas Republican Mayra Flores in last week’s special election for the state’s 34th Congressional District. This was no accident. The GOP invested heavily in this contest while the Democrats virtually ignored it. As Flores put it in an interview last week:

I’m grateful that the Republican Party is finally investing in the Hispanic community.… The Democrat Party has completely abandoned us and taken us for granted. They feel entitled to our vote and they feel like they really don’t have to work for it. And what we’re showing now is that, “Yes, you do have to work to earn our vote.” That’s why we won this special election. We knocked on thousands of doors, made thousands of phone calls. I have the most hard-working team and that is why we’re also going to win that reelection in November.

The Democratic leadership in Washington was far too busy conducting the Trump inquisition and lying to the voters about the Jan. 6 riot to devote any attention to the South Texas special election. Flores took advantage of this blunder by reaching out to the neglected voters, an effort augmented by the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) and the Texas Republican Party. Not long after her victory the Texas Tribune reported, “The NRCC and Texas GOP put in $1.1 million for voter contact, according to an NRCC memo released Wednesday, and the state party invested over $500,000 in English and Spanish-language mail.”

Flores’ defeated opponent, Dan Sanchez, was not pleased that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee had left him out to dry but he didn’t make much of it in his concession speech. His campaign manager, Colin Steele, has been far less reticent the Hill reports, “The DCCC, DNC, and other associated national committees have failed at their single purpose of existence: winning elections. The loss in TX-34 was a complete and total abdication of duty.” But this Democratic tendency to take certain voting blocs for granted isn’t limited to Hispanics. Darvio Morrow writes in Newsweek that it is even worse for Black voters:

It is clear to many that the Hispanic vote is far more competitive than Democrats would like them to be. But fewer are willing to accept a possibly more significant trend: the attrition of Black voters that the Democrats are dealing wit.… Because the Black vote has been solidly Democratic since 1964, political prognosticators tend to ignore and even deny the diversity of thought in the Black community. It’s how they missed the fact that for a majority of Black voters, being a Democrat does not mean being a liberal, and it certainly doesn’t mean being “woke.”

How do the Democrats plan to handle voter apathy and defections from their party? They plan to escalate their attacks on Trump while portraying the GOP and its voters as a clear and present danger to democracy. They have even exhumed Hillary Clinton and sent her out to scare the voters. In a Friday interview with the Financial Times she warned: “We are standing on the precipice of losing our democracy, and everything everybody else cares about then goes out the window. Look, the most important thing is to win the next election. The alternative is so frightening that whatever does not help you win should not be a priority.”

According to a report in the Hill, erstwhile President Clinton expressed very similar concerns a few days earlier on CBS’s The Late Late Show. He told host James Corden, “I’ve never before been as worried about the structure of our democratic form of government.” Such statements, coming from either of the Clintons, are pretty rich considering the long history of legal and political skulduggery for which both are justly notorious. Not coincidentally, former President Obama has also been parroting the “democracy is in danger” talking point. During his recent remarks to the Copenhagen Democracy Summit, for example, Obama intoned:

On every continent, emboldened autocrats are ramping up oppression, they’re targeting minority groups, they’re often flouting international law. Just as disturbing, within democracies, populist appeals grounded in fear and bigotry and resentment, have elevated leaders who, once they’re in office, have sought to systematically undermine democratic institutions and entrench themselves in power. In my own country, the forces that unleashed mob violence on our Capitol are still churning out misinformation and conspiracy theories.

You will note that none of these people actually mention Donald Trump or the GOP, yet it could hardly be more obvious which “forces” they are talking about. Nor are the Clintons and Obama the only people who are been talking like this. Former Bush speechwriter turned MSNBC talking head Matthew Dowd recently tweeted, “Conservative republican judge Luttig didn’t just say Trump was a clear and present danger to our democracy, Luttig said Trump’s allies and supporters are a clear and present danger as well. Powerful and true.” This stuff isn’t merely false, it’s crazy. Not even quislings like Dowd really believe this balderdash.

The Democrats want to convince the public that Trump and the GOP present a danger to the republic because, after controlling the White House and Congress for 18 months, they have turned the nation’s economy, immigration system, and foreign policy into a trio of blazing dumpster fires. Instead of doing their jobs, the Democrats have pursued the Bad Orange Man with a vehemence that Captain Ahab would find excessive. Even worse, they have also vilified the 74.2 million Americans who voted for Trump. That is dangerous to democracy. The Democrats simply don’t deserve the trust of the voters who are about to fire them.

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David Catron is a recovering health care consultant and frequent contributor to The American Spectator. You can follow him on Twitter at @Catronicus.
Photo “Donald Trump” by Gage Skidmore CC2.0.