How Much Destruction Will the Democratic Party Suffer in 2022?
To the astonishment of many, not only have Democrats adopted policies that have alienated much of the U.S. electorate, but they keep doubling down on their destructive policies. Not only are those policies not intelligent reactions to the country’s problems, but they are also terrible politics. This begs the question: Just how much political destruction can the Democratic Party expect in November? And how could the Democrats have been so stupid?
The Destruction Wreaked on the American People by Democrats
Although Democrats seem constitutionally incapable of admitting their own culpability for our problems, they have no one but themselves to blame. The list of catastrophic disasters they have inflicted on the U.S. is large and growing. Unfortunately for both them and ourselves, progressive Democrats keep doubling down on their mistakes. A partial list of their blunders is shown below:
1. A Democratic Party war on fossil fuels
Arguably, the Democratic Party’s war on U.S. fossil fuel production is their worst fiasco in a long list of debacles. This one policy exacerbates all the other mistakes they have made. By reducing fossil fuel production, particularly oil, this policy disaster contributes to both inflation and further interruptions of domestic supply chains.
Interruptions in supply chains are exacerbated by increasing the cost and reducing the availability of needed fuel. Such interruptions are particularly worrisome in the domestic production of food. A reduction in oil supply impacts not only the supply of fuel for tractors and other farm machinery. It also reduces the production of fertilizers and pesticides for crops.
2. Massive government spending
The progressives running the Democratic Party are true believers in Modern Monetary Theory. This is the notion that since the federal government controls the national money supply, there is no reason it can not spend as much as it wants.
Since the government through the Federal Reserve controls the “printing” of money, i.e. the quantity of money in circulation, politicians can require the Fed to use newly created money to buy government bonds. This gives the government a new supply of fiat money to finance anything it wants. Progressive politicians need never depend on tax revenue to finance government programs.
Admittedly, such a practice can lead to huge inflation. Of course, if Biden cannot persuade Congress to increase taxes due to Republican resistance, inflation would constitute a hidden tax to finance his programs.
The inflation rate increases with the percent increase in the money supply and the percent increase in the velocity of money, and decreases with the percent increase in the GDP. [NB: see this PDF to see the proof of this assertion.] There is only one way Joe Biden and company can defend the claim inflation will decrease with their massive spending programs. You would have to believe the new federal programs financed would increase the GDP faster than their increase in the money supply. Good luck with that! All the available evidence says the exact opposite is true.
3. Opening the U.S. borders to cartels and illegal immigration
The Biden administration’s opening of our southern borders does great harm to the American people in at least three different ways. First, there is the flood of new people who either become wards of the state or become homeless on our city streets.
Second, there is the de facto handing-over control of our Mexican border to the drug cartels. They are the primary organizers of the caravans of illegal immigrants. First, the cartels send across the immigrants, who promptly surrender themselves to the U.S. Border Patrol and appeal for asylum. Then, while the Border Patrol is distracted by the immigrants, the cartels send across drug runners who smuggle in drugs such as the opioid fentanyl. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has reported that 42 % of pills tested for fentanyl contained at least 2 mg of fentanyl, a potentially lethal dose. NBC News has reported “a staggering 4,000 percent increase in fentanyl seizures over the last three years.”
Third, the flood of illegal immigrants includes people not just from Central America, South America, and Mexico, but people from a great many nations all over the world. Mixed among these have been found criminals and agents of our enemies, who wish to destroy us.
4. Government policies that prevent private companies from substituting for lost foreign supplies
The Biden administration has repeatedly blamed inflation and the breakdown of supply chains on the COVID-19 pandemic and on Putin’s war on Ukraine. There is a tiny kernel of truth in these claims. Both the pandemic and the Ukraine war have wreaked havoc on foreign supply chains, especially for oil and wheat.
Nevertheless, Biden’s economic policies have waged war on domestic supply chains. The massive government spending programs described earlier create a big part of the problem. These take away needed capital from American corporations. Instead of being used by companies for investments to increase production and raise wages, this capital is dissipated in government programs of dubious economic value. A vast amount of empirical data from various sources shows the more an economically developed country’s government spends, the more it exacerbates its society’s problems.
Another big problem for domestic supply chains is the aforementioned Democratic war on U.S. fossil fuel production. Transportation of domestic goods, agricultural production, and the erosion of the value of ordinary people’s assets are all impacted by this ill-advised war.
If the federal government would just get out of the way of private businesses, they could substitute for most of the foreign supply losses.
5. Foreign policy blunders that invite aggression from foreign adversaries
President Obama’s former Defense Department secretary, Robert Gates, has famously said that Joe Biden has “been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” Unfortunately for us, President Biden has continued this fallibility during his own presidency. The disastrous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is a perfect example of Biden’s poor judgment. Consider Robert Gates’ testimony on Biden’s foreign policy fecklessness in the 60 Minutes interview below.
Many progressives tend to think the U.S. is at fault for causing most of the world’s foreign policy problems. They argue for restraint in the face of our adversaries’ military adventures. This opinion along with fear of conflict has led Biden to shrink from offending the leaders of China, Russia, and Iran. Historically, this penchant not to offend hostile adversaries has led not to peace, but to a continuous string of everlasting “forever wars.” Constantly attempting to appease hostile foreign adversaries will only generate their contempt for U.S. weakness. Nothing better could lead to war.
The Reaction of the American People
The sum of all these crises has taken a toll on the Democratic Party’s political support. A measure of this is given by the time development of President Biden’s job approval. Currently, it is in a small upswing, but this looks more like a small fluctuation in the middle of a catastrophic fall. As of August 11, 2022, the Real Clear Politics average of presidential approval polls is as shown below.
Another measure of the growing disapproval of the electorate is provided by an increasing defection of important parts of the Democratic base. The desertion of blue-collar voters from the Democrats is old news. A more recent flight is that of the important factions of Hispanics and Blacks. The left-wing magazine The New Republic reports
While democratic strategists are deeply unsettled by Trump’s gain nationwide among Latino and Hispanic voters—estimated to be around eight to 10 points, with the increase far wider in some key districts—most Democratic strategists appear to ignore a key reason for the shift.
“The Democratic Party Is Shedding Latino Voters. Here’s Why.”, The New Republic
The author Katherine Stewart goes on to explain several ways in which Latinos have “conservative” values and are thereby drawn to the Republican Party. These include beliefs about religion, abortion, and a Latino animus toward socialism. Remember, many of these Latinos have fled from failed socialist countries in Central and South America.
For exactly the same reasons, many black voters are switching allegiances from the Democratic to the Republican Party. If a black voter is also a blue-collar worker, that voter’s defection is even more likely. A CNN post reports
Now look at exit poll data going back this century. I couldn’t find a single year with a smaller difference between how White voters and voters of colors filled in their congressional ballots than what the polls are suggesting right now. The lowest was 55 points in 2004 and 2006.
The big reason for this shrinking gap is that voters of color are supporting Republicans at very high levels. The previous low watermark for the Democratic edge among voters of color in House elections this century was 40 points in 2004.
Republicans are currently doing 10 points better than their best year of 2004.
“Voters of color are backing the GOP at historic levels”, CNN
It would seem that Republicans and Democrats are splitting the black vote.
As bad for the Democrats as all this seems, we still have a little more than three months to the mid-term elections. The logic of ongoing events suggests the political environment will grow even more dire for the Democratic Party.
The Logic of Developing Events
There have been suggestions that although Democrats will undoubtedly lose big in the House of Representatives in the midterm elections, nevertheless they just might be able to hold the Senate. Also, the CPI inflation rate recently fell from June’s 9.1% to July’s 8.5%. Progressives would like us to believe inflation has peaked and now will begin to fall. If we have seen the worst in the U.S. economy and it now rebounds, surely the Democrats will fare well in the polls in November. Or so Democrats would like to believe.
There is a huge flaw with this Democratic rosy thinking. It ignores the logic of developing events. For example, the small reduction in inflation was due primarily to a fall in gas and energy prices. However, this decline was not because energy supplies became more abundant. The supply of gas at the pump continues to decline. Instead, energy prices fell because people have greatly reduced their demand for it. They are driving a lot less because of the continuing high price of gas. Reuters reports that the “U.S. demand for gasoline, jet fuel, and diesel is down more than 10% compared to 2019, before the pandemic began, according to the Energy Information Administration. Gasoline stations have responded by lowering prices.” This is a bad thing for the economy, not a good thing. It comes about because high energy prices have reduced economic demand from what it otherwise would be. Inflation has slightly fallen at the cost of recession.
Another continuing development that bodes ill for the economy is the Democrats’ war against U.S. fossil fuel production. This war is all the more aggravating because its main premise — that increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide is an existential threat — is demonstrably false.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration informs us that fossil fuels gave us 79% of U.S. energy in 2021. They also gave us the chart below, which shows the time history of energy consumption by types of energy sources from the beginning of the country to 2021.
Non-fossil fuels (solar, wind, biofuels, nuclear, and other renewables) provided only 21 % of our energy in 2021. Substituting renewable energy sources for fossil fuels would require many decades of development. Trying to eliminate fossil fuels almost immediately logically means we will increasingly lack the energy to run our economy. GDP would necessarily have to decrease. Widespread rolling blackouts of electrical power this summer have been predicted by many. As people connect the dots coupling the Democrat’s war on fossil fuels with economic failures, how will Democrats’ electoral chances change?
Developing social reality promises other ways it will thrash the Democratic Party. As the economist Nouriel Roubini has pointed out, the Democratic hope that we are in a recession that will be short and shallow is “totally delusional.” His way of looking at economic developments emphasizes the high debt levels everyone, particularly corporations, is carrying. As interest rates rise to contain inflation, high debt levels can destroy both companies and individuals financially. An economic environment combining stagnation (recession with high inflation) with high debt levels is a recipe for a 1930’s depression-level collapse. As voters realize we are on this course, their anger at the Democrats who put us in this situation should cause them to “throw the bums out.”
It is impossible to gauge just how much damage Democrats will suffer in the 2022 midterms. Nevertheless, consider the combination of all the hurt the American people have suffered already at the hands of the Democrats with the ongoing logic of destructive Democratic policies. If the Democrats do not lose big in both houses of Congress, I will be totally astounded.
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