Most Americans are not going to the ballot box this year thinking about abortion. They’re not going into the booth thinking about a perceived “threat to democracy” from “MAGA Republicans.” They’re not sealing the envelope on the ballot believing their vote will forestall climate change or promote racial equity.
In survey after survey, poll after poll, American voters have made their concerns clear: It’s the economy, crime and education, stupid. These are the three issues voters have consistently told pollsters they care about.
Inconveniently for the Democrats and their establishment media supporters, they’re also issues Republicans tend to win on.
What’s the solution? Pretend those issues don’t really exist. Then, when that doesn’t work, pretend some more. Fake it until you make it.
As Fox News’ Tucker Carlson noted on his Monday show, this still isn’t working.
Carlson began by harkening back to the heady days of June, after the Supreme Court had overturned Roe v. Wade and “every hour on MSNBC sounded like a plot summary from ‘The Handmaid’s Tale.’”
“Liberals seemed genuinely upset, and probably most were — but on some level, not very deep beneath the surface, the people who run the Democratic Party weren’t upset at all,” Carlson said.
“They were thrilled. Here, finally, was an issue for them to run on in the midterm elections,” he said. “It was an issue perfectly suited to a party that had nothing else to talk about. Are they going to brag about Joe Biden? I don’t think so, so it was going to be abortion. They’re going to take your abortions away.
“That was the Democratic message for the midterm elections, the ones that are coming up in just a few days, but there was a problem with the messaging.”
Will the Republicans win back Congress?
The problem was that, having just emerged from the pandemic, American voters remembered that the party of “my body, my choice” had fought tooth and nail to ensure you had no choice in getting a vaccine or wearing a mask. The only time you had a “choice” was when it involved the fate of a human life genetically distinct from the woman who was carrying it. Jabs, masks? Uh, no.
That hasn’t stopped those on the left from trotting out those same talking points, as Joy Reid did on her MSNBC show last week.
“The midterm election is now less than three weeks away and in the final stretch, I’ve noticed and I don’t know if you’ve noticed, frankly, the gaslighting of women voters,” Reid said.
“This message that says, ‘Oh, you don’t really care about your right to control your own bodies, dears. It’s the economy, stupid.’ You’ve got a media narrative that says that women don’t really care about abortion, that women don’t really mind if the states control their bodies. They don’t care about that. They just care about the price of milk.”
Except not only is that literally not the media narrative — consider how much time and effort has been spent by mainstream outlets in propping up nonresonant issues such as abortion, climate change and those pesky “MAGA Republicans” who all bear responsibility for Jan. 6, 2021 — it completely undermines the Democrat desire to control pretty much everything else you consume, from vaccines to social media.
And, as Carlson noted, a recent RMC Research/America First Policy Institute poll shared with The Daily Caller found that “[i]nflation, crime and gun violence, health care, economic issues and education were the most likely issues to be considered ‘very important’ among women for influencing their vote” and “most women support abortion restrictions that are opposed by most Democratic leaders and would have been struck down under Roe.”
“It’s all pretty amusing, and the good news is that for once, lines this preposterous are not working,” Carlson said. “Abortion politics is a total fixation of Democratic donors. It’s the main thing they care about.”
Next, there’s the issue of crime, also thorny for the Democrats. That’s because crime rates began skyrocketing concomitantly with the cries to defund the police after the death of George Floyd in May 2020 — and those calls didn’t come from Republicans.
But again, the media has an answer for this: Talk about race, don’t talk about crime.
We saw this in action when a reporter spoke to Arizona GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake last week about law enforcement, telling her that “a lot of people of color feel like they’re being targeted.”
“A lot of people of color? How many people of color have you talked to about that?” Lake responded.
“I mean, if you look at surveys –,” the reporter said.
“Which surveys?” Lake shot back.
“I’m happy to look at those stats, because — I will tell you this — that I talk to people of color,” she said. “I talk to all Arizonans. They’re all concerned about the crime. Just because their skin isn’t the same color as yours doesn’t mean you want your kids to be walking down the street in an unsafe neighborhood.”
“It doesn’t matter what your skin color is, and if you look at stats, you will look and see that police do not target people of color,” Lake added. “That is a lie that’s been perpetuated by the left and then spread and disseminated and respread in the media. Check the stats.”
Stat-checking? What’s that? That’s not important; a good narrative shouldn’t be despoiled by the facts, after all.
Except it’s not working.
People know where violent crime is coming from. They know that Democrats have enabled it, particularly the party’s progressive district attorneys — people like Alvin Bragg in New York City, George Gascón in Los Angeles and Larry Krasner in Philadelphia — who have simply stopped prosecuting certain crimes.
Americans are not so dumb to have forgotten the relationship between cause and effect, nor have they become so timid as to be browbeaten into accepting that they’re racists for even noticing.
“Voters are getting very tired of this, so tired of it that even some Democrats have started to figure out actually maybe voters don’t want to be shot, raped or carjacked and then attacked morally if they don’t like it,” Carlson said.
The media, however, will still spend the next two weeks gaslighting us into thinking Americans really care about abortion, abortion, abortion. When that fails, they’ll try the ol’ “MAGA Republicans” feint, or maybe roll some split-screen stock footage of a polar bear stranded on a melting iceberg juxtaposed with a coal-burning power plant.
It’s all pure gaslighting. And, while the only poll that matters is the one taken on Election Day, the fact remains there’s a pile of other polls that indicate America isn’t buying it.
They shouldn’t. The country needs new leadership to address the issues that matter, not a midterm election decided on phantom grievances that don’t affect voters.
