Democrats have been trying to scare voters for months. A Republican victory, they shout, will mean the rise of semi-fascism! Women will be shackled to their birthing beds! Democracy itself is at stake!
None of it has worked. Despite endless news reports about how Democrats’ chances in the midterms were improving, the needle just isn’t moving.
So, will they try to run on their record of “accomplishment”? Brent Budowsky, a columnist for The Hill, says they should. In a piece headlined: “A closing message for Democrats to win,” he says they just need to ask voters: “Do you want to build on, or reverse, the achievements of Biden and the Democratic Congress?”
What achievements? Budowsky lists them. Democrats, he says:
- lowered prescription drug costs,
- created tens of millions of high-wage jobs,
- made “dramatic” improvements in veterans’ health care,
- “important” progress to combat gun violence, and
- “historic” progress climate change,
- strengthened the Violence Against Women Act,
- passed the American Rescue Plan,
- expanded Child Care Tax Credit,
- and got a bipartisan infrastructure law passed.
Seriously? That’s the list? Most of these are bogus. The rest will just make voters think Democrats are even more out of touch than they imagined. Their top concerns are inflation, the recession, and violent crime, and Democrats want to brag about bigger subsidies for electric cars?
But let’s take Budowsky seriously for a minute, and look at each of these “wins.”
On drug prices, a new analysis finds that wholesale prices for brand-name drugs went up 4.9% in the second quarter. And the alleged drug cost savings from the Democrats’ “Inflation Reduction Act” are highly uncertain, limited to a small set of prescription drugs, and won’t take effect for years.
Those tens of millions jobs? Those weren’t “created,” they were just filling the millions laid off during the pointless COVID lockdowns. And “high wages”? What a cruel joke. The Heritage Foundation reports that Bidenflation has cut real disposable household income by more than 11%.
Dramatic improvements in veterans’ health care? All Biden did was sweeten the VA benefits package, not improve what it actually delivers. Darin Selnick, a senior adviser for Concerned Veterans for America, reports that “veterans are still in the lurch wanting for care,” and Biden’s supposed improvements “will inevitably make the wait times at the VA longer.”
How about gun violence? Well, let’s see, gun-related deaths hit an all-time high in 2021 and show no sign of slowing down this year. What’s more, the crime wave is being fueled by the defund-police stupidity Biden and his fellow Democrats embraced. By all means, let’s reverse that.
On climate change, if wasting money and distorting the economy is the measure of success, then kudos to the Democrats. But those massive costs won’t make an iota of difference in global temperatures and will only serve to make Americans poorer.
And how does making it easier for biological men who “identify” as women to get placed in women’s prisons and shelters count as “strengthening” the Violence Against Women Act?
As for the American Rescue Plan, all it accomplished was to fuel inflation. COVID is still with us. The economy is in the dumps. And rising prices have stolen back all the money Biden passed out to “rescue” America.
Meanwhile, it was Democrats who couldn’t get the child tax credit expansion renewed as part of the Inflation Reduction Act. And we just learned that the IRS sent $1.1 billion of those child tax credit payments to the wrong people.
The last item on the list, the infrastructure bill, was a boondoggle, but a bipartisan one, which means Republicans aren’t likely to do anything about it should they take control of Congress.
Given what little Democrats have to work with, is it any wonder they keep returning to their scare tactics?
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
