I always warn people not to pay too much attention to polls, particularly not polls taken months in advance of an election, when most Americans are too busy with real life (summer activities, getting the kids back to school, etc.) to pay attention to the political horse race obsessions of the media class. And when you’re talking about “generic preference polls,” where it’s only about parties and not even actual candidates, you’ve descended to a whole new level of worthlessness.
Still, the fact that Real Clear Politics shows Democrats well ahead in all such polls in the races for Congress, with an average lead of 7.3 points, is both worrisome and baffling. Intelligent people can’t help but look at the desire to return power to Democrats, shake their heads and ask, “Why?!” Are they really tired of winning already?
Despite the never-ending anti-Trump propaganda blitz by the media, it can’t have escaped most Americans that they are far better off now than they were two years ago. Economic growth has leaped by several points; unemployment hasn’t been this low in half a century, and that includes black and Hispanic unemployment. Most Americans got a tax cut, with many companies opting to share theirs with workers in the form of raises, bonuses and new benefits. Even with Democrats poo-pooing the results as “crumbs” and the cut as a “giveaway to the rich,” the rich are still paying the same hefty share of taxes as ever. The resulting growth brought higher revenues to the government even with lower tax rates.
In terms of foreign policy, the North Korean nuclear threat is being dismantled, bad trade deals are being renegotiated, and ISIS has been nearly obliterated. And with each new blow to Russia by Trump, the ridiculous “Russian collusion/Putin’s puppet” narrative looks more and more like the threadbare fairy tale that it is.
Meanwhile, what are the Democrats offering if they are returned to power? They not only don’t have a positive platform, they can’t even come up with a slogan that means anything. We know they’re in favor of hating Trump so much they’ll try to impeach him without grounds. And they’re in favor of screaming, threatening and committing vandalism to silence and intimidate people who disagree with them. They want to bring back Obamacare, higher tax rates and job-killing regulations. They don’t want government insiders who abuse their power to be investigated or held to account. And about two-thirds of them are assuring us that Democrats don’t want socialism, open borders or to abolish ICE, so ignore the other third who are loudly demanding that we embrace socialism, open our borders and abolish ICE.
Given all that, I’m hard pressed to understand why anyone would want to put these loons in charge of a snowcone stand, much less the United States Congress. But maybe a deeper look at a new Rasmussen survey will provide some clues. At the link, John Hinderaker of the Powerline Blog delves into the numbers and finds that the clues may lie in young Democrats’ cluelessness.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/07/the-polls-are-crazy.php
For instance, 51% of Democrats have a favorable view of socialism, but only 19% think the Party should “come out” openly as socialist (maybe they’re holding that big reveal as a post-election “surprise!”) Digging deeper, we find that the numbers are skewed by Democrats under 40, who have a much more favorable opinion of socialism than older Democrats, and are much more in favor of the party becoming openly socialist. However, they are also the group most likely not to understand what socialism or capitalism even mean; and most likely to believe that in a socialist government, individuals have more power than the government – which they really, really, really do not.
Again, I don’t put a lot of faith in early generic election polls, but these deeper surveys do indicate something I’ve long suspected: one of the worst mistakes conservatives ever made was letting leftists become entrenched in the education establishment and mislead generations of young Americans into swallowing toxic ideas such as socialism or thinking that protecting people’s feelings is more important than protecting free speech. Let’s hope that come November, the silent majority of Americans who aren’t suffering the ignorance of history, economics and the Constitution that only comes from certain types of higher education will exercise their uniquely American individual power over the government by getting out and voting.
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