Hubris. Arrogance. Complacency. Whatever you want to call it, the biggest threat to a red tsunami is voter apathy. We do NOT have it in the bag – that doesn’t happen until after all the votes are counted.
If the election were held today, I doubt many Democrats would be returning to Congress. People are fed up and angry – and all of that ire is aimed at the Democrats. Blaming Trump is laughable – and not working. One failure after another has dogged the supposedly most popular president ever. An election today would probably decimate the Democrats and very probably collapse their party.
But the election isn’t for another year – and a year is a very long time in politics. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not expecting a miraculous turnaround in Democrat fortunes but I’m old enough to know better than rule one out, either.
Something could happen – although I can’t readily imagine what – to turn things around for the Democrats. Wars are usually convenient for just such emergencies – but given what happened with Afghanistan I doubt seriously that this administration wants another bite at the military apple. Worse, the public is very anti-war at present – even among the usually more hawkish conservatives. Russia is unlikely to cooperatively bomb an American base and the Chinese are content with saber rattling – neither wants a hot war with an unpredictable American president. Russia is content to let Biden sink himself. China doesn’t want to take any overt risks while they are having internal issues.
A new pandemic? That would devastate the Democrats, not help them. People are done playing this Covid game and a new ‘crisis’ would likely get some really nasty pushback. New Greek letters aren’t striking fear into the American public anymore and a completely new disease would likely be seen more as a hoax.
An economic recovery? Now this has real possibilities – except that Democrat policy is usually anti- economic growth and tends to worsen, not fix, economic woes. If the Biden admin would reverse a lot of its policies and re-establish a good number of Trump’s, that actually could significantly help the Democrats. Satan is more likely to ice skate to work, however.
Abortion? Most people are a lot more concerned about their wallets right now than what the Supreme Court does or doesn’t do with Roe v Wade. If the Court overturns Roe, it will enrage the base and energize the right – but the majority of people simply won’t be that interested. It could help the Democrats but only in their strongholds – not exactly a great help, really.
No, there’s only one thing that can save the Democrats – convince Republicans that the election is in the bag and that they don’t need to turn out. Make the Republicans believe that the red wave is a foregone conclusion so that they aren’t as motivated to get out the vote – or talk to their friends and post memes on social media. Convince the Republicans they can’t lose and maybe, just maybe, it will be a repeat of 2016 only in reverse.
At least that is what the Democrats hope. Will they get it? Only if we let them.
And they somehow manage to stay out of trouble for the next eleven months…
