Sorry, there’s not going to be any ‘blue tidal wave’ this fall

Each day, the impending electoral “blue tidal wave” gets upgraded on the Hawaiian scale of electoral wave strength. Every special election, no matter how small, is inflated to an epic scale that “spells disaster” for the president and the party he commandeered in 2016.

Just one thing stands in the way of this electoral disaster of biblical proportions.

{mosads}Reality.

The writing is simply not on the wall for a Democratic blow-out. The president’s approval rating has been consistently higher than Obama enjoyed at the same point in his presidency. Economic news has been staggeringly good. The unemployment rate is at a 44-year low. The Democrats have no coherent message. The NRA is flush with cash following this year’s extremist anti-gun rhetoric. And the RNC has 40 million dollars more than the “dead broke” DNC.

Now, this is not to suggest that Republicans will make huge gains themselves. Honestly, how many more offices are left for Republicans to win? The only place where Republicans could see real growth is California, where we might not even be able to field a candidate for governor or senator. The party’s silver lining for the Golden State is, as always, that California is the living embodiment of the failure of left-wing politics. With no grown-ups in Sacramento, California’s pain is the Republicans’ gain.

And for their electoral woes in the other 49 states, Democrats have no one to blame but themselves.

The party that once genuinely championed the working-class and traditional liberal values has been hijacked by elite coastal millionaires; insane college professors; impossible-to-please social justice warriors; and an unending, unthinking mob of protesters. The Democrats’ “big tent” has become a three-ring circus.

Liberals no longer call themselves “liberal” because they have abandoned the values that word embodies: “liberty.” Instead they now use the Orwellian term “progressive.” Only what we want is progress. Those who disagree will report to the Ministry of Love for re-education.

The far left, which has become the mainstream left, has turned on core liberal values like the presumption of innocence; freedom of speech; freedom of the press; the right to a secret ballot; racial integration; and freedom of religion. (The last one doesn’t even require a citation.) So basically, progressives have declared war on the core tenets of democracy.

Many even want to get rid of democracy.

There’s no room for classical freedoms when there’s a frenzied mob starving for its daily dose of outrage. The left now wantonly advocates violence against dissenters and frequently carries it out. Progressives haven’t just abandoned the best parts of liberalism, they’ve embraced the worst tactics once used only by the far-right.

This was bad in the years leading up to Trump’s victory and has only gotten worse since. Instead of toning down, the left has doubled down — with fresh attacks every day on any American institution imaginable. Upon the altar of impossible multi-culturalism, the schizophrenic left has sacrificed any hint of unity, which we’re seeing already with nasty primaries and disobedient candidates.

They have no core set of principles such as, say, nationalism — or even better, shared religious values. Their manufactured unity is constantly shrieking about prejudice, and inventing it when they can’t find it, with divisive, hypocritical nonsense like “micro-aggressions,” “cultural appropriation,” and telling people they can’t wear Black Panther costumes.  

The modern left has waged a constant, relentless attack on American culture. Their main victim has been the Democratic Party itself.

Doubling down on identity politics will make finding a single candidate impossible, with 50 Democrats competing for the top spot and two unforgivably old white men at the head of the pack. Sorry, Bernie Sanders: even being Jewish won’t be enough for diversity zealots, and it certainly won’t sit well with the increasingly anti-Semitic part of the party of protests.

Democrats will fight each other over ideological purity, cannibalize their side’s resources, and provide endless grist for Matt Drudge to shock mainstream America into re-electing the man they feel stands between them and anarchy. Voters may want to check some of Trump’s eccentricities, but why give control of the country to people who can’t hate it enough?

Conventional wisdom suggests the party out of power will pick up seats in a midterm election, which does seem reasonable. But keep in mind that the same people predicting disaster assured us two years ago that Trump could never be the nominee, and then could never win the White House. After miscalculating the 2000 elections, pundits became cautious. After imploding in 2016, they became hysterical.

So ignore the obstinate, biased, alarmist headlines: the blue tidal wave will, at best, be a blue trickle.

Jared Whitley served as associate director in the White House under George W. Bush and as press liaison for Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah).