When politicians talk big, judge them by their actions, not their promises. It’s a lesson we keep having to learn the hard way.
To take the results of the Blue Tsunami election at face value, the right got their asses kicked, in large part due to the framing of economic issues.
It wasn’t not the jobs market. Another 400,000 jobs were added in the last 3 months, well above expectation. Not about the stock market.
They pressed hard on questions of kitchen table issues: price at the pump, groceries, and energy costs. Anna Navarro was roasted for a serious gaffe she made while pushing Schumer’s talking points. “Do you understand that at a time when most Americans are having a hard time making ends meet, when gas is $5 a gallon, diesel is $6 a gallon, ground beef is $6.30 a gallon, this is the sh*t he’s talking about? Guys, please go out and vote tomorrow and vote these bums out.” But gaffe or no, rightly or wrongly that was the message voters took to the polls.
This is hardly the first time we’ve been promised relief from expenses and gotten the opposite result.
What was the central promise of Obamacare? Everyone would have affordable health care, while being able to keep your doctor and your plan. That earned Obama the ‘lie of the year’ award. Biden gave us the ‘Inflation Reduction Act’, that even he admitted was more of a Trojan Horse for key components of an unpopular Green New Deal. Even Manchin eventually got tricked (bribed?) into supporting it in 2022.
The average inflation across Biden’s entire term was just under 5% year after year. Under Biden, the news never talked about it except as ‘transitory’, and they conveniently redefined the word recession when it helped them prop him up. Energy shocks coming not only from the conflict around Iran, but also from the destruction of Diesel facilities on both sides of the Ukraine/Russian conflict have driven prices higher. That’s been the talking point. But even this year’s elevated inflation is 3.7%. Still lower than the average across the entirety of Biden’s administration.
Now that the dust of the election has mostly settled, and the hangover from the emotional decisions made that day is soon to begin, let’s look at the evidence we have that they never cared about affordability in the first place.
1. Big Beautiful Bill
The Big Beautiful Bill (aka: “Working Families Tax Cut”). This was one of the big genuine legislative accomplishments of Trump’s first term. It included the largest tax cut in history. It included the Trump accounts — which have already become a mechanism by which philanthropists can direct money directly to the benefit of people in a certain age bracket, state, or zip code. It puts real ‘skin in the game’ for the American Dream of every American regardless of what box the experts might try to fit you in. No tax on tips. On overtime, either.
Not a single Democrat voted for any of it. Had Dems blocked that vote, Americans would NOT have seen ‘an estimated $129 billion’ in tax savings last April.
2. Precipitous Pump Prices
Gas, diesel, and home heating costs were up this year. Iran was part of it, but only a part.
The real question cannot be was Trump and his choice good for the voter in an absolute sense but was it better than the alternative. Because when you choose the alternative, you are stuck with the alternative’s agenda. And what IS that alternative agenda?
Talarico has openly disparaged the oil and gas industry. El Sayed supported Net Zero. When Trump tried to alleviate punishing pump prices by lifting the import ban on Russian diesel, Democrats like Blumenthal openly threatened any companies that might have delivered Russian oil to the American NorthEast. On the left coast, prices are higher there partly because Dems have crushed any refining capacity, and partly because they have cut themselves off from any pipeline capacity.
Speaking of pipelines, New Englanders and New Yorkers would have cheaper alternatives for home heating if elected Democrats at the state and federal level weren’t so busy blocking natural gas pipelines into the NorthEast.
3. The Power Grid
Remember all of the scare-mongering we had about how AI was going to doom us all and raise energy prices sky-high? If what Dems REALLY cared about was improving the lives of people, instead of leveraging their fear for political opportunistic gain, Schumer would NOT have blocked the Ratepayer Protection Act that passed 417-3 in September by the house to protect consumers from spiking energy costs.
Nope. Senate Dems cared more about harvesting that precious fear for political gain. Same is true about the ‘water’ scare for data centers. New designs of data centers actually recycle the same water over and over. And then there’s putting them in orbit where the whole process is powered by the sun and cooled by the void of space itself.
What are their REAL plans with the power grid? In the case of Texas, they are ‘helping’ Texans by invoking powers they might not actually possess to impose the same price control methods that killed competition and drove up energy prices in California. How quickly those ‘No kings’ protests give way to Napoleon complexes.
4. Immigration
Dems are all about open borders and shutting down ICE. Some have even admitted their explicit goal of padding their numbers for purposes of redistricting. (Once again, it’s an exercise in acquiring and maintaining political power.)
The lives of Americans became objectively better as Trump reversed the flow of immigration. Predictably, with fewer people clamoring to live in the same finite number of homes, we saw less upward pressure on housing prices, both rental and purchase. (Even the Bank of Canada admits the relationship between immigration and housing costs.) You would expect a similar dynamic at play in wages with fewer people chasing the same number of jobs.
How else do Open Borders policies fly in the face of their cost of living claims? For one thing, Biden spent much of his administration robbing Peter to pay Paul in his efforts to throw money at all of the NGO’s that sprung up like mushrooms as ‘service providers’ of one sort or another in serving the migrants? Food. Shelter. Transportation. Language services. Education. Social support. Free phones. Medical support. The opportunities of getting your grift game going were limited only by your imagination. This was drinking from a fire hose.
And Biden took money out of FEMA to keep it going. And the VA, and God alone knows all the other nooks and crannies that got raided to keep this plan alive, as the national debt climbs higher and higher, and so many of the migrants Dems see as their new power base are completely dependent on the taxpayer for food and shelter.
It’s difficult to justify flooding America with new hungry mouths when we’ve failed to solve the homelessness crisis of those already here. And speaking of need…
5. Medicare/Medicaid Insolvency
For years we’ve been told we are on the precipice of running out of the money we need to fulfil our obligations to Medicare and Medicaid. Even if we suddenly liquidated the wealth of our wealthiest citizens (and who, pray tell would have the finances to buy everything they’re selling?), that money would quickly vanish while the costs of running the government would remain.
Look at just ONE of the big promises they are making. ‘Free Medicare for all’. Bernie Sanders isn’t just offering the hopelessly overburdened Canadian system. He is gladly throwing in items even Canadians aren’t dumb enough to stick on the national credit cared: vision, hearing and dental.
Interest in debt alone is already the Second-largest line item on the national budget. We’re at the point that the only real way to dig our way out of this hole is to have ourselves another industrial/economic revolution like the several iterations in agriculture, manufacturing, telecommunications and computing that have gone before it.
But it would be awfully hard to grow our way out of this hole if the Democrat’s first instinct is to take an ax to the neck of the very industries that could lay golden eggs that could get us there.
Bonus Answer: America ‘First’
We saw a lot of handwringing in this election over the question of Israel.
Some of it was based on allegations that Israel was driving Trump’s involvement in Iran. (Which was denied by Trump himself.) Others were very vocal about any money being given to Israel.
Trump, for his part, has already pivoted on money to Israel, saying they have become sufficiently self-sufficient as to no longer need such help.
Dems loved to frame that spending in terms of the better uses such foreign aid money could be put to here at home. But what have they been promising even before they know who will be given the new gavel?
No money for Israel.
Sure, if that’s your big issue, I can see that argument, especially in light of the national debt. But to turn around and push for a reboot of the USAID programs in the same breath?
Nope. Sorry. You don’t get to have it both ways.
Cut Israel’s funding, sure.
But if you’re gonna go that route slash that AND all of the unjustifiable other foreign aid that (ultimately) finds its way into the hands of sketchy people whose real goals and aims run contrary to those of the ordinary voter anyway.
