Category Archives: Democrat

To explain the Democrats poor performance in state and local elections Tuesday, various commentators have made very specific claims: It was mostly about critical race theory, or mostly about Terry McAuliffes flaws as a candidate for Virginia governor, or mostly about suburban white women voting like its 2012 again.

But none of these explanations is fully satisfying. The turn against Democrats wasnt limited to parents, or Virginia, or white women. Compared with the 2020 election, support for Democrats decayed across states, genders, ethnicities, and counties. Democrats lost because of something bigger than any demographic or issue. They lost a vibes war. Despite many positive economic trends, Americans are feeling rotten about the state of thingsand, understandably, theyre blaming the party in power.

How are vibes any different from what weve historically called economic fundamentals? Can President Joe Biden mount a comeback after losing the first decisive battle of the vibes war? And why do we always have to name stuff?

The U.S. economy is booming. Kind of. Consumer demand is on a rocket ship upward, and Americans collectively are spending more money than ever on hard goods. The unemployment rate is lower today than it was for most of the 2010s. Having banked stimulus checks, unemployment insurance, student-loan-interest forgiveness, and other savings, Americans say that their finances are in excellent shape.

Annie Lowrey: America failed at COVID-19, but the economy is okay. Why?

Yet supply-chain snarls have made shopping harder, and incipient inflation has made what we can buy more expensive. Independents say theyre as despondent about the economy as they were during several months of the Great Recession. One measure of consumer confidencebuying conditions for household durableshas fallen to its lowest rate in about 40 years. Gas prices are salient, not only because people buy a lot of it, but also because theyre the only prices printed in 3,000-point type across the countryand theyve gone way up under Biden. Meanwhile, the Delta variant obliterated promises of a hot vax summer, and the presidents approval rating has tanked.

These days its good to be a savings account, or a nominal-gross-domestic-income graph. But bank accounts dont vote, and nominal-GDI graphs currently lack Senate representation. Consumers vote, and hiring managers vote, and overworked service-economy employees dealing with rude customers vote, and right now it stinks to be any of those people. An economist can tell you that, technically, things are looking up. But vibes eat technicalities for breakfast. The vibes are bad, and Democrats are suffering for it.

For now! But we may have reached a vibe inflection point.

The U.S. economy added 531,000 jobs in October. This is a good sign that Delta fears (like Delta cases) are waning, and the service economy is going back to normal. As pandemic savings are drawn down, more people will likely join the labor force, which will ease the worker shortage and help companies fill out their staff. The supply-chain meshugas is not going to end before Christmas, but nobody Ive spoken with expects it to last a full year.

Derek Thompson: America is running out of everything

Vaccine approval for kids should allay the fears of parents and help schools go back to normal, if schools and parents choose to do so. Young people are at much lower risk of severe illness than the elderly, but the mass vaccination of kids will help the U.S. avoid a repeat of whats happening in the U.K., where cases are surging among unvaccinated children. New antiviral drugs from Pfizer and Merck will bring even more artillery into the fight against COVID in 2022.

Meanwhile, Bidens new de facto vaccination mandate is a quiet economic-stimulus policy that, despite the controversy around it, really will make life feel more normal for millions of Americans. This week, the White House announced that companies with 100 or more employees have to fully vaccinate their workforce or test unvaccinated employees for COVID on a weekly basis. The Department of Health and Human Services also requires health-care facilities participating in Medicare and Medicaid to make sure all their employees get shots. Despite threats of mass resignations in response to these mandates, the reality hasnt matched the headlines. In fact, vaccination requirements could result in more hirings, rather than more quits, as Americans fearful of infection feel more comfortable returning to fully vaccinated workplaces.

Wagners music, as the saying goes, was better than it sounds. Todays economy is better than it feels. If 2021 was the year of negative shocksDelta, labor shortages, supply-chain madness, and general shopping woes2022 could be the year of pleasant surprises, when the economys statistical recovery becomes a bona fide vibes recovery.

Joe Biden promised normality, Americans got abnormality, and Democrats got punished at the polls for it. The path toward a more successful midterm election for Democrats in 2022 flows through the converse of this strategy. First, make things feel better. Then talk about it.

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Democrats Are Losing the Vibe War - The Atlantic

[Follow our live coverage of N.Y.C. elections.]

Last November, the often-fractious Democrats of New York papered over their sharp differences to celebrate Donald Trumps defeat, a development that briefly united the partys relatively moderate leader, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, with the states ascendant left wing.

One year later, New York Democrats are in a vastly different place. Mr. Cuomo has resigned in disgrace and faces the prospect of a criminal trial. President Biden is in the White House, and the center-left politics that propelled his campaign have been embraced by the new governor, Kathy Hochul, and the likely next mayor of New York City, Eric Adams.

And all across the state, a series of Election Day contests are setting up fresh tests and tensions over the direction and identity of the Democratic Party.

In New York City, Mr. Adams, who is heavily favored to win Tuesdays election, has already declared himself the face of the Democratic Party, and many national Democrats have elevated him.

Mr. Adams, a former police captain who fought for reforms from within the system, has described himself as both a pragmatic moderate and the original progressive. But he is also a sharp critic of the defund the police movement; he makes explicit overtures to the big-business community; and he defeated several more liberal rivals in the primary.

A very different face of the Democratic Party may be emerging in Buffalo: India B. Walton, a democratic socialist, who defeated the incumbent Democratic mayor, Byron W. Brown, in the June primary. Mr. Brown, a former state Democratic Party chairman, is now running as a write-in candidate in a closely watched rematch that has become a proxy battle between left-wing leaders and more moderate Democrats.

Then there are the Democrats, from Long Island district attorney candidates to the occasional New York City Council hopeful, who face serious opponents in races that will offer early tests of Republican Party energy in the Biden era.

After an extraordinary summer of political upheaval, power dynamics are now being renegotiated at every level of government, shaped by matters of race, age, ideology and region. The influx of new leadership has implications for issues of public safety and public health, for debates over education and economic development and for national questions surrounding the direction of the party.

Theres a battle of narratives in New York, said State Senator Jabari Brisport, a Brooklyn socialist. You do have Eric Adams getting elected in New York City, then you have a socialist like India Walton getting elected in Buffalo, right in Gov. Hochuls backyard. New York is in the midst of finding itself.

The most consequential New York election this year is the race for mayor of the nations largest city, which will be decided on Tuesday as Mr. Adams competes against Curtis Sliwa, the Republican founder of the Guardian Angels.

Backlash to New York Citys vaccine mandates in more conservative corners of the city, and the prospect of a relatively low-turnout election, inject a measure of unpredictability into the final hours of the race and could affect the result margin, some Democrats warn but in a city where Republicans are vastly outnumbered, Mr. Sliwa is considered a long shot.

The more revealing contest regarding the direction of the Democratic Party is taking place about 300 miles away in Buffalo.

That mayoral race is unfolding in raw and divisive terms: Ms. Walton has referred to Mr. Brown as a Trump puppet who has become complacent about Buffalo, while his campaign questions her character and paints her sweeping proposals as too risky for the city, a message she has cast as fearmongering.

In a sign of just how high tensions are running, Jay Jacobs, the state party chairman, sparked outrage when he used a hypothetical candidacy of the former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke to argue that the party was not obligated to support every nominee, including Ms. Walton. He later said he should have used a different example and for that, I apologize, but stood by his decision not to endorse her.

The contest has drawn attention from statewide and national figures as well as a number of Democrats considering runs for higher office.

Jumaane D. Williams, the New York City public advocate who formed an exploratory committee for governor, has campaigned for Ms. Walton and urged other Democrats to endorse her, as New Yorks U.S. senators have, even as other party leaders have stayed out.

What to Know About the 2021 New York Election

Ms. Walton is one of many local candidates who amplified ideas popular with the partys left on issues from reallocating funds from the police budget to how best to protect tenants and won primaries this summer, continuing a trend that began three years ago with the primary victory of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, another Walton endorser.

Theres a lot of appetite for these kinds of policies, Mr. Williams said.

The Democratic Party has unquestionably moved to the left in recent years on issues like criminal justice reform and combating climate change and Mr. Williams argued that internal divisions are often more a matter of tactics than of substance.

The policies that are being pushed are not really whats at issue, he said. Whats at issue sometimes is how far into political risk, how far past the establishment leaders, how far past, when the executive or leader of the House calls and says no, how far would you push past?

But plainly, there are policy differences among Democrats, too, and in New York those distinctions are especially vivid around matters of public safety.

Do you want to defund the police? demanded Representative Thomas Suozzi of Long Island, when he campaigned for Mr. Brown in Buffalo.

No! the crowd replied.

Do you want to let criminals out of jail no matter what they did? he continued, as the crowd shouted their objection.

We will lose if we let them win, he said, referencing those who he declared were seeking to push Democrats in an extreme direction. We will lose the American people, we will lose New Yorkers, we will lose Buffalonians if we adopt that type of extremist agenda.

Jesse Myerson, a spokesman for Ms. Walton, rejected the notion that her ideas were extremist, while suggesting that left-wing contenders have been especially successful at energizing voters.

Democratic panic is rising. Less than a year after taking power in Washington, the party faces a grim immediate futureas it struggles to energize voters and continues to lose messaging wars to Republicans.

The politicians who are driving new voter registration, the ones driving small-dollar donations, the ones driving more volunteers to knock doors and make calls, youll find that they are Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Cori Bush, he said. And other politicians whose vision closely aligns with India Waltons, and not the pro-corporate Democrats.

But Mr. Suozzi, a potential candidate for governor next year, argued in an interview that if Ms. Walton wins, thats a national story that is bad for Democrats.

Major 2022 races in New York will also help shape the narrative about the direction of the party. Ms. Hochul, who succeeded Mr. Cuomo after his resignation this summer, is running for a full term. Letitia James, the state attorney general who has closer ties to New Yorks institutional left, is challenging her, and others including Bill de Blasio, the New York City mayor, may jump in, too. And a young, diverse class of incoming New York City Council members is preparing to reshape City Hall, with machinations around the council speakers race in full bloom.

But one of the biggest national stories coming out of New York has involved Mr. Adams, who would be the citys second Black mayor. He won the primary on the strength of support from working- and middle-class voters of color and declared that America does not want fancy candidates, despite his own close ties to major donors.

Some national Democrats have embraced him, believing that he offers a template for how to promote both police reform and public safety though whether that lasts will hinge on how Mr. Adams, who has faced scrutiny over issues of transparency, finances and past inflammatory remarks, governs if he wins.

Still, Representative Sean Patrick Maloney of New York, who chairs the House Democratic campaign arm, has described Mr. Adams as a rock on which I can build a church.

What Eric Adamss victory showed me is that the Democratic Party, at its best, is a diverse blue-collar coalition that doesnt fall victim to elite or academic notions about what makes sense in the real world, he said.

Mr. Adams and Ms. Hochul a former Buffalo-area congresswoman have both likened themselves to Mr. Biden.

The comparison, allies say, is as much about tone, faith in relationship-building and a sense of pragmatism as it is about a particular policy agenda.

But if the two Democrats presumed to be the most powerful leaders in New York are considered relative moderates, that hardly reflects the entirety of New Yorks incoming leadership.

In New York City, there are signs that the likely next comptroller, some presumptive City Council members, the public advocate and possibly the likely new Manhattan district attorney will be to the left of Mr. Adams on key issues, setting up potential battles over how to create a more equitable education system, the power of the real estate industry and big business, and the role of the police in promoting public safety.

Ms. Hochul, for her part, came to office with a reputation as a centrist, but she has pursued a number of policies that have pleased left-wing lawmakers.

Rana Abdelhamid, who is challenging Representative Carolyn Maloney, noted that Ms. Hochul has embraced proposals like extending the eviction moratorium a sign, Ms. Abdelhamid suggested, of the power of the left: Because of this progressive movement and because of the organizing and because of progressive electeds really gaining momentum.

The race for governor, already underway, will accelerate as soon as Wednesday as the political class heads to a conclave in Puerto Rico. That election will become the next major battle over the Democratic direction, in a midterm year that is historically difficult for the presidents party. But many political leaders say the question is emphatically not whether New York remains a Democratic stronghold it is about what kind of Democrats win.

Its going to be either blue or dark blue, said former Representative Steve Israel of New York. If you have more Hochuls and Adamses being elected, its a lighter shade of blue; if progressives and The Squad surge across the state, obviously its a deeper blue. The fact is, it remains blue.

Julianne McShane and Arielle Dollinger contributed reporting.

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How New York Elections Will Shape the Future of the Democratic Party - The New York Times

But Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, was not second-guessing it.

Glenn Youngkin got away with being all things to all people, and we cant let them do that, Mr. Maloney said, adding: The House Republicans have cast their lot with the toxic Trump agenda of lying about the election, of minimizing the pandemic, of ignoring the attack on the Capitol.

While more unexpected, the Democratic defeats on Tuesday were not as overwhelming as the last time the party controlled the presidency and Congress, in 2009, when Republicans won the Virginia governorship by 17 percentage points and the New Jersey governorship as well. Deepening polarization has entrenched Democrats in some suburban jurisdictions, such as Virginias Fairfax County, which Mr. McAuliffe carried by 30 percentage points in his comeback bid.

These suburban voters, who remain disdainful of Mr. Trump, may not be reachable for Republicans next year. There are, however, two sides to the countrys growing polarization, and the sweeping losses that Democrats suffered in rural Virginia and in New Jersey demonstrated that they were at grave risk of losing even more states and districts next year with sparse populations.

What gives Democrats some optimism is the idea that, while their candidates this year were running against an unsightly backdrop of intraparty legislative wrangling, there will be major accomplishments to trumpet next year.

When were talking process, were losing, but once the process is done, were going to have lots to say about what were doing for real people, John Anzalone, Mr. Bidens pollster, said.

Of course, by the 2010 midterms, Democrats had the opportunity to promote the Affordable Care Act and still suffered sweeping losses in part because they were not seen as sufficiently focused on reviving the post-recession economy.

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Reeling From Surprise Losses, Democrats Sound the Alarm for 2022 - The New York Times

The results also put the Donald Trump phenomenon in a new perspective. Trump was necessary to smash the old G.O.P. and to turn the party into a vanguard of anti-elite resistance. But by 2020, with his moral degradation and all the rest, he was also holding back Republicans. If Republicans can find candidates who oppose the blue oligarchy but without too much Trumpian baggage, they can win over some former Biden voters in places like Virginia and New Jersey.

Democrats would be wise to accept the fact that they have immense social and cultural power, and accept the responsibilities that entails by adopting what Id call a Whole Nation Progressivism.

America is ferociously divided on economic, regional, racial and creedal lines. The job of leaders is to stand above these divides and seek to heal them. The job of leaders is not to impose their values on everyone else; it is to defend a pluralistic order in which different communities can work out their own values.

From F.D.R. and L.B.J. on down, Democrats have been good at healing economic divides. The watered-down spending bill struggling its way through Congress would be an important step to redistribute resources to people and places that have been left behind.

But Democrats are not good at thinking about culture, even though cultural issues drive our politics. You cant win a culture war by raising the minimum wage. In fact, if politics are going to be all culture war as Republicans have tried to make them I suspect Democrats cant win it at all.

Democrats need a positive moral vision that would start by rejecting the idea that we are locked into incessant conflict along class, cultural, racial and ideological lines. It would reject all the appurtenances of the culture warrior pose the us/them thinking, exaggerating the malevolence of the other half of the country, relying on crude essentialist stereotypes to categorize yourself and others.

It would instead offer a vision of unity, unity, unity. That unity is based on a recognition of the complex humanity of each person that each person is in the act of creating a meaningful life. It would reject racism, the ultimate dehumanizing force, but also reject any act that seeks to control the marketplace of ideas or intimidate those with opposing views. It would reject ideas and movements that seek to reduce complex humans to their group identities. It would stand for racial, economic and ideological integration, and against separatism, criticizing, for example, the way conservatives are often shut out from elite cultural institutions.

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Opinion | Democrats Need to Confront Their Privilege - The New York Times

Activists have held rallies near the White House to put pressure on President Biden to do more to protect voting rights. Alex Wong/Getty Images hide caption

Activists have held rallies near the White House to put pressure on President Biden to do more to protect voting rights.

As voters trickled into a community center to cast ballots near West Manor Park in Atlanta, singer Gabe Lustman performed as a part of a "Party at the Polls."

Lustman, dressed in a royal purple shirt, played as a DJ pumped music through two portable speakers.

"We're just getting started," he said. "Shout out to the New Georgia Project."

The New Georgia Project, an organization aimed at registering and mobilizing people of color and young people, holds events like this one Tuesday to keep voters' spirits high while they wait to cast a ballot.

But the organization has also marshalled its voter protection program in a vigorous push against Georgia's controversial voting law. That law is one of a wave of new measures restricting ballot access in Republican-led states.

Organizers in Georgia and across the country say they're doing all they can to fight back against these laws and turn out voters. But they also say what they haven't gotten at least not yet is much help from Washington, D.C.

"What we need is for people to do their jobs," Ns Ufot, CEO of the New Georgia Project, said in an interview from her Atlanta office. "I'm doing mine."

With Democrats' slim majority in Congress, they've been unable to pass federal legislation to push back against restrictive voting laws at the state level. Republicans say the laws are meant to ensure "election integrity," but Democrats and activists say they intentionally make it harder for some people, particularly people of color, to vote.

In Georgia, the new law, SB 202, restricts ballot access in a number of ways, including adding more hurdles for absentee voting. Among its provisions, it also limits who can pass out food and water to voters waiting in line, and where that can occur.

Ufot says Republicans seem to have a clear, unified strategy to sharply limit ballot access. Democrats, she countered, are not as unified around the cause of voting rights.

"Why do we not have that clarity and that consensus and that urgency among Democrats?" she asked. "That urgency, that clarity exists among activists. And so we are looking forward to having our Democratic leaders join us."

Vice President Harris speaks to reporters after Republican senators voted to block debate on another major voting rights bill pushed by congressional Democrats. Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call Inc. via Getty Images hide caption

Vice President Harris speaks to reporters after Republican senators voted to block debate on another major voting rights bill pushed by congressional Democrats.

President Biden has described these GOP state laws as a once-in-a-lifetime assault on the right to vote.

And Vice President Harris, who is spearheading the White House's efforts on the issue an assignment she personally requested told civil rights activists this week that the nation is at an "alarming" and "consequential" moment.

"This is a moment for action," Harris said Monday in a speech to the National Action Network. "And whether we take an oath of office or we take to the streets, we all have an important role to play. "

Harris, who has been convening regular discussions on the issue, urged civil rights activists to keep fighting.

"Yeah, the time is to fight, we've taken enough defensive blows," the group's leader, the Rev. Al Sharpton, said Wednesday after Senate Republicans again blocked debate on a piece of major voting rights legislation. This time, it was the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which is named for the late Georgia Congressman John Lewis, who died last year.

"Today Black America was stabbed in the back. The president needs to use his bully pulpit and say that this is intolerable," Sharpton said.

Sharpton is among those calling for Democrats to change Senate filibuster rules to allow voting rights bills to pass with just their votes. But it's unclear whether Democrats have a path to do that, with not even all of their members on board.

For his part, Biden has said he would be open to a move to "fundamentally alter" the filibuster, but not until his spending bills passed in Congress.

The White House says the administration is pursuing a multipronged approach to protecting voting rights that includes calling on Congress to pass legislation and executive actions, but also organizing and other tools.

The White House points to the executive order that Biden signed in March to promote voting rights. And Harris announced a $25 million expansion of the Democratic National Committee's "I Will Vote" program, which focuses on voter protection, education and registration.

DNC Chair Jaime Harrison described this as a "break the glass" moment in which the party must be more "proactive" about protecting the right to vote.

He pointed to one way Democrats are using technology to combat what they label voter suppression efforts.

"Somebody could have voted in the last few elections, but because they miss one election, they get a postcard sent in by the Republican Election Commission in some state. and if they don't turn that postcard in, then they are purged from the voter rolls," Harrison said by way of example.

"We're able to get their contact information to have our canvassers and our organizers get in contact with them," he continued. "We are even able to match them up to social media data so that we can get in contact with them and say, 'Hey, listen, you have just been purged from the Georgia voter rolls. Do you want to register to vote again?' "

But when it comes to federal legislation, Harrison also said he believes Congress must move as quickly as possible.

"It's important that we accelerate the pace here in order to really have an impact, particularly on the 2022 election cycle, to make sure that not one American is prohibited from exercising the right to vote," he said.

The Justice Department has also doubled its voting rights enforcement staff, and sued Georgia and, just Thursday, Texas over voting restrictions.

Frustration among activists isn't limited to states where ballot access has been restricted. There are also fears of what could come in the future.

In Virginia, ballot access has been expanded under Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam. But some activists worry that the state could veer back to its long-held restrictions on voting rights.

"The way that I voted when I first moved here is not the same way that I can vote now. It is so much easier. There is a 45-day early voting period. People no longer need their photo ID to vote," said Maya Castillo, the political director of New Virginia Majority. "I don't want to lose all that."

Castillo was helping to organize a group of canvassers in her Fairfax, Va., neighborhood a little more than a week before Republican Glenn Youngkin won that state's governor's race, though the party does not control the state General Assembly.

Now, many activists warn that if Democrats in Washington can't do more to protect the right to vote, losses could be on the horizon in 2022 and beyond.

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Voting rights activists say Democrats in Washington need to do their job - NPR

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, came out on Friday against President BidenJoe BidenHouse sets up Friday votes for Biden agenda House leaders make last-minute change on drug pricing after dispute Aide who traveled with Biden to Europe tests positive for COVID-19: reports MOREs COVID-19 vaccine mandate for businesses with 100 or more employees, saying she doesn't think its the correct or most effective move.

The Democratic governor, who is up for reelection next year, said she appreciates the intention to keep people safe but doesnt think the administrations vaccinate-or-test requirements serve as a solution for Kansas.

It is too late to impose a federal standard now that we have already developed systems and strategies that are tailored for our specific needs, she said.

I will seek a resolution that continues to recognize the uniqueness of our state and builds on our on-going efforts to combat a once-in-a-century crisis, she added.

Governor Laura Kelly's statement addressing the new federal vaccine mandate: pic.twitter.com/lAFAs3pQLK

Her disapproval of the administrations move comes as many Republican governors and attorneys general have voiced their opposition to the vaccine requirements for businesses.

Under the rule issued this week, businesses with at least 100 employees have until Jan. 4 to require workers to either get vaccinated orundergo regular testing. Biden had issued an executive order earlier this year calling for the requirement, which is expected to cover 84 million people.

But several Republicans, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantisRon DeSantisDeSantis vows to fight federal vaccine mandate: It's 'going down' Overnight Health Care Biden unveils January vaccine deadline Kinzinger open to running for White House, Illinois governor MORE, have pledged to challenge the Labor Departments rule, saying it violates constitutional rights and will exacerbate current labor shortages in several industries. Some business groups, including in retail, have expressed worries on how it will affect the upcoming holiday season.

"Florida will be responding, and I think the rule's going down. I just don't think that there's an adequate basis for it, and I think you've even seen people on their side acknowledge that they don't have firm constitutional footing for this," DeSantis said.

Missouri, along with 10 other states, filed a lawsuit against Biden and his administration objecting to the vaccinate-or-test policy.West Virginia's attorney general also teamed up with six other states to sue the administrationover the mandate.

Biden has defended the mandate, saying on Thursday that these requirements have broad support and are necessary because more than 50 million adults in the country remain unvaccinated.

There have been no mass firings and worker shortages because of vaccination requirements, Biden said in a statement. Despite what some predicted and falsely assert, vaccination requirements have broad public support.

Officials also extended the deadline for federal contractors to get vaccinated, giving workers until Jan. 4to align with Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standards.

The administration predicts thelatest federalmandate will save thousands of lives and prevent more than 250,000 hospitalizations in its first six months. Kansas has seen more than 6,400 COVID-19 deaths and beyond 15,000 hospitalizations throughout the pandemic.

Kansas is ranked in the middle of the pack for its vaccination rate, with the state government reporting 53.7 percent of the total population have gotten at least one dose, while less than half are fully vaccinated.

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Democratic governor comes out against Biden's vaccine mandate | TheHill - The Hill

Effectiveimmediately, Americans can take a concrete step to save this country: Stop voting Democratic.

From the West Wing to the West Coast, the Democratic Party has deteriorated into a clear and present danger to this republic. It is virtually impossibletoidentifya realm in which Democrats are wreaking anything but havoc, division and devastation.

A nation without boundaries ismerely square mileage.In just nine months, President Biden and cheerleading Democrats have erased President Donald Trumpslargely sealedsouthern frontier and converted it into a Welcome Center for All.

Between Feb. 1 and Sept. 30, on Democrats watch, Customs andBorder Protectionencountered1,438,236illegal aliens up 391 percent in one year.Democratsbus and jet these foreign invaders into the interior, many to Democrat-run sanctuary cities, from which even violent criminal convicts are shielded from deportation.

Biden now contemplates spending$1 billionto pay$450,000 in psychological-trauma reparationstoeachillegal alien separated from his family under Trumps zero-tolerance policy.Thatsfour hundred and fifty thousand. Dollars. To illegal aliens. Each.

Year-on-year inflation is 5.4percent,a 30-year high.Prices are soaring across the board,largely dueto Democratsspending addiction and its attendant pummeling ofthe dollars value.

Trump turned America into a net oil exporter in December 2018 for the first timesince 1943. Biden drop-kicked that accomplishment into the Potomac. On Inauguration Day, he killed the Keystone XL pipeline. He has choked off drillingpermitsand vilified oil and gas companies. Motorists are just the first to pay for this idiocy, as regular-gas prices climbed under Biden, from$2.37to$3.40 per gallon up 43 percent, a seven-year high.

Federal, state and local Democrats last year defunded, demonized and demoralized the police. Consequently, UShomicides climbed 30 percentin 2020, the largest one-year spike ever recorded. Democrat-run cities reel beneath the reign of shoplifters, gangbangers and murderers. Bail reform lets arrestees swiftly pose for police photos and then return to crime. Biden now wants bail reform nationwide, to advance gender equity, no less.

Democrats like New York Mayor BilldeBlasio scrap gifted programs in the name of equity since they consider black and Hispanic children too dumb to challenge, tutor and otherwise educate.

Since the civil rights movement, Americans white, black, brown, red and yellow seemed to get along or at least tried to. Mellowing racial attitudes culminated in Barack Obamas election as president.

Since then, Democrats have deployed the 1619 Project to denounce America as a white-supremacist juggernaut. Meanwhile, critical race theory condemns all whites as oppressive bigots and blacks asbenightedvictims. CRT reinforces racial stereotypes and pounds them into public policy.

Bidens Justice Department announced that it would use the FBI and the Patriot Act to probe and prosecutepeskyparents as domestic terrorists. How dare they speak at school board meetings?

Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsomsigned a law ordering toy stores to sell gender-neutral items for gender-fluid children.Really? Has any US storeeverbeen compelled to offeranyproduct? If Safeway suddenly decided to stop selling bacon and eggs, it could do so. When did toy stores lose that freedom?

Enough said.

Against this backdrop ofholisticfailure, whywouldanyone vote Democratic? Old habits die hard. But, as the saying goes, doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results defines insanity.

Nevertheless, the time is now: Save America. Stop voting Democratic.

DeroyMurdock is aManhattan-basedFox News contributor,acontributing editor with National Review Online and aseniorfellow with theLondon Center for Policy Research.

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Democrats have screwed up everything stop voting for them! - New York Post

Sean Hannity discussed what led to Democrats' disappointing results in Tuesday's election, and even offered rare praise for one of the party's most respected longtime figures, James Carville, Thursday on Hannity.

Hannity said that Carville, who rose to prominence as the successful 1992 campaign strategist for then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, was spot-on when he declared the Democratic Party has been engaged in battles over "stupid wokeness."

"Dont just look at Virginia and New Jersey. Look at Long Island and Seattle, Washington. This defund-police lunacy and take Lincolns name off of schools: People see that. Its having a suppressive effect across the country. Some people need to go to a woke detox center," Carville said in a recent interview on PBS.

"James Carville believes his party lost its way and he is correct," Hannity said.

ICSS - Securing Sport 2015 - Harold Pratt House, New York - 4/11/15 James Carville interviews Sunil Gulati, President, U.S. Soccer Federation during Day 2 of Securing Sport 2015 - the annual conference of the International Centre for Sport Security Photo Eduardo Munoz for ICSS Livepic (Getty Images)

"I think I finally won James over," the host continued, noting he has always enjoyed debating the Louisiana Democrat.

"Stupid wokeness: Carville is right," Hannity said. "The radical socialists rule the party. They are not going anywhere. They now rule the entire Democratic Party and they do so with an iron fist."

The host later noted that President Biden himself appeared unaware of the control the far left has over the government after he appeared "bewildered and befuddled" when questioned by Fox News' Peter Doocy about what was reportedly his plan to give illegal immigrant families $450,000 in payments; more than quadruple the amount paid to gold star families.

"As it turns out, Joe was not in the loop as usual. Today his deputy press secretary said Biden supports these payments," Hannity said after spokeswoman Karine Jean Pierre stated as much during the White House briefing.

Sen. Joe Manchin III, D-WV, center, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, left, and Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., rear left, listen as Virginia Governor Ralph Northam addresses a news conference at the end of an 'infrastructure summit' in Annapolis. April 23, 2021. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Hannity also said West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin is another voice of reason in the increasingly leftist party.

The host said the Farmington, W.V., native was correct when he said Thursday that the United States is not a politically-extreme country:

"This is not a center-left or a left country. We are center, if anything center-right. We ought to be able to recognize that," said Manchin in a recent interview on CNN.

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Hannity reflects on how Democrats' liberal policies led to their poor election results - Fox News

A number of House Democrats voted against a resolution on Wednesday that would condemn Cuba's government and offer support for protesters throughout the communist-ruled country.

The resolution, sponsored by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., was introduced this week in an effort to express "solidarity with Cuban citizens demonstrating peacefully for fundamental freedoms, condemning the Cuban regime's acts of repression, and calling for the immediate release of arbitrarily detained Cuban citizens."

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH SAYS CUBA REPRESSES VIRTUALLY ALL FORMS OF DISSENT

Anti-government protesters gather at the Maximo Gomez monument in Havana, Cuba, Sunday, July 11, 2021. (AP Photo/Eliana Aponte)

The House passed the measure in a vote of 382 to 40, with all no votes coming from Democrats. Included in the list of Democrats who voted against the resolution are all members of the left-wing House "Squad," as well as Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., and Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y. Four lawmakers voted present, while five did not vote.

The resolution aimed to condemn the Cuban government's response to a series of protests that occurred over the summer amid high prices, food shortages and the country's handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

Backers of the government march in Havana, Cuba, Sunday, July 11, 2021. (AP Photo/Ismael Francisco)

In addition, the measure calls forthe Cuban government to allow Cubans to peacefully protest on Nov. 15 during a planned demonstration over civil rights orchestrated by a group called Archipelago.

Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., who voted against the resolution, attempted to defend his vote, writing in a tweet that the resolution fails to acknowledge "the role the U.S. plays in contributing to the suffering of ordinary Cubans."

A report by Human Rights Watch found that the Cuban government "systematically engaged in arbitrary detention, ill-treatment of detainees, and abuse-ridden criminal prosecutions in response to overwhelmingly peaceful anti-government protests in July 2021."

People attend a cultural-political event on the seaside Malecon Avenue with thousands of people in a show of support for the Cuban revolution six days after the uprising of anti-government protesters across the island, in Havana, Cuba, Saturday, July 17, 2021. (AP Photo / Ismael Francisco)

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"When thousands of Cubans took to the streets in July, the Cuban government responded with a brutal strategy of repression designed to instill fear and suppress dissent," Juan Pappier, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, said at the time. "Peaceful protesters and other critics have been systematically detained, held incommunicado and abused in horrendous conditions, and subjected to sham trials following patterns that indicate these human rights violations are not the actions of rogue agents."

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Progressive House Democrats oppose resolution to support Cuban protesters - Fox News

Much of whats distressing the public is beyond U.S. policymakers control, even though voters tend to blame whoever is in the White House. Gasoline prices, for example, have risen because of developments on world markets, not anything happening here. The same goes for food prices. And supply-chain problems, mainly reflecting a scramble to buy durable goods at a time when people are afraid to consume in-person services, are hitting many countries.

Americas third-quarter economic slowdown, however, wasnt matched abroad. For example, over the same period euro area economies grew at an annual rate of almost 9 percent.

Theres no mystery about why we had a slowdown here that wasnt equaled in Europe. It was all about the Delta wave, which was much worse on this side of the Atlantic. That wave is now receding. As it does, early indications, including claims for unemployment benefits and surveys of purchasing managers, suggest that a renewed economic surge is already underway. And as consumers start to feel safer, they may also shift demand away from stuff to services, which would ease some of the supply-chain pressures.

So the way forward for Democrats seems fairly obvious.

First, pass something. It doesnt have to be perfect; in particular, given incredibly low borrowing costs, it doesnt matter whether the proposed sources of revenue will fully pay for the new spending. Whats crucial for the politics right now is that something significant gets passed and that Biden then goes out and sells it.

Second, control Covid. The evidence is now overwhelming that vaccine mandates work and that threats of mass resignations if workers are required to get shots are mostly empty. When confronted with the prospect of actually losing a job, a great majority of workers comply.

On Thursday the Biden administration announced that Jan. 4 would be the deadline on two major vaccination mandates for health care workers and for employees of companies with payrolls exceeding 100. It should stick to this plan and ignore the screams of protest.

Will Democrats be able to turn their fortunes around if they push forward on their agenda and hang tough on vaccines? I dont know. But theyll certainly fail if they respond to Tuesdays setbacks by curling up into a defensive ball.

Originally posted here:

Opinion | On the Spending Bill and Vaccines, Democrats Must Get Moving - The New York Times