There can be no doubt that today’s Democratic Party has almost totally abandoned any efforts to win the middle class, Middle America, and middle of the spectrum voters. Needing new voters to fill that void, they are increasingly turning to four, shall we say, “non-traditional” groups: convicts, children, non-citizens, and, yes, lazy people.
It is hard to fathom, but as recently as 2001 nearly as many Democrats identified as conservative (25%) as liberal (30%), while the largest segment, 44%, were moderate. Today, 50% identify as liberal, while only about a third as moderate (35%), and hardly any as conservative (13%). With the party’s very sudden and very enthusiastic lurch to the Left, those few remaining holdouts will soon either abandon ship, or be forced to walk the plank.
To be sure, these voters are not leaving the Democratic Party as much as the Democratic Party is leaving them.
The Democratic Party that used to call for tolerance has been replaced by rabid rabble-rousers demanding conservatives not be tolerated at all. Calls for inclusion have been replaced by violent protests against conservative speakers on campus. Calls for diversity have been replaced with constant complaints about white privilege, and demands that schools provide “safe spaces” where white students are not permitted.
Democratic leaders openly pine for violence and skulduggery, praising ANTIFA’s legion of masked bandits and other radical groups, as they intimidate public officials in their homes, and attack conservatives in the streets. The same Democrats who told us that a shop owner has to bake a wedding cake for whoever wants one, also cheer when restaurant owners throw out a patron just for being a Republican.
Today’s Democrats reflexively take extremist positions just to placate whatever radical group is foaming at the mouth at the moment, and now demands that ICE be abolished because the agency has been doing what the agency is tasked with doing: enforcing immigration laws. Even though 76% of American voters do not want open borders, to suggest that immigration laws should be enforced is the surest way to be excommunicated from, and branded a “racist” by the Democratic Party, which self-righteously open borders and no restraints on immigration whatsoever, even though they aggressively opposed such ideas as absurd just last decade.
And while Democrats rightly scolded Donald Trump for his proposed Muslim ban during his election campaign, they illegally insist that Catholic nominees to government office submit to unconstitutional religious tests.
How often have you heard any prominent Democrat denounce any of this?
No, they’re happy about it. They’re happy to be liberated from Middle America, and free to pursue a much more radical agenda. All they need are new voters to replace the old.
The most obvious source of untapped Democrat voting potential is the criminal class. According to the Washington Post, violent criminals are roughly 60% more likely to be registered as Democrats than Republicans, and nonviolent criminals about 51% more likely. So it makes sense that Democrats are making efforts nationwide to restore voting rights to convicted felons, with Florida taking center stage at the moment, as ten percent of their adult population cannot vote because of a felony conviction.
New Jersey, which is a Democrat stronghold, has five high-crime counties (which is precisely what makes the state a Democrat stronghold) where at least half of the adult population cannot vote because of a felony conviction. So the Democrats there want every criminal to be able to vote, even those still in jail, and even for murders, which Maine and Vermont presently allow. The criminals would be able to mail in ballots from the jail directly, and it would be cast in the district where they live (and probably committed their crimes) before they were incarcerated.
In neighboring New York, another blue utopia, Democrat Gov. Andrew Cuomo has ordered parole officers to give registration forms to their former-inmate clients during office or home visits, and must even help the ex-cons fill the forms out when asked for assistance. This comes after he issued restored voting rights to 24,000 convicts this past April, including to Herman Ball, who murdered a police officer.
Gee, I wonder what party he’ll register as.
And over in Virginia, Democrat governor Terry McAuliffe, the former head of the Democrat National Committee, issued an executive order in April 2016 declaring that all felons who had completed parole, about 200,000 people, would have their rights immediately restored, regardless of the underlying offense.
When Republicans objected, McAuliffe is said to have replied “Why don’t you go out and earn these folks’ votes?”
But that’s precisely the problem with allowing criminals to vote: that their vote has to be earned at all, because votes are earned by appealing to the interests of the voters, but the interests of the criminal class are antithetical to those of law-abiding citizens. Obviously, criminals are going to support politicians who favor lighter penalties for crimes, who offer harsher rhetoric and policies towards police officers, and who take money from people who have earned it to gift it to people who have not.
Republicans should be proud not to earn their vote. Perhaps the better question is “What is so fundamentally wrong about the Democratic Party that makes it so appealing to criminals?”
And children!
Millennials overwhelmingly prefer Democrats to Republicans by about 46-28. Both sides are proud of this. Those in the 18-24 age group supported Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump by 56-34, while Trump won every age group from 40 and above. So since Democrats do better with younger voters, Democrats now want them to be allowed to vote even younger!
Never mind that two-thirds of 12th-graders students can’t pass basic proficiency tests, and that a frightening number of teens are video game addicted, Tide Pod eating, condom snorters. The Washington Post, while severely understating that “A case could be made that 16-year-olds lack the life experience to make informed choices,” nevertheless exhorts us to lower the voting age because of the “compelling argument” that this would encourage civic engagement.
But why should we encourage civic engagement from the least intelligent, least informed, and least disciplined people? Because, the Post reminds us, children are at a greater risk of being shot at school than adults, a rationale joined by the New York Times in its call to allow children the ballot. Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) agreed, saying it’s an idea worth considering.
OK, then consider this: when David Hogg, the Parkland school shooting survivor who became the self-anointed conscious of America for fifteen minutes, was asked what specific measures he would implement to make schools safer if given the opportunity, he replied that it’s “not [his] responsibility to formulate solutions,” complaining “I shouldn’t have to! I’m seventeen!”
He’s right. Children should not be involved in this process in any way.
And neither should non-citizens.
But they’re another source of sure-fire Democrat votes, and the Democrats are pushing hard to get them ballots. Strange, that the same party that incessantly complains that foreigners influenced the 2016 Presidential elections now wants foreigners to influence every election. So this week, the City of Boston began debating whether to allow non-citizens to vote in municipal races. The Maryland city of College Park recently allowed non-citizens to take part in their local elections, joining ten other municipalities in Maryland. Not to be outdone, San Francisco recently passed “Proposition N,” which allows noncitizens, including illegal aliens, who have children in the city school district to vote in local school board elections. Chicago also allows noncitizens to vote in local school council elections, but then again, Chicago is known to have dead people vote, so nothing should surprise us about them.
But voting rights are useless unless those rights are exercised, and Democrats know that their voters are consistently less likely to vote than Republicans. That’s why, in poll after poll, Democrats tend to do better with “all Americans” than with “registered voters,” and better with “registered voters” than “likely voters.” The solution to that is simple: the easiest way to get lazy people to vote is to just force them. So The Atlantic bemoans that voter turnout in off-year elections is only around one-third of eligible voters, which gives Republicans an advantage, and President Obama chimed in, (when does he not?), noting that “Other countries have mandatory voting,” and that “”It would be transformative if everybody voted.”
That’s one of his words, “transformative.” He likes faddish words that don’t mean anything.
The New York Times, which has basically taken to writing the marching orders for Democrats, also argued that voting should be mandatory, ostensibly for the tenuous reason that it makes politics less polarizing if politicians have to appeal to everyone, (don’t ask me), but the impetus behind this is really because there’s no greater crime than allowing a Republican to win an election.
Oddly, this is the same New York Times that ran an editorial seven years ago titled “Mandatory Voting Would Be A Disaster,” arguing “The median voter is incompetent at politics. The citizens who abstain are, on average, even more incompetent. If we force everyone to vote, the electorate will become even more irrational and misinformed. The result: not only will the worst candidate on the ballot in a better shot at winning, but the candidates who make it on the ballot in the first place will be worse… If we really want to help America, we shouldn’t for citizens to vote. We should encourage citizens to go well or not vote at all.”
They were right. Someone who doesn’t care enough to vote also doesn’t care enough to do all the things necessary to be informed, and democracy is better served when people like that don’t participate. Besides, if you have to rely on voters who are just too lazy to do their civic duty, then you don’t deserve to win, and if your party appeals most to such a person then some self-reflection is clearly in order.
And it should go without saying that the country’s interests are not better served by gifting political influence to criminals — how that’s for a special interest group! — or, for goodness sake, children. And while people who have come here legally should be entitled to the same legal rights as everyone else once they are citizens, to give them the same rights as citizens in the meantime is to nullify what citizenship is by nullify the votes of those citizens.
But the interests of the country are clearly not important to a party that has to create new voters because it can no longer compete for them.
It’s sad, but Democracy is supposed to be when voters choose their politicians. Today, politicians choose their voters.
