Democrats are surprisingly angry at a time when they think everything is going their way. Democratic National Committee (DNC) chairman Tom Perez admitted that there are “no moderate Democrats left,” and lately the fulminations of Hillary Clinton, Eric Holder, Maxine Waters, Cory Booker, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, etc., confirm that admission.
Democrats claim that a ‘blue wave’ will bring the House, and perhaps the Senate, under their control. The term “blue wave” refers to the color associated with the Democratic Party, and comes from the same mindset that proclaimed the “blue wall” in the Midwest and Great Lakes area would make a Republican victory in the 2016 presidential election impossible.
The blue wall was not impregnable. Republican candidate Donald Trump won three previously solidly Democratic states in the area.
The Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC colluded with Vladimir Putin to affect the 2016 election. They funneled millions of dollars in campaign money through a Seattle law firm to pay Russian government officials for incriminating information about Clinton’s opponent, Trump. The law firm hired Fusion GPS, a firm that performs opposition research, which hired Christopher Steele, a former British spy, who paid current and former Russian government officials for incriminating information on Trump.
When Donald Trump first mentioned that the Obama administration was surveilling and spying on the Trump presidential campaign, many thought he was bizarre for saying such a ridiculous thing that could never happen in America. As usual, Trump was proven right.
Due to the efforts of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the unethical and often illegal behavior of the CIA, the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the National Security Agency on the 2016 election became known. Left-wing officials and progressive appointees at these organizations and the National Security Council took various risks to ensure a Clinton landslide.
The FBI did not investigate the Clinton campaign for foreign collusion. Instead, the FBI itself paid Steele to collude with Russians for more dirt on Trump. Prominent DOJ and FBI officials — including Rod Rosenstein, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, and Sally Yates — approved Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court warrant applications that were based on unverified information from the Steele dossier, including the warrant allowing the surveillance of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
Although a FISA warrant requires a showing that the target’s clandestine activities involve probable violations of US criminal law, and although the warrant applications asserted that a prosecutive assessment will be made to determine whether any crimes were committed, no Trump campaign official has ever been charged with any crime related to collusion with Russia.
Senior Obama administration officials unmasked the names of US citizens captured in the government surveillance. Many of those names were illegally leaked to the press. This disclosure forced former UN ambassador Samantha Power and former National Security Adviser Susan Rice to admit that they had requested most of the unmaskings. Rice had previously denied any involvement.
Obama was lecturing the nation on the eve of the anticipated Clinton landslide that there was zero chance of any party, much less any foreign nation, affecting the US election. Meanwhile, the Russian collusion decoy was on. As published in an October 2018 issue of New York Magazine, Obama had a plan in 2016 that “called for congressional Republicans, former presidents, and former Cabinet-level officials including Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, to try and forestall a political crisis by validating the election result. In the event that Trump tried to dispute a Clinton victory, they would affirm the result as well as the conclusions reached by the U.S. intelligence community that Russian interference in the election sought to favor Trump, and not Clinton.” This, in addition to the official count state by state, and Congress certifying the election.
Trump won the election on the idea that globalization made more voters poorer than richer, manufacturing things in the US still mattered, and millions of the “deplorable” middle and working classes had no innate advantages accruing from “white privilege” and were tired of being told they did by those who really had clout and connections.
The US economy grew at 4.2 percent in the second quarter of 2018, something that Obama and the experts derided as impossible. In 2016, Obama went to Indiana and told people that Trump was lying to them; their jobs were not coming back. He mocked Trump by asking: “What magic wand do you have?” The unemployment rate has been around 4 percent in 2018, the lowest level in 17 years. About 300,000 good manufacturing jobs, which Obama assured us “weren’t coming back,” have been created in the last year.
Immigration is an important issue for many voters. Democrats want open borders and the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the law enforcement agency tasked to enforce US immigration laws, even as thousands of Central Americans move towards the US border intending to enter the US illegally. Low-skilled immigration drives down wages for low-wage workers; however, Democrats characterize low-income US citizens as racists simply for pointing this out, and being angry that they must compete with those in the US without permission. Democrats in “sanctuary” jurisdictions drop criminal charges against immigrants to prevent their deportation; a betrayal of the public trust.
Midterm elections generally have lower voter turnout than presidential elections, making it vital for a party to turn out its base. During the confirmation hearings of Brett Kavanaugh as a Supreme Court justice, the Republican base noted Democrats using uncorroborated allegation of assault at a party to destroy a decent, eminently qualified man and his family publicly. Democrats withheld this allegation for almost two months while secretly providing his accuser with attorney services from Democratic operatives.
The accuser cannot be sure about the year, the month or the date of the occurrence, nor of the residents of the house where it allegedly happened, nor of the location of the place, nor of how she got there or how she got home. She admitted she drank alcohol, and she did not know her alleged assailant at school or anywhere else. All the other people she claimed were present stated under oath that they were never at such a party, including her friend, who swore that she did not even know Brett Kavanaugh. The accuser claiming 36 years later, she could identify someone she did not know when she was not affected by alcohol, with no supporting witness or corroboration of any detail of her story, would mean she could never get a prosecutor to take her case, or a lawyer to sue for damages.
To substantiate her claim, Democrats jettisoned the right to be innocent until proven guilty; the need for corroborating testimony, witnesses, and physical evidence; considerations of motive; inadmissibility of hearsay; the right of the accused to conduct cross-examination; the need for reasonable statutes of limitations; etc. They proclaimed her telling others of the alleged assault 30 years or so later, from recovered memory at a couples’ therapy session, as de facto proof, that the event happened just as she described.
Never-Trump Republicans reluctantly agree that never has a Republican president appointed so many qualified judges and seen them confirmed so quickly, and could do so without nominating anyone like a George H. W. Bush-nominated David Souter or George W. Bush-nominated Harriet Miers. Under Trump, conservatives now have a 5-4 edge in the Supreme Court, and Republicans could retain both houses of Congress. This could be the quickest ascension to broad power in all branches of US government in generations.
Trump is campaigning on his doing what he promised: Tougher immigration laws, renegotiating trade deals, reducing regulations, cutting taxes, confronting North Korea, opposing China, getting NATO countries to pay their bills, bombing ISIS out of Iraq and Syria, exiting the Iran nuclear deal, exiting the Paris climate agreement, etc. Trump’s economic policies are yielding results; salaries are rising at their fastest rate in ten years.
Minorities who mostly did not vote for Trump are doing better under him than any past president; unemployment rates among blacks and Hispanics are at historic lows. Trump’s approval number among African-Americans is 36%. In 2017, it was 23%, and 8% in 2016. Environmentalists who despise Trump know that America has become more effective than its green European critics in reducing carbon emissions, largely through the massive production of natural gas.
In October 2018, Trump signed the ‘Save Our Seas Act,’ an initiative to clean up eight million tons of debris from the planet’s oceans. President Obama did not do this; President Trump did. Diplomats who loathe Trump find their soft power has more resonance backed up by a better US military, a better national security team, and a president who is capable of doing anything, at any time to anyone anywhere, in the defense of American interests, sovereignty and allies.
Former Attorney General Eric Holder talks of kicking his political opponents. Democracy cannot function properly when leading politicians join the mob.
n the last presidential debate between Trump and Clinton, the moderator asked Trump a hypothetical question regarding what he would do if she wins, to which he gave an answer based on the hypothetical premise. Trump was asked to pledge right then to accept the election results. He declined to pledge an acceptance until after the election had taken place and the votes counted. The moderator did not ask Clinton if she would right then pledge to accept the election results if Trump wins; however, she intimated that Trump’s response was the biggest threat US democracy has ever had! Soon after Trump’s inauguration, she declared she has joined the Resistance!
Clinton stated that her party can only be civil when back in power. Former Vice President Joe Biden said he would like to “beat the hell out of” President Trump. Rep. Maxine Waters wants mobs to hunt down Republicans and administration officials in restaurants, malls, etc. Former Attorney General Eric Holder talks of kicking his political opponents. Democracy cannot function properly when leading politicians join the mob.
Hillary and the other advocates of hate appear to assume that James Hodgkinson, the Bernie Sanders’ campaign worker who near-fatally shot Rep. Stephen Scalise, the current US House of Representatives Majority Whip, and tried to kill many more Republican representatives, had never existed. The manifestation of such advocacy is the left-wing Antifa groups and other mobs that have been inflicting physical violence and property damage on their political opponents, or the mobs getting in the faces of Republican Senators in elevators and on the way to work, or the mobs hounding Republican Senators and administration officials out of restaurants, etc.
When Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign chairman for a couple of months in 2016, was convicted of offenses that occurred a decade before he knew Trump, Trump’s opponents proclaimed it is almost over for Trump. It has only just begun! Just as Trump figured he could win the Republican nomination by speaking for those who despised the establishment, and he could win the general election by campaigning to gain a majority in the Electoral College rather than the popular vote, he is exploiting that there is no leader of the opposition in the US system, and between presidential elections he has no rival.
Trump is not an abnormal interval; he is a tremendous change. He has a mandate to drain the Washington swamp and he plans to fulfill it. Democrats could be too berserk to win this midterm election. Their blue wave could be a ripple. Trump could win again.
Dr. Sheyin-Stevens is a Registered Patent Attorney based in Florida, USA. He earned his Doctorate in Law from the University of Miami.