Since President Trump’s inauguration five months ago, the Democrats and their lapdog “news” media have miscalculated on a scale that might be unprecedented in American political history.
In order to understand their miscalculation, you have to understand that the Democrats and their “news” media don’t just disagree with Trump. They don’t just oppose him.
The Democrats and their “news” media hate Donald Trump from the depths of their souls and with every fiber of their beings.
And everyone they know does too.
Living in that echo chamber of hate, the Democrats and their “news” media assumed that everyone hates Trump like they do. So they adopted a strategy of branding him a “fascist” and “resisting” him. And they tried to brand every Republican as equally “deplorable.”
During last year’s campaign, the Democrats contrived a “scandal” alleging that Russia was tampering with the election at the behest of Donald Trump and his campaign.
Their hope was that these allegations would offset the disgust of the American people with the mountain of evidence showing criminal corruption by Hillary Clinton as President Obama’s Secretary of State.
Unlike the allegations against Hillary, however, there was not and never has been so much as a scintilla of evidence to support the allegations against Trump.
Nevertheless, the fake Russia “story” became the dominant narrative in the “news” media in the final weeks of the campaign and has remained such ever since Trump won the election.
So, in the five months since Trump took office, the Democrats went all in on trying to discredit and castrate Trump and every congressional Republican with these fake Russia allegations – allegations that they knew were fake when they made them
And their “news” media allies joyfully pursued these fake stories with a vengeance. Literally.
At the same time, the Democrats started to brand themselves as “The Resistance” and as “Anti-Fascists,” labels that their “news” media allies enthusiastically promoted.
The Democrats then proceeded to violently disrupt congressional Republicans’ town hall meetings. They took to social media to vilify Trump and the Republicans as “fascists” who were endangering the entire country with a sinister plan to transform America into a dictatorship. They called for Trump’s impeachment. Their Hollywood allies encouraged violence and went so far as to publicize a photo showing Trump’s severed and bloody head. They sent death threats to Republican officials across the country.
They even shot and nearly killed a Republican congressional leader.
The “news” media again enthusiastically covered most of these events as if they constituted a legitimate “resistance” to a real “fascist” threat to the country. And when their Democrat allies went too far even for them, they gave cursory coverage to those extreme actions and then promptly changed the subject. (Steve who? We’re still busy covering Gabby Giffords….)
The Democrats targeted four special elections across the country to win and use as harbingers of an expected landslide backlash against Trump in the 2018 congressional midterm elections. And their “news” media allies covered those Democrat candidates as heroes and saviors.
But something happened on the way to the Promised Land: The Republicans won all four elections.
So now the Democrats are licking their wounds and trying to figure out what went wrong.
After all, if everyone hates and fears Trump – which must be the case since everyone they know hates him – then how could they have lost?
What happened was the Democrats themselves.
The American people are not enamored with President Trump. He says a lot of stupid things that are beneath the dignity of his office (although, in fairness, he seems to be conducting himself with more dignity lately). And they are frustrated that a Congress controlled by Trump’s own party can’t get anything in his agenda passed.
The Democrats were right that they were playing on a political field that favored them. But they grossly overestimated the level of animus the American people feel toward Trump and his party.
The vast majority of the American people don’t hate Donald Trump like the partisan Democrats and their “news” media do.
They are, however, disgusted with the horrifying antics they have been seeing by the Democrats. And they resent being lied to on a daily basis by obviously agenda-driven “news” media who have abandoned any semblance of honesty and integrity.
And so, they go to the polls with little enthusiasm for the Republicans but highly motivated to oppose the obnoxious and often violently dangerous Democrats.
And elections that the Democrats had touted as bellwethers of electoral disaster for Republicans next year became backlash elections against the Democrats themselves.
And the “news” media are now less trusted than the politicians they cover.
Indeed, the “news” media repeatedly have been forced to retract and apologize for stories on the contrived Russia “scandal” when it turned out that those stories were just. plain. wrong.
The worst purveyor of such fake news has been CNN, which touts itself with a straight face as “The Most Trusted Name In News.” This week they announced the forced resignations of three “reporters” who were responsible for CNN’s latest fake news story about an alleged Trump-Russia collusion.
At the same time, Project Veritas intrepid reporter James O’Keefe released a video showing CNN Supervising Producer John Bonifield admitting that CNN has no actual evidence of any connection between the Trump campaign and the Russians, that CNN is, in fact, engaging in a witch-hunt against Trump, and that CNN CEO Jeff Zucker ordered that these fake news stories continue anyway because Trump is “good for business.”
This. Is CNN.
And so, at a time when we have a Republican president who is disliked enough by the American people to give the Democrats significant electoral advantages, the Democrats have managed to turn the tables and get the American people to dislike them even more. A lot more.
The American people already know what they’ve got with President Trump, and truth be told, most Americans have found that he’s not that bad. They’re skeptical of him, but they’re giving him an honest chance, and they want the Democrats and the news media to do so as well.
What they’ve seen, though, are Democrats behaving in grotesquely unacceptable ways and the “news” media routinely fabricating news to pursue a vicious vendetta against the president and his party.
The American people identified the real threats when they went to the polls.
So, the Democrats not only have lost all of the recent special elections, but they’ve damaged their brand so badly that they will have difficulty recovering before next year’s elections.
And the “news” media have rendered themselves so untrustworthy that they are virtually irrelevant.
The strategies employed by the Democrats could not have worked better – for the Republicans.
As long as President Trump continues to show discipline and avoids any more stupid statements, the Democrats just might be his party’s salvation.
Author: Ken Falkenstein
Ken Falkenstein is the Managing Editor of Committed Conservative and brings a wealth of experience and expertise in public affairs to the job. Ken served in the U.S. Army in the last years of the Cold War as a Russian linguist for military intelligence and the NSA. After leaving the Army, he earned his degree in Secondary Education from Old Dominion University, where he also wrote a popular column in the student newspaper.
Upon graduation, Ken worked as a Legislative Aide to two Republican members of the Virginia House of Delegates. Ken also served as Corresponding Secretary of the Young Republican Federation of Virginia, managed several successful political campaigns, and managed governmental affairs operations for a local Realtor association.
In 1995, Ken moved to Washington, DC to serve as a Legislative Assistant to Sen. John Warner (R-VA). While working for Sen. Warner, Ken attended law school at night, earning his J.D. with honors from the George Mason University School of Law (n/k/a The Antonin Scalia Law School). Since that time, Ken has practiced as a civil litigation attorney, including serving for three years as an Associate City Attorney for the City of Virginia Beach, Virginia.
Ken previously was a contributor to the highly-regarded political blog Bearing Drift and was a weekly co-host of The Steve Batton Radio Program. In 2016, Ken ran unsuccessfully for the Virginia Beach School Board. Ken is also a former President of the Down Syndrome Association of Hampton Roads.
Ken now lives outside of Denver, Colorado with his wife, Kim, and three sons, Adam, Dylan, and Joshua, who has Down syndrome. Ken’s writing is motivated and informed primarily by his concern for his kids’ future.
