This week: The Briefing, Vol. X, Issue 24
- Democrats wave the bloody shirt over Jan. 6
- San Franciscans recall soft-on-crime prosecutor
- Sarah Palin’s comeback?
Outlook
Jan. 6 Show Trial: Do you remember January 6, 2021?
For most Americans the answer to this is the yes, they do. Gas cost less than $3 a gallon on that January 6th. And that’s what they remember.
As far as that unpleasantness that happened in Washington — the riot around the Capitol, the violent behavior by a relative handful of crazies in a much larger crowd of peaceful protesters — they know it was bad. And they got over it a very long time ago. Most people may not even remember the incident at all unless you ask them some leading questions.
Unfortunately for Democrats, January 6th is their election strategy for 2022. The instigators of the riot that day are being prosecuted and investigated, but that’s not enough for them. They need to turn the event into a national crisis — into, as some have even suggested, the worst tragedy in all of American history. It is no exaggeration to say that some of them compare this to Pearl Harbor, 9/11, and Watergate. They only cheapen those events by doing so.
Much of the liberal media is trying to help them in this effort, going so far as to surrender their primetime lineup last Thursday to propaganda show trials that Democrats are putting on in order to refocus attention on the events of January 6, 2021. It is an unnatural attempt to make something out of nothing, to take an incident that passed and turn it into something that it wasn’t.
It is our belief that this is a fool’s errand. The average voter is not concerned with this fake threat to democracy. He is far more concerned with the fact that gas prices have doubled under Biden’s watch. He’s concerned with the fact that beef, chicken, and pork are becoming prohibitively expensive. He may also be concerned with the fact that the borders are being overrun thanks to a deliberate policy of inviting people to cross illegally. He also has some rather sour memories of a completely incompetent administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, an incident that caused several deaths — unlike the riot of January 6th, which did cause deaths, but only those of unruly protesters at the hands of the Capitol Police.
In the end, if this is the Democrats’ strategy to avoid destruction in November, it leaves a lot to be desired. It is going to be very difficult, even with the best television producers (whom Democrats hired for this event) and the most loyal, sycophantic media allies, to refocus the attention of the electorate upon an event that almost everyone got over so long ago.
Democrats are attempting to gain something by waving the bloody shirt, as Republicans did in the Nineteenth Century after the savage caning of Sen. Charles Sumner by Democratic Congressman Preston Brooks.
But today’s Democrats have a few problems. Their second-biggest problem is that this event was not nearly so savage. Their third-biggest problem is that none of the blood is theirs.
Their biggest problem is that inflation just hit a 40-year record with last week’s new economic data. They are doing nothing about that, but they are going into hysterics about one of the hundreds of violent riots that occurred a couple of years ago.
As we noted a couple of weeks ago, the Quinnipiac poll showed that Democratic voters’ priorities are out of line with the election priorities of every single racial and demographic group. Whereas all age and racial and ethnic groups are overwhelmingly worried about inflation, Democrats are worried about abortion and “election laws.” This is one more attempt to change the subject from the tough realities that are harming Joe Biden’s ratings most.
San Francisco-Recall: Of course, the issue that affects everyone even more than the economy is public safety — crime, that is.
The decisive vote to recall District Attorney Chesa Boudin proves that even in such a far-left city as San Francisco, voters are not interested in the version of so-called criminal justice reform that Boudin and other “progressives” espouse. They agree with the idea of applying other punishments besides incarceration to non-violent first-time offenders. They do not agree with the idea of letting violent career criminals off the hook, again and again, and of refusing to prosecute property crimes.
The main lesson here is that the belief that incarceration is an evil in and of itself is far outside the mainstream. Prosecutors who drop charges and make it easier for violent criminals to access guns and other people’s wealth are a genuine menace to society.
Boudin’s recall is a healthy reminder that even in the craziest left-wing parts of America, some common sense remains. Criminal justice reform doesn’t mean what the Left wants it to mean — at least, not for anyone who wants to support it. Also, the best form of gun control — and of crime control — is to throw the book at known violent criminals instead of letting them off the hook.
Gun control: The Senate has come to an agreement that excludes most of Joe Biden’s wish list for gun control. It includes school safety grants, the use of juvenile records in NICS background checks, and programs encouraging states to pass red flag laws. Some conservatives are upset at the idea of giving Biden any sort of win, but the first two provisions don’t pose any problem to gun rights whatsoever.
The third is the more controversial provision. Red-flag laws can be abused if they are too permissive for prosecutors. They can also become useless in practice if they are too exacting as to what it takes to confiscate the guns of someone showing “red flags,” i.e. signs of instability or violence. The devil will be in the details here.
House 2022
Alaska-AL: Former Gov. Sarah Palin and Nick Begich, both Republicans, have advanced to a special ranked-choice general election on Aug. 16 to replace the late Rep. Don Young, along with independent Al Gross and Democrat Mary Peltola. This result exposes a major weakness in Alaska’s new top-four primary election system. It means that a candidate can qualify for the November ballot by winning just 12% of the vote, or even getting only single-digit support in a primary, as Petola appears to have done here.
Texas-34: A special election will take place tomorrow in South Texas. If Republican Mayra Flores overcomes Dan Sanchez in this light-blue district, it will be another early sign of the Hispanic Republican renaissance sweeping that region. It could also be considered one of the first dominoes to fall for Democratic dominance of the Latino vote, which is waning in part thanks to Joe Biden’s poor performance, and in part due to the far-Left’s takeover of the Democratic Party over the last ten years.
Democrats know this — Sanchez received the nomination with robust establishment support in part because he is a pro-life moderate. But this gesture could be too little, too late.
