With the dreaded 2024 election year upon us, it becomes necessary to consider the main issues that will determine who wins at the ballot box. Will it be the economy? Immigration? Foreign policy? Political corruption?
Maybe it will be none of those.
Because Joe Biden has an abysmal record, he and his supporters in the corporate media will be forced to circumvent this reality and keep Democrat voters in the dark. Moreover, they will fabricate issues to demoralize and further confuse the left and the right. Ideally, this two-pronged approach will soothe Democrats into blissful ignorance as they vote for the same terrible politicians while it provokes Republican voters into endless squabbles.
A perfect example of how this works can be found in two recent op-eds in Newsweek. In the first essay, “Why 2024 Could Totally Rule!” college professor David Faris optimistically predicts that some “lucky breaks” at home and abroad will lead to the triumph of Biden and the Democratic Party along with the fall of Donald Trump and the GOP.
Taking the same political angle but predicting doom, “2024 Is Another Year of Living Dangerously” by former Associated Press editor Dan Perry rules out those lucky breaks, predicting a second Trump term and a world on fire.
More than what they argue, what makes these two essays notable is what they leave out.
If most Americans are misinformed and distracted, Biden and the Democratic Party will win the next election and seize more power.
Even though the biggest issue in any election is the economy, both Faris and Perry address it in the most oblique and dishonest manner.
For no reason at all, Faris asserts, “With interest rates falling, inflation back to pre-pandemic levels, and stocks roaring past all-time highs, there will be little left to pin on President Biden and the Democrats.”
Oh? Considering the federal government’s continued profligate spending, there is every reason to believe inflation will continue impoverishing Americans. The only other way to change that would be to raise interest rates, but this could trigger a recession, which Democrats must delay until after November at all costs. This is to say nothing of the swelling debt that will eventually require steep tax hikes and spending cuts. Rather than expecting a “soft landing” and sustained economic recovery, Americans can expect to be slowly but surely crushed by rising prices and stagnating wages.
For his part, Perry frets over artificial intelligence, which will “replace many of the white collar functions that have enabled non-geniuses with a bit of education to bring home the bacon.” Like most AI pessimists, Perry offers few details of how this actually happens. Most jobs, even seemingly monotonous ones, require human judgment, which AI lacks. Someone will always need to set the parameters, review the product, and consider what further actions are necessary.
If anything, AI will supplement what white-collar workers do and make them more productive, not replace them and make them redundant. As conservative columnist Kurt Schlichter concludes in his case against artificial intelligence, “AI is a tool and a gimmick, but it will be useful for some functions.”
Projection, Biden-style
Faris and Perry also address Biden’s corruption, albeit in bad faith. Faris uses the typical leftist tactic of calling the accusations of Biden’s influence-peddling a “farce” with no “credible” evidence to support it. Perry takes the other popular leftist tactic of shameless projection: “[Trump] coddled anti-democratic rulers, tried to use the presidency to enrich himself, was impeached for shaking down Ukraine for dirt on Joe Biden and then for egging on a violent mob to attack the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.”
Contrary to these claims, evidence shows how the Biden family grew rich from Joe’s willingness to make deals with the world’s worst people. Ironically, this has caused him — not Trump — to be the one to coddle anti-democratic rulers, including Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Xi Jinping, and now Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro.
As for illegal immigration and the military failures of Afghanistan and Ukraine, Faris and Perry have almost nothing to say since there’s just no way to spin them positively.
The mass influx of illegal immigrants will continue to burden all levels of government with a swelling class of dependents in need of health care, housing, education, and protection, as well as flood the labor market with cheap, unskilled workers — in effect, Americans can expect to see the proliferation of slums and shantytowns everywhere.
On the foreign policy front, even before Biden’s disastrous withdrawal in the summer of 2021, the war in Afghanistan had proven to be a pointless effort that wasted thousands of lives and billions of dollars. Nevertheless, the Biden administration entered another wasteful conflict less than a year later in Ukraine. Although it seems like this war might finally end with a peace deal in the near future, this outcome could have been reached long before all the death and destruction of the past two years.
Abortion now, abortion forever
But rather than concede any of this, Faris and Perry instead stoke unwarranted fears of a Trump “dictatorship” and potential limits on abortion.
As Faris looks forward to a “codification of Roe” and the demise of Trump’s “bizarre antics and increasingly authoritarian rhetoric,” Perry fears more “abortion ban talk” and the possibility that “Trump will again alienate America’s allies and trash America’s brand as he takes steps to rule as an authoritarian to whatever degree the system will allow.”
So long as reality doesn’t assert itself, the arguments of Faris and Perry — and those of the left generally — might well prevail. Sure enough, Biden announced his re-election campaign would be predicated on attacking Trump and trumpeting abortion.
If most Americans are misinformed and distracted, and Republicans tie themselves in knots explaining how they’re not fascists, Biden and the Democratic Party will win the next election and seize more power. So it falls on Americans not to take the bait and to fight the falsehoods.
More than ever, the case for the American left is remarkably weak, and conservatives have an opportunity to win back the country in a big way. They just have to focus, keep it real, and help others to do the same.