As I write this piece, it has been three weeks since the 2018 Midterm Elections. In looking back roughly a month or so--back to the Midterm Campaigns--I remember the tone of many of the Democratic Senate and House candidates during their campaign. It was a tone of normalcy, of "regularness", of telling Americans in Flyover Country that they were really no different than us...they weren't crazy...they weren't unpatriotic...that they have the same concerns as the rest of us...that those Democratic candidates were, for lack of a better term, "reasonable".
This tone was, of course, a striking difference to the tone we in Flyover Country had seen out of Democrats for the last decade or so. After continual and constant examples of Democrats focusing on the wants and needs of Illegal Aliens, Urban Criminals, Muslim Terrorists, the LGBT community, Environmentalists, crazed Feminists, and anyone else who wanted to attack the very religious values and traditional family structure that made America great to begin with...and after continual examples of Democrats placing a far higher priority on people in these groups than they ever did on the wants and needs of normal, middle-class, Christian Americans...there was understandably a great deal of distrust and skepticism of Liberals and Democrats in Rural America leading into the midterms. In order to win their elections (particularly in the Senate--where those elections are statewide in nature, and where you simply can't get around having to appeal to rural voters), Democrats were going to have to actually speak to Americans in Flyover Country, and provide them with a message that was far different then what their party had espoused for the last decade. A daunting task, yes...but a necessary one if the Democratic candidates were to have any legitimate shot at winning.
Now, I don't want to overstate this direction--it certainly wasn't something that we saw from Democrats on the national level, or in their appearances on CNN, MSNBC, or other national news and opinion outlets. Those folks continued to appear as crazy as they've ever been. But out on the campaign trail--and that state and district levels--Democrats who were actually running for office tried their best to paint a different picture. It was those Democrats who tried to paint a picture of being "just like you", but simply having a different way of dealing with our nation's issues than President Trump and the Republican Party have.
Here in Missouri, Claire McCaskill--who was running to retain her Senate seat--seemed to go all in with this strategy. It started with the usual advertisements touting her background of having grown up in rural Missouri. It then progressed to how much she valued "reaching across the aisle" (all of which seemed to ignore the most obvious question--if "reaching across the aisle" to Republicans was truly as much of a focus for Claire as she claimed...then why didn't she just cross the aisle and become a Republican at some point during her long career?). Finally--perhaps because she hadn't gotten her point across, or perhaps out of rote desperation--McCaskill actually started calling out members of her own party as "Crazy" in an attempt to separate herself from them in the eyes of Missouri voters. In the end, it didn't work--it was, after all, too much of a pivot from what rural voters had seen and heard over the last decade--McCaskill lost her Senate seat to Josh Hawley...and around the country, Republicans ended up gaining seats in the Senate (something that, historically speaking, just doesn't happen during a President's first term).
Ok, so the strategy didn't work for Democrats. But what if this wasn't just a strategy? What if, in a "glass half full" sort of moment, there had really been a pivot in the Democratic Party and the American Left back towards normalcy and towards the values of rural Americans? If so, couldn't that portend some good things for America's future? Couldn't there be *gasp* the possibility of meaningful cooperation and even a hint of that most treasured of focus-group tested buzzwords, bi-partisanship?
Well, given what we have seen in the last three weeks of the election, the answer to that last paragraph is a pretty clear, "No". Almost immediately after the election, the actions of Democrats proved that they had gone from "reasonable" back to "bat-shit crazy" in about the same amount of time it takes a Corvette to go from 0 to 60 MPH. Almost immediately, Democrats went peddle-to-the-floor on backing the invading hordes marching through Mexico with the intent of invading at our Southern border (or, as sympathetic and anti-American journalists often referred to them, the "migrant caravan"). From there, a Democratic Representative from California tweeted casually about using nuclear weapons on gun owners who refused to give up their guns. In short, the focus for Democrats has reverted back to what it always was--uprooting the values, beliefs, and behaviors that have stood our nation in good stead for so many years, and replacing them with a "fundamentally transformed" America based on false notions of "Social Justice" and "equality" at any and all costs.
In other words, they are just a nutty today as they were before the Midterm campaigns. Nothing really changed, and Senate voters in Flyover Country recognized this, and didn't take the bait.
But this situation does raise a red flag for us. At some point during the next two years, there will be a push from Democrats for some sort of "bi-partisanship" or "coming together" on some issue. Mark my words--this will happen at some point before the 2020 Presidential election. Maybe it will come because they recognize, late in the game, that continual investigations and attempts at impeachment (if they choose to go that route) will piss the American People off to the point that they have no real shot in 2020...or maybe it will be something more pragmatic, such as an infrastructure plan of some sort that they would likely get cooperation from President Trump for, and that they could then take back to Flyover states and say, "Look, we can work across the aisle". Whatever the motivation or situation that might bring it about...I fully expect some sort of push for bi-partisanship to come from the Democrats within the next two years.
And when this push does happen, it will look like something similar to what we saw in the 2018 Midterms--a calculated attempt to "put on the mask" and convince normal Americans that Democrats and Leftists have more in common with us than we think. Their words and their rhetoric will--temporarily--try to give this impression. But pay attention to their actions, not their words. Whenever this occurs, they really will not change in the manor that they proclaim (just as it is clear the "changes" they tried to convince us of during their Midterm campaigns were not legitimate in the end). Rest assured, they will be every bit as evil and anti-American as they are today. They will just try to convince you otherwise.
When they offer the olive branch--and they will at some point over the next two years--brush it away. Do not accept it. It is only an attempt to place themselves closer to power, so that they might continue their incremental destruction of America. They are not bargaining in good faith for America, and they never will. It will be the political version of the "Tennessee Handshake"--shaking a man's hand with your right hand, while you have your left hand behind your back, with a knife in it, preparing to stab the person in the back who's hand you are shaking in the moment.
Reject them and their calls for bi-partisanship, no matter what they say to your face. In the end, it is what is best for America in general, and for us all individually, in particular.