Washington Examiner senior columnist Guy Benson said that the Democratic Party will use what angers its base for messaging in the midterm elections.
“The Democrats are being led around by the passions of their base,” Benson said on FOX Business’s Evening Edit on Tuesday night.
Benson explained that Democrats use this as a “resistance posture.”
“The affordability issue, if it remains major with the American people and salient, that will be the defining question of the midterms,” he said. “But right now we see the base getting really angry about this or that, and the party zigs and zags along with its base.”
“We’ll see how it works for them in November,” he added.
When asked about Democrats “switching” their midterm elections messaging away from affordability to defunding Immigration and Customs Enforcement as fraud schemes are being discovered, Benson said the extent of the fraud wasn’t known until recently.
“Whenever there’s an effort to actually go after I know waste, fraud and abuse sounds like it’s a cliche in Washington, D.C., but it does exist, I think, on a scale so vast that many of us didn’t really understand it until very recently,” he said.
“Democrats virtually unanimously oppose these efforts and refer to such moves as cuts to programs, so, I mean, it is what it is,” he added.
Benson also discussed the recent indictment of Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-FL) for allegedly conspiring to steal $5 million in federal disaster funds during the COVID-19 pandemic and funneling some of it to her congressional campaign.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said he would not expel Cherfilus-McCormick, who pleaded not guilty to the charges.
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Benson said Cherfilus-McCormick is “entitled” to the process, but believes the evidence against her is “substantial.”
“I don’t know why Democrats would necessarily want to hang on to her or bear hug her except for the fact that it’s a very tight spread right now in the House of Representatives,” he said. “The Republicans barely have a majority. Every seat counts. And if one is occupied on the Democrat side by an indicted, accused fraudster, I guess so be it because they want the votes.”
