The early-voting numbers are in, and as of Saturday, they already surpassed numbers from the 2014 midterms. What does that mean for early voters? That they can sit by, unfazed, as the political circus continues. However, in just the past week, major news has broken that may have left early voters reconsidering.
It has been discovered, for instance, that two of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s accusers fabricated part or all of their allegations against him.
A report from the Department of Homeland Security has also emerged, stating that the migrant caravan from Honduras, lauded by the Left as being full of people who dare to dream, contains at least 270 criminals. The report further elaborates that men within the caravan have been seen preparing Molotov cocktails, and are paying women and children to move to the front of the caravan to be used as human shields during any confrontations.
Those stories, however, have taken a back seat to renewed attacks on Republicans.
Last week, CNN’s Don Lemon tried to claim the country has never experienced a violent attack by a Democrat. After being corrected, he made the baffling statement that “we have to stop demonizing people and realize the biggest terror threat in this country is white men, most of them radicalized to the Right.”
More galling are the words of Hillary Clinton’s former running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va. Six days after an anti-Semitic man killed 11 worshippers at Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Kaine claimed at a campaign rally that Republicans go after media mogul George Soros because of “straight, flat-out anti-Semitism.”
To catch the news about Kaine, you had to pay close attention. The only national media outlet to cover his inappropriate, and flatly incorrect, remarks was the Washington Examiner.
Some of the news sites that might have picked up that report and distributed it to their readers were silenced weeks ago. On October 11, without warning or explanation, Facebook deactivated 220 political accounts. Of those affected, The Western Journal found that “67 percent are conservative or pro-Trump pages, 22 percent are libertarian or non-aligned, and 11 percent are liberal or anti-Trump pages.” Those accounts, which include IPhoneConservative and Right Wing News, gave voice to those who felt that the media were not addressing their political concerns. Those who turned to the banned sites for perspective must go elsewhere for their news.
Should they turn to Lemon? Or to people like Mara Gay of the New York Times editorial board, who, during an MSNBC roundtable, called the president a “white nationalist” and a “threat to democracy,” and said that she was “not willing to let white voters off the hook,” for bringing him to power?
In the same rally where he suggested that Republicans writ large are anti-Semitic, Kaine claimed Democrats are the “for all” party. This is one more in a string of examples of the divisive strategy of hypocritically bleating that the Right is for stupid or power-hungry, hate-filled bigots, and the Left is for everyone who remains — in other words, the good guys.
For those who have yet to vote, their choice should consist of examining the state of the country and picking the candidate whose platforms best reflect their personal values. Though less has been said about the issues this election season, much more has been added to the strategic calculus of where to place your vote. Will Americans be moved by the rhetoric from the Left, which has spent the past two years debasing the Right and promises that there will be “blood in the streets” if it does not regain power? Its desire to win must be great, and its fear of the remarkable state of the U.S. economy equally so, if it is willing to threaten and demonize so many Americans to make those political gains.
The constancy with which the message that conservatives are evil is hammered in leaves many of us wondering whether those who despise us will cease those baseless attacks and let us regain our voices, even if there is a change in leadership in the House or Senate on Tuesday.
Beth Bailey (@BWBailey85) is a freelance writer from the Detroit area.
