Politics often doesn’t make sense. This occurs notably when politicians do things that unwittingly help their opponents.
Since winning the midterm election in November, Democrats have been moving recklessly to the left in a way likely to aid President Trump’s prospects for re-election in 2020. And if Trump wins a second term, Republicans are all but certain to keep control of the Senate and could win back the House.
Why would Democrats do this? Two reasons. One is they’ve overrated the impact of their victory in 2018, viewing it as a preview of the 2020 election. Republicans fell for a supposed preview like this in 2010, when they won 63 House seats. But two years later, President Obama easily won re-election. Midterm victories, it turns out, don’t signal future landslides.
The other reason is the Democrats’ loathing of Trump. They’ve become irrational. They believe Trump is such an execrable president that they’ve loaded up on left-wing policies they love and he hates, yet will still capture Congress and the White House in 2020. It’s as if Trump has set them free to be their real, far-left selves.
Maybe he has. But their real selves have given the president an issue he intends to exploit against them tirelessly. It’s socialism. Six months ago, socialism wasn’t on the tip of the tongue of the political class. Now it’s issue No. 1 in political circles.
Most Democrats, outside of a few moderates, don’t appear to be worried. They don’t think they’re socialists, though the popular House rookie Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., are. And they don’t believe Trump can make much of the issue anyway.
They’re wrong. It’s true that voters in recent years have failed to respond hugely to Republican claims about the evils of bigger government. But they seem to understand that socialism is a giant step beyond this, a matter more alarming than the addition of bureaucrats in Washington.
A poll by Public Opinion Strategies a month ago asked if respondents agreed with this: “The country would be better off if our political and economic systems were more socialist, including taxing the wealthy to pay for social programs, nationalizing health care so it’s government run, and redistributing wealth.” The result: 51 percent said no, 45 percent yes.
The partisan divide was wide but not unexpected. Democrats favored a more socialist approach, 77-19 percent. Republicans didn’t, 83-14 percent, and independents were also against it, 56-37 percent.
These results were not overwhelmingly anti-socialism. But voter intensity, a big advantage of Democrats in the 2018 midterm, was far stronger on the anti-socialist side. Forty-one percent opposed more socialism strongly, while 23 percent backed it.
Significant majorities in three key 2020 swing voter groups disagreed with a “more socialist” tilt: White suburban women were opposed, 57-40 percent; voters in major 2020 presidential states, 54-42 percent; and suburban voters in general, 56-41 percent.
Two weeks before these poll numbers were released, Trump had criticized the talk of socialism in his State of the Union address. POS pollster Neil Newhouse said the president’s “warning against a shift to socialism makes sense given these poll results.”
In 2018, “the threat of socialism and socialist policies found its way into congressional campaigns across the country as a background or back burner concern,” Newhouse said, “but as 2020 approaches and Democrats prepare to do battle for the Presidential nomination, this data indicates that a debate over socialism is likely to be the framing of the ’20 election.”
Trump’s State of the Union remarks were a bit of a surprise, but they showed he’s ready to take part in that debate. I suspect his decision to inject socialism into his speech was instinctual. It was also politically wise.
“We are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country,” he said. “America was founded on liberty and independence … not government coercion, domination, and control. We are free and we will stay free. Tonight we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country.”
In their post-midterm zeal, Democrats have talked up a series of new policies that would expand the scope, power, and taxation of the federal government. These include “Medicare for all,” the vast Green New Deal, a top income tax rate of 70 percent, an unprecedented wealth tax, and reparations for slavery.
These don’t quite constitute a total socialist package, but they come close enough to justify an offensive against socialism and its supporters by Trump. They’re a gift, but not a wise one, from Democrats.
Fred Barnes, a Washington Examiner senior columnist, was a founder and executive editor of the Weekly Standard.
