Why shouldn’t Democrats be confident of a big midterm sweep in November? Part of it is the latest battle in America’s redistricting wars. The Virginia Supreme Court held last Friday that Democrats violated state law in ramming through their plan to turn the commonwealth’s congressional delegation from a 6-5 Democratic majority to 10-1. This leaves the GOP with a clear advantage from this cycle’s gerrymandering shenanigans that might help Republicans avoid losing the House.
In the Senate, Democrats not only would have to carry North Carolina’s competitive open seat. They’d also need to net at least three other GOP seats by some combination of defeating Republican incumbents in Alaska, Maine, Nebraska, Ohio and Texas and swiping Iowa’s open GOP seat, while holding their own open seats in Michigan and New Hampshire and defending a Democratic incumbent in Georgia. That will be tough.
Limelight-seeking Democrats are making the task tougher by defining the party in voters’ minds as out of touch with much of America.
Near the top of the list is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is clearly eyeing a 2028 presidential bid. She has star appeal but real drawbacks. In a recent “It’s Open With Ilana Glazer” podcast, she revealed just how far she is from the mainstream.
AOC blamed opposition to open borders on a “deep racism” and the “impulse . . . to feel like there is another class of people that is below you.” When Ms. Glazer suggested the death of AOC’s father from lung cancer was the fault of capitalism, Mr. Ocasio-Cortez agreed, calling our market system “barbarism.”
She believes no one can earn a billion dollars legally. “You can get market power, you can break rules,” she says, “but you can’t earn that.” Tell that to the tech, finance, and entertainment gazillionaires who fund Democratic campaigns, starting with George Soros, Tom Steyer, and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker. At what point should anyone’s earnings become illegal? Wherever you set the line, it sets a dangerous precedent.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez also waxed paranoid, asking “who do you think is next” after immigration officers have “rounded up every person in the country.” She asserted that the government wants “to scan your face and put it in a system” if “you want to protest.”
As for Republican voters, “they’re not red, they’re oppressed,” she says. In the tradition of Barack Obama (“They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them.”) and Hillary Clinton (“basket of deplorables”), Ms. Ocasio-Cortez suggests people in rural America and other red regions make easy marks for right-wing overlords.
If she doesn’t seek the presidency in 2028, perhaps she’ll challenge New York’s senior senator, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. Regardless, she will be a national presence this year. She will work hard to be heard with appearances across the country.
AOC isn’t the only Democrat whose utterances unsettle mainstream voters. The Democratic lineup this year is rife with kooks. Maine’s Democratic Senate hopeful Graham Platner has called a local police chief “trash” for refusing to kneel during a Black Lives Matter protest and described himself as “a communist.”
Mr. Platner asked online why “black people don’t tip” and advised sexual-assault victims to “take some responsibility for themselves and not get so f— up they wind up having sex with someone they don’t mean to.” He also opined that “an armed working class is a requirement for economic justice.”
For 18 years, he displayed a Nazi-style Death’s Head tattoo on his chest. Mr. Platner claimed that he didn’t know it was offensive until it became a campaign controversy. Then he blamed the U.S. military’s culture for his decision to be tattooed with a “Totenkopf.”
Mr. Platner claims he’s changed and shrugs off his past comments: “I made dumb jokes and picked fights.” He’s trying to tone it down for November. But candidates have a way of showing who they really are.
