OPINION:
For most of the past nine months, the Democrats have had a modest but durable 5-point advantage in the generic ballot test (i.e., “Who are you more likely to vote for in next November’s election — the Republican or the Democratic candidate?”).
Given the context under which the ruling party is running — an OK-but-not-great economy, an on-again, off-again conflict in the Middle East that has increased gasoline prices, and the general fatigue associated with any sixth-year election of a president — it is remarkable that the Republicans have managed to stay within double digits of Democrats.
The only rational explanation for the narrowness of the Democratic advantage is that their candidates are not very good. That is no doubt in part because some of them give off the faint whiff of deputy commandants in reeducation camps.
The woman who just barely missed becoming the Democratic nominee for governor in Wisconsin, Francesca Hong, is a good example. She dislikes Thanksgiving, for all the reasons one might expect from a young and promising apparatchik. She wants to abolish the police. She doesn’t like Culver’s restaurants (which should be a crime).
The recent Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate from Michigan and leader of this crew of child communists, Abdul El-Sayed, doesn’t like guns, fireworks or football. I get it; it is tough to like football when you have to root for the Detroit Lions. Still, I’m not sure where he is going to campaign Fridays through Sundays in Michigan this fall.
Some want to get rid of the Senate. Some want the federal government to own corporations (which was a little edgier before team Trump started to get in on the action). “Free” tuition for the kids, “free” healthcare for the old folks, universal rent control, and you have to think gun confiscation is on someone’s list.
What happened to these people that made them hate the United States as it is currently constituted? Nate Silver offered some insight into that recently when he noted that the most solidly Democratic voters in the U.S. are those voters with postgraduate degrees and household incomes of $30,000 to $60,000 per year.
Perhaps not coincidentally, this demographic — overeducated and, in their minds, underpaid — is also dead center for the Democratic Socialists of the America. In the party’s most recent membership survey, 80% of members older than 25 had bachelor degrees and 45% had household incomes below $60,000 a year.
It is easy to see why they are angry at the system: They went to college and got degrees, sometimes multiple degrees, and they were told by their parents or whomever that society therefore owed them something.
The great philosopher Eric Hoffer suggested that part of the problem in the United States in the past two generations has been an overproduction of scribes, which is a direct consequence of society’s inexplicable compulsion to produce armies of young people with meaningless degrees and credentials.
That wouldn’t be terrible by itself, except that the armies of the educated and useless are often organized and persistent in demanding that people take them seriously. To keep them quiet, they are awarded sinecures in government, think tanks, media, academia, etc. Almost all of them lack a basic understanding of how most people — the working class — make a living and pay bills. But still they rage on against the indifference shown them by most citizens.
This is your new Democratic Party: young, educated beyond their intellectual capacity, angry and entitled. Small wonder that they are having trouble putting away the Republicans in this cycle, and I doubt it will get better in 2028.
Who will they offer as a presidential nominee? Rep. Ro Khanna of California? Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York? Former Vice President Kamala Harris? None of the alternatives will look appetizing to voters who (mostly) just want the federal government to leave them alone.
• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor at The Washington Times.
Follow the author
Please read our comment policy before commenting.