BY PAUL MIRENGOFF | POWERLINE
In 2020, Joe Biden carried the city by a margin of nearly 40 points.
Thus, the Dems’ stranglehold on Columbia seemed complete.
However, Columbia has just elected a
Republican mayor. The Republican, Daniel Rickenmann, defeated Democrat
Tameika Isaac Devine in a runoff election last week. The margin was 4 points,
52-48.
Rickenmann, a member of city council, prioritized three
issues: public safety, support for small businesses, and repairing
infrastructure. Devine focused on
“issues of income instability, affordable housing, creating equitable
neighborhoods, and embracing the diversity of this city.”
Rickenmann’s platform proved more attractive to voters.
Even in Democratic strongholds, voters seem more worried about crime, lack of
job opportunities, and deteriorating roads and bridges than about abstractions
— especially abstractions like equity and diversity that have come to stand for
an erosion of standards and lack of concern for public safety.
_____________________
RELATED
ARTICLES
Red
Wave Coming: GOP Holds Biggest Lead in 40 Years in 2022 Congressional Election
Poll
By Joe Saunders |
The Western Journal
With numbers like these, Democrats are looking at a red
wave next year that will leave them as under water as a Joe Biden job approval
rating.
Only 10 months into the Biden presidency, the doddering
chief executive and the party that supports him have fallen so out of favor
with the American public that a generic ballot finds Republicans holding an
unprecedented lead over Democrats, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll released Sunday.
And that bodes very badly for Democrats, who should
already be panicking ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
For Biden himself, the numbers are miserable. A president
who came into office promising to unite the country and vanquish all memories
of his infinitely superior predecessor now finds himself with only a 41 percent
approval rating, according to the poll. Meanwhile, 53 percent disapprove — a
mark that’s under water by double digits.
When it comes to the economy alone, Biden’s approval
rating is even worse. Fifty-five percent of those polled disapproved, compared
to only 39 percent who approved. In September of 2017, then-President Donald
Trump had a disapproval rating of 49 percent. That was the highest of the Trump
presidency, according to the poll, and it was still 6 points lower than Biden’s
is now.
Most Americans remember that Republicans lost control of
the House in midterms a year later — a development that made possible the
ludicrous impeachment efforts that followed.
The reasons for the current dissatisfaction are obvious
to anyone who hasn’t been blinded by the mainstream media’s overwhelming bias.
Inflation is putting a bite on everyday Americans, the
poll found, and the coronavirus pandemic Biden vowed to defeat is still a
nagging concern.
And while the poll didn’t mention them, the illegal
immigration crisis Biden created on the nation’s southern border and his
administration’s utterly disastrous handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan have left Americans
disgusted with a lawless administration in Washington.
They all add up to a grim picture for the president’s
party: “As things stand, if the midterm elections were today, 51 percent of
registered voters say they’d support the Republican candidate in their
congressional district, 41 percent the Democrat,” ABC reported.
“That’s the biggest lead for Republicans in the 110
ABC/Post polls to ask this question since November 1981. Indeed, it’s only the
second time the GOP has held a statistically significant advantage (the other
was +7 points in January 2002) and the ninth time it’s held any numerical edge
at all.”
For perspective, as National Review’s Jim Geraghty pointed out on Sunday, that lead stands out even
against watershed, red-wave years like the midterms of 2010 and 1994.
ABC polls gave the GOP a 4-point advantage in the weeks
leading up to the 2010 midterms, when Republicans took the House and held it
for the remainder of then-President Barack Obama’s two terms in office, PolitiFact reported in a 2013 fact check.
And in the weeks preceding the 1994 midterms, when
Republicans under Newt Gingrich took the House majority for the first time in
more than half a century, ABC generic polls actually showed Democrats with a
lead of 4 or 5 points, the PolitiFact report noted.
It’s important to point out that those polls were
conducted, basically, on the eve of the elections, while the country is still
more than a year away from a 2022 reckoning. However, it’s doubtful that any
honest person could expect the factors that have been destroying confidence in
Biden and the Democratic Congress are going to improve any time soon, because the
party isn’t going to change any time soon.
A president who kicked off his administration by
deliberately killing a controversial oil pipeline project via executive order
— and thousands of jobs with it — isn’t likely to
suddenly decide his fellow citizens’ livelihoods are more important than his
party’s green agenda.
And Biden administration officials have already made
clear that issues like high oil prices and rising food costs are not problems the White House
takes seriously, so the damage to the economy is likely to continue
A political establishment already entrenched in a
heavy-handed, top-down approach to battling the coronavirus isn’t going to
suddenly understand that local and state-level decision-making, which has been
very successful in Florida, should replace the politburo power of nationwide
measures like unconstitutional vaccine mandates, so don’t expect
Americans’ view of Biden’s handling of COIVD-19 to improve.
Meanwhile, the slow-motion disaster on the southern
border is almost certain to keep rippling throughout the country, providing
periodic moments of outrage every time an illegal alien commits some new criminal outrage or another unsuspecting
American community finds itself flooded with more uninvited guests.
Furthermore, a presidency with zero credibility on the
international stage after the deadly Afghanistan debacle has invited challenges
from United States rivals across the globe, from Xi Jinping’s China to Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the murderous mullahs in Iran.
The Biden administration’s policies are a direct result
of the leftist thinking that dominates his Democratic Party. As long as those
policies don’t change, the increasingly miserable conditions they’re inflicting
on the American public won’t either.
The good news is, the Founders foresaw exactly situations
like this when they adopted a Constitution that makes an out-of-touch government
accountable to the people it’s supposed to serve.
Democrats learned that lesson in Virginia and elsewhere in the off-year elections
earlier this month, which should already have the party in knots over next
year. If nothing changes, they’re going to learn it again in November 2022,
with a red wave to rival the Republican victories of 1994 and 2010, in size and
importance.
Their days are numbered — and that number can’t come up
soon enough.
______________________
Texas
State Rep Deals Blow to Democrats, Switches to GOP: The Values of Those in DC
Are Not Our Values
By Cameron Arcand |The Western Journal
Texas state Rep. Ryan Guillen is sending shockwaves
through Texas politics as he announced his decision to switch from the
Democratic Party to the GOP this week.
Guillen’s district, which represents Rio Grande City
along the southern border, is being redrawn to be extremely favorable toward
Republicans, which likely solidified his move.
“Friends, something is happening in South Texas, and many
of us are waking up to the fact that the values of those in Washington, D.C.,
are not our values, not the values of most Texans,” Guillen said, according to
the Texas Tribune.
“The ideology of defunding the police, of destroying the
oil and gas industry and the chaos at our border is disastrous for those of us
who live here in South Texas.”
Although former President Donald Trump did not win in all of South Texas, the
2020 election did show gains for Republicans in the region, according to NBC News.
In McAllen, Texas, a Republican narrowly won the mayoral race in June, showing a shift across
all levels of government.
According to Mark Jones of Rice University, Guillen was
considered the least liberal member of his caucus.
While conservative leadership already dominates in Texas, this one lawmaker’s decision is reflective of a nationwide
political trend.
A recent poll from ABC News and The Washington Post revealed
that registered voters have a preference for Republicans over Democrats by 10
percentage points on a generic ballot.
In South Texas, that mostly comes down to issues
including the border crisis and economic woes such as inflation.
The Biden administration has done a poor job at taking
initiative on problems that matter to Americans and is instead shifting the
blame onto the previous White House or circumstances outside of its control.
Although President Joe Biden has promised to govern
moderately, the White House seems to be catering to progressives with its Build
Back Better agenda.
Guillen noticed the values in D.C. are political
expediency and inaction, so he knew that becoming a Republican for his
constituents would be the most effective move.
“Welcome to the party of freedom, opportunity &
prosperity @RyanGuillen,” Republican Gov. Greg Abbott tweeted following
Guillen’s announcement.
“As Dems move
further left, they’re abandoning the people of South Texas & their values.
Rep. Guillen’s decision to switch parties is indicative of a shifting landscape
in South Texas.”
If Guillen’s frustration is any indication of the country
at large, 2022 will be a disaster for Democrats.
______________
Biden's Got Big Trouble in 2022 as Powerful Trump-Era Icon Is Set to Rise Against Him
