No. of Recommendations: 5
So the Epstein bill passed 427-1 in the House and 100-0 in the Senate. On for Trump's signature.
The democrats have staked their reputations on this. If they come up with nothing, then they'll look like a bunch of random political drive by shooters. They will have wasted tons of capital on an issue that did nothing but cost them the scalps of prominent left wing politicians and supporters while getting nothing in return for it. Plus the opportunity cost of having wasted the country's time on this instead of building back their (very) damaged brand and credibility among the electorate.
It's tough times for the democrats. They have to run on something and so far they've...not got much. They can't say, "We're better on affordability" given that they're the ones that ran prices through the stratosphere the last time they were in charge. They can't say, "trust us on crime and the border" because it took Trump only 3 months to do what the democrats claimed for years was either impossible or required a ridiculous new piece of legislation to do. And they can't say "trust us on national security" when several major regional wars broke out under their watch in the last 2-3 years and China has continued gaining strength.
Their identity politics scheme is petering out. The stylish europeans figured out that handing out puberty blockers to kids ~11-12 years old and subjecting them to life-altering surgeries was and is a bad idea so they're banning it. The notion that schools can hide crucial health and medical information from parents is also as popular as gonorrhea at a frat party. No help there.
Climate change as an issue isn't dead but is on life support. Can they conjure images of Bambi dying to frighten the electorate into passing more ruinous boondoggles, or twist things to consent to sending more money to China? Unlikely. EV car sales are in jeopardy as only Tesla sells them and without the federal subsidies holding prices down - and ironically, the democrats helped kill this, too - it doesn't look good for the artificially propped-up market. Plus, it's hard to tout success when you spent $7.5 billion to build 37 or so charging stations (Side note: That is the single most unintentionally hilarious Politifact "Fact check" ever). Real people say, nah, bruv.
What about health care? Surely they can campaign on how the Affordable Health Care Act made prices cheape-, erm, no. They can't blame the Republicans for the dems' own bad health care legislation needing to be propped up with federal subsidies that are going to big health insurers so that early retirees in their low 50's don't have to work anymore. That dog ain't gon' hunt, either.
And finally what about the "We stood up to Twump!" hijinks. I'm sure the families on SNAP are breathing a sigh of relief that when their fully paid democrat Senators and Representatives threatened to take food off their families' table that Trump Was Being Stood Up To. Ditto the tens of thousands of air travelers who either had their flights cancelled or stood in hours-long lines at TSA checkpoints.
So let's see. Somewhere in dnc headquarters the people who run the democrat party have one fist clutching a fifth of Fireball and in the other, extra-strength Pepto. They won some races...but the people that won on the local level don't necessarily call themselves "democrats". They call themselves "democrat Socialists".
Interesting times. The liberals saddled a tiger. Now that tiger is hungry.
