While polls show Americans are far more concerned about inflation and the economy than they are about anything else – even Covid – President Biden and Democrats are responding by ignoring the economy they scuttled and are working overtime instead to change federal election laws so they always stay in office.
An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll released last week showed only 37 percent of Americans say Covid is one of their top five concerns the government should be working on, while 68 percent list economic concerns among that top five. Yet the Biden Administration spent last week stumping for congressional support to rewrite the nation’s voting laws to make it easier to cheat in urban, traditionally Democrat-controlled areas.
It’s a telling trend really. It follows the release of Kansas results earlier this month from the Kansas Chamber of Commerce, who every year poll 300 Kansas business leaders about their concerns. Last year it was Covid. This year – workforce development and finding employees. Covid barely got a mention and voting law reform – not at all.
What was Biden’s campaign slogan again? “Build Back Better?”
Not since the oblivious musicianship of Roman Emperor Nero has there been greater disconnect between a leader and the led. Biden and his gaggle of hapless Leftists are utterly unaware of the pulse of the American public. After nothing but a string of defeats over the past year, Biden’s troops know time is running out to eke out a little of the domestic socialism they so desire before the 2022 elections turn their efforts – and maybe even their party – into an anachronism.
While Biden and Democrats press forward on a mission to win elections by standardizing the peculiarities and outright violations of law that characterized the 2020 election under Covid, Americans are paying, on average, 7 percent more for goods and services than they were this time last year – the highest year-over-year gain since 1982. Vehicle prices are up over 30 percent; food costs 6.5 percent; housing over 4 percent. Gasoline costs have leveled but are still nearly 60 percent higher than they were pre-pandemic.
Think of it this way: If you make $15 an hour in a 40 hour work week and gross $600 a week, your paycheck is now $42 less each week because the goods you buy are more expensive. Over the course of a year that’s nearly $2,200 out of your pocket.
Inflation chews away at earners constantly. If the Federal Reserve reacts to it and raises interest rates, that pulls money out of the economy and reduces profits at companies that sell goods, which means their stocks are worth less. That means your 401k or mutual fund or your kids’ college investment accounts earn less. Spiking inflation is bad all around, and people are right to be worried about it because it’s something they feel directly.
But to hear the outright lies about voting laws told by the President and Vice President last week in Georgia, one would think they lost the 2020 election and that the country is so inflamed about voter suppression that they’ve forgotten all about rising prices.
The tenor of those Georgia speeches and the composition of these so-called “vote reform” efforts being pushed by Democrats illuminate their desperation in the knowledge that their time in the sun is running out. In an utter fabrication, Harris said “anti-voter” laws could make it more difficult for as many as 55 million voters to cast their ballots. That’s a lie, and state legislators of both parties all across the country can prove it with a simple – but actual – reading of their state voting laws. Democrats champion doing away with voter ID laws – it’s harder to prove a vote is bogus if you can’t really confirm who cast it, afterall. They want open mail balloting because there’s less security that a vote can be faked or a voter was coerced or influenced. Laws right now in most states require no electioneering within 150 feet of a polling station; but with mail balloting, it’s open season.
But with their approval poll numbers crashing, it’s clear that fewer and fewer Americans are buying what Biden and Harris are selling. The 2020 election had the highest overall turnout since 1992. If there was widespread concern among voters about the suppression of their voting rights in a time other than Covid, a groundswell of average American voters would be screaming for reform, not a handful of politicians who want to tweak the game to their advantage.
But after a year of policy disasters, unconstitutional government overreach and abject political failure on most every front, Biden’s former privilege of saying anything he wants with no public accountability is no more. It’s sad that it took awful political leadership draining their wallets for most Americans to begin to see it.
–Dane Hicks is publisher of The Anderson County Review in Garnett, Kan.