OPINION:
“1984” is the dystopian novel written by George Orwell in 1949. It described life in an imaginary future dictatorship under a dictator referred to as “Big Brother.” It is famous for the slogans in this future society — “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength.”
Sounds like the emerging 2020 Democratic Party platform. Or the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates.
There is another 1984 the year that Walter Mondale, Minnesota Democrat, ran against President Reagan. Mondale ran explicitly on increasing federal taxes, just like all the Democratic frontrunners today. Do they not know that any such tax increase would simply cause another recession? Do they think the American people want to go back to the interminable Obama/Biden recession, with declining real wages and incomes for the middle class?
In 1984 Walter Mondale famously lost 49 states to Ronald Reagan, barely taking his home state Minnesota. Mondale lost the popular vote 59 percent to 41 percent. We think Democrats could be on track again for the same result in 2020.
Polls showing President Trump behind today are no more valid than the polls showing him behind in 2016. Polls showed Ronald Reagan behind Walter Mondale, and former Sen. John Glenn, Ohio Democrat, in 1983, and George H.W. Bush losing to Michael Dukakis in 1987, even 1988. Republicans do 10 points better, or more, in polls of likely voters rather than registered voters. But a year and a half before Election Day, no one can tell who the likely voters are.
Nevertheless, we must not be overconfident because that diminishes our prospects. And we must realize that through their “Act Blue” small donor platform the left raised $1.6 billion for last year’s midterms, for more than conservatives generated, which changed the outcome in many districts, as did widespread voter fraud and ballot harvesting by Democrats.
And we cannot discount the role of social media and its ability to censor and limit news its liberal leadership opposes. We must counter this with aggressive and widespread Facebook and YouTube postings, podcasts and other educational avenues that tell the story of tax reform’s full benefits for America, which we failed to do last November.
In addition, we must broaden the base of common-sense voters with a traditional commitment to our nation and its future. We are working to identify, recruit and inform the employees of small, community and family businesses who will vote for policies good for their businesses and future, taking a page from the experience of BIPAC across the nation.
Mr. Trump has delivered on the promises he made to those workers, creating 6 million new jobs, with the lowest unemployment in American history among African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and youth (teens). That means Mr. Trump has led the most inclusive recovery in American history, which has produced the lowest unemployment overall since 1969, with more jobs available than the number unemployed. Wages are rising again for the first time in over a decade, since before Obama/Biden.
And we must tell the full story of Mr. Trump’s deregulation of energy, a major source of his blue-collar boom. It is not just the workers employed in the energy producing industries. Low cost, plentiful oil, natural gas and coal provide America with an enormous advantage over every other country in manufacturing, even Germany and Japan.
As a result of Mr. Trump’s energy deregulation, America is now energy independent for the first time in 75 years, leading the world in production of oil and natural gas, with enough coal to lead the world in that too, if Obama/Biden hadn’t tried so hard to bankrupt America’s coal industry.
But now Democrats are foolishly campaigning on phasing out fossil fuels entirely, under the so-called Green New Deal. Extremists have predicted the world will end by a certain deadline three times that have already passed, if humans did not stop using fossil fuels.
That climate hysteria has been thoroughly refuted by peer reviewed, scientific volumes published by The Heartland Institute under the moniker Climate Change Reconsidered II. The real deniers are those who stubbornly still cling to this scaremongering fairy tale, explicitly advanced to end capitalism and take over the world, like the communists planned to do.
Democrats used to take the notion they are socialists as an insult. This year they are explicitly running as socialists, especially outdated Bernie Sanders. Socialism has failed everywhere it has been tried which was the message of the 20th century. The European countries Mr. Sanders cites as Democratic Socialist gave that up decades ago.
Adding up all the promises Democrats have made, federal spending would have to rise to more than America produces in a year: 100 percent of GDP. That is Soviet communism actually, not socialism.
Under Medicare for All, 100 million workers would lose their employer insurance. Medicare actuaries predict it will run short of money to pay all promised benefits to seniors in 6 or 7 years. The Democratic answer? Expand Medicare to All.
And we haven’t even mentioned fourth trimester abortions, open borders, reparations. Are these Democrats really expecting to win?
• Lewis K. Uhler is founder and chairman of the National Tax Limitation Committee and Foundation. Peter J. Ferrara is a senior policy adviser for the Foundation and teaches economics at Kings College in New York.
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