[August]

Guy nails it.

The hysterical stage of the campaign

by Byron York, Chief Political Correspondent |

November 04, 2022 02:45 PM

THE HYSTERICAL STAGE OF THE CAMPAIGN. Even with campaigns that are less hard-fought than this one, the final days before an election can be a time when both sides, but most often candidates who are trailing in the polls, make extreme statements about their opponents. Losers see defeat coming and make desperate attempts to avert it. That is what is happening now: The 2022 midterm elections have entered the hysterical stage.

Everyone knows that voters are most concerned about the economy. Foremost among economic issues is inflation — it is hurting people every time they go to the grocery store, fill up their cars, or do any of a thousand other things. But there are also fears of a recession, rising mortgage interest rates that make it difficult to buy a home, and shrinking life savings in stock market investments. There is simply no question that the economy dominates the campaign.

Yes, there are other issues — crime and the border for Republicans, abortion and climate change for Democrats. But the economy prevails. And even with other issues, the net benefit leans toward the GOP.

And on top of that is the unpopularity of President Joe Biden. The president's job approval rating stands at 42.3% in the RealClearPolitics average of polls. It has bounced around between 36% and 44% for a year. The last time it was above 50% was Aug. 14, 2021, when it was 50.1%. Presidents with 42% job approval ratings lose seats in midterm elections. That's all there is to it.

So things look bad for Democrats. And that is why, with about 100 hours to go before Election Day, Democrats are becoming hysterical.

Leading the pack is the president himself. On Wednesday night, he delivered a hastily scheduled speech at Washington's Union Station. The purpose was to try to squeeze some political benefit from a deranged man's attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). The theme was what Biden maintains is the impending loss of American democracy, should Republicans win on Tuesday. "Democracy itself" is "at stake," Biden said. "In our bones, we know that democracy is at risk."

"What we're doing now is going to determine whether democracy will long endure," Biden said, echoing the Gettysburg Address, "whether [the American] system will prevail."

Biden led a team of national Democratic Party leaders in warning of a possible end of democracy. Former President Barack Obama campaigned in Arizona and said Republican candidates there might well put an end to the American system of government. "Democracy as we know it may not survive in Arizona," Obama said. "That's not an exaggeration. That is a fact."

"They're going after our democracy," added Hillary Clinton.

And then there was the well-known presidential historian Michael Beschloss, who appears frequently on television. Appearing on MSNBC Wednesday night to comment on Biden's speech, Beschloss was very, very worried.

"Six nights from now, we could all be discussing violence all over this country," Beschloss began. "There are signs that may happen, may God forbid." He continued: "We could be six days away from losing our rule of law and losing a situation where we have elections that we all kind of rely on. You know, those are the foundation stones of a democracy."

The stakes simply could not be higher, Beschloss claimed. Given what is at stake, he said, Biden could not have gone on the air and talked about something as relatively insignificant as the economy. Beschloss noted that in 1940, Franklin Delano Roosevelt said that "never before since Jamestown and Plymouth Rock has America been in such danger." And now, "Joe Biden is saying the same thing tonight." Looking into the future, Beschloss said that a historian like himself, writing 50 years from now, "if historians are allowed to write in this country ... will say what was at stake tonight and this week was the fact — whether we will be a democracy in the future, whether our children will be arrested and conceivably killed. We are on the edge of a brutal authoritarian system, and it could be a week away."

Welcome to the hysterical stage of the 2022 campaign. Look for more, not less, of this kind of rhetoric in the next few days.