Last month Gallup published the results of their Mood of the Nation poll having to do with personal satisfaction with daily life. The results show that 90% of Americans are satisfied with the way things are going, a new high in Gallup’s four-decades of reporting on this particular issue. Furthermore, Gallup asked a follow-up question to measure the extent to which respondents are “satisfied”; results, 65% are “very satisfied” which is also a new high number.
Presidential elections are about one thing, change.
Logic would suggest that if we are currently “satisfied” with our personal life, it will take a very special, undeniably remarkable proposition to cause us to want to change. Having said that, we must also recognize that the concept of change is scary for a lot of folks and a lot of organizations; call it fear of the unknown.
Niccolo Machiavelli summed up the fear of change rather nicely about 500 years age, saying, “There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new.”
Given that campaigns are about change, what are the democrat/socialist candidates offering that meets that extra special criteria that would convince the majority of American voters to change? Let’s perhaps get some insight by going through some of the major issues they are currently peddling.
MEDICARE FOR ALL: Thomas Sowell summed it up this way: “It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medications somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medications and a government bureaucracy”. There are zero examples of the US government ever running a huge social operation efficiently or effectively. Zero. Additionally, is cancelling the private health plans for 180 million Americans who are satisfied with their policy a good idea?
Medicare for all would probably be the most dramatic social change in our history. Just for openers, imagine a website created by a government committee with oversight from several government agencies and congressional committees. This will make the Obamacare website look like a simple weather app. And, oh-by-the-way, according to the Office of Inspector General, the Obamacare site cost $1.7 billion dollars. And it didn’t work.
SOCIALISM: Some years ago, I visited a small socialist village in the Golan Heights, Israel. The elders took care of the children, everyone else had a job (“From each according to his abilities ….”). The paychecks all went into one pot; The money was then doled out, “….to each according to his needs.” It worked there, at that level, but socialism has never succeeded on a large scale anywhere in the world. Wake up America, it is a failed system and no amount of rhetoric can make it right. Ask a starving Venezuelan.
GREEN NEW DEAL: Let’s just look at one factor, the US has 15 coal-fired power plants and no plans to build any more. And Democrat politicians, with their green new deal, want to shut down those 15 plants in order to “save the planet”. In the world’s 8 largest coal-fired power plant countries/areas (China, India, Japan, South Korea, Philippines, South Africa, Turkey and the EU) they have 3,737 on line with 1,892 more planned; total 5629. China alone is averaging one new plant per week. Talk to me democrats, how does your Green program deal with that reality?
IMMIGRATION: Their program is amnesty and open borders. They won’t say those exact words but they explain it this way, “Crossing the border without permission is not an illegal act.” Also, “Do away with ICE”. It is obvious to the casual observer that the democrat’s long-range plan is to create a permanent voting block of tens of millions of Latinos. Their policies will encourage tens of millions more illegals to flood the US thereby overloading the welfare, medical, judicial and education institutions. The taxpayers will pay for this and America as we know it today will never exist again. Period.
SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE FOR ILLEGAL ALIENS. FREEE COLLEGE TUITION. CANCEL STUDENT DEBTS, etc. free stuff: There will necessarily be massive tax increases and not just for the rich. All of the assets of the rich combined will not begin to pay for the tens of trillions of dollars in all of their proposed programs. Most of the income from the bottom 50% of Americans is not taxed. The middle class will get hit hard with debilitating tax increases.
RAISE CORPORATE TAXES: We have been there, done that and it is a disaster. Our manufacturers have to compete in a global market. Corporate tax is an added cost of producing a product which keeps us from successfully competing price-wise. The alternative is for manufacturers to move overseas for cheaper labor as they did by the tens of thousands during the past two decades. It is just that simple and just that stupid of an idea. It will undo the massive economic turn-around of the past 36 months.
WEALTH TAX AND INCOME TAX RATES OF 70, 80, 90%: Wealthy folks do not put their excess cash under the mattress; they invest it. That investment capital is the fuel for capitalism. The economy cannot flourish without it.
BAN FOR-PROFIT CHARTER SCHOOLS. END ALL FEDERAL FUNDING FOR CHARTERS: Government education is a national disgrace. Our ranking in the world is pitiful. Charter schools represent one bright hope but the unions hate them. The democrats have and will continue to pander to the unions irrespective of the negative consequences for America.
SANCTUARY CITIES AND STATES: Favoring hardened criminals over citizens isn’t just radical, it is against the law. In 2017 ICE arrested more than 127,000 illegal immigrants with criminal convictions or facing charges of breaking our nation’s laws, including nearly 5,000 gang members. How would we deal with these criminals if the whole United States became a “sanctuary” for those who break the law?
A REGULATION NATION (again): Unstated, but an absolute result of all of the above is a massive federal government. With that comes massive regulations. Massive regulations drag down the economy, prohibits innovation and new businesses.
MILITARY READINESS: The democrat /socialist candidates will not talk about the military because they will take it down; they always do. President Carter decimated the military in his four years. Clinton exacerbated the post-Cold War drawdown and left office with a hollow military. After eight years of Obama we had one, yes ONE fully combat-ready fighting brigade and half our fighter aircraft could not get off the ground.
That’s change. Now I would ask you to scroll back up and just read the all-caps headings to the above paragraphs. This is what the democrat/socialist candidates are proposing. Ninety percent of Americans today, according to Gallup, are satisfied or very satisfied with their life today. Is there any of the above items that, when properly analyzed, leads the majority of voters to say, wow that looks so good, makes so much sense, I guess I can withstand the trauma associated with change, sign me up?
More sage advice from Thomas Sowell: “If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else’s expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else.” “The assumption that spending more of taxpayer’s money will make things better has survived all kinds of evidence that it has made things worse.”
Conclusions: Change is sometimes inevitable, sometimes necessary, sometimes misguided or even stupid. Change is often difficult, even impossible. Sometimes, particularly in the business world, it’s change or die. Whatever the situation, a couple things ring true. The more you like the status quo and/or the direction we are moving the more difficult it will be to change. The more you dislike the alternatives to the status quo, the more unlikely it will be that change will satisfy you even if you are not completely committed to the status quo. Be careful what you ask for because change may also sometimes be irreversible.
The current crop of democrat/socialist presidential candidates are all afflicted with the hate virus and they are coughing, sneezing and slobbering into their microphones attempting to create a nation-wide epidemic of hate. Their intent is to infect voters with the hate virus to the extent that changing the very underpinnings of American society with their radical agenda might seem like a good idea.
But what they fail to understand is that vast numbers of Americans have, in the past 36 months, been properly “inoculated” against hate. The serum includes a dose of the most wide-spread and comprehensive positive economic numbers in our history. Also included is make-sense foreign policy against corrupt countries, plans to get us out of Middle East conflicts, focus on neutering the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism, Iran. Additionally, one of the most dramatic accomplishments has been our new-found energy independence. For decades our daily livelihood has been directly linked to the flow of Middle East oil to the US. No longer does any nation hold petroleum leverage over us.
The democrat/socialist platform may sell well in the Northeast and on the West Coast but remember, there is a big swath in the middle of our country where candidate Trump won 84% of the counties, the heart of America.
According to Gallup, 90% of Americans got the shot to protect them from the hate virus. While it may not “take” on all of them, the current group of democrat/socialist candidates, if they want to be successful, may what to re-think their platforms and run FOR some ideas that are aligned with today’s successes rather than just running AGAINST President Trump.
PS: As we watch the mainstream media report on the presidential campaign, commentators and reporters would lead us to believe that Bernie Sanders has captured the hearts and minds of a majority of young Americans in the 18-34 age bracket. However, the previously mentioned Gallup poll reported that 92% of that age group is “satisfied” and 62% are “very satisfied” with their current state of life. Well, perhaps it is the 35-54 age group that are in Bernie’s camp. Nope, 87% satisfied, 63% very satisfied with the status quo.
Stay tuned,
Lt Gen Marvin L. Covault, US Army retired.