No Matter Who Wins in November, America Is Moving Inexorably to the Right

We support our Publishers and Content Creators. You can view this story on their website by CLICKING HERE.

Joe Biden has done more for the conservative movement than any single politician since Ronald Reagan. His radical policies and elevation of radical ideals have forced the “normies” to revolt and push back against the tide of extreme leftism that swept the country in 2020-21.

The president who entered office promising to restore “normalcy” has instead brought chaos and disaster in the form of a border and inflation crisis. Far-leftists who ran American schools were so out of control that ordinary Americans were forced to intervene to protect their children from radical social experimentation. As in the 1970s, the political pendulum had swung too far to the left, and American politics was due for a course correction.

At this point, it doesn’t matter whether Trump or Harris wins. The difference is in how fast the rightward revolution will proceed. Harris will be constrained in governing because of a certain Republican majority in the Senate and a good chance that Republicans will maintain nominal control of the House. There will be no grand spending programs, no great social “leaps forward.” Harris, if she’s elected, will be a caretaker for the next Republican who takes office.

The issues of this campaign will dominate American politics long after the election ends. Immigration, crime and punishment, and the fraying social contract will continue to define our politics going forward.

The social contract “that defines and limits the rights and responsibilities of a community and its rulers” has been under assault by leftists who are trying to foist radical ideas on the community as a whole, including attacking biological certainties and undermining our traditions and customs.

The story of this political tilt to the right can be told in opinion polls on issues like immigration, crime, and transgender rights.

Semafor:

In the summer of 2020, after a backlash to Trump’s border and deportation policies, the share of Americans who wanted increased immigration surged to the highest level ever — 34%, according to Gallup polling. Just 28% told pollsters that they wanted immigration levels to decrease.

That was turned on the head in the Biden years. In June, Gallup found that just 16% of Americans wanted higher immigration levels, while 55% wanted a decrease, the highest share for that position since the weeks after the 9/11 terror attacks.

It was a similar story on crime, with public support for reform peaking during the Trump years and falling after the GOP nominee headed back to Mar-a-Lago. In June 2020, 47% of Americans said they were “satisfied” with federal anti-crime policies. This summer, just 28% of people agreed with that sentiment; 69% said they were “dissatisfied.”

The “defund the police” movement is dead. Black Lives Matter, exposed as con artists and thieves, isn’t even mentioned in the media anymore. The Democrats have quietly tip-toed away from them, hoping no one will notice their past full-throated support.

The public is much more supportive of the local police and less tolerant of criminals who threaten their well-being. The idea of criminal justice reform isn’t dead, but events have pulled its political teeth.

Democrats are backing away from their support for transgender issues.

In power, the Biden-Harris administration has restored the muscular LGBTQ protections for health and employment that Obama left behind. But they have campaigned more defensively on those issues while facing Republicans who are newly confident that voters don’t want “biological men” in sports or free gender surgeries for prisoners. In multiple states, Democrats who’d never run ads about transgender rights have run ads promising that they wouldn’t let “boys in girls sports,” or assuring voters that what they’re seeing on TV is already illegal in their state.

I don’t think this conservative backlash is the same as the one in the mid to late 1970s. That revolution was a total rejection of the New Deal and the idea that the government was the answer to every question facing society.

It seems that every couple of generations, Democrats need to be retaught that lesson.