In a variety of ways, big and small, Democrats are working hard to get President Trump reelected.
The best covered example of Democrats’ misguided plans is the impeachment circus in Washington, which has proven to one and all that the party puts politics ahead of progress every time.
But while that grand show plays out on the national stage, Democrats are upsetting voters in swing states on more local levels.
Their recent push for gun control in Virginia has created an explosion of anti-Democrat feeling in the state. Second Amendment supporters rallied in Virginia in massive numbers in an attempt to block Democrats’ gun control plans. Despite their protests, Democrats seem hell-bent on upsetting their constituents in order to placate mega-donors like Michael Bloomberg.
The next effort by Democrats to alienate voters in swing states appears to be focused on energy-producing states like Michigan, Ohio, Colorado, Pennsylvania and Florida. Stephen Moore explains the party’s political suicide in the Wall Street Journal, writing:
The Democrats’ war on fossil fuels was on full display at the debate in Los Angeles last month, where Joe Biden, the supposed moderate, was asked if he would rein in America’s shale oil and gas production even if it meant “thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands” would lose their jobs. He unhesitatingly responded “yes,” to cheers from the audience of college students and professors. He then recited the familiar liberal riff about how investment in wind and solar power will save the economy. (Soon afterward he told a New Hampshire audience that unemployed energy workers should “learn how to program.”)
The gaffe evokes the moment in 1984 when Walter Mondale pledged during a presidential debate with President Reagan that he would raise everyone’s taxes. Mr. Mondale went on to win one state and the District of Columbia.
Curtailing U.S. oil and gas production would be economically disastrous. At least $1 trillion of U.S. economic output is related to the shale revolution, and more than 1.5 million Americans are employed in the industry. A PricewaterhouseCoopers study for the American Petroleum Institute found that at least four million American jobs are tied to the shale oil and gas revolution in areas like auto production, construction, petroleum engineering, pipe fitting, service stations, steel production and trucking.
Democrats’ quest to eliminate these jobs would hurt them in the swing states they’ll need to win to unseat President Trump. Ohio and Michigan have a combined total of more than 400,000 workers in the shale industry. Pennsylvania has another 320,000. Colorado and Florida each have more than 200,000 workers in oil and gas.
Pittsburgh has become a global energy hub, and whole towns in Ohio and Pennsylvania that were once left for dead have been revitalized thanks to shale gas and related industries.
Then consider Texas. Liberals have long wanted to turn the Lone Star State blue, or at least purple. But nearly two million Texans are employed in oil and gas and related industries. Many hard-hat workers and truckers employed in the oil-rich Permian Basin earn more than $100,000 a year with overtime. How do you win in and around Houston, Dallas and Midland with a platform that opposes oil and gas?
Democrats seem so focused on pleasing their base in liberal strongholds like San Francisco and New York that they are forgetting it takes swing states to win a presidential election.
One person not taking swing states for granted is President Trump. In places like Milwaukee, the President is laying out his case to swing-state voters, explaining the strong economic benefits his administration has brought them, and how he’ll continue to work for more.
Despite their antagonism toward the President, Democrats are unknowingly working for Team Trump.
