How Not To Win Over The Electorate

The Democrats are in trouble and they know it. Systematic corruption, legislative failures and dirty-tricks, overspending, misplaced spending, and now the health care bill have doomed them. They hoped the stimulus package or ObamaCare would have saved their sorry rear ends, but it’s only made things worse. Now they have a new plan. Unfortunately for them, they picked two things the public just doesn’t care about: financial regulation and nuclear weapons.

1. Financial Regulation (yawn)

The Democrats actually think that “regulation” of Wall Street will resonate with the voters. Talk about delusional.

The first, most obvious, problem with using this as a sales pitch is that the public just doesn’t care about the issue. The reality is that most voters assume that whatever regulations are needed for things like banks are already in place. If a change needs to be made, then make it and shut the heck up about it. . . stop bothering us. Does it matter to you if hedge funds must obey “the tick rule” when engaging in trades or that banks need to account for mortgages as tier two or tier three assets? I didn’t think so. No one cares about this. Even the people who know what Basil Two means don’t really care. These are arcane rules that voters don't want to know about -- one mention of derivatives and securitization and people’s eyes begin to glaze over.

For the Democrats to think that they will be rewarded for passing such regulations is laughable. When Congressman Dirtbag walks into a townhall meeting in his district in flyover country and says, “we regulated those evil financial institutions!” all he’s going to hear is a big yawn, followed by angry questions about why everyone in the room is losing their health care -- no one's going to rush to shake his hand for slaying the evil banks.

Moreover, the Democrats have a credibility problem on this issue. Despite their talk about being the anti-Wall Street party, it’s now well known that the Democrats get most of their money from Wall Street and that they are nothing more than Wall Street’s crack whores, ready to do anything for another hit. Consider. . .

Everyone knows that the TARP, the TALP, the bailouts, and everything else were nothing more than an orgy of bankers sucking down public money and unloading failed bets on overburdened taxpayers. And all of that was made possible by Pelosi and Frank and Dodd and the Democratic Party.

Everyone knows the Democrats could have passed financial regulation at any time during the past two years, but didn’t because the money kept pouring in from Wall Street.

Everyone knows that the Democrats have stripped everything that should be in “financial regulation” out of their bill, and that they’ve left only the promise of future taxpayer bailouts. . . “too big to fail” means “taxpayer protected.”

And everyone knows that taxpayers are going to get screwed again by these regulations.

So when the Democrats rail against Wall Street, no one cares except to the extent that we all know we’re about to be bent over by the Democrats to help their rich, banker friends. That’s not going to bring anyone to the polls on their behalf.

So let’s sum up this policy. The Democrats will trumpet an issue that should have been fixed a long time ago and that people don't want to hear about. Moreover, in so doing, they are raising suspicions that all they are doing is lining up taxpayers to be raped by bankers again in the near future. Yeah, run on that.

2. Nuclear Weapons

The second issue the Democrats intend to trumpet is Obama’s treaty to cut nuclear weapons. Really? Let’s do a simple test. Before Obama raised this issue, were you afraid of a Russian nuclear strike? Didn’t think so. No one else was either. What about now that he’s worked his magic, do you suddenly feel safer? No huh? So they’re relying on an issue that no one cared about before they raised it, and they’re selling a plan that hasn’t made anyone feel any safer? I can’t wait to see the ads on this one.

Moreover, this issue will backfire in several ways. First, raising this issue when no one is thinking about it only upsets people -- never a good idea for the party in power. Secondly, real or imagined, this plan raises fears that the Democrats are weakening our country. That will bring people out to oppose this plan, not support it. Third, this plan sounds like a smoke and mirrors diversion from the real nuclear issue, which is Iran. That will make people feel like they’re being tricked, which is again not a great message to send to voters.

So let’s sum up this policy. The Democrats have poked an issue that wasn’t an issue and in the process, they’ve raised suspicions that they’ve weakened our defense and they are causing people to wonder if this isn’t a smoke screen for their pending failure in Iran. Yeah, run on that too. Idiots.