Sanctimony never sells, shaming never works, and you can’t sway voters by telling them they’re stupid.
But apparently there are some lessons the left never learns. And they wonder why there is a red wave.
Six years after Hillary Clinton called Trump supporters ‘a basket of deplorables’ — one of the biggest self-inflicted campaign wounds in modern American history — women on the left are doubling down.
Let me qualify that: high-profile, rich, smug, self-regarding women in media and in office (for now) do. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reports that white suburban women plan to vote Republican, citing the economy and inflation as their top concerns.
Of that cohort, 85 percent described themselves as ‘highly motivated’ to vote.
Yet here is Oprah Winfrey – the woman who Dr. Oz gave a national platform for many of his special medical claims – which his opponent John Fetterman endorsed in the Pennsylvania senate race.
‘There are clear choices and some dynamic candidates,’ Winfrey said, ‘who are working to represent the values that so many of us hold dear – like inclusion, compassion and community.’
Yet here is Oprah Winfrey – the woman who Dr. Oz (left in 2007) gave a national platform for many of his special medical claims – which his opponent John Fetterman endorsed in the Pennsylvania senate race.
Hostin’s right, her tone deafness, is truly astonishing. And that’s saying something with this panel – Joy Behar calls the GOP ‘a cult,’ Sara Haines (above left) says her number one problem is election deniers, Whoopi Goldberg insists that ‘Americans will go the right way’ – Democrat – ‘or the wrong way.’
The bottom line, if you’re one of those voters too stupid to get it, is that anyone who votes Republican is a knuckle-dragging racist, homophobic, transphobic cretin who doesn’t care about the well-being of his fellow Americans , let alone the future of democracy.
Think I’m being dramatic? Winfrey continued: ‘So, I ask that voters use discretion and choose wisely for the democracy of our country.’
Oh, this language. Doesn’t it sound almost biblical, Winfrey coming down from the mountain like Moses to enlighten the rest of us?
Never forget: This is a woman who once fervently promoted ‘The Secret’, a book based on magical thinking: If you want anything – money, health, fame – all you have to do is hard enough wish, and it will manifest.
Conversely, should you suffer – from, for example, a terrible diagnosis – it is your own fault, because, as the book says: ‘You can’t ‘catch’ anything unless you think you can, and thinking you can is inviting you with your tins.’
Something to chew on in our COVID time, isn’t it?
Oprah Winfrey is rich and successful beyond measure. That does not make her a political genius.
That doesn’t mean she understands a particular election better than you. In fact, her stratospheric level of wealth and fame puts her far removed from the everyday concerns of the average voter.
It’s easy to be concerned with such lofty ideals as ‘compassion and community’ when you never have to worry about filling up your gas tank versus buying groceries – to say nothing of the private security that insulates Winfrey and her ilk from rising, rampant homelessness and crime.
In fact, not mentioned in Oprah’s endorsement is a problematic incident in Fetterman’s past: in 2013, as mayor of Braddock, Pennsylvania, Fetterman got into his truck and chased down an unarmed black teenager, pulling a shotgun on him.
If Fetterman were a Republican candidate, the media would be covering this incident wall-to-wall, forensically picking him apart. Add a stretch to that and he would be done.
But little surprise that, as the New York Times reported, a recent poll found that only 6 percent of Pennsylvania voters, and 4 percent of Blacks, have seen, read or heard about it “a lot” .
If you saw Fetterman’s appearance on ‘The View’ on Friday morning, you would understand why.
Softball after softball was lobbed at Fetterman, even by the two Republican hosts of the show, the effects of his stroke wore away, his cognitive abilities, they said, not up to the problem, his opponent Oz ‘a bully’, and that most troublesome ‘shotgun’ incident, of course, never mentioned.
And that brings us co-host Sunny Hostin, one of the most relentless talking heads today.
After calling for a complete eradication of the Republican party on ‘The View’ last summer – it called the party of ‘white supremacy… insurgents… [and] carnage at this point,’ she then said on Thursday that women voting for Republicans is akin to ‘roaches voting for Raid.’
Are cockroaches the new deplorables?
Sunny Hostin just called half of her viewing audience roaches. No less a liberal governor than Bill Maher recently expressed this snobbery, saying that you can’t call yourself an American ‘and write off half the country so easily’.
He identified the exact reason Dems will suffer in the midterms: They’re focusing on all the wrong things.
“All that socialism and identity politics and victimhood and oversensitivity and the nullification of culture and white self-loathing and the forcing of complicated ideas about race and sex on kids who are too young to understand — literally anything would be better than that,” Maher said of right-leaning voters.
Hostin doesn’t see it that way. Anyone who thinks to vote Republican is dumb and ill informed, just wait for someone like her to explain it all. Take inflation: ‘I don’t think people educate themselves on that,’ she said on Thursday.
So let Hostin, with her literal nose-in-the-air height and huge diamond-encrusted ‘Sunny’ nameplate necklace, step in to explain: ‘Domestic inflation is due to corporate greed.’
Not a global pandemic, not vulnerable federal government spending, not global instability and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, not supply chain shortages and bottlenecks – no, Hostin has figured out what the chairman of the Fed cannot.
A wealthy talk show host, a former federal prosecutor (as she never fails to remind us) and married to a surgeon (as she never fails to remind us).
Hostin’s right, her tone deafness, is truly astounding. And that’s saying something with this panel – Joy Behar calls the GOP ‘a cult’, Sara Haines says her number one problem is election deniers, Whoopi Goldberg claims that ‘Americans will go the right way’ – Democrat – ‘or the wrong way. ‘
So let Hostin, with her literal nose-in-the-air height and huge diamond-encrusted ‘Sunny’ nameplate necklace, step in to explain: ‘Domestic inflation is due to corporate greed.’
As for women voters on crime, Hostin is here to educate us on that, too: “They fear,” she said of Republicans. ‘The crime problem has been going on for decades.’
Hours before this episode aired on Thursday, a 43-year-old woman jogging in Hudson River Park was raped in broad daylight by a homeless man with 25 previous arrests, including two sexual assaults.
Such a crime would have been unthinkable ten years ago. Now it’s just another day in New York City, where residents rightfully fear random shootings, stabbings, slashings, subway shovings and sexual assaults.
Crime has increased by 6 percent in New York City compared to one year ago. Total crimes in the subway system are up 44 percent this year. The Republican candidate for governor, Lee Zeldin, was nearly stabbed on stage during a campaign stop in July. In October, two teenagers were shot just outside his suburban Long Island home, his twin daughters alone inside.
During the only debate that incumbent Kathy Hochul granted her challenger, she expressed annoyance with Zeldin’s biggest concern. Of crime, she said: ‘I don’t know why that is so important to you.’
If that doesn’t sum up what the Democratic establishment thinks of all those voters who are concerned about crime and the economy – I don’t know why that’s so important to you? – I don’t know what it does.
But Dems will soon understand, because the red wave is coming.