The “red wave” that is coming on Tuesday is a rebellion by the American people themselves against the excesses of big government and a “woke” left-wing ideology that has been imposed on every aspect of our lives, making our society less safe and more unhappy.
Democrats know what is coming. Even California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) admitted this week that a “red wave” is on the way. He added that his party is being “crushed” on “messaging,” arguing there is nothing wrong with Democrats’ policies, just their rhetoric.
He has to say that, because so many of those policies reflect the “California values” that Newsom hopes to take to the national stage. Newsom leads a state that is about to become the world’s fourth-richest economy, yet is mired in poverty, crime, and homelessness.
California’s high taxes and heavy regulations, evident in the highest gas prices in the nation, have made the cost of living difficult for all but the rich to afford. Its welfare spending maintains a growing underclass that can never rise, thanks to a failed education system.
The Golden State led the way in the criminal justice “reforms” that ushered in a national crime wave, such as ending cash bail and defunding police. It launched the “sanctuary cities” that declared Democrats’ defiance against immigration law and border security.
Newsom is forcing Californians to buy electric cars, while the state tells drivers not to charge them during the electricity shortages that are becoming more common as the state rushes toward “green” energy and abandons both fossil fuels and nuclear energy.
The state is running out of water — not just because of climate change, which even California cannot stop, but also because amid all the talk of “infrastructure,” California has not built a large reservoir in decades, and has been reluctant to embrace desalination.
During the pandemic, California imposed draconian lockdowns, even on churches, violating religious liberty and freedom of assembly — that is, for all but the Black Lives Matter marches. Meanwhile, Newsom dined with lobbyists at the French Laundry.
Despite that record of failure, Newsom deigns to lecture the rest of the country about its shortcomings. He is urging Americans to come to California to have abortions up until the last moment, or to arrange “gender-affirming” surgery for their minor children.
He has convened a committee to recommend reparations for slavery, even though California was a “free” state from its birth. He is trying to force people to use transgender pronouns. The Democrats’ “woke” rhetoric is the policy, and it is what voters are rejecting.
While Newsom has run ads in Florida and other Republican-governed states, he has been largely absent from his own state during the midterm elections. Indeed, it is sticking how quiet Democrats have been, even in a state where they dominate politics and culture.
In my own — still beautiful! — neighborhood in Los Angeles, the only yard signs are for Republicans, save for mayoral candidate Rick Caruso, who used to be a Republican. It is as if Democrats are trying to hide, hunkering down for the hurricane that is coming.
I attended a rally last week for Caruso’s opponent, Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA), a left-wing member of Congress who is the choice of the Democratic Party establishment. The speeches were about abortion, climate change, and Donald Trump; they ignored L.A.
Bass dominated the polls until last month, when the billionaire Caruso began spending on advertising — and when Democrats on the City Council were exposed using racist language to mock nearly every community in L.A., revealing their contempt for the public.
For too many years, “democracy” in big cities and blue states has meant voting within the constraints imposed by Democrats’ one-party rule, regardless of results. That is the reason we are losing faith in democracy, not the Capitol riot or “election deniers.”
Democrats tried to make their campaign about Donald Trump. That backfired when the partisan excesses of the one-sided January 6 Committee discredited the investigation, and the raid on Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago — over documents — shocked the nation.
Trump managed to rally his party while avoiding controversy — thanks, ironically, to the fact that he was banned from every major social media platform, except the one he launched himself. Censoring Trump meant that Democrats faced public scrutiny alone.
Moreover, thanks to the vote-by-mail process that Democrats imposed on many states in the 2020 election, using the pandemic as a pretext, there was little that Biden or his party could do to turn their fortunes around in the closing days: people had voted already.
Biden’s only mandate in 2020 was to replace Trump. His party had razor-thin majorities in Congress; he governed as if he had a veto-proof majority. He and his party were undone by their excesses. They will win a few races on Tuesday; but they will lose many more.
Arguably, the turning point in the midterm election was September 1, when President Joe Biden decided to make a prime time speech attacking Trump and the “MAGA Republicans” — the growing, working-class base of the GOP — as a “threat to this country.”
Declaring the opposition illegitimate was anti-democratic in itself. But it also showed that Democrats did not care about the problems Americans are facing — a lesson reinforced when liberals on Martha’s Vineyard refused to house migrants their policies had invited.
That was when the momentum shifted away from Democrats, who had been heralding the reversal of Roe v. Wade as their salvation. It was a moment when Republican leaders — notably, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) — had given up on victory.
While McConnell scorned the “quality” of the candidates that Republican voters had nominated, voters rallied behind them. Unlike the lavishly-funded “Resistance” to Trump in 2018, or even the Koch-infused Tea Party revolution of 2010, this is an organic revolt.
The “red wave” is not just about politics, or even about the ailing economy; it is about culture. It is about toppling a “woke” tyranny that threatens to destroy the country. It is a rebellion that did not need a leader, because it comes from deep within the American soul.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.