Issues that dominate the midterms

OPINION:

Several issues dominate the midterm elections this week: The roaring economy, migrant caravans on a mysteriously swift journey to the United States, health care reform and leftist mobs protesting almost nonstop.

Most of these are troubling optics for the Democrats.

Unless violence erupts when the biggest Central American caravan approaches the border, which the media will pin on President Trump no matter what actually happens, the immigration crisis favors Republicans. It has allowed the GOP to reassert its identity as the law-and-order and national security party, even without legislative victories.

For their part, Democrats are trying to beat Republicans senseless by blaming them for tragic shootings and claiming that Republican health care reforms would bring back ruinous costs for people with a pre-existing condition, a scarily effective misrepresentation.

Looming above it all is Donald Trump.

Apart from defending Obamacare, Democrats lack a coherent set of goals and are flirting with the Marxist quackery of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. They hope that Trump hatred is all they really need to bring out voters, aided by a large flow of money from several left-wing billionaires. They desperately want to turn Congress back over to the leaders who gave us Obamacare, Dodd-Frank and nearly a national carbon tax that would have made Al Gore our unofficial sultan of soot.

For Republicans, it’s about whether a Nancy Pelosi-led House would blast apart the Trump agenda, including tax reform and deregulation.

Democrat-led committees would kill current probes into the Democrats’ role in producing the Russian dossier and politicizing the FBI, IRS and Justice Department. Instead, they would endlessly investigate Mr. Trump and introduce articles of impeachment.

They would resume their efforts to push the LGBT agenda and abortion and sacrifice religious liberty on the altar of sexual anarchy.

Apart from some “conservative” pundits who are actually rooting for a Democratic takeover to punish the Republican Party for embracing Donald Trump, most NeverTrumpers have edged back from the cliffs of insanity; they wince at Mr. Trump’s ongoing tweetstorms and instant pushbacks but strongly support Republican House and Senate candidates.

It could be that more and more Americans are wearying of the media’s constant vilification of the president. Every report contains absurd negativity. For example, when Mr. Trump created a national monument in Kentucky to commemorate a Civil War recruiting center for black troops and a refuge for freed slaves, The Washington Post buried it inside in a tiny brief highlighting criticism of his earlier reduction of two other national monuments.

After the mass murder at the Pittsburgh synagogue, Mr. Trump, Melania and his daughter and son-in-law went to pay their respects, triggering a throng of protesters.

The Trumps met quietly with Rabbi Jeffrey Myers of the Tree of Life synagogue, who was asked about the meeting by a CNN reporter.

The rabbi replied: “The president was very warm, very consoling. [He] put his hand on my shoulder, and the first question he asked me was, ’Rabbi, tell me, how are you doing?’ And I must say, throughout the time we spent together, I was pleasantly surprised by a warm and personal side to the president that I don’t think America has ever seen.”

As Reagan White House aide and American Values President Gary Bauer asks rhetorically, “When the rabbi says this is a side of the president America hasn’t seen, I thought to myself, ’Why is that?’”

It’s because the media show only Mr. Trump’s combative side, of course. If the press, as they did often with the Obamas, showed the first couple comforting disaster victims, it would humanize them and spoil the narrative of Mr. Trump as hater and architect of societal violence.

As prominent author and former Israeli paratrooper Joseph Gelman told Laurence Jarvik, columnist for TheLatest.com, “They are exploiting a tragedy at the height of election season. it went nuclear politically immediately, as they tried to blame Trump, who’s probably the most Jewish President we’ve ever had.”

Mr. Gelman explains: “The man’s daughter is Jewish, his son-in-law is Jewish, and unlike most liberal Jews, his grandchildren are Jewish. He’s not only philo-Semitic, he’s a Zionist and unwavering supporter of the Jewish state. He’s done more for Israel than any President has dared to do, including moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem.” Mr. Trump is not a very effective anti-Semite, it would seem.

Some of this truth-telling is seeping through the media’s wall of anti-Trump invective. And they can no longer cover up Democrats’ silence on open borders and mass illegal immigration, which an overwhelming majority of Americans oppose.

The GOP is likely to increase its Senate seats, so control of the House is the big question. The optics may be enough to blunt the “blue wave” and spoil the media’s expectation to gloat on election night.

• Robert Knight is a contributor to The Washington Times. His latest book is “A Nation Worth Fighting For: 10 Steps to Restore Freedom” (djkm.org/nation, 2018).