OPINION:
Take a look at how well GOP candidates did with the overall popular vote, with the largest block of American voters, and with Hispanics, and the numbers say they should have achieved a wave election.
But they didn’t. On the day after, President Biden was so giddy he promised to use his executive powers (his continued use of the FBI as his political police force) to vanquish former President Donald Trump. He also threatened the use of government power against Twitter’s Elon Musk.
We are not in a Third World dictatorship.
Republicans lost a number of razor-close House races and perhaps are hitting a lid on how many Republican House seats are out there given they had already gained a net 14 in the 2020 election.
Exit polls: Pollsters break up voters into generations of four age groups, 18 to over 65. The largest two are mature adults, Generation X/baby boomers (45-64) and baby boomers/WWII (65 and older). Those two accounted for 67% of all House voters. Republicans carried both by double-digits, 10 points and 12 points, respectively, according to CNN exit surveys of thousands of voters.
Just to underline, Republicans beat Democrats decisively among the biggest blocks of American voters — the mature working/retired class who moved toward conservatism as they grew wiser.
In 2018, the last midterm, Republicans lost Congress and carried those ages by only 1 point.
The next group is millennials, ages 30-44. Republicans were competitive, losing this 21% of the electorate by just 4 points. It illustrates my point: Millennials are starting to see the light.
Where the GOP lost big time was with the new Gen Z crowd and younger millennials (18-29) –– the woke generations who love socialism, hate free speech, blackball conservative speakers and professors, revile Donald Trump, and shun Christians.
As expected, since Democrats mirror those positions, the party won by a whopping 28 points in the smallest age group of voters at just 12% of ballot droppers. Mr. Biden bribed them by paying off their student loans. Bribery works.
What this means is, Mr. Biden and congressional Democrats will pander to this group even more.
Among the all-important Hispanic voters, the ones Jill Biden praised as “breakfast tacos,” Republicans greatly improved their share with 39%, compared with 29% in 2018.
The GOP is increasingly the party of faith –– churchgoers –– as Democrats go increasingly secular. It is not a coincidence that in the 2020 riots, the left targeted Christian icons for destruction and attempted to burn down St. John’s church across from the White House. Democrats cheered the Lafayette Park riot.
Here are the most puzzling numbers. The Cook Political Report estimates that, with nearly 97% of the votes counted, Republicans took the popular House vote by 6 points, 52-46. That’s huge. They lost the same vote by 3 points in 2020 yet gained seats.
Anyway, Mr. Biden was so emboldened by potentially losing the House of Representatives to Republicans that he held a victory press conference and boasted of his power to vanquish rivals.
A reporter asked him how he plans to stop Mr. Trump, who plans to run for president again. Remember. Mr. Biden has already unleashed the Department of Justice on his political rival, as they would do in any corrupt Third World dictatorship.
“Well,” a jovial Mr. Biden said, “we just have to demonstrate that he [Trump] will not take power by — if we — if he does run. I’m making sure he, under legitimate efforts of our Constitution, does not become the next president again.”
Wow, times two.
Mr. Biden right now is “making sure” Mr. Trump cannot run again. This would be a reference to his FBI’s raid on Mr. Trump’s home, Mar-a-Lago, in a dispute over documents between the former president and the National Archives. Mr. Biden wants Mr. Trump indicted and jailed. This would fit his reading of “our Constitution,” and would get rid of a political competitor.
As Mr. Biden says, “No one f—ks with a Biden.”
He was so emboldened by Nov. 8 (he lost the House) that he pledged to use his Justice Department to damage Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter. Under previous ownership, Twitter fit in the sphere of leftist influencing. Twitter banned the Hunter Biden laptop. It limited microblogs about China’s sloppy Wuhan virus lab. It gave Chinese lies full access; it never censored liberals.
A reporter asked if EV-maker Mr. Musk was a national security threat. Aren’t all carmakers who deal with the global market national security threats?
Again, a jovial Mr. Biden said: “I think that Elon Musk’s cooperation and/or technical relationships with other countries is worthy of being looked at. Whether or not he is doing anything inappropriate, I’m not suggesting that. I’m suggesting that it’s worth being looked at. And — and — but that’s all I’ll say.”
Reporter: How?
Mr. Biden: There’s a lot of ways.
Wow, times three.
The irony of saying he will investigate Mr. Musk for foreign ties is not lost. Republicans say he oversaw an influence-peddling operation carried out by his son Hunter who raked in millions of dollars from Chinese communist tycoons and Russian and Ukraine oligarchs and spread the cash around the family.
Mr. Biden has publicly disabused the Justice Department for even considering a Hunter indictment. That might unearth family secrets.
In the end, Mr. Biden and the Democrats benefited from the liberal media, the country’s most powerful influencers. The conservative Media Research Center said 87% of midterm coverage was Republican-negative. Democrats could not hope to ever afford such influencing.
• Rowan Scarborough is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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