My latest column appeared in The Hill this morning. You can read the full thing here.
It’s finally election day after a long and bruising campaign season. Regardless of who ends up controlling the House and the Senate, this election season will be remembered for two ads, one from the Right and one from the Left, which defined it by finding new lows in American politics. Yet they also revealed that many Americans—on either side—had found their floor in terms of what they would tolerate from people seeking office.
The first ad was put out by the Republican candidate for governor in Ohio, Vivek Ramaswamy. The ad featured the biological mother of his Democratic opponent, Amy Acton, calling her daughter a liar. It seemed like powerful stuff, until you learned the backstory: Acton’s mother has not seen her daughter since Amy was 12. That’s when Amy accused her stepfather of raping her.
The second ad was put out in support of the Democratic nominee for Senate in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed. The wasn’t put out by El Sayed’s campaign but by YouTuber Cenk Uygur’s left-wing political action committee, Rebellion PAC. The ad featured a couple in a grocery store choosing items for their children, and having to put them back one after another because the money for bananas had to go instead to “killing Palestinians.” Yet when called upon to address it, El Sayed did so in a mealy-mouthed way which called attention to the fact that his own campaign had trafficked in similar tropes throughout.
Like many Republicans in Ohio sick to their stomachs over Ramaswamy's ad, El-Sayed’s refusal to stand against antisemitism in a meaningful way had immediate political consequences.
Sorry, but we need to major in the majors. If both house and senate are lost, all the good things this administration has managed, despite continual pushback, will be wiped away, and the next two years will one big impeachment extravaganza. At this point in the midterm cycle, we should be talking about the amazing things like closing the border, lowering the crime rate to historic lows, poverty rate at historic lows, removing men from women’s sports, and the tax benefits from the BBB, not ads in poor taste. That will seem unimportant when all those problems and then some come roaring back if we don’t get out and vote. For real. The time to sift through candidates was the primaries. So if an ad in poor taste is enough to make you want to vote for a person with horrible policies, that’s your right. But if we don’t reject the DSA and the destructive party supporting them, we will be living in a socialist, antisemitic America.
I still want to know the deeper backstory of the Acton ad. Why wasn't the stepfather extradited from wherever he was. Child rape is a red line offense, yet he skated. Why? Evidence problem? Leftist prosecutor? I don't know but someone out there does.