Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.
Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal.
The midterm elections are about five months away, and we’re having here in California a hotly contested governor’s race. And of course, everybody’s heard about the mayor’s race. They all have something in common if we examine them. There is no Democratic agenda.
There’s no antithetical agenda to the Republicans.
What I’m getting at is if you watch the debates between Spencer Pratt, Karen Bass, and Councilman [Nithya] Raman, none of them run on their records as incumbents. Karen Bass does not say, “I solved the homeless problem, and here’s how I did it.” She’s not saying, “I’ve stopped crime, and here’s how I did it. I have solved and rebuilt Pacific Palisades after the fire, and here’s how I did it. And here’s my new fire prevention plan. Here’s my new water plan, so we don’t have empty…” None of it.
And when you see Councilman Raman, she doesn’t either. She doesn’t offer—all it is, is personal invective against Spencer Pratt.
When you look at the governor’s race in California, you have two Republicans in this jungle primary: Chad Bianco, the sheriff from Southern California, and Steve Hilton, Northern California entrepreneur who’s running. They’re both conservative, but they’re up against a whole array of Democratic candidates.
So if you look at what Xavier Becerra says, Kathleen Porter says, Tom Steyer says, there’s no agenda. They don’t say, “I want to continue Gavin Newsom’s program. High-speed rail has been a great success. I know we’ve had some controversies, but I want to finish it, and I can come up with the $250 billion to do it. We should be proud that we have the most illegal aliens in the country. Gavin Newsom allotted $500 million to illegal alien medical care. I’d like to boost that and improve on it. We have a very sophisticated penal system. I know crime is high, but when you treat criminals humanitarily, in a humane way, crime goes down.
“So when Governor Newsom, which I second, allowed iPads for people in prisons to use, and maybe some of them abused them a little bit, that’s a good idea and I’ll build on it. And we have the homeless, half the homeless people in the country because they like our weather and we’re a humane people. We’ve got to improve on that. We have the highest gas prices, but that means less pollution. And we have the highest taxes, that’s share the wealth. And we’re going to tax accumulated wealth of billionaires. Why not? They can pay their fair share.”
But they, they don’t defend the record in any specificity. None of them do. And none of them do in the Democratic Party on these congressional elections. They never say that we had a president. What happened?
We had Joe Biden, and we had a very orderly withdrawal from Afghanistan. It was a model operation. Or why do we need a border? Joe Biden showed you that we could let in ten thousand people a day, ten million over four years. Nothing was wrong with that.
We had a few criminals here and there, but it was a very humane policy. And we want to open that border, tear down that wall, and resume the Biden immigration policy.
Now, as far as crime, why would we want to be punitive? Some people, you know, they commit violent crimes, but they have to come up with cash to get out of jail. We got rid of cash bail because society, society is guilty, not the criminal. We should understand that by now.
And, you know, before Trump came in, we had DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion. And what it was is that we took into account, in a preferential manner your race, superficial appearance, your ethnic background, your sexuality, your gender, etc.
And that was a wonderful thing because the country had been founded by white males. The Founding Fathers were all white males. And ninety-five percent were white males. And you know how bad the country is now. So why don’t we, kind of, reverse the process. And let other people have preferences to make up for systemic bias and racism? So we want more DEI. That’s what we’re going to do if you elect us.
Now, there’s been a lot of attack on government, DOGE, etc. But whatever you say about the fraud in Minnesota or the fraud in California or the fraud in Chicago, notice that a lot of the people who are allegedly committing it are people of color.
So this is a Right-wing racist campaign.
But more importantly, even if it wasn’t DEI, what is so wrong with taking government money from wealthy people, taxing it, and then spreading it around? Do we really care if somebody is on electronic banking transfer or food stamp card and he has two or three of them? He’s in need. He’s not a billionaire like Ken Griffin.
Here’s what I’m getting at. They don’t take the Biden record or the Obama record and defend it. They don’t give specific anecdotes to the Republicans, so that they can win.
So what do they do? When you listen to these debates, you look at these congressional races, they say the following.
Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Donald Trump. We are not Donald Trump. Donald Trump is a Nazi. No, he’s a fascist. No, he’s an Epstein molester. No, he’s a pedophile. No, he’s a rapist. No, he’s a terrorist. That’s about all they have. And to the degree they do get specific, they call people fascists and Nazis.
Why do they do that? They do that because they know the agenda was not popular with the American people. And so their agenda is not going to be defended. And they know that Donald Trump is a counterrevolutionary. He’s doing things that are shaking up the United States that we haven’t seen in 100 years. And that offends a lot of entrenched interests. And so they think by just saying Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Donald Trump, fascist, fascist, Nazi, they can get that message across.
More importantly, they do one other thing, one other thing in these elections. They talk about changing the system. Not working within it when they’re out of power.
When they lose power, the Left, they say, the system, not us, lost our power. So if we get back in power, we’re gonna start lawfare again, just like the five civil and criminal cases that went after Donald Trump.
You know what else we’re gonna do? We’re gonna pack the court. We’re gonna get 15 justices to nullify the, since 1869, nine-justice court.
We’re gonna get rid of the Electoral College through the National Popular Vote Compact. We’re gonna let in Puerto Rico. We’re gonna let in D.C. as states. We’re gonna get four senators, as well. We’re gonna get rid of the 180-200-year Senate filibuster. That’s what they talk about.
They talk about changing the system because within the system they’re not successful.
So we have not heard agendas that are positive, that counter the Republican agenda. This is not the party of JFK or Bill Clinton. This is something very different. This is a revolutionary socialist agenda that wants to change fundamentally the United States. It’s what Barack Obama said he wanted to do. But he didn’t, yet, have the power to do so. And now they want to reify that radical socialist agenda.
And the only way they can do it is by demonizing other people and calling them names or changing the system. Otherwise, they’d have to have a positive agenda, and that would be equivalent with defeat.
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