The 2022 midterm elections should have been a bloodbath for the Democrats. The consequences of President Joe Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan were still fresh in voters’ minds. People were facing record-high inflation, a spike in crime, and a growing crisis at our southern border. And Biden was facing credible allegations that he had been personally involved in his son’s overseas business affairs.
Former Assistant Treasury Secretary Monica Crowley, a conservative, predicted the midterm elections would be “an extinction-level event” for the Democrats, and most of us agreed.
But just as despair was setting in among the Democrats, along came an extraordinary gift in the form of the Supreme Court’s June 2022 reversal of Roe v. Wade, a ruling that returned abortion law to the states. The landmark decision sparked fury among the Left.
Pro-choice activists took to the streets to protest this perceived violation of their “rights.” Politicians, from Biden on down, distorted the truth in angry rants about the end of safe and legal abortions in America. Social media feeds filled up with statements from corporations seeking to establish their progressive bona fides as they vowed to reassure their panicked employees that, regardless of where they lived, they would be reimbursed for the cost of travel to the nearest state that allowed abortion on demand.
The issue galvanized the party’s base and breathed new life into Democratic prospects in the coming election. Angry voters are motivated voters. And Republicans, who had utterly underestimated the power of the Left’s outrage, waited in vain for their red tsunami to materialize in November.
Likewise, former President Donald Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts on Thursday at the end of a Soviet-style show trial sent shock waves throughout the Republican Party — and even beyond. It was a seminal moment for people who immediately grasped that the Democratic Party had corrupted the justice system to influence a presidential election.
Naturally, the Left was delighted with the jury’s decision. ABC News anchor Mary Bruce reported that “there were cheers inside the Biden headquarters in Wilmington as the verdict was read. These guilty verdicts are a political gift to Democrats, a political gift to the president. He is now running against a convicted felon.”
Bruce was mistaken.
Less than an hour after the verdict was read, a surge in donations to the Trump campaign caused the website to crash.
In a statement posted on X, Team Trump said: “The American people see through Crooked Joe Biden’s rigged show trial. So many Americans were moved to donate to President Trump’s campaign that the WinRed [the Trump campaign’s donation platform] pages went down.”
In the first 24 hours after the verdict was read, the Trump campaign received $52.8 million in donations.
Even anti-Trumpers expressed their outrage over the verdict. National Review’s Rich Lowry wrote, “The charges were rigged, the prosecution’s presentation of the case was rigged, the judge’s management of the case was rigged, the gag order was rigged, and the instructions to the jury were rigged. The whole thing was rigged from beginning to end, in the hopes of … rigging the presidential election.”
Wealthy donor Shaun Maguire, who supported Hillary Clinton in 2016 and sat out the 2020 election because he was “disillusioned,” announced on X that he’d just donated $300,000 to the Trump campaign. In a lengthy explanation, he wrote, “I know that I’ll lose friends for this. Some will refuse to do business with me. The media will probably demonize me. … I refuse to live in a society where people are afraid to speak.”
Democrats who celebrated the verdict will quickly find that this brazen and unprecedented corruption of our justice system has galvanized voters beyond the Republican Party who recognize that the most sacred principles of America’s founding were just trampled.
The anger unleashed by this corrupt trial and its unfathomable conclusion won’t dissipate in the next few news cycles. This travesty has awoken voters who plainly see that the Democrats, in their lust for power, have weaponized the law against a formidable political opponent. Trump is about as guilty as O.J. Simpson was innocent, and all but the most partisan Democrats know it.
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Just as Republicans misjudged the power of the Roe v. Wade decision two years ago to motivate voter turnout, Democrats fail to appreciate the gravity of their current actions. It’s understandable. They feel invincible. After all, they faced no consequences for their previous forays into election interference: the Russian collusion hoax, the bogus impeachments, and conspiring with the legacy media to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story ahead of the 2020 election.
But this time is different. And Democrats are about to face the whirlwind.
Elizabeth Stauffer is a contributor to the Washington Examiner and the Western Journal. Follow her on X or LinkedIn.