OPINION:
The Labor Day holiday marks more than just the end of summer – it also signals the official kick-off of the political campaign season. The parades and cookouts morph into focus groups and survey data where incumbent politicians plot with their consultants how to convince their constituents to send them back to Washington D.C. for a fresh term on the taxpayer dole. They craft the sound bites to gloss over their record and votes, hoping that carefully crafted buzzwords and advertisements will whitewash their broken promises.
This year, events are shaping up a little differently. A recent poll brought a sobering statistic: 58% of respondents stated America’s best years may already be behind us. Less than two years into President Joe Biden’s first term, nearly three-quarters of those surveyed believe our nation is headed in the wrong direction.
Yes, we have been divided before, but voters across the political spectrum have all been able to coalesce around belief in America herself.
Look around and it’s easy to understand the discontent. Inflation is at a 40-year high. A gallon of gas costs closer to four dollars than two. Necessities such as baby formula have become rarities. Overseas, Europe is six months into the largest land war since the 1940s with no end in sight.
But it goes beyond just current domestic and world affairs. We’re almost three years into a global pandemic where the politicians and elite got everything wrong. Unelected health bureaucrats, names like Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx, who had never earned a single vote, were suddenly ordering us to shut our businesses, schools and churches with the full force of the federal government.
“Fifteen days to slow the spread” turned into weeks, months and years.
The people in charge sent COVID-19 patients into nursing homes, exposing our most vulnerable. They forced our military servicemembers to take a vaccine or find a new line of work. They told us to “follow the science,” and shunned anyone who had a different point of view on the medical choices for our families and loved ones.
Lives and livelihoods were upended. Businesses closed never to open again. The untold damage inflicted upon children is something we will, unfortunately, be reckoning with for years to come.
Dr. Fauci, the man who once told us he represented science, announced plans for retirement. Even on his way out, amid the outpouring of high fives from his fellow Beltway glitterati who lapped up every one of his glossy magazine profiles, Dr. Fauci refused to show an iota of regret or humility.
Dr. Fauci and crew put us through hell, and to what end? When President Donald Trump left office in January 2021, an estimated 400,000 citizens had lost their lives to COVID-19. Under President Biden, that number is more than 600,000 and sadly climbing every day, despite the Democrat’s promise to “crush the virus” and the widespread availability of vaccines and antibody treatment.
Now, many of these same politicians who aided and abetted our government’s misguided approach to COVID-19 are asking for a fresh term in Washington. They are hoping for those early days of the pandemic to be a distant memory come November.
To be clear, this is not a Republican or Democrat issue. The blame crosses party lines. Of course, the arrival of a once-in-a-century pandemic on our shores is bound to create a fog of war. Hindsight is always 20/20.
But it was the Democratic Party that has stubbornly clung to a government-knows-best philosophy that has failed. It is Democratic politicians who push their agenda of masks and mandates and fails to acknowledge mistakes along the way. Even today, the Democratic mayor of Washington D.C. is forcing children to get vaccinated to attend classes, a decision that would overwhelmingly hurt Black and lower income families. It was Democratic politicians who voted along party lines for the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package in March 2021, even when it was clear the worst of the pandemic was in the rearview mirror and leading Democratic economists were sounding the alarm on the looming threat of inflation.
America can change direction, but only by changing our representatives. The career politicians are betting our memories are short. They think we won’t remember the last three years. In November, we need to show them they are dead wrong – as wrong as their policies that got us into this mess.
General Don Bolduc spent 33 years in the US Army special forces and is a Republican candidate running for the United States Senate in New Hampshire.