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President Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., didn‘t get their big spending plan, didn’t get their so-called “voting rights” bill, and couldn’t get a majority of senators to eliminate the time-honored Senate filibuster. Those are all big developments right out of the gate in 2022.
Nevertheless, the government remains by far the biggest industry in America today and that means politics is a full-time business. With so much at stake, there are many dynamics at play in this midterm election year.
In 2022, here are five of the most important dynamics to watch.
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5. Will the Democrats moderate their law-and-order views?
Throughout 2020 and 2021, polls showed that violent crime was a major issue in the eyes of Americans as the Left’s push to “defund the police” took hold across the country. In May 2021, 49% of Americans believed that violent crime was the biggest of the very big problems Americans faced. That was up just 1% from 2020, but all other issues receded far below it, including COVID – which dropped to just 32%.
What is troubling for Democrats is that by a nearly 2-1 margin voters now disapprove of how Biden is handling crime. His approval rating is just 36% and his disapproval rating on the issue is at 61%. That is quite a high number in this polarized society, which I called Divided Era, in my book of the same name. Getting that many Americans to agree on a subject is simply rare in this era.
Negative presidential numbers that high on an issue are never good for a party in a midterm election year. So, the question arises, will the Democrats do something about that by moderating their views? Some big-city Democrat mayors, from Chicago to San Francisco, already have at least changed their rhetoric.
What the remainder of Democrats do on law and order will be important to watch in 2022, along…