Democrat Voters are just as bright and just as talented as American Voters
Even misguided policy yields occasional wins. The Democrat record doesn’t.
The Pattern and the Test
In any voting process you expect some hits and some misses. The odds of missing almost every time, across many issues and many years, are not chance. They reflect design. With Democrats, results line up in one direction. When outcomes arrive, they tend to move away from American strength rather than toward it. If that were not so, you would see regular wins that clearly serve the country’s interests.
By anti-American I mean something precise. A policy is anti-American when it reduces sovereignty, shrinks prosperity, erodes social cohesion, or narrows liberty. I am not grading motives. I am looking at outcomes that people can feel and that public data can confirm.
The pattern appears in two forms. Some policies are sold as good for America and deliver weaker results once the bill comes due. Others are plainly good for someone else, whether a protected constituency, a bureaucracy, or a foreign interest, and the cost falls on the nation.
The test is simple. A policy is pro-American if it strengthens at least one of four outcomes without obviously degrading the others: sovereignty, prosperity, cohesion, and liberty. Sovereignty is control of borders and the timely enforcement of law. Prosperity shows up in energy costs, grid reliability, real wages, and the survival of small firms. Cohesion is visible in public order and the certainty of consequences for repeat offenders. Liberty is tested by how freely people can speak, organize, and dissent without quiet pressure from government routed through private platforms.
Borders decide whether the law is a promise or a suggestion. Energy policy decides whether households can plan around predictable prices and whether small businesses can keep the lights on. Crime policy decides whether ordinary people can use their own cities at night. Schools set literacy, numeracy, and the pipeline of skilled work. Speech rules are the only tool a free society has to find and fix its mistakes. If the record were mixed, I would say so. It is not. Start where sovereignty is most visible: the border.
Border and Citizenship
Sovereignty is the quiet ability to set and enforce the nation’s rules. A pro-American border policy reduces illegal entries, resolves cases quickly, removes those without a lawful claim, and channels admissions through predictable legal lanes that serve the country’s interests. When those targets move in the wrong direction, the country pays in clogged courts, stressed city budgets, and a diluted definition of citizenship.
At the creation of the modern system, Senator Ted Kennedy assured his colleagues, “The bill will not flood our cities with immigrants. It will not upset the ethnic mix of our society.” He also said, “Our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually.” Those promises shaped the 1965 Hart–Celler Act, which replaced national-origin quotas with a preference system based on family reunification and selected skills. Outcomes did not match the assurances. The foreign-born share rose from roughly five percent in 1970 to the mid-teens by the early 2020s, and the composition shifted heavily toward Latin America and Asia. Later laws reinforced this, including the 1980 Refugee Act, the 1986 IRCA legalization, the 1990 Immigration Act with the diversity visa, and the 1996 enforcement reforms that were not fully enforced.
Practice in the early 2020s compounded the problem. Encounters at the Southwest border hit records, the immigration-court backlog grew into the millions, and formal asylum applications waiting for hearings reached into the two‑million range. Big intake cities budgeted billions for shelter and related services, crowding out other priorities. The approach was sold as safe and orderly. It was neither safe for public order nor orderly for the courts.
Since January 2025, tighter rules have reduced encounters to levels below prior peaks, while removals and returns have risen. That deserves credit and proves the central point. When rules are clear and enforced, flows respond. When discretion expands and timelines stretch into years, incentives pull in the opposite direction, and costs roll downhill to local governments and working taxpayers.
Verdict. The record fails the test of sovereignty and strains cohesion. The remedy is not complicated. Secure the border first. Decide claims in months rather than years. Use parole sparingly and explain it in public. Align legal admissions with the country’s economic needs and the capacity of communities to absorb newcomers.
Energy and Cost of Living
The green transition was sold as cheaper for households, cleaner for the air, and good for jobs with little sacrifice. If that were true, people would see smaller bills and a sturdier grid. They have not. Gasoline hit record highs in 2022, electricity rates climbed through 2023, and winter heating and diesel costs pushed up the price of everything that moves by truck. Prices eased from the 2022 peak through 2024 and 2025, yet in many places they remain well above 2019 levels. Reliability did not improve in step. Grid operators warned about thin reserves as dependable plants retired faster than firm replacements came online. California issued conservation alerts and extended the life of Diablo Canyon because the system could not afford to lose firm power. New England leaned on oil and imported gas during cold snaps because pipeline capacity is tight.
How do you get rising costs and falling resilience from a program that promised the opposite? By moving costs off the brochure and onto ratepayers and taxpayers. Mandates count intermittent output as if it were firm power, then push the price of firming to someone else. The advertised cost of a megawatt from wind or solar ignores storage, gas peakers, and long transmission that make it usable when people need it. Retire coal and block new gas before replacements exist at scale, and you get scarcity and curtailment while households pay for two systems at once.
The money trail explains the sales pitch. Tax credits, direct payments, and procurement rules channel revenue to developers, manufacturers, and consultants. Utilities earn a regulated return on new capital, so they build what the mandate favors. Net metering shifts grid costs from solar owners to neighbors who still need the wires all day. Electric‑vehicle rules shift the cost of chargers and distribution upgrades to utilities first and then to monthly bills. Subsidies do not erase costs. They move them.
Supply chains are not domestic as slogans imply. Key minerals are mined abroad, much refining is done in China, and a large share of panels, batteries, and rare‑earth components comes from foreign factories. Emissions are counted on our side and mining impacts are counted somewhere else. Strategic risk grows as more of the system depends on parts and processing we do not control.
Examples make this concrete. In 2020, California faced rolling outages when solar output faded in the early evening, and there was not enough firm power to cover the ramp. The state kept Diablo Canyon online after planning to close it, an admission that firm power still matters. In New England, winter demand collides with pipeline limits, so operators lean on oil and expensive spot gas to keep the lights on. Nationwide, tight diesel and refining capacity fed directly into food prices because every item on a shelf rode a truck.
Electric vehicles are a test of the promise that the future is cheaper. They are impressive machines, but missing lines matter. Insurance and repair costs have run high in many markets. Range drops in heat and cold. Fast chargers must exist where people actually park, not just where press releases get written. Neighborhood circuits, transformers, and highway interchanges require upgrades to handle clustered fast charging during peak hours.
Since January 2025, Washington has tilted back toward permitting, production, and reliability. Gasoline is below the 2022 peak, lease approvals and pipeline work eased bottlenecks, and firm resources regained priority in planning. That proves the rule. When you expand supply and clear firm projects, prices and reliability move the right way.
Verdict. The Democrat approach fails prosperity. It raises household costs, weakens the grid, and swaps domestic energy security for foreign dependence. The remedy is simple. Be technology neutral and reliability first. Keep firm generation until genuine replacements exist in concrete and steel. Permit pipelines, transmission, and nuclear at the same time. Require intermittent resources to procure firming and pay for the grid they need.
Crime and Public Order
Public order is the quiet condition that lets strangers cooperate. A pro‑American policy protects the innocent, incapacitates the violent, and makes consequences swift and sure for chronic offenders. When that breaks, people change how they live. They shop earlier, avoid downtowns, and pay through higher prices and lower trust.
Homicide jumped sharply in 2020, then eased in 2023 and 2024 and continued to improve in many places during 2025, yet several large jurisdictions remain above 2019. Robbery and auto theft rose in several cities over the same period. Reporting systems changed, so figures vary by agency, but the direction is clear. When the certainty of consequences falls, victimization rises.
Philadelphia: DA statements vs. outcomes
“We don’t have a crisis of lawlessness. We don’t have a crisis of crime. We don’t have a crisis of violence.” — Larry Krasner, December 2021.“Ultimately the buck stops here… If there’s a decision that is poor, and I believe that was an incorrect decision, then we have to own it.”, Krasner, after criticism that his office freed a suspect later tied to Miss USA hopeful Kada Scott’s death.
What happened: Philadelphia set a modern homicide record in 2021. In the Scott case, the suspect Keon King had prior charges reduced/dropped and was released on low bail; court officials said the DA’s office could have sought an emergency bail appeal and did not.
New York rewrote bail in 2019 so most misdemeanors and many non‑violent felonies no longer require cash bail. Within a year, high‑volume reoffending by a small group became a visible problem. Albany narrowed the rules later, but judges still have narrower tools than before to detain obvious risks.
California reclassified theft under $950 and several drug offenses with Proposition 47. The street‑level result was persistent shoplifting, repeat offending, and organized retail crews that treated the threshold like a shield. Downtowns lost anchor stores, and insurance costs climbed. Crime got so out of control that voters and lawmakers narrowed the experiment. Proposition 36 in 2024 created felony exposure for serial theft and stiffened some drug penalties, and 2025 laws added tools to address organized retail theft and the aggregation of repeated small thefts. The threshold still shapes incentives for a first offense.
San Francisco became the emblem of what happens when order gives way. Car break‑ins turned into a routine nuisance. Officials warned people not to display high‑value watches or jewelry and told drivers to leave nothing in their cars. Some residents left cars unlocked or trunks open to avoid smashed windows, a measure of how normalized theft had become.
Philadelphia set a homicide record in 2021 and struggled with gun crime while conviction rates for illegal possession sagged earlier in the decade. As the prosecution of gun carrying tightened and focused units returned, violence moderated. Portland disbanded its gun‑violence team in 2020, saw homicides rise, and later rebuilt the unit. Seattle and other West Coast cities de‑prioritized public‑order offenses, then watched open‑air drug markets take root. When they restored enforcement and paired it with mandatory treatment, street conditions improved.
Verdict. The Democrat record strains cohesion and prosperity. The fix is not novel. Focus on the few who do the most harm. Enforce gun‑carrying laws. Detain the demonstrably dangerous, adjudicate cases quickly, and incapacitate the violent. Pair enforcement with drug treatment that has teeth and timelines. Publish time‑to‑disposition and reoffense rates so the public can see whether policies work.
Schools and Standards
The point of school is mastery. A pro‑American policy raises literacy and numeracy, keeps order so teachers can teach, and builds a pipeline into skilled work or higher study. Judge it by outcomes you can feel: whether a nine‑year‑old can read a page out loud, whether an eighth‑grader can handle fractions, whether a classroom is quiet enough to learn, and whether a graduate can step into a job without remediation.
Since 1979 we built a larger federal department and spent much more. What we did not get was a steady rise in basic skills. The long view is modest gains into the early 2010s, then a long stall and a sharp slide in the early 2020s. Some grades remain above 1970s baselines, but recent losses pushed many measures back toward early‑2000s levels. If centralization were the answer, the curve would slope up. It does not.
Chronic absenteeism surged during the pandemic and stayed elevated in many big districts into 2024 and 2025. Several Democrat jurisdictions kept schools closed longer, under union pressure, and reopened later. Costs landed on children with the least margin at home. When buildings reopened, many systems had narrowed suspensions and limited removals in the name of equity. A small group of chronic disruptors consumed class time and drove good teachers out. Where districts restored consequences and built alternative placements for repeat offenders, classrooms calmed and instruction time rose.
Curriculum drift made things worse. Reading wandered into balanced‑literacy fads while phonics sat on the shelf. Scores sagged. Districts spent heavily on consultants, then pivoted back to the science of reading once the losses were impossible to ignore. In math, discovery approaches and grading reforms hid gaps rather than closing them. Mastery takes explicit instruction, practice, and cumulative review.
Grades broke from reality. GPAs climbed while national assessments flattened or fell. Colleges dropped tests, remedial enrollment stayed high, and employers complained about basic writing and numeracy that a diploma was supposed to certify. Higher education grew administrative layers and politics while tuition kept rising. Debt forgiveness shifted costs to the public without forcing universities to cut prices or trim bureaucracy.
Money was not the binding constraint. Per‑pupil spending reached records after 2020, much of it outside direct instruction in central administration and non‑teaching roles. Parents noticed. Charters, private options, and homeschooling grew.
Why did earlier decades look better on the basics for what we spent? Authority and feedback were closer to the classroom. Principals could remove chronic disruptors, teachers taught phonics and arithmetic to mastery, and vocational paths were strong. As rules stacked up from Washington and state capitals, the job shifted toward compliance. The department does useful administrative work on data and civil rights enforcement. By the only test that matters to families, it has not delivered steady gains in reading and math.
Verdict. The Democrat approach weakened prosperity and cohesion. The fix is simple. Keep schools open except in true emergencies. Teach reading with systematic phonics and writing with real sentences and paragraphs. Teach math for mastery with practice and cumulative review. Restore consequences for chronic disruption and protect teachers who enforce them. Track time on task, attendance, and learning gains, and publish them in plain tables. Rebuild vocational and apprenticeship paths by junior and senior year so graduates can step into paid work with dignity. Expand parent choice and let money follow the student.
Speech and Censorship
Free speech is how a free people finds and fixes its mistakes. A pro‑American policy protects the right to speak, criticize, and be wrong in public without quiet pressure from government routed through private hands. When that line blurs, error hardens into orthodoxy and the costs fall on ordinary people who are told to accept the narrative and move on.
Officials could not lawfully ban ideas, so they leaned on platforms and third‑party fact‑checking shops to do it for them. The message looked like a request, but it came from offices that write rules, issue grants, and open investigations. That influence tilted the public square toward what agencies and their allies preferred.
The Hunter Biden laptop made the tactic obvious. Weeks before the 2020 election a newspaper published files attributed to the candidate’s son. Platforms throttled the story, one locked the paper’s account, and distribution was limited on-site. A letter from former officials framed the material as likely foreign disinformation. Later reporting and testimony confirmed the core authenticity of the files. The speech was lawful. Voters had a right to weigh it. The pressure campaign suppressed true information at the precise moment the public needed it.
The same mindset labeled categories of political speech as misinformation and routed flags to platforms for downranking or removal. Claims that favored one narrative stayed up. Claims that challenged it were throttled. When the referee picks sides, trust collapses, and error lasts longer.
Elections hinge on process as much as persuasion. In 2020, emergency rule changes turned mail‑in voting from a limited tool into the default in many places. States and counties mailed ballots or applications to broad lists. Signature rules loosened in some jurisdictions. Ballot curing expanded. Drop boxes multiplied. Observers were kept at a greater distance in several large counts. Private grant money flowed to election offices and concentrated in Democrat strongholds. Each change could be defended as a crisis response. Together, they softened the chain of custody, weakened verification, and tilted the field. When critics raised these concerns, the same speech apparatus treated them as forbidden.
Set the context plainly. In 2016, party elites and media allies preferred Hillary Clinton because she reflected the centralizing politics they favored. Joe Biden, then the vice president and next in line by tradition, was nudged aside as unreliable. By 2020, the lesson taken from 2016 was that persuasion would not be enough. The pandemic became the pretext for emergency rules that upended voting and crushed the economy under blanket shutdowns. The chosen candidate was the safest bet for control, a compliant figure who would be led rather than lead. The censorship pipeline and the voting‑rule changes worked together. One managed what could be said. The other reshaped how votes were collected and counted.
Universities added their own layer. Bias‑response teams and speech codes by another name policed tone rather than argument. Speakers were shouted down. Departments issued political statements as if they were teaching. DEI offices grew while viewpoint diversity shrank.
Since January 2025 the federal posture has tilted toward transparency and non‑interference. That proves the rule. When the state steps back and the sun comes in, debate returns and error corrects faster.
Verdict. The Democrat approach narrowed liberty and weakened cohesion. The remedy is bright lines and sunlight. Bar agencies from pressuring platforms about lawful speech. Publish every contact between government and content moderators within days and in full. Cut off federal money to misinformation shops that act as de facto censors. Restore election rules in statute with clear safeguards for chain of custody, signature verification, observer access, and uniform curing. Ban private money from running public election offices.
Economy and Work
A healthy economy is simple in practice. Stable money. Work that pays. Rules you can understand. A pro‑American policy keeps prices predictable, lets small firms hire and invest, and rewards people for taking a job or starting a business. When those basics slip, it shows up in rent, groceries, loan payments, and the number of help‑wanted signs that never come down.
The recent story has two parts. The price level jumped. Inflation surged in 2021 and 2022, then cooled from the peak, but the cumulative increase left everyday costs much higher than 2019. Families did not get a refund when inflation slowed. They were paying a new, higher bill. The cost of money rose. Interest rates climbed to fight the inflation that spending helped create. Mortgages, car loans, and small‑business credit became more expensive. Real wages took time to catch up.
Policy choices pushed those outcomes. The Democrat approach paired very large federal spending with tighter rules on the supply side. Demand rose while production faced new costs and delays. More dollars chased not enough goods. Higher energy costs fed through a sandwich, a utility bill, and a delivery fee.
The labor market felt the design. Cash benefits and tax credits detached from work reduced the urgency to reenter the job market for part of the population. Student‑loan pauses freed up cash for years, then the bill returned. Rules narrowed independent‑contractor status, which made it harder to be a freelancer or to run a lean startup that scales with contract talent. Minimum‑wage jumps and predictive‑scheduling mandates raised fixed costs for small shops that live on thin margins. Owners skip their own pay when the month runs long.
Debt forgiveness did not fix university prices. It shifted costs to taxpayers who never agreed to guarantee someone else’s tuition. Industrial policy followed the same logic. Large firms with the right lobbyists won subsidies and credits. Smaller firms faced the same inflation and higher borrowing costs without a line into federal cash.
Since January 2025, the posture has tilted toward cost control and production. Permitting, energy supply, and rule trimming have moved faster. Gasoline sits below its 2022 peak, bottlenecks have eased, and investors put money into projects when timelines are clear. That proves the point. Stop feeding demand and start removing barriers to supply, and prices and activity move the right way.
Verdict. The Democrat record weakened prosperity. It delivered higher costs, slower real wage gains, and rules that punished people who try to build things. The remedy is straightforward. Hold the line on spending so the central bank does not keep crushing borrowers. Clear permits for energy, transport, housing, and industry. Keep independent‑contractor pathways open. Index brackets to inflation and lower the marginal bite on the next hour worked. Tie any child or poverty benefits to work or training. Sunset regulations that cannot show measurable benefits at reasonable cost.
Foreign Policy and Deterrence
Deterrence is the belief in an adversary’s mind that crossing a line will cost more than it gains. A pro‑American policy sets clear interests, backs them with credible force, and uses energy and finance as leverage so shooting is rarely needed. When deterrence fails, the bill arrives as longer wars, higher prices, and more brazen tests of U.S. resolve.
The recent record shows how deterrence erodes. The Syria red line on chemical weapons turned into a negotiation. The Afghanistan exit signaled that deadlines mattered more than conditions. Waivers and relief for hostile regimes bought time for those regimes, not for us. Sanctions on Iran loosened and funds moved while proxies struck at partners and shipping. Russia tested the West in Ukraine and learned that aid would flow with caveats and delays that turned a shock into a grind. The Houthis turned the Red Sea into a toll road and discovered that harassment could raise world shipping costs while the response came slowly. These are not random stumbles. They are outcomes you get when a party prefers process to power.
Deterrence also lives in the economy. Constrain domestic energy and raise the political cost of production at home, and you grow the leverage of people who sell oil and gas abroad and do not wish you well. Drain stockpiles without a plan to refill them at a reasonable price, and you trade today’s headlines for tomorrow’s weakness. Send large aid packages without hard objectives and timelines, and you buy influence for a week and confusion for a year.
Since January 2025, the posture has shifted toward clarity and cost imposition. Rules on hostile proxies tightened. Sanctions enforcement stiffened. Energy leverage returned as permits moved and supply grew. Partners heard hard lines stated in public. Adversaries who probed met direct costs.
Verdict. The Democrat record weakened sovereignty and prosperity abroad and at home. The remedy is practical. State interests plainly and keep them short. Tie aid to defined objectives, milestones, and time limits. Sanction revenue streams that finance attacks, then enforce sanctions until behavior changes. Rebuild stockpiles and industrial capacity so promises to partners mean something. Use energy abundance as a strategic tool. Put immediate costs on those who test you.
Family Policy and Incentives
Family policy either lines up incentives with marriage, work, and responsibility or it pulls against them. A pro‑American policy does the former. It lowers the hurdle to marry, rewards steady work, and makes clear that bringing a child into the world is an adult decision with adult duties. When policy does the opposite, you get more single‑parent households, more poverty, and more boys drifting out of school and out of work.
The marriage rate is roughly half of what it was in the 1960s. About four in ten children are born outside marriage. Children raised by married parents are far less likely to be poor, more likely to graduate, and less likely to be arrested. That does not condemn single parents. It says structure changes odds.
Means‑tested benefits stack and then phase out as earnings rise. SNAP, Medicaid, housing vouchers, childcare subsidies, and tax credits can create very high marginal tax rates for low earners as they advance. Add the tax code’s remaining marriage penalties and a simple picture appears. Two adults who live together can be poorer on paper if they marry or if the second earner takes more hours. When the state pays more when dad is absent and pays less when he is present, the message is not subtle.
In 2021, Washington temporarily turned the child tax credit into monthly cash. The amount rose to roughly 300 dollars per month for children under six and 250 for children six to seventeen, paid July through December, with the balance at filing. The credit became fully refundable, so a household could receive the full amount even with little or no earnings. There was no work requirement. Income caps existed at the top, but there was no link to a current job at the bottom. The change reduced measured poverty for a time, which is why it was sold as compassion. It also weakened the tie between benefits and work and increased marriage penalties at the margin because a second adult’s earnings could reduce or eliminate the payment while other benefits phased out. Several blue states copied parts of the design with state credits or guaranteed‑income pilots that likewise detached cash from work.
Schools and courts added to the drift. Discipline rules that removed consequences for chronic disruption pushed boys out of learning. Family courts that defaulted to conflict and delay kept children in limbo. Vocational tracks thinned out just as male non‑work rose. The message to young men was mixed. School is chaotic, work is optional, and your presence in a home can be a financial liability.
Since January 2025, the posture has moved toward restoring work links and reducing marriage penalties. Where states and agencies tightened eligibility, smoothed phase‑outs, and re‑attached benefits to work or training, results improved. Full repair needs legislation.
Verdict. The Democrat record weakens prosperity and cohesion. The remedy is practical. Remove marriage penalties across the tax code and benefit programs so a couple is never poorer for marrying. Re‑attach child benefits to work, training, or education for at least one adult. Smooth phase‑outs so the effective tax on the next hour worked is not confiscatory. Enforce child support and fund fatherhood programs that help men keep jobs and stay present. Restore order in schools and rebuild vocational and apprenticeship paths so a seventeen‑year‑old can see a paid future that starts this year.
Culture and Merit
Merit is simple. Pick people for what they can do, hold them to clear standards, and let results speak. Culture makes this possible. It rewards effort, honesty, punctuality, and competence. A pro‑American policy defends both. It keeps the rules equal and the bar visible. When policy replaces merit with identity and grievance, institutions select for politics instead of excellence. Trust falls and performance slips.
The last decade made the shift obvious. Colleges dropped admissions tests or made them optional, then padded GPAs while basic skills stalled. Medical and law schools added required diversity statements that worked as ideological screens. Public systems copied the practice in hiring. Several large districts scrapped or watered down honors tracks, then watched advanced achievement shrink and quietly brought them back. San Francisco delayed Algebra I to ninth grade in the name of equity and later reversed course after fewer students reached higher math. New York whittled gifted programs, then rediscovered why parents fought for them. Cutting advanced work does not help struggling students. It only limits those ready to move faster.
Courts pulled one thread in 2023 by barring racial preferences in admissions. Many universities answered with essay prompts and scoring rubrics that sought the same signals under new names. If you want a diverse pipeline, you fix K–12 reading, math, and order. Essays cannot replace years of mastery.
Inside schools, grading drifted away from learning. Minimum‑grade policies and no‑zero rules raised transcripts while achievement fell. Discipline changes that narrowed removal produced classrooms where a few students burned time for the many. Teachers left. Parents who could moved their children. Those who could not were told the new approach was compassionate.
The same incentives spread through agencies and corporate life. Consultants turned compliance into a business line. Bureaucracies measured plans and trainings rather than outcomes. When you pay for signals, you get signals. When you pay for performance, you get performance. Too many institutions forgot which one they were buying.
Equal rules and open doors are not the enemy of opportunity. They are its foundation. Blind auditions in orchestras raised female representation because they removed irrelevant signals and let skill carry the day. The lesson generalizes. Remove non‑merit screens, raise early preparation, and keep the bar steady. If you try to manufacture equal outcomes by softening standards, you destroy the signal that tells the country who is ready to cut into a patient, design a bridge, or run a refinery.
Since January 2025, the federal posture has moved toward equal treatment and viewpoint neutrality. Agencies trimmed ideology screens in hiring and placed more scrutiny on programs that substitute politics for performance. The repair job is local and institutional.
Verdict. The Democrat record weakens prosperity and cohesion. The fix is practical. Put merit back in charge of admissions, hiring, and promotion. Publish the measures that matter, including entry standards, completion rates, licensure pass rates, time to degree, and first‑year job performance. Restore advanced tracks in K–12 and let students move as fast as they can master the work. Tie public funding to outcomes, not offices and plans. Protect speech so bad ideas are defeated in daylight.
The Pattern Problem
If choices were random, the record would be mixed. It is not. The misses cluster the same way across borders, energy, crime, schools, speech, the economy, foreign policy, family structure, and standards. That is not chance. It is preference.
Sovereignty moved the wrong way. Border encounters set records, the court backlog swelled into the millions, and large cities ate billions in unplanned costs. Prosperity moved the wrong way. Prices jumped, electricity rates climbed, and reliability warnings became routine. Public order moved the wrong way. Homicide spiked in 2020, then eased but often stayed above 2019. Mastery slid after modest gains in earlier decades. GPAs rose while proficiency fell. Liberty narrowed as officials leaned on platforms to throttle lawful speech, and emergency voting rules loosened safeguards while critics were labeled dangerous. Work and enterprise took a hit as big spending plus tight supply pushed prices up and rates higher. Abroad, deadlines beat conditions and waivers beat sanctions. Family structure weakened as benefits detached from work and marriage. Standards slipped as merit took a back seat to politics.
Many Democrat policies were sold as good for America and produced the opposite once the bill arrived. Others were good for someone else, a favored constituency or a bureaucracy or a foreign supplier, and the cost landed on the country. Exceptions exist, but the pattern is one way.
Show where the chosen policy since 2019 clearly increased sovereignty, prosperity, cohesion, or liberty without obvious damage to the others. Show it with outcomes that ordinary people can feel, not slogans. If such cases were common, the record would look mixed. It does not.
Change the Incentives
Reward dependency, leniency, and symbolism, and you will get more of them. Reward capacity, order, and merit, and you will get those instead.
The repair is practical. Secure the border and decide cases in months. Put reliability and price first in energy and build firm replacements before retirements. Restore the certainty of consequences for the few who do the most harm while pairing enforcement with treatment that has teeth. Keep schools open, teach phonics and mastery math, protect order, and report real gains, not inflated grades. Draw a bright line between government and private moderation of lawful speech, and set voting rules in statute with clear safeguards. Stop juicing demand while constraining supply; clear permits, cut red tape, and keep independent work legal. Tie family benefits to work or training and remove marriage penalties so two adults are never poorer for marrying. Put merit back at every gate and publish outcomes per dollar so the public can see what works.
Since January 2025, where incentives moved toward enforcement, production, transparency, and merit, results improved. That lesson scales. Change the incentives and you change the country. Keep the incentives and you keep the bill.
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