If the Democratic Party were a five-year-old kid, it’s bedtime ritual would be, “Mommy, check under the bed. Okay, now check in the closet. Leave the light on so you-know-who can’t get me while I’m sleeping.” Then, the party would lay awake in fear that it would once again have the dream—the nightmare where it’s a midterm election year and the Boogie-Man, who looks exactly like gun control legislation, somehow ends up in front of Congress. Gasp! Cold sweat. Thumping heart. Then, sigh of relief because it was just a nightmare.
But that nightmare is about to Freddy Krueger itself into reality for the Democrats because the Progressive party base and the anti-NRA Media hacks have no idea that they’re acute onset activism in March of 2018 is an electoral Bermuda Triangle the Democratic party must now navigate through as they try to take back the House and Senate from GOP majorities.
Consider Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer’s rhetoric on the gun control issue. Generally, his talking points operate like a leftwing doom-and-gloom Madlib: If Republicans get their way on [insert issue], it will be a [insert apocalyptic event] for [insert identity group] Americans. He called it “a disaster” when Republicans backed tax cuts, he led a government shutdown when he didn’t get his way on DACA, and he weeped like a Boehner when Trump issued his so-called “travel ban.” So now that the CNNs and Alyssa Milanos of the world have pressured Democrats into introducing gun control legislation which bans certain types of guns and treats due process like kindling for the big Constitution bonfire, what sort of hardcore rhetoric is Schumer going with? He said, “If we can get a good portion of it and not all of it, fine… I’m not drawing any lines in the sand.” Not exactly rousing leadership. Hard to imagine General Patton telling the Third Army, “I will be proud to lead you wonderful guys into battle anytime, anywhere… but I’m not drawing any lines in the sand.” Or King Hal at the Battle of Agincourt telling his army, “Let us, in the sand, draw nary a line, Upon St. Crispin’s Day!”
If tax cuts are “Armageddon” and rescinding DACA is tantrum-inducing, why isn’t gun control worthy of the Democratic Party’s customary 21-hyperbole salute?
First, take a look at the 2018 Senate Map Democrats are facing.
The battleground states include: Nevada, Arizona, Montana, North Dakota, Wisconsin, Missouri, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, and Florida.
In Nevada, Republican Dean Heller will try to hold his seat in a blue state that went for Hillary Clinton. That race could actually be an advantage to Democrats as long as they don’t do anything stupid like, you know, give Heller a gun control bill to fight against.
In Arizona— routinely ranked by Guns & Ammo Magazine as the number one state for gun owners— every Republican vying for the GOP nomination is crossing their fingers for a second amendment fight in the general election.
In the other 8 battleground states, Democrats—who all held tight to a handful of Super-Obama’s cape in 2012 and relied on his nefarious turnout-control device— will now be forced to headline tickets in states that President Trump won by an average margin of 18 points in 2016.
Four of those states allow the second amendment right to bear arms without even having a permit, and every single one of them is ranked in Guns & Ammo Magazine as a top thirty state for gun owners. Anyone think those 8 Senate Democrats want to spend their campaign being asked why they’ve decided to go all Ronda Rousey on the second amendment? Spoiler alert: they don’t.
Now, take a look at the House map. The MSM loves to tout the “generic congressional vote” where Democrats routinely have a slight edge, but that’s a dubious statistic in the Trump era. Progressivism, like the kind Hillary Clinton ran on in 2016, widens margins in blue districts which helps the Democrats in the generic vote but does nothing to actually change the composition of the House. Trump won 230 Congressional districts in the 2016 election, and Republicans currently hold seats in 238 districts. If there were a shred of electoral capital to be seized by gun control advocacy, the Democrats would have seized it with their gun control gambits in 2013, 2015, and 2016. But, for now, Middle America and Republican majorities appear to be impervious to CNN-Townhall-style mania.
In the end, any gun control bill voted on by Congress will be nothing more than a reminder of how completely unpopular the Democrats’ sporadic attempts at gun-grabbing are. “I’m not drawing a line in the sand” means let’s do this quietly and let’s hurry up and lose because the midterms are coming.
Eddie Zipperer is a political science professor at Georgia Military College.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.