By John J. Duncan Jr.
The Democrats and the national media they control got in a big uproar when President Trump said a few days ago that he wanted Republicans to “nationalize the elections,” obviously referring to the upcoming midterm races.
The president’s critics reacted in horror as though they had never heard of such a thing before and, of course, tried to put the worst possible spin on it.
Actually, efforts to “nationalize the elections” have been made by both parties whenever it is to their advantage to do so, and this has gone on ever since there have been elections.
In fact, almost all the Democratic candidates have been trying much harder than Republicans to nationalize the elections ever since Trump came down the escalator at Trump Tower to announce he was running for president.
Democrats have tried to avoid talking about their unpopular stands on many national issues and instead have based their campaigns almost entirely on Trump hatred. Their platform has been Trump, Trump, Trump, and almost nothing else.
This has been especially true over the last few months since the president’s favorability has reached its lowest level.
The Democrats have tried to ignore or refused to admit that all over this country, people are fleeing the high taxes, high crime, wasteful government policies in Democrat-run cities and states and are moving in droves to conservative, low-tax, Republican areas.
Holier-than-thou liberal elitists have tried to proclaim that they are protectors of democracy. There is even a far-left national program called “Democracy Now!” Yet, these same “protectors” had court actions going in 30 states to try to keep Trump off the ballot until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 9-0, including even the three liberals, that this was unconstitutional.
They overturned a decision by leftist “protectors of democracy” on the Colorado Supreme Court to kick Trump off the ballot in that state. If all these anti-Trump cases had been successful, the more than 77,000,000 who voted for him in 2024 would have been deprived of the right to do so.
Liberal elitists have always felt superior to “the little people” and believe that more people should be appointed rather than elected. Unfortunately, even in Tennessee, past actions by the state legislature have taken away the right of the people to elect school superintendents in some counties, and have made most judges appointed rather than elected.
When President Trump said he wanted to nationalize the elections, all he really wants is honest, clean elections with voting being done only by American citizens. Democrats have wanted same-day voter registration so that it would be impossible to keep millions of illegal immigrants from voting. Their party is becoming more and more dependent on foreign-born voters – legal and illegal.
In a column in USA Today on Feb. 4th, Nicole Russell wrote that a 2025 poll by the Pew Research Center found 83% of Americans favor a law to require all voters to show a government type of ID. She also wrote that a Gallup Poll in 2024 found the same percentage favor requiring presentation of a government ID to register to vote for the first time. Democrats in the Senate have said they will filibuster any bill requiring voter identification.
Right now, the Democrats are trying to nationalize elections based on the unfortunate killing of two people by ICE officers in Minneapolis. Leftist organizations have mobilized demonstrations all over the country against these killings. Unfortunately, they have not demonstrated against the many killings of women and children all over this country by illegal immigrants.
The most dramatic nationalization of an election I remember was by the Democrats a few weeks before the 1990 midterm elections. Their party went on the attack after the first President Bush went back on his “no new taxes” pledge.
A panicky, late-night meeting of the House Republicans was held in the historic Cannon Caucus Room. Ed Rollins was the head of the National Republican Congressional Committee, which was the campaign arm for Republicans running for the U.S. House.
He told us all Republicans had dropped by at least 10 points almost overnight. This meant that a 60-40 race was now 50-50, and one that had been 55-45 Republican was now 55-45 Democratic. His advice was to “run as far away from the president as possible.” The White House sent orders the next day for Rollins to be fired, and he was.
Polls before that pledge was broken had predicted Republicans would pick up 20 to 30 seats in the House. Instead, we ended up losing nine seats, dropping from 175 to 166 in the 435-member House, a swing of almost 30 to 40 from the earlier polls.
