In America, Optimism Is the Winning Vote

So when you get to Election Day, like today, you kind of think that everything that needs to be said has already been said. In my case, that’s probably true. So permit me to try to express the most basic thought I have about why I believe the cavalry’s coming and the Congress is going to change hands. In short: The voters are simply not buying what the Joe Biden Democrats are selling. I’m not pretending to be nonpartisan, because I’m a free-market capitalist and I’ve disagreed with President Biden’s policies all along. But I think this election goes way beyond partisan politics. Way beyond political parties. Right up to the last moment, Mr. Biden has tried to sell an end to fossil fuels and a transformation to something called the Green New Deal. He and the Congress have spent a fortune on this. All they’ve done, though, is reduce energy availability and jack up energy prices. This climate change socialism has been a dismal failure, and yet the president is out there calling for an end to coal, an end to all drilling. I do not believe the majority of people in this country agree with him. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t use our God-given natural resources, and similarly there’s no reason why we shouldn’t allow technology and innovation to develop renewable fuels, even while we nurture fossil fuels. People don’t want to end gasoline-powered cars, and they don’t want to lose millions of jobs, and they don’t want to freeze this winter, and most of all I think they don’t want a bunch of central planners to tell them what to do, how to live, where to live it, and how much to live it. It’s like: Stop telling me what I can and cannot do, central government in Washington, D.C. This is a free country, and we prefer freedom. The Bidens don’t seem to tolerate freedom, and that’s a big problem — and it’s just one aspect of this election. The president seems incapable of telling the truth about the economy. He says he inherited “economic ruin” — which was completely false. Then, on top of that falsehood, he created a $2 trillion spending package, which many of the leading economists in his own party told him would create major inflation — and it did. Yet he denied it. Built on top of that were even more spending programs, which then created even more inflation. Not only has he waged war against fossil fuels, he’s waged war against business. In fact, Mr. Biden basically blames everyone else but himself for the political defeat he faces. The problem is greedy businesses. The problem is Vladimir Putin. The problem is Donald Trump. The problem is Covid. No. The problem is big-government socialism. Overspending, taxing, and regulating has literally strangled the economy. That’s what inflation does. That’s what the heavy hand of government does. We’ve seen this movie before. It’s never worked. And I think voters are going to reject it once again. People sitting around kitchen tables are not happy campers. They’re working hard. They’re making money, but they’re still losing ground to inflation. Groceries are too expensive. Gas is too expensive. Everything’s too expensive. Given a choice between socialism and free-market capitalism, America’s going to take capitalism every time. Also, people don’t want a cultural transformation. They believe parents should guide their children’s schooling. They don’t believe everything is about race or gender or sex. They don’t believe American history should be rewritten. They don’t believe cops are bad. They worry about crime everywhere. They don’t approve of open borders, or millions of illegals, or drug cartels, or fentanyl. They were appalled as America’s military — the greatest in the world — was forced by this administration to seemingly flee from Afghanistan. In a real sense, the retreat from Afghanistan was the end of the Biden honeymoon, and it has been downhill ever since. Let me finish on this note: Most elections in our great country are about peace and prosperity. Certainly presidential elections are, but to a large extent nowadays midterm elections have become national elections. Regrettably, at this point, we have neither peace, nor prosperity. And what’s more, we seem to have no optimism. The party in power is always telling the rest of us how bad things are and how things have got to change, to be transformed. That’s pessimism. I suggest that most voters know there are some things wrong, but by and large they can be fixed — and in that sense they are optimists about our future. That’s my view. Optimists win. Pessimists lose. I know polls don’t vote, and it is still possible the outcome of today’s election may not be to my liking. I get that. But my suspicion is our great democracy is going to produce a tidal wave of change. People want growth, not inflation or recession. People want American strength, not weakness. People want optimism, not pessimism. Remember when Reagan said: “If not now, when? If not us, who?” I think now, people really want to take back their country. Here’s hoping the cavalry comes. From Mr. Kudlow’s broadcast on Fox Business News.

In America, Optimism Is the Winning Vote

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