Today is Halloween, a time for ghosts, ghouls, and garish costumes. The same could be said for the midterms.
Take costumes. Has there been any costume more garish this year than drag-loving, trans-pushing, scripture-defacing Texas Senate candidate James Talarico? All campaign long, he’s been wearing the costume of a beef-loving, border-closing, Bible-loving, truck-driving, prototypical Texas man.
His fake getup puts Halloween costume queen Heidi Klum to shame, challenged only by those mysterious 12 days when he was wearing an invisibility cloak.
Or how about Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed’s mild-mannered doctor costume? Take off that mask and lab coat and you find a raging anti-Israel zealot who seems to favor Hamas the way trick-or-treaters favor Snickers.
A cheap costume that candidates can get off the rack en masse at the DNC? The “I’m a Moderate” costume. The costume was all the rage last year, leading to Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill being elected governors of Virginia and New Jersey, respectively. The minute they were sworn in, they shed the moderation garb quicker than if the fabric caused a rash.
The party is passing those costumes out like Smarties this year, hoping to duplicate last year’s masquerade success.
This includes Alaska Senate nominee Mary Peltola. Pull off the moderate mask and you find a radical dirty trickster, according to The New York Times and Peltola’s former campaign manager. The Times broke the news that Peltola’s campaign aides helped recruit a second Dan Sullivan for the race in an effort to divert votes away from Sen. Dan Sullivan. And, according to that former campaign manager, Elisa Rios, Peltola knew all about it.
Looks like Peltola’s putting the trick in “trick or treat.”
On Wednesday night, Peltola dismissed the growing scandal as a “distraction” and “diversion.”
Pro Tip: A politician calling a scandal a “diversion” is usually shorthand for, “I did it, just like Freddy Krueger.”
The Ghouls
While voters are telling candidates, “It’s the economy, stupid!” Democratic Party leaders are telling voters, “It’s vengeance, baby!”
The big pitch to the base, from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and House Judiciary Committee ranking member Jamie Raskin, D-Md., to Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., on down, is simple: When we resume power, we will hunt Donald Trump, his family, his associates down like we’re Jason and they’re unsuspecting teens staying in an isolated cabin in the woods.
This to the cheers of the bloodthirsty throng that lifts toasts to the killing of Charlie Kirk and curses Thomas Crooks for having bad aim.
Jeffries declared, “Beginning on Day One, we’re going to hold the crooks accountable,” and “Accountability is coming to all of these sick extremists.” As we learned during the Biden years, “sick extremists” means Catholics praying at abortion mills, parents speaking at school board meetings, and average folks who say chopping off the healthy body parts of children is a bad thing.
Raskin says the investigative workload will be “gargantuan.”
Slotkin, the same former CIA spook who tried to convince young military members to mutiny against Trump, literally wants those connected to Trump persecuted to intimidate young conservatives from serving their country.
This creature is the anti-John Kennedy: “Ask not what you can do for your country, but what we can do to you for wanting to serve your country.”
The message couldn’t be clearer if it were written in blood: Make a noise, MAGA people, and you will be savaged like the survivors in “The Quiet Ones.”
The Ghosts
All who hold honest elections dear head into this Halloween weekend haunted by the ghosts of 2020 and 2022, and this spring’s Los Angeles mayoral race. Phantom voters that emerge from the grave, from warehouses, from across the border, from thin air, after the sun is set and the moon is high.
We worry that states could summon these ghosts through enchantments disguised as election rule adjustments, then harvest illicit ballots like the grim reaper harvesting souls.
Should you dare try to cast out these ghosts, you yourself are condemned. Just this week, the U.S. attorney trying to get California to hold off counting 20,000 ballots from “likely non-citizens” until they can be checked out? Not only did one judge block the effort, but another judge ruled it’s unlawful for him to even serve.
Anyone who tries to stop illegal ballots in California? The governor says they’ll be arrested.
The journalists who were exposing how easily illegal immigrant Somalis can game Minnesota’s election system? Charged with a felony.
But the efforts to banish these ghosts must not, cannot stop.
For on this Halloween, three days from Election Day, one does not worry that the voters will speak. Only that the ghosts, ghouls, and tricksters will speak louder.
And that thought should scare every American.
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.
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[ H/T The Daily Signal ]
