Victor David Hanson , does the chaos strategy work for the Democrats?

We can draw a few conclusions from an off-year election, when iconic races in blue states went, as expected, overwhelmingly Democratic. Nevertheless, there is only a year left before the midterms. So Republicans must react to even these paltry results.

(1) Democrats’ chaotic nihilism still works. The chaos strategy causes so much turmoil, noise and negative media coverage that the confused voting public simply cannot sort it all out. The public wishes the upheaval would just go away and often blames those with the most current authority — logically, the incumbent Trump and his administration.

(2) Every day of Trump’s first year, there were either campus eruptions, Tesla firebombings, street violence against ICE or crazy district judges’ injunctions.

The bedlam becomes force multiplied by unhinged outbursts from Democrats such as AOC, Jasmine Crockett, Eric Swalwell and the proverbial Squad.

The public has no time to sort out all the actual causes for such mad hattery. It knows only from Democrats that the commotion is roughly correlated with “Trump.” Note that there is never a positive Democrat “Contract with America,” because it is impossible to advance anything popular or moderate past its now firmly socialist base.

(3) Democrats also use the chaos strategy to target key electoral groups.

In last week’s election, Republicans finally grasped the purpose of the pre-election shutdown. It was designed to galvanize key constituencies to get out the vote in a low-turnout year. The lockdown was especially aimed at two groups: laid-off and unpaid government workers and entitlement recipients terrified that their checks would dry up. Both turned out disproportionately in Virginia and New Jersey.

The same strategy applies to the Hispanic vote that had defected in large numbers to Trump in 2024. However, last week, in many counties, the Hispanic vote shifted back toward the Democratic Party.

The truth does not get out enough that 70-80 percent of deportations are targeted at those with either criminal records or prior deportation orders.

Instead, the nonstop violent protests, the dangerous nullification threats from blue-city officials and the slanted media coverage worked like proverbial propaganda to reduce ICE to “the Gestapo.”

The administration and MAGA do not talk enough about positive news of GDP growth, tolerable inflation, massive foreign investment, a calmer Middle East or numerous miraculous ceasefires around the globe.

Instead, when there is a vacuum in self-praise, it is more easily replaced by the sensationalism of Trump’s “revenge tour” in hounding the boy scout James Comey and poor Letitia James, of taking a wrecking ball to the revered White House, or of insulting for no reason our blameless, “nice” and gentle Canadian neighbors. The economy, not culs-de-sac, wins elections.

The multitrillion-dollar foreign investments may take a year or two to create jobs and spark the economy. The deportations will take time to switch more jobs to U.S. citizens. New gas, oil and nuclear energy production, trimming the federal workforce, deregulating and greenlighting AI and other new technologies will not be felt immediately.

After the summer 1984 convention, even Ronald Reagan trailed the anemic Walter Mondale in a few polls. Then the first three quarters of GDP — cumulatively more than 7 percent growth — were digested, as the economy took off and buried Mondale by the November elections.

Threaten a political opponent with assassination? Brag about killing his kids? Tattoo the 3rd Panzer SS Division death’s-head insignia on your chest? Promise to arrest a foreign head of state when he visits your city? Boast about grabbing the “means of production.”

So what?

To the new left, this is just proof that their new candidates and voters “mean business.” They cannot be shamed — not even by mocking Charlie Kirk’s wound or hoping Trump is not so lucky a third time.

There is plenty of time for Republicans to digest these results, especially the strategy and dangerous nature of the new left, along with the mercurial moods of the swing voters — and the need to stick to the economy. But the clock is ticking.

Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness and a classicist and historian at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. Contact him at authorvdh@gmail.com.

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Jack Dempsey, President

401 Gold Consultants LLC

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