Five Quick Things: America Needs Despondent Democrats, and We Have Them

We begin this edition of the 5QT with a poll.

Which perhaps necessitates an apology, because this column is highly skeptical of poll results. But seeing as though most pollsters are either leftists or are employed by them, polls can sometimes be taken seriously as an admission against interest.

And with that, we have…

1. Very Sad Donkeys

So here’s a poll that the AP, in conjunction with the University of Chicago’s polling center, released on Wednesday…

In contrast, Democrats have become more pessimistic about their party’s future, the state of the country’s politics, and the country’s process for choosing political leaders. Only 35 percent of Democrats say they are optimistic about the future of the Democratic Party, down sharply from 57 percent in the July 2024 poll.

About 7 in 10 Democrats are pessimistic about the state of politics in this country, up from 60 percent last summer. And 55 percent of Democrats are pessimistic about the way our leaders are chosen under our political system, up from last summer when Joe Biden was still in the White House.

Yikes.

The Republican numbers were a good bit better, but Republicans are never particularly happy about politics — if you like government, what on earth are you doing as a Republican?…

Republicans have grown slightly more optimistic about the future of the Republican Party than they were last summer. In July 2024, 47 percent said they were optimistic about their party. Now, three months into Donald Trump’s second term, 55 percent are hopeful about their party’s future.

While half of Republicans are pessimistic about the state of politics in the United States, that is down from 73 percent last July. And they have grown slightly more optimistic about the way our leaders are chosen under the country’s political system.

The guess is that if House Speaker Mike Johnson can get the Big Beautiful Bill off the floor this week and over to the Senate, and if the RINOs in the Senate don’t gut the bill before they pass it, those GOP numbers will go up.

And the Democrat numbers will plummet even more.

This is actually a good thing.

Today’s activist modern Democrat is someone who substitutes radical politics for religion, morality, and a positive social life, and when the Democrats are politically ascendant, they don’t stop and think of how they can make things better for the American people. Instead, they indulge in ever-greater messianic fetishes to satisfy their lust for imposing their will on their fellow man. (RELATED: ‘Get Laid’ and ‘Have Fun’: The Democrats (Still) Don’t Get It)

If you don’t agree with that, then feel free to explain how we could possibly have gone from gay marriage to transgenderism over the course of a decade, or the utter madness of climate-change alarmism, or any number of utterly fringe policy initiatives they’ve allowed their party to be captured by. (RELATED: Democrats’ ‘Trans’ Intransigence)

Or the suicidal idea of paying reparations for slavery, 160 years after it ended. More on that below.

The point being that these guys need to be demoralized and despondent. If they are, perhaps some will turn away from radical politics and take up something more productive to fill their schedule. (RELATED: The Masochistic Democrats Hate You — And Beg You to Hate Them Back)

Or if not, they’ll realize the current set of messianic causes to which they’re wedded are losers, and, so badly needing a win somewhere in their lives, jettison those in favor of more attainable things which don’t horrify the bulk of their countrymen.

Either way, hopped-up Dems who think the great revolution is just around the corner are a disastrous thing, and that AP poll suggests there isn’t so much of that right now. Let’s be thankful for it.

2. Look How Awful This Is

Have you seen James O’Keefe’s exposé about the Biden HHS and its eager placement of illegal immigrant kids with sex traffickers?

This doesn’t need a whole lot of commentary. It just is. And it’s, well…

HHS Whistleblower Tara Lee Rodas says she raised concerns about sending so many illegal migrant children “to the same address”

“I was told, Tara, we only get sued if we keep kids in care too long. We don’t get sued by traffickers”

This is the HHS under the Democrat Party pic.twitter.com/8nH11LvpKl

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) May 13, 2025

3. Doom-Spinning of an Economy Which Has Surprisingly Little Doom In It

You don’t see a whole lot of reportage about the markets anymore, for some reason. And you don’t see a whole lot of reportage about the performance of the economy, either. It’s amazing the difference a few weeks will make, no?

What reportage you do see has a lot of the typical elements. This…is…CNN…

U.S. wholesale prices sank in April, logging their biggest monthly drop since COVID stifled the economy, as tariffs put a squeeze on profit margins, according to new data released Thursday.

The Producer Price Index, a closely watched measurement of wholesale inflation, showed Thursday that the prices paid to U.S. producers dropped 0.5 percent in April from the month before, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

Hey, that seems pretty good. Weren’t we going to get big inflationary problems because of Trump’s tariffs?

Economists were expecting monthly prices to rise in April by 0.2 percent and to slow to 2.4 percent on an annual basis, according to FactSet.

A driving force behind the downward monthly swing was a 1.7 percent plunge in trade services, a category that measures gross margins for wholesalers and retailers.

Although it’s a volatile category, the sharp downward swing in trade services indicates that companies’ margins are being eaten away by higher costs from President Donald Trump’s tariffs, Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM U.S., told CNN on Thursday.

“We are beginning to see the impact of trade policy filtering into the hard data in such a way that it’s impossible to deny that it is now affecting revenues and profit margins for firms,” Brusuelas said.

Oh, right. Sure. But weren’t the expectations that those tariffs would be passed on to the consumer and, as a result, there would be tons of inflation?

Guess not. So the importers are eating the tariffs?

Those higher costs will likely start spilling over to consumers soon, he said.

And the economy-powering consumers are already showing some signs of fatigue: Sales at U.S. retailers slowed sharply in April to 0.1 percent after a surge of 1.7 percent in March, when shoppers rushed to beat the slew of new tariffs.

“Sharply?” From 1.7 percent growth to 0.1 percent, and it’s “sharply.”

OK, I guess.

Then CNN gives us this…

Separately on Thursday, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell warned that “supply shocks” could force the central bank to keep rates higher over the long term.

“We may be entering a period of more frequent, and potentially more persistent, supply shocks — a difficult challenge for the economy and for central banks,” Powell said.

He noted that “inflation could be more volatile going forward than in the inter-crisis period of the 2010s.”

On Tuesday, the latest Consumer Price Index data showed that overall inflation cooled further for the goods and services Americans commonly purchase. However, some economists pegged some of that softening to weaker demand.

Trump’s bevy of tariffs is widely expected to make items more expensive in the months to come and drive inflation higher.

Wait, here comes the fun part…

On the surface, the April PPI report appeared to portray a welcome decline in key areas, notably energy and food — including a continued plummeting of egg prices, which dropped 39.3 percent in April after falling 21.3 percent in March.

Excluding food and energy, which can be volatile, core PPI also showed some softness, largely due to the big negative swing from trade services: Prices fell 0.4% for the month and annual inflation slowed to 3.1% from 4%.

So, much less inflation. (RELATED: Inflation Report Has Journalists Wiping Egg Off Their Faces)

No, says CNN. Much MORE inflation!

Despite the seemingly cool reading, tariffs are making their mark, Chris Rupkey, chief economist at FwdBonds, told CNN.

“Goods prices are picking up,” he said.

Stripping out food and energy, prices for goods have been steadily on the rise. After posting a 0.1 percent increase in December, that category rose 0.2 percent in January, 0.3 percent in February and March, and 0.4 percent in April, Rupkey noted.

The 0.4 percent increase is the fastest monthly inflation for that category in more than two years, BLS data shows.

“It looks like some of the fears of what is going to happen from these import tariffs is becoming a reality, and that is goods prices going up,” he said. “That’s a worrisome sign for inflation down the road, meaning it could be only a couple of months away.”

This, from the same people who were just way off on the April numbers.

There’s an interview with a guy from Walmart who says they’re about to jack up their prices because they can’t eat Trump’s China tariffs. Of course, while that might be true to an extent, and for a while, nobody really knows what high Walmart prices will do to Walmart’s customer base.

Or, consequently, to Walmart’s supply chain, which is the whole point of the tariffs.

These numbers they’re throwing around, though, don’t look much like the advertised catastrophe. We’ll have to see how it goes.

But it’s not like you really want to take CNN seriously — on this topic or any other.

4. The Pfizer Election Manipulation We Already Knew Existed Is Now Pretty Much Proven

It was obvious at the time that Pfizer held the rollout of their COVID vaccine until after the 2020 election, though that was denied as absurd.

Just as obvious was the reason why: while then-President Donald Trump had made Pfizer and a few of the other drug companies filthy rich by throwing government money at the development of those ultimately-useless vaccines, Trump wasn’t going to force anybody to take Pfizer’s jab.

Unlike Joe Biden, who was happy to ruin millions of lives in doing so.

No sooner was the election over than Pfizer triumphantly announced they had the vaxx ready to roll. Now we know that wasn’t a coincidence, as though we didn’t already know it…

HUGE

New Information Suggests Senior Pfizer Executives Conspired to Delay COVID-19 Vaccine Clinical Testing to Influence 2020 Election.

One exec was so scared about this being investigated that he asked to be relocated to Canada!

MASSIVE SCANDAL uncovered by @Jim_Jordan. pic.twitter.com/pZKLAz1Wmx

— House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) May 15, 2025

No, it’s exceptionally unlikely anybody goes to jail over this. But I talked about Trump’s drug-price cramdown in Tuesday’s column, and in light of this, it’s pretty hard to give a fig about any complaints these guys might have over getting stomped by the federal government. (RELATED: Trump’s Drug-Price EO Should Have Happened Decades Ago)

Mess with the bull, you get the horns, fellas.

We’ll see how many Pharma Pets in the Senate, like Bill Cassidy, for example, wet their pants over the choice between sticking with Trump or following the Pharma path for the rest of the year when the budget and other bills come through.

5. The House’s Sweet Summer Child

She has a name which sounds like it should come from an old 1960s hippie folk song, but that’s not who Summer Lee, Democrat from Pennsylvania, is at all.

Not much peace or love with this nasty woman…

REPARATIONS: Democrat Rep Summer Lee opposed allowing white refugees to resettle in the United States and now she’s introducing a bill that would require white taxpayers to pay black citizens trillions of dollars as reparations. Are you feeling generous? pic.twitter.com/DseHo1Rmyu

— @amuse (@amuse) May 14, 2025

This isn’t going anywhere, obviously, but it’s glorious nonetheless. It’s one more spark to that racial powderkeg the Dems are irresponsibly playing around with, and that’s inherently dangerous except for the fact that even black people in America are dog-tired of all the racial crap the Democrats won’t leave alone.

Pimping a reparations bill in 2025 is the absolute height of “out of touch.” 2025 isn’t 2020. You have no George Floyd, Summer — you have Karmelo Anthony. And nobody is interested.

Between this idiocy and the likely ongoing conniption fit the race-hustlers in the Democrats’ political class are going to have over white South African asylees coming off planes, they’re going to cement the public’s perception that they’re the anti-white party. (RELATED: The Plight of the Afrikaners Is a Clarifying Moment for Western Civilization)

Or, put the way Thomas Sowell put it years ago, they’re not interested in putting an end to racism but rather in putting it under new management.

Which they’ve done. And everybody’s sick of it.

So good luck with your bill, Summer. And thank your crack political consultants for their rock-solid advice in making this your brand right now.

READ MORE from Scott McKay:

The Plight of the Afrikaners Is a Clarifying Moment for Western Civilization

Trump’s Drug-Price EO Should Have Happened Decades Ago

Five Quick Things: Habemas Trumpam?

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