The COVID-19 narrative is retracting, if not collapsing, on many fronts. But that doesn’t mean Democrats are ready to throw in the towel.
In fact, the responses gathered from the left in a new poll by Rasmussen Reports and the Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank, should give those on the right cause for concern.
Taken last week, on the day the U.S. Supreme Court rejected President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate, the poll found 48 percent of respondents favored the forced jabs.
The number was that high because of Democrats, 78 percent of whom supported Biden’s push for mandatory shots. Only 22 percent of Republicans agreed with them.
Yet that was only part of it.
As Rasmussen noted, “While many voters have become skeptical toward the federal government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, a majority of Democrats embrace restrictive policies, including punitive measures against those who haven’t gotten the COVID-19 vaccine.”
“Many Democrats would support even harsher measures [than the mandate], including fines for Americans who won’t get the COVID-19 vaccine and criminal punishment for vaccine critics.”
For instance, 55 percent of Democrats support a “proposal for federal or state governments to fine Americans who choose not to get a COVID-19 vaccine,” Rasmussen noted.
An even bigger share of Democrats, 59 percent, favor “a government policy requiring that citizens remain confined to their homes at all times, except for emergencies, if they refuse to get a COVID-19 vaccine.”
Almost half of Democrats – 48 percent – have given up on the First Amendment by thinking “federal and state governments should be able to fine or imprison individuals who publicly question the efficacy of the existing COVID-19 vaccines on social media, television, radio, or in online or digital publications.”
Similarly, 45 percent of Democrats like the idea of COVID camps, where governments could require citizens “to temporarily live in designated facilities or locations if they refuse to get a COVID-19 vaccine.”
Meanwhile, 47 percent of Democrats are fine with governments “using digital devices to track unvaccinated people to ensure that they are quarantined or socially distancing from others.”
Rasmussen also found that a sizable portion of Democrats – 29 percent – would support “temporarily removing parents’ custody of their children if parents refuse to take the COVID-19 vaccine.”
The pollster added, “President Biden’s strongest supporters are most likely to endorse the harshest punishments against those who won’t get the COVID-19 vaccine.”
The poll revealed that of those who have a “very favorable” opinion of Biden, 51 percent favor the government putting the unvaccinated in “designated facilities”; 54 percent support imposing fines or prison sentences on vaccine critics.
So, in sum, nearly half of Democrats, if not more in some cases, would support draconian, dictatorial measures to save them from a virus survived by 99 percent of the people who contract it.
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