A famous Democrat once declared, “All we have to fear is fear itself.” These days, fear is all Democrats have to sell.

And that’s true in more than one sense from Democrats in this cycle. A reporter challenged Raphael Warnock to address the biggest issue that matters to voters in this cycle, a subject that Democrats from the White House down keep avoiding. Rather than speak to inflation, Warnock attempted to deflect from the subject by blaming it on COVID-19 rather than the idiotic and unneeded stimulus passed by Joe Biden and Warnock in March 2021, along with other failed economic policies.

As part of that deflection, Warnock insisted that the pandemic is still upon us — which may be news to most voters in Georgia:

Reporter: “Democrats have been in control of the White House, the Congress for the past 2 years. Inflation has soared. Why should Georgia voters give you another chance?”

Raphael Warnock: *long pause* “We are still in the throes of a pandemic” pic.twitter.com/rs4JlUWwZL

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) October 17, 2022

Which “throes” might that be? The “throes” of low case rates and non-existent causative hospital admissions and deaths? The throes in which government-promoted vaccines are instantly available everywhere and therapeutics accessible to almost the same degree? Warnock’s pitching a perpetual emergency as an excuse for power that may yet be the most explicit such call in this election cycle. (Adam Baldwin and I discuss that dynamic in our latest VIP episode of The Amiable Skeptics, too.)

FreedomWorks’ Stephen Moore shows why Warnock and other Democrats keep deflecting from inflation to fear:

Joe Biden is the Inflation King.

Pass it on. pic.twitter.com/rhDjz66CE5

— Stephen Moore (@StephenMoore) October 17, 2022

Warnock has other subjects from which he needs to deflect as well. The Free Beacon followed up on Warnock’s portfolio yesterday and discovered that the right reverend and his church are also supreme slumlords:

A low-income apartment building owned by Raphael Warnock’s church is plagued by pests, maintenance problems, and filth, according to residents—and at least two people have sued the building this year after the elevator allegedly collapsed on them.

Residents of the Columbia Tower at MLK Village complained about living conditions in the building, telling the Washington Free Beacon that garbage is left to pile up in the storage rooms for days, creating an “overwhelming trash smell,” common areas aren’t maintained, and the air vents produce a “sickening” amount of dust.

Tenants also said the elevators often break down, and handicapped residents have had to call the fire department to carry them to their rooms.

The allegations follow a Free Beacon report that found Columbia Tower had attempted to evict at least eight low-income residents over unpaid rent since the start of the pandemic—including one tenant who owed just $28. Warnock serves as senior pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church, which, through a charity it controls called the Ebenezer Building Foundation, owns 99 percent of Columbia Tower, according to records obtained by the Free Beacon.

These tenants are in the throes of something, but it ain’t the pandemic.

More broadly, however, Warnock is only copying Democrats’ strategy across the country. They don’t have an answer for inflation, or for that matter crime either, the spikes in both their policies created and aggravated. Instead, Democrats have turned to fear as a campaign message — fear of Donald Trump, fear of alleged racists, fear of the pandemic, and fear of abortion restrictions. If they got a boost from it at all, it has long since dissipated, as recent and more accurate polling shows.

To ironically paraphrase FDR, the only thing Democrats don’t fear to sell is fear itself. Fear, however, turns out to sell rather poorly, especially when voters know precisely what Democrats fear is their own record, the outcome of their own policies, and accountability from voters for all of it.

Update: The Free Beacon updated its scoop on the evictions that are taking place at Columbia Tower, which Warnock “emphatically denied” during the debate. That turns out to be an outright lie:

Georgia Democratic senator Raphael Warnock forcefully denied the charge that his church is trying to evict chronically homeless tenants, telling Georgia voters on Friday that those are “false charges” and an attempt to “sully Ebenezer Baptist Church.” But just two days earlier, the apartment complex owned by his church filed eviction proceedings against three additional residents, with the goal of ousting tenants who owed as little as $115 in past-due rent. …

The latest evictions involved tenants who were just days late paying their October rent, and owed as little as $115, according to Fulton County Magistrate Court records filed by Columbia Tower.

The records conflict with Warnock’s statements over the past week denying that Columbia Tower—which is 99-percent-owned by the Ebenezer Baptist Church, where he serves as senior pastor—has tried to oust anyone. Fulton County marshals carried out two court-ordered evictions on residents at the property, one in August 2020 and the other in February 2022.

“There have been no evictions, full stop,” Warnock said when asked about the Free Beacon report during a debate on Sunday. Warnock claimed the news was “one more example of Herschel Walker and his allies lying” and “trying to sully the name of Dr. King’s church, John Lewis’s church, for short term-political gain.”

Quick — throw out more “throes”!