The floggings will continue until morale improves.

That’s the message we’re getting from the Left these days, and it’s all about the upcoming election. So utterly consumed are they with beating Donald Trump and returning to their “rightful” place of power, the Democrats and their Leftmedia bootlickers are committed to making you feel miserable. Really committed. And really miserable.

Until Tuesday, November 3, that is. By then, if all goes according to plan, enough of us will be ready to cry “uncle,” and ready to vote for a change.

Think about it: When was the last time you felt good about the news? Maybe one day back in early March, when the stock market was soaring, our nation was at full employment, and President Trump had just beaten back a bogus impeachment rap? Back then, our kids were still in school, Anthony Fauci was still encouraging us to go on cruises, and the greatest of our concerns was getting those brackets built out for March Madness.

Those were the days.

Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson focused on this very theme last Thursday. “Democrats,” he said, “understand that the unhappier Americans become, the more likely [Democrats] are to win. Unhappy people want change. It is not complicated. So every ominous headline about the state of the country makes it more likely that Donald Trump will lose his job. The more that people suffer, the greater Joe Biden’s advantage. Democrats have a strong incentive, therefore, to inflict as much pain as they can, and that’s what they’re doing.”

He’s right, of course; elections are about change. They’re about staying the course or getting off at the next exit. Carlson then delved into a measurable that isn’t much talked about with family and friends but is studied obsessively by polling geeks and campaign strategists: the right-track wrong-track number. This is a snapshot of both our satisfaction with the present and our optimism about the future.

If we were to convert that right-track wrong-track number into a single pithy question, it might sound something like this: Are you better off than you were four years ago?

When he posed that question to the American people in 1980, Ronald Reagan had a strong hand. President Jimmy Carter had appeared feckless and incompetent throughout his term. Our economy was weak, and so was our standing in the world. The answer to the Gipper’s question was clearly “No,” and he thus rode it to an electoral victory.

Were President Donald Trump to have asked that same question in March, the responses he’d have gotten would be far different than what he’s hearing today. Indeed, as Carlson noted, on March 3 more than 40% of the American people thought the country was headed in the right direction. Even after colleges began to send their students home, and pro sports leagues suspended their seasons, and malls and movie theaters locked their doors, that right-track wrong-track number stayed remarkably steady. And a number that high — especially under those conditions — spells almost certain reelection for a sitting president.

But then came the shutdown. Large public gatherings were forbidden, classrooms emptied, and bars, restaurants, gyms, hair salons, and churches were ordered closed. Unemployment soon soared, and people began to get miserable. Except in South Dakota and a handful of other flyover states, where folks still lived free. But the damage to most of the country had been done.

“Prescriptions for antidepressants rose 21% in a single month,” noted Carlson. “By the end of April, the right-track wrong-track number inverted. Just 22% of those polled believed the country was on the right track.”

Then came the wrongful death and weird martyrdom of a criminal named George Floyd. And the riots. And the meteoric rise of a Marxist pressure group called Black Lives Matter. And antifa. And the statue-toppling and the anti-Americanism. And the chaos, anarchy, and sorry excuses for governance in leftist enclaves like New York, Seattle, and Portland. And the cowardly shuttering of our schools.

Why, it’s enough to make a centrist or a suburban housewife hope for change. And yet there was President Trump on Friday, with 49% approval and 49% disapproval in the Rasmussen Daily Tracking Poll.

Between now and November, remember: Unrest is all they have.