“Obamacare will destroy our economy, take away our freedoms, and bring about Death Panels!” “Gays want to destroy your marriage and turn your kids into homosexuals!” “Al Qaeda is coming to kill us all!”

Republicans know that the way to win elections is through fear. Fear makes people react immediately, in a reflective way, without taking the time to analyze the situation. People who are afraid vote more than those who are not. This is a fact.   

With the help of their propaganda arm (a/k/a Fox News), they are continuing with this stragety — the problem is that the previous scare tactics aren’t working. Obamacare is doing just fine; gay marriage hasn’t hurt anyone; Al Qaeda is no longer a serious threat …

So they’ve come up with some new ones this year. “Ebola will spread and murder your family!” “Isis is coming to kill us all!” “Immigrant children coming over our border are infected with ebola and are actually terrorists, too!” (That last one always gets me. It’s really quite creative.)

The problem is with we Democrats. You see, we tend to try to appeal to the head instead of the heart (or maybe, as Colbert puts it, the “gut”). And that’s one of the reasons we don’t do as well at election time even though we outnumber the Republicans — our voters aren’t scared enough, and so they stay at home.

So I suggest a few Democratic scare tactics.

“A crazed conservative white guy with easy access to guns is going to kill you!”  (This is, of course, extremely more likely in America than your chance of being killed by a Muslim terrorist.)

“Bad guys want to control your personal life and tell you who you can marry!”  (Also true.)

“Big Brother police forces want to turn America into a police state!”  (A bit of an exaggeration but hey, not necessarily a lie.)

“Invasive and unnecessary medical procedures will cause you great pain for no legitimate purpose!”  (Yep, the GOP favors anything to discourage abortions no matter how needless.)

So help me out here.  Surely we can think of our own scare tactics.