7/23/19
The obvious problem of the Democratic Party has
been rehashed, diced, and sliced by commentators both friendly and hostile to
the Party in which most people in this country, Democrats, Republicans, and
independents, have their roots. This
difficulty is the Party’s apparent ongoing death wish. In this latest iteration, while yours truly
can’t say this with the conviction he could muster as recently as a few months
ago, it still seems that all the Dems have to do is nominate somebody
reasonably sane in 2020 and they win.
While the definition of “reasonably sane” is fluid as both Democrats and
Republicans consider the likes of Nancy Pelosi to
be of the Party’s reasonable, centrist wing, it is safe to name a few
names: Joe Biden, Amy Klobuchar,
Pete Buttigieg, John Delaney, Tim Ryan, maybe Kamala Harris. By nominating somebody who does not assume
that Americans’ distaste for Donald Trump translates into a sudden
enthusiasm for universal health care and the abolition of private health
insurance, wiping out student debt, free college, an incalculably expensive yet
scientifically questionable Green New Deal, the abolition, in any meaningful
sense, of U.S. borders, and the certainty that racism lies at the heart of
every problem in America, the Democrats can keep in their fold the moderates who
abandoned the GOP in droves in 2018 and thus set up shop on Pennsylvania
Avenue.
The Dems, on the other hand, seem to have other
ideas. Perhaps playing into a clever
Trumpian ploy, they have now rallied around the four members of “The Squad,”
whose antipathy toward their country is matched only by their ignorance of its
history and whom most Americans, perhaps especially the Americans the Dems are
trying to court for 2020, find either scary, mildly amusing, ideologically
repulsive, or a combination of the above. If Mr. Trump succeeds in keeping the focus on
these four misfits and those who support them, whoever gets the nomination will
be easily, and quite justifiably, labelled as a radical or a pusillanimous
popinjay afraid to confront the crazies of his or her party. Less importantly, of the “sane” candidates named
in the last paragraph, at this juncture only Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris
have a realistic chance at the nomination.
Plenty of people to their left remain viable, including Elizabeth Warren. If I were a betting man and were able to get
the right odds, I would place my money on Ms. Warren to get the nomination, but
I digress.
The problem with the Democratic Party is deeper, however,
than its insistence on catering to the crazies and thus insuring its own
demise. The Party’s problem can be encapsulated
in the comments of Bill Press, former chairman
of the California Democratic Party, as quoted in today’s Capital Journal
column in the Wall Street Journal by Gerald F. Seib. In order to get back the blue-collar vote,
Mr. Press prescribes telling them
“We’re the party that’s going to fight for you, the blue-collar workers that built this
country: Medicare for All, creating
thousands of new jobs by rebuilding our infrastructure, plus thousands of green
jobs in solar and wind energy, a living wage, lower cost of prescription drugs,
free community college, wipe out college loans, new affordable housing.” (sic)
While Mr. Press’s prescription looks like yet another
manifestation of the problems yours truly has outlined above, his utterances display
a deeper problem. Mr. Press, and those
who think like he does, think this laundry list of giveaways will appeal to
blue collar workers, defined in this context as “white without a college
degree,” because, one easily supposes, Mr. Press feels that the aforementioned
voters are simply incapable of seeing this bag of goodies as financially unaffordable,
scientifically questionable, societally destructive, and contingent on the
government’s assuming a vastly larger role in the conduct of the country’s
economy and its citizens. Another
underlying assumption behind appealing to such voters with handouts for which they
themselves will ultimately pay is that these voters are in desperate need of
governmental intervention, that the wise people in Washington, educated in our
country’s “finest” institutions of higher learning, have a duty to bring
enlightenment to the benighted masses so desperately in need of guidance from
their betters.
In short, Mr. Press and those who think like him
see the elusive “white, without a college degree” voter not as a fellow citizen
who can think and reason but, rather, as, at best, a case in sociology class
or, at worst, as some kind of zoo animal, a species best observed from a safe
distance but that, from that safe distance, can be understood with enough
careful study and managed with the right combination of sticks and
carrots. That this attitude prevails in
the modern Democratic Party is not the least bit surprising as its base, and
certainly its leadership, no longer lies in the ethnic neighborhoods of our great
cities but, rather, in the faculty lounges of Harvard, the studios of our
nation’s leading media outlets, and the salons of Georgetown. While I am referring to the Washington, D.C.
neighborhood in which it is located in that last reference, I could just as easily
be referring to the University of the same name, but, of course, I digress.
One more note…
Since yours truly referred to “The Squad” as misfits
who display antipathy toward their country and ignorance of its history and “The
Squad” is composed of, by the current popular definition, non-whites, I will
surely be accused of “racism.”
After all, the most effective and applicable definition of a racist is
one who is winning an argument with a liberal, making it very much akin to the 21st
century definition of a fascist.
However, those who will accuse me of racism for criticizing “The Squad”
fail to understand that criticizing somebody of a different race does not make
one a racist; criticizing somebody because s/he is of a different race
makes one a racist.
