The Democratic Party, in America, is in disarray. And is astoundingly weak.
But why?
Because Democrats lost their way, embracing oppositionalism, racism-baiting, and vulgar stupidity in place of the kind of power negotiations that made Tip O’Neill tops in the 1980s.
At the beginning of the Obama Administration, the Democrats had a chance at establishing a lock on the American polity. It is obvious that there are enough progressives to ride herd over the rest of America. But the progressives have one major problem: they are intellectually flaccid, morally depraved and clueless about how the world works.
The Democrats could have succeeded by doing one thing in 2009: embrace the Tea Party. But they couldn’t do that. Not because the Tea Party was saying anything inherently Democratic, but because Progressives need white, Flyover Country rubes to hate. And because they support ever-more government not because it is better for people, but because that trend-line conforms to their religious bigotries, their statism.
So the left waited a year or two and started their own, made-in-hell protest movement: Occupy X. And that quickly became so repellent (messy, hysterical, raping mobs “protesting” what they were not quite sure) that they lost face with normal people.
Concurrently with this, the Democrats pushed through an unpopular Jerry-rigged health care reform package — which in turn made life really hard for working folks. (Though it was a boon to non-working folks, and, perhaps, the very sick. It basically ruined my finances for two or three years. So I was not a happy camper.) Indeed, Obama backed it all the way, thereby pissing away much of his political capital.
Add to that fiasco Obama’s racial stance, with the Trayvon Martin case and others, where Obama exacerbated tense racial relations. He basically doubled down on the left’s moral preening about racism. To say that middle-class white Americans were not impressed would be to understate it.
What’s worse, Obama’s foreign policy appeared incoherent: the Libya fiasco, the proposed Syria coup, the rise of ISIS, and a continuing Afghanistan war sat on top of Obama’s ramping up of the drone strike policy — all followed by the Russia uranium deal (which people did not understand) and the Iran deal (which people understood even less). There was nothing really good on the foreign policy front. Obama got his Nobel Peace Prize upon election, and apparently decided that this undeserved honor gave him the green light to mess up the rest of his term in office.
Finally, the Democrats offered up for American consideration a self-satirizing socialist and a corrupt insider harpy . . . to take Obama’s place. And insiders in the corrupt party used chicanery to squelch the socialist. They all rallied around A Woman, and the left’s besetting reverse discrimination play became obvious for all to see. Nothing was kept close to the chest. The cards were on the table. The Queen of Spades was up to ride into the presidency and rule America — a second dynasty in our time was set to change everything by changing nothing.
Obama may very well have been elected “because he was black,” but enough Americans got squeamish about voting in a woman for no better reason than her “gender.”
And that was the final straw. Republicans, adrift since the Tea Party fizzled, flitted from one candidate to another, finally selecting the Mule, the weirdest candidate in American history, Donald Trump.
Because Democrats had so disgraced themselves, and because they went hysterical at the very idea of Trump, enough Americans voted for the outsider to send him to Washington, D.C.
Though going in I knew the election would be closer than Democrats were saying, I was nevertheless surprised that The Donald took the Electoral College.
I was pleased, of course, to see an obvious slimeball booted off stage. But I confess, Trump made me a bit nervous.
But there has been little time to worry, for the Democrats could not help themselves: they doubled down. The Resistance went into full protest mode. And the left disgraced Progressivism again. The left’s invective against the new president just wouldn’t let up. And seemed so unhinged.
And as if to prove every point I have ever made against partisanship, leftists accused the new president of nearly everything their side exhibited better:
- Ignorance
- Sexism
- Racism
- Vulgarity
- Corruption and self-dealing
The list could go on and on. Only with the petty “orange hair” crap could I see something that might not apply better to the Democrats themselves — though pussy-hats mimicked Trump’s hairdo’s color and risible nature. (This must have something to do with one’s head and the collective unconscious.)
Democrats could have played nice with Trump and got him to do all sorts of things they wanted. After all, the man had been a self-described Democrat for much of his adult life, a hobnobber with the Clintons and (I am told, if not necessarily reliably) a guest on the Epstein Rape Plane. But instead of cultivating Trump, their anti-Trump hysteria turned off even many #NeverTrumpers. Huge mistake, that. In the game of coup-stick insult and grudge-holding, Trump is the master. He knows how to use others’ vices for his benefit.
Now Trump has made some sort of deal with North Korea. This is obviously good from a Democratic point of view — accept that it was not a Democrat who did it. So Trump is riding high and the Democrats look like losers.
Still, after all this, the Trump win remains a bit strange, no matter how bad a candidate Hillary Clinton was. Perhaps the election was fixed — not by Russians or Julian Assange, but by time travelers from the future. The devastation of a Hillary Clinton presidency was just so much that they broke protocols and “fixed” history.
Anything being better than Hillary. Even post-human Americans can understand that.
We live in interesting times.
twv
The day neoliberals embraced neoconservatism.
Wirkman Comment 