It appears that the Democrats — like the dinosaurs of the Jurassic Period – have wandered into the political version of the La Brea Tar Pits. Having stepped into the black muck on several issues, they are stuck. They cannot escape, and their very attempts to do so only draws them down deeper.
The three pits that the Democratic Party has stumbled into are impeachment, automatic believability for women and every-thing-for-everybody socialism.
Most American are not keen on the impeachment of a President – any President. When Democrat leaders like Maxine Waters add both Vice President Pence and now Justice Brett Kavanaugh, it starts to look like a coup to topple the government and nullify the election. If crazy Maxine was alone in rattling the impeachment saber, it would not mean much. But she has been joined by other Democrats in Congress. Even the generally cautious and hugely ambitious New Jersey Senator Cory Booker says the door of impeachment should not be shut.
Those in the Party leadership with any residual sense of pragmaticism – speaking of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi — are horrified by the promises of impeachment should Democrats take the House of Representatives. They know that impeachment is not popular with the public and even the threat could turn voters away from the donkey party. But they are stuck.
President Trump and virtually every Republican candidate and office holder are more than happy to give the Waters & Co. impeachment plan as much exposure as possible. Democrats do not have a good or united response. There are not enough voices in what is left of the slightly more moderate Democrat establishment to silence those carrying the pitchforks. So, every time Schumer or Pelosi say “no, no, no,” the others scream “yes, yes, yes.”
Even if Schumer and Pelosi could prevent the impeachment effort, the public is getting more and more convinced that the Democrats will, indeed, plunge the nation into constitutional and political chaos. As that belief spreads, Republican polling numbers improve.
In the second issue, Democrats lay claim to the women’s vote. They have been doing that for decades without much justification when you look at election results. They operate under a misconception that all women issues are defined by a monolithic embrace of the liberal feminist platform.
The Democrats’ problem can be seen in the #MeToo Movement. It started out as an important social movement to embolden women to come out of the shadow of sexual oppression to tell their stories for both emotional relief and even justice in the criminal courts. Unfortunately, the Movement was hijacked by the feminist extremist. The slogan could well have been “justice for the victims of abuse” – meaning applying the rule-of–law where possible.
But that was not good enough for the man-hating wing of the radical feminist movement. Now it is enforceable believability of each and every accusation. The demanded that women be believed … period. No rule-of-law, no due process, no presumption of innocence until proven guilty, no requirement for corroboration or evidence and no consideration of false testimony. A man is to be determined to be guilty solely on the word of a woman.
That is unacceptable – and not only to men. We have seen more and more women express concerns for their sons, brothers, fathers and husbands under such a system. They understand the inherent wrongness in such a concept. The idea that believing makes it so may have worked for Peter Pan, but in the real world it brought us the Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials, vigilante justice and the reign of terror by Ku Klux Klan in the old solid Democrat southland.
Like the impeachment issue, Democrats are divided on the accusation-is-proof issue – a division between the rational and the rabble. The latter demand unanimous acceptance of accusation by all women – and no few men. Women who hold out for the rule-of-law – as did Main Senator Susan Collins – are deemed to be “gender traitors.”
The Democratic Party is conflicted on this issue. They are stuck. If moderates call for common sense and the rule-of-law, they fear the radicals bolt – stay home on election day or vote third party. If the moderates allow the radicals to push the accusation-is-proof concept, the entire Party loses.
Finally, there is the issue of socialism. For the Democratic Party, avowed socialist Bernie Sanders has been the political equivalent of Typhoid Mary – spreading the virus throughout the Party. Even though he does not consider himself a Democrat, the Party gave him aid and comfort in return for his fraction of a faction being added to the Democrat base. Democrats made the mistake of allowing the failed policies of socialism to mutate the Party’s genetics like one of those scientists in those iconic horror movies.
America remains a right-of-center nation. Sander’s arcane and anachronistic political language is a relic of different times and different places. The concept of everything for everybody has been the malignant promise of authoritarians throughout history.
Socialism creates anticipations that can never be met. Radicals like Alexandra Ocasia-Cortez can stump for free education, free medical care, high minimum wages and any other snake oil proposals that can be sold to the gullible, but she cannot explain where the $40 trillion will come from to enact those programs. Socialism will do for America what it did for Maoist China, Stalinist Russia, Castro Cuba, Kim North Korea and everywhere else it has been imposed.
In many ways, these three issues have come to define the increasingly left-leaning Democratic Party. We can only hope that the historic good judgment of the American people will again manifest itself.
