What is Happening to the Democrat Party?
By Robert B. Charles February 14, 2019
The Democrat party seems troubled. When negotiating a curve at high speed, too tight a turn can shake up passengers, test the integrity of the carrying vehicle, and deliver everything into the pucker brush. Arguably, this is where the national Democratic Party is headed, if they don’t slow down, start thinking about where their public positions are leading, and reorient.
Take top issues – and unpack them. They do not align with seniors or average Americans. The question behind the question: What are national Democrats thinking? Why break-neck speed into 2020’s turn?
- Two Democrat Governors (New York and Virginia) have advocated late-term and at-birth abortion (in Virginia, outright killing of a child after birth, so long as the infant is “made comfortable”). The bill became law in New York and remains under serious discussion in Virginia. How can there be no national Democrat opposition to such a horrifying, unconscionable, and immoral act?
Across American history, in most countries of the world, in the conscience of most Americans, this is murder. Yet the liberal media buried the issue – diverting to other unseemly acts. Where is the American media on this? The notion that we would, as a nation, condone this is chilling.
- Congressional Democrats proposed a “Green New Deal,” that swiftly ends reliance on fossil fuels (of which the United States is the world’s top producer), seeks federal control of America’s energy sector (since they have done so well with health care), mandates to retrofit all buildings, ends modern agriculture, transportation, security, and capitalist norms such as pay for work (i.e. paying those “unwilling to work”), terminates air travel, and proposes other unworkable, nonsensical federal dictates. Where are national Democrat leaders? Where is the media?
While led by New York Democrat member of Congress Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who has given herself the nom de guerre “AOC,” ala “FDR, JFK, MLK, in her personal war with traditional American values, she was oddly joined by a flood of Democrats. Really?
On closer examination, the bill looks like rewarmed Soviet doctrine, a bold socialist agenda that tips toward totalitarian control over production, forced redistribution of wealth, centralized decision-making, the antithesis of limited government, individual rights, state sovereignty, and private property control. The text gives a shiver. Where are Democrat voices of reason?
- Democrats in Congress push openly “Medicare for All” to end private and employer-covered health insurance for 150 million Americans – ala Bernie Sanders. Like the Green Deal, no price tag – or source of funding. The unmasked plan is simple: Usurp the private sector, states and individual rights and transfer control to the federal government. Soaking an invisible class of taxpayers (read: middle class) for unaccountable, unmanageable, and highly wasteful single -payer-system. Breathtaking is one word for this audacity. Ignorance – of history and economics – is another.
- Next, a raft of Democrat presidential nominees are diving to the left, each trying to out-radical their next-up-radical Democrat competitor, with one advancing legalizing marijuana nationally to “spread joy” (despite skyrocketing addiction and treatment costs, drugged driving and crime), another seeking to stop “white privilege” (while a colleague rescinds her “Native American” status), another wanting to take over the banking sector (despite a flying US economy), all advancing “open borders,” opposing border walls, arguing for “sanctuary cities,” ending ICE and DEA, none offering anything on the economy except higher taxes, more regulation and greater federal spending. Quiets one to silence.
- Last, one is stunned by the pivot away from these issues in the media, except to offer gloss – toward distraction of scandals. But even here, the Democratic Party seems to be stumbling. When the US Senate revealed this week that they have found no evidence of Trump Campaign collusion with Russia, media and Democrats argued the point.
Then, in Virginia, a sitting Democrat Governor is found to have been active in multiple “blackface” events confirmed by a graduate “yearbook,” side by side wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood. To be clear, the KKK killed people; they are not a joke. Yet media ignored that and turned to the “blackface,” not the clansman. On both, the Democrat governor gets a pass? Why?
Then add the Virginia Lieutenant Governor, credibly accused by two separate women of recent sexual assaults, rape and forced sodomy. The Democrat party allows the man to keep his job? Add a third high-ranking Democrat, the sitting Virginia Attorney General – a man commissioned by the people to enforce anti-discrimination laws – and he also confesses to wearing racial costumes that parody black Americans. Still the majority of Democrats are silent.
So, what is happening? The answer is simple: A national party is stumbling, moving far too fast to the radical left, losing any sense of self-awareness, alignment with seniors, average Americans, taxpayers and history – in a frantic, frenetic and ultimately self-destructive spasm of personal ambition, every member for themselves, no matter how absurd that posture looks to most of America.
They have convinced themselves that, despite the best economy in 50 years, lowest unemployment, strongest trade position and dollar, emphasis by President Trump on what Americans care about, from federal accountability and national security to rebalanced trade and the drug crisis, from individual liberty and free speech to free exercise of religion, they will win because they hate President Trump. Only they are again off track. Fully 76 percent of Americans liked President Trump’s State of the Union message, and the objective indicators are all favorable.
Maybe Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Schumer, radical pro-infanticide Democrats, pro-socialist voices, anti-liberty and failed accountability big spenders and limitless regulators should sit down and think about the future. They should think about what most Americans want, instead of careening around the corner into 2020 bullhorns blazing.
Most Americans appreciate “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” – not the opposite. That would be a fresh message, echoes from our past. The Democrat Party seems troubled. The question should be – as President Kennedy noted: What can you do for the country, not what can the country do for you. Simple, and time to remember.
