Sunday, September 15, 2019
On Shooting Oneself In The Foot
I'll go out on a limb here and make a wild prediction: that Trump will win re-election in 2020 (unless someone shoots him first, in which case we'll get Pence -- oh, joy), and that the wiser heads among the Democratic National Committee know it.
No, really! Back in my wild and woolly youth I did a lot of grassroots political work -- in Michigan and Chicago, where I also worked for minor but well-run newspapers. One thing I learned was that when a political party is facing an election, when it knows it's going to lose, it will put up at least one candidate who's severely "ideological" -- i.e. flogs the party's wildest and most extreme policies. Why? In order to win the loyalty of the new young voters -- preferably voting for their first time: the idealistic, politically inexperienced and naive youngsters, the kids who really believe they can change the whole world with one vote if they can just turn out enough voters. Offering the kids their political dream is a good way to win their loyalty for the next 20 years, hopefully. It doesn't matter if the candidate is too far out to possibly win the election; the party was going to lose it anyway. This is why the Republicans put up Barry Goldwater in 1964. Check your history.
This would also explain, as nothing else can, the DNC and its media-flacks frantically hyping members, policies, and candidates that are totally unelectable -- while doing its best to shoot down its one really electable candidate. Over the past year we've seen the usual Democrat crew fawning over grotesque Jew-haters like Tlaib, Omar and Sarsour, with no sense of how these characters annoy and actually worry the majority of American voters. We've also seen them trying to rehabilitate "Socialism" by selling it to high school students who have little to no idea what the term means, but just might be eligible to vote in 2020, much to the dismay of their parents. And then there's the amazing circus of the Democratic candidate debates, which have spurred the candidates to astonishing feats of public idiocy. Swalwell took himself out of the race early by promising to ban all civilian firearms and send the police from house to house confiscating them. And then no less than Robert O'Rourke (who's 100% Irish-American but took the nickname "Beto" in order to snuggle up to the Latino voters, who would have to be prize idiots to trust him) not only boasted of loving the same policy but proved himself outrageously ignorant about firearms by claiming that the AR-15 was a "weapon of war" and the AK-47 could be easily bought by civilians anywhere in the US. And then, at the last debate, the other candidates turned on Joe Biden, of all people, and accused him of being too old and senile to take the job of president; this will not sit well with the older Democrat voters. If this was intended to funnel Democrat voters into going for Warren and Harris, both nicely liberal women (as Hillary was supposed to have been), it's too little and too late; smart Republicans have already dug up political and financial dirt on both of them, and will doubtless find more. About the only selling-point the Democrats have left is hate-Trump-get-Trump-anything-but-Trump, a tune which the voters are growing bored with hearing.
So why are the Democrats so determinedly shooting themselves in the foot like this? If it isn't the losing-year sacrifice, what's the reason? They can't really believe that their way-out agenda actually appeals to to the majority of voters, can they? Do they think that their bloated media-campaign will make up for contrary information which voters can see for themselves? Or are they thinking ahead not to 2020 but 2024, hoping that by then they will have dutifully propagandized enough of the new young voters to bring in a Democrat landslide?
Or have they so thoroughly brainwashed themselves that they actually believe their own propaganda, and think that voters hate Trump and adore their people and policies as much as they themselves do? Such thundering stupidity is hard to believe, but stranger things have happened.
Still, going on the assumption that the average politically-active Democrat has at least average intelligence, I'll hold out for the ideological-sacrifice theory and a foreseen second term for Trump -- or maybe a term for Pence.
--Leslie <;)))><
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6 comments:
I can think of several reasons. One is that enough Democratic voters and large donors believe in, or at least are publicly committed to pretend to believe in, intersectionality and/or "social justice" that the party's leadership doesn't dare disavow crazies such as Beto or "the Squad".
A second reason might be simple fear. The SJW practice of using phone campaigns to get opponents fired from jobs and blacklisted from forums for made-up or nonsense offenses has become accepted in the mainstream left, and lately has been turned against fellow lefties who dare to argue with the stupider parts of the narrative (most recently Tulsi Gabbard, banned from the debates while still polling third).
All this makes me think of the French Reign of Terror. And it may even go as far as the guillotine.
This is why the vast mainstream of moderate voters will stick with Trump. The Democrats are all not only nuts but scary, and they're determined to stay that way.
I don't think the Democrats are trying to lose. They're frantically trying to find something, anything that will rid them of Trump, because they know that if Trump wins, they can kiss the judiciary good-bye for a good long time. A lot of their triumphs were gained, not through persuading majorities of the voters, but by running crying to the courts (gay marriage is an example. AFAIK every time it's been put to the voters, it's been shot down in flames.)
If Ruth Bader Ginsberg dies or can't go on on the Supreme Court, and Trump is still POTUS, the ensuing shrieking over who will replace her will make the Kavanaugh mess look like a model of civility and decorum. It won't matter who Trump puts up. The Left will scream bloody blue murder that this person's presence on the Supreme Court will land us straight into The Handmaid's Tale or "If This Goes On---". They can't see that the Nehemiah Scudder crowd is no longer as ascendant in the GOP as it once was. They've stupidly made abortion-on-demand, up to the very moment of birth, the hill they are going to damn well stand and die on. And they think that the second conservatives have a clear majority on the Supreme Court, Roe vs. Wade is as dead as Plessy vs. Ferguson. (I know you hate him with the hatred of a million white-hot suns, but I think you'll agree that Richard Nixon knew where his towel was on American politics. I was reading a book about him in his later years, and he was quoted as saying that if abortion wasn't banned under Reagan, it wasn't going to be banned.)
Hi, JD. I'd guess you're right about the Dems riding a tiger that now they can't get off. Probably nothing will shut down their hysteria except Trump/Pence winning that second term. Even if they manage to impeach Trump, which is by no means a done deal, they'll then have Pence to deal with, and the gods only know how hysterical they'll become then.
Hi, Nomad. If the Dems are doing all this to get rid of "conservative" judges, then they're already too late. Trump has already appointed over 150 federal judges aside from the SCOTUS. Also, they're dragging up another accuser against Kavanaugh who's already been discredited. If their hysteria gets any worse, they'll be losing elections massively all over the country. The fools should shut up and just pray that Ginsburg stays healthy.
They also don't seem to have noticed that every time gun control has come up for public vote, it's been shot down in flames -- and never mind how much they trust their anti-gun media campaigns to persuade the voters.
The GOP has been dying slowly and steadily for the last 20 years, but the Dems seem determined to shoot themselves down in flames. My hope is that the Libertarian Party can collect enough votes or signatures to stay on the ballot for 2020.
As for Goldwater---barring a miracle, the GOP was not going to win in 1964. Not after Dallas. The American people were not up for three presidents in seventeen months. That said, AuH2O would have been a better POTUS than LBJ.
Hi, Nomad. Yes, precisely; the GOP knew that there was no way in hell it could win in 1964, so it put up the "ideological" candidate. It's a pity he couldn't have won. He would have made a far better president than not only LBJ but the next four presidents after him, at least.
I don't quite have the same hope there. Second verse same as the first as long as we've got the secret party infecting any of the actual parties with its anti-american propaganda and policies.
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