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The Democrats Need a Bigger Boat
Pollsters want to know: is America ready for a gay president? Personally, I’m not even ready for the New Deal, so what do I know? I do know that one can no longer marvel in polite company that a dude is married to another dude. Like you, I’ve been informed that Buttigieg’s marriage doesn’t impact my marriage so long as I submit to baking the cake, as it were.
Then again, what is left to marvel at in this primary, other than the fact that Bernie Sanders is not, apparently, donning a sandwich board and channeling Lyndon Larouche? Take the issue of gender. (Please!) The candidates in this race were literally beyond parody even before Warren felt compelled to say that “trans,” “nonconforming,” and “non-binary” women of color are the “backbone” of American democracy. Such posturing is actually funny in Biden owing to his “yeah, whatever” cynicism regarding all things woke. The former Vice President will one moment be praising women for being the only ones who know the pain of childbirth and the next minute acknowledging that yes, men can get pregnant, too.
Meanwhile, in the eleventh ring of the ten-ring circus that is the Democratic primary, the party’s establishment has recruited something called Deval Patrick. Get excited, America! Granted, Patrick doesn’t have the energized and broad-based support of, say, Lincoln Chaffee, but still. Clearly the party elders are concerned that Biden can’t close the deal against Trump and that the party needs a centrist candidate who can also win over African Americans. The establishment’s aim is clearly akin to that of Conservative, Inc.’s desire in 2016 for a Latinx savior to win over Hispanics while putting a nice sheen on amnesty (Marco Rubio). In that sense, the Democratic establishment’s reading of the American pulse is no better than that of their counterparts in the GOP in their 2016 primary.
The hope is that Patrick’s status as a centrist former governor of Massachusetts with ties to Bain Capital will work better for him than it did for Mitt Romney. (Now that I think of it, maybe what America thirsts for is a Romney-Patrick ticket. It certainly wouldn’t hurt to pick up an endorsement from Evan McMullin.) Is there reason to believe, though, that Patrick will stay a centrist instead of being dazzled by the bauble of Sanders’ socialism à la Booker, Harris, and the now-deposed (heh) Beto? Or will he begin claiming that he was fired from Bain for being visibly pregnant?
Then, of course, there’s the aspiring Nanny-in-Chief Michael Bloomberg, who’s convinced that what the field lacks is another white septuagenarian frontrunner. Americans are sick of Trump, so the thinking goes, and want to replace him with a different Manhattan billionaire who’s changed his party affiliation a dozen times. The media mogul has already apologized for the stop-and-frisk policy he instituted as mayor of New York and will no doubt soon attribute his history of demeaning comments about women on climate change.
Meanwhile, the party’s Impeachment Lite™ train continues to roll on. Among the more entertaining aspects of this otherwise nonentity is how we are to pretend that Chair of the Intelligence Committee Adam Schiff is the only person in America who doesn’t know the identity of the so-called whistleblower.
If you haven’t been watching – and let’s face it, who has? – let me bring you up to speed: as with collusion and obstruction, quid pro quo is out. What’s in? Bribery. That’s right, bribery is the narrative of the day, at least until the Democrats’ focus group settles on the only thing Americans of both political parties really believe: that Epstein didn’t kill himself.
Published in Elections
James Buchanan?
Even one of Rob’s LongView slices of parody cannot touch the enfolding reality of the moment.
We seem to be skipping one of Marx’s historical steps and proceeding directly to farce.
It’s technology. It has sped up the cycles of everything. Direct to video? Passé. Direct to farce? It’s the new thing.
That was a fun read. Thanks.
I am so old I can remember a time when Harold Stassen was the only true joke candidate in the field–in retrospect, he had a lot of gravitas compared to the free health-care-and-college-for-trans-illegal-aliens freakshow underway.
Mayor Pete’s spouse stated in an interview that he can’t wait to be the first male to pick out china patterns for the White House. I freely admit that I am not ready for that. If the Democrats want to recoup the blue-collar guys who defected to Trump I strongly suspect this could be a problematic nomination choice.
If you are a Democrat you are supposed to go along with a lot of questionable policies:
*Men in dresses going to the women’s bathroom.
*Men competing as women in sports where strength and size are big advantages.
*Patronizing the delusions of certain mentally ill people in the law.
*Getting Christians who believe that the homosexual lifestyle is sinful fired or marginalized.
*Spending taxpayer money to pay for the health care of illegal aliens.
*Doing nothing to protect citizens’ jobs from being taken by illegal aliens.
*Calling for the closing of ICE.
*Supporting abortion on demand right up to and even after birth.
*Giving the heartland no say in how the country is run, but giving all the power to a few big population centers on the coasts.
*Stripping everyone of their private health insurance.
I don’t see how many in the democratic coalition can go along with this stuff.
My answer? Yes, but who cares? I would vote for a gay Trump in a heartbeat, but not a gay Mayor Pete. It’s all about policies . . .
Kennedy was dead before I was born, so I cannot speak with authority here. Nevertheless, I don’t have the impression that he had much to say about being Catholic, did not try to sell his Catholicism as a particular bonus for the country in the form extra-special wisdom, a prejudice overcome, a moment of healing, or a condition that would make him more appealing to other world leaders. Nor did he feel the need to lecture people on how Catholics have fared historically in America.
This kind of behavior is what we should expect of any president regardless of how much his “group” has suffered or even continue to suffer. Because he – or she, or whatsoever else – is President of America as a whole, not a poster boy for an identity group.
I’ll pass on Pete; he is a liberal/Democrat and I am a conservative/Republican and I am inclined to vote for my own kind. If/when there is a conservative Republican homosexual in the running I will certainly not rule him out.
Bravo to Mayor Pete’s spouse – so few gay people are willing to reinforce clownish stereotypes these days.
You wonder how it is that many in the democratic coalition can go along with this stuff.
The answer might be that people who were part of the democratic coalition no longer are.
In Nov 2016, 10 percent of all AA men supported Trump. That figure is at 42 percent right now.
Then you have so many people who are fed up with being told that their micro aggressions mean they now need to sit at the back of the bus, until told otherwise, as their thoughts on things are offensive. And the offensive thought doesn’t even need to be a fully formed thought: it can be just one simple question.
In my case, I made the mistake of saying out loud: “I think Trump’s idea about investing in infrastructure is a good idea.”
How anyone who remembers the massive death toll after the bridge collapse in Minnesota could not think the nation has infrastructure needs, I don’t know. I really don’t.
But I was told that Trump intended for each and every job that his infrastructure program would create to be mandated to go to white people only.
And so I was given thirty seconds to reverse myself on my thinking and say, “Yes, Massa, I don’t wanna be called a White Supremacist, so please keep me in the Party and don’t send me to re-education camp.” After that interaction with the Party, my last one BTW, I became a devotee of Candace Owens. The only thing Owens might not understand is that it is not just black people the Party wants on the plantation. It is every one of us.
It just occurred to me when I read yr comment: so far, the only mud not slung at Trump is that he appears gay.
If Mayor Pete fails to win the White House this year, and Tech Billionaire Pete (Theil) were to somehow decide to run in 2024, my guess is the general media buzz and celebration of the possibility of the first openly gay president would be a lot, lot, lot lower (and you could say the same thing about Nikki Haley as the first woman or Ted Cruz as the first Latino). Diversity and historic firsts are only to be celebrated if the person in question is a liberal Democrat in good standing — Donna Brazile still gets media credit for being the first woman to run a losing presidential campaign, while the first woman to actually run a successful presidential campaign three years ago, eh, not so much.
Great summation of the Clown Car Candidacy, David! I don’t have anything to add. My comments could not possibly convey the idiocy that is unfolding.
Not with that hair, Madame!!!
I need to see a video of you reciting this while juggling unwieldy plastic bags, cinder blocks, and eggs.
Love her.
Listen to her recent podcast with Ben Carson.
Then go back and listen to earlier podcasts.
A British friend who had once lived in the US made the comment in 2016 that Americans wouldn’t vote for a female President. My response was that we’d vote for a Maggie Thatcher no problem, but to paraphrase Lloyd Benson, HRC was no Maggie.
Unfortunately Thiel is ineligible for the presidency as he was born in Germany…
That any of these people could actually win, or even carry some states shows just how far we’ve come. The hate for Trump is a little more understandable among highly partisan Democrats, he’s very different, tweets offensively, at times stupidly, and folks don’t know enough about the world, economies, or the US for that matter to grasp what seems to be going on, or they’re socialists or some other ignorant marxists without knowing it. The anti Trump media is obviously highly effective however and they could and would turn on any alternative with equal vitriol and Republicans would lose very strong Trump supporters. So whatever anyone feels about Trump, they must vote for Trump in hopes that at least some Democrats will return to sanity after a thorough defeat.
Too bad, But the general point still is true, and has been noted by many others in the past — Democrats love diversity of race, sex and gender identity, just so long as all those people are part of the same hive-mind of progressive thought. Anyone who thinks differently draws the wrath of the left at levels you normally have to be president to achieve, because they fear people like that might start siphoning off voters from their coalition.
Amazing that we have yet to reach an “emperor has no clothes” moment. Maybe we should elect this guy.
Compared to Hillary – better looking and a snappier dresser . . .
The only sex life (Never) conservatives care about is Trump’s. :-/
If they cared about their own, they might get one . . .
Thanks. I’ll make a point of listening to her and Ben Carson. Must have missed that one.
This post just hit Powerline! Nice job!
Some of us believe that the federal government shouldn’t be doing anything (education, welfare, housing programs, etc.) that can be handled by the states or the private market. The nation does have infrastructure needs, but that doesn’t mean that the federal government should pay for them. My belief is that the greater the distance between who is paying for something and who is getting that thing, the more waste there will be. For me, the silver lining to the war between Trump and the Democrats is that it keeps them from coming together to pass legislation like a trillion dollar infrastructure bill.
Couldn’t agree more!