Tag Archives: political parties

Too Early to Say

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…but I’m gonna say, anyway.

Much is being made of Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate and Senator Bernie Sanders’ (I, VT) so-called victory in the just concluded New Hampshire primary and the momentum he’s supposedly gained with that, coming as it does on the heels of his “near victory” in what the Iowa Democratic Party has been pleased to call a caucus earlier in the month.

[T]he campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders (I, VT) goes from strength to strength, drawing massive crowds and recording top-two finishes in the early-state contests.

I don’t agree. Sanders has gone from maybe-strength to should-have-had-strength, from a narrow “loss” in the Iowa fiasco (quotes of substitution because the Iowa thing almost doesn’t count) to very badly underperforming in New Hampshire, where he should have won by an order of magnitude larger margin than his narrow, nominal plurality victory.

Sanders is far from a loser, but if Buttigieg and Klobuchar can maintain, and especially if Warren, Biden, and/or Steyer can hang in, and/or if Michael Bloomberg’s buying strategy shows strength, the Progressive-Democrats may well go to a brokered convention.

There’s more.

If Sanders doesn’t come out of that convention with a first-ballot nomination, the hue and cry will be louder than it was in 2016, and many of his supporters may well sit out the general election again. If he doesn’t get the nomination after the first ballot, when Party elites get to vote—the brokering part having begun—the cries of foul will be deafening, likely justified, and Sanders’ supporters can be expected to sit out the general election en masse.

The uproar will be especially loud and Party internecine warfare will ensue in the unlikely, but far from not gonna happen, event Michael Bloomberg gets the brokered nomination. His economic views are virtually diametrically opposed to Sanders’, and Bloomberg will be unable to escape the charge—accurate or not—that he simply bought the brokerage.

It won’t only be Sanders’ supporters who sit out. Or defect.

And the move, from that civil war, to split away from Party and to form a third party will gain strength.

Leave alone, Jobs, Respect

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Ex-Chicago Mayor and ex-President Barack Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel (D) cried out in a Wall Street Journal op-ed earlier this month that Progressive-Democrats are “blowing their chance,” the central theme of which was that the current crop of Progressive-Democrat Presidential candidates seemed to be running against ex-Progressive-Democrat Presidents Bill Clinton and Obama, rather than the current President, Donald Trump.

A Letter to the Editor writer in Friday’s WSJ took issue with Emanuel’s piece; this part in particular drew my attention.

Donald Trump is on the edge of doing more for black Americans than Mr Emanuel’s party has done for decades. He’s leaving them alone, giving them jobs, showing them respect.

I agree with the letter writer (RTWT), but I do have one small correction here. Giving minorities things is what Progressive-Democrats—like Emanuel—do, in order to keep those minorities trapped in the Progressive-Democrats’ welfare cage. Trump is creating opportunity and helping black Americans—all minorities—get second chances after sometimes serious mistakes, find their own jobs, be able to make their own way.

And you bet Trump is otherwise leaving them alone. This is wholly unlike the Left, even more generally than its Party, which hektors, when not outright smearing, blacks for not adhering to Party, not voting correctly, and thereby being good blacks.

Opportunity, actual help rather than giving things, no soft bigotry of low expectations—that’s true respect.

There was this, also, from Emanuel in his missive:

The next nine months will present our raucous coalition a rare opportunity to establish a new Democratic “metropolitan majority” that could last for years.

This is very illuminating. It makes explicit the Progressive-Democrats’ utter contempt for tens of millions of Americans—those of us citizens who live in flyover country.

Upset

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Republicans have run a video montage that pairs House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D, CA) SOTU speech rip-up with individual quotes from President Donald Trump’s speech.  The Progressive-Democrats have their panties thoroughly twisted over that. Here’s the offending video.

Here’s Drew Hammill, Pelosi’s Deputy Chief of Staff with a canonical example of the angst:

The latest fake video of Speaker Pelosi is deliberately designed to mislead and lie to the American people, and every day that these platforms refuse to take it down is another reminder that they care more about their shareholders’ interests than the public’s interests[.]

“These platforms” are Twitter and Facebook, where the ridicule is posted.

With this plaint—and these folks really are serious—Progressive-Democrats once again display their utter contempt for average Americans. With this Pelosi speech-tearing video, they’re saying average Americans are just too grindingly stupid to recognize satire, ridicule, campaign rhetoric when we see it.

These are the thin-skinned ones, or the So-Much-Smarter ones, who want to run our nation. These are the easily triggered ones who want to face Vladimir Putin, Ali Khamenei, Kim Jong-Un, Xi Jinping.  Emmanuel Macron, Boris Johnson.

Wow.

A Party Platform

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Kimberly Strassel had an interesting column (when has she ever not?) in her Thursday Wall Street Journal, centered on the divisions within the Progressive-Democratic Party. What especially drew my attention, though, was the question with which she closed her piece.

Does the common Democratic desire to beat Mr Trump overcome all that [all those venues of division]?

The very existence of the question illuminates another Progressive-Democratic Party problem: it has no serious policy on which to run (another attempt to take over the private economy—Medicare for All? Really?); all it has is a platform of “Beat Trump.” Shouting about beating an opponent rather than proposing new, restorative policies or touting existing, successful policies is, I suggest, no path to gaining a position from which to expand on existing, successful policies or enact new, restorative policies.

And: what will Party do for an encore in 2024?

The Snub

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Much is being made (still!) about President Donald Trump’s seeming snub of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D, CA) offered handshake as Trump handed up copies of his SOTU speech to the Vice President of the United States/President of the Senate Mike Pence and to Pelosi. Ample video shows Pelosi accepting the copy of his speech with her right hand, then switching hands in order to offer her right hand to shake and Trump turning away to begin his speech without taking the handshake.

There are three possibilities for this.

One is that Trump did, indeed, snub Pelosi.

Another is that Pence did not offer his hand, which the videos also clearly show, and Trump was not looking for or expecting any offered handshake.

Another is that Trump was only handing up the copies and, as the videos show, was turning back to his podium to begin his speech when Pelosi offered her hand: whether mentally focused on the beginning of his speech or merely insufficiently observant, he didn’t see the hand, just as he didn’t see the hand not offered by Pence.

Which possibility an observer focuses on—especially to the exclusion of the others—says volumes about the observer, and it says not a syllable about the event itself.