Democrats Think Things Are Fine Yet Want to Change
Because Democrats are as Democrats do, it was inevitable that they would resort to type. What happened on the eve and the first day of their coronation confab for Hillary Clinton, then, is the socio-political definition of regression to the mean.
By now, no matter where you are on the political spectrum, you most likely have absorbed most of what is worth knowing about the Democratic National Committee’s active, vile and — spiritually, at minimum — criminal sabotaging of Bernie Sanders’ insurgent campaign during the Democratic primaries.
In prototypical response, Hillary, after denying knowing the first thing about the plot — Clinton never knows anything about anything; let’s make her president! — hired the its architect, the outlandish and disgraced Debbie Wasserman Schultz, as the “honorary” chairwoman of her campaign.
HRC’s message: Yeah, the party screwed you, and I just rescued its conniving overseer. What’s that? You don’t like my thumb in your eye? Bernie doesn’t seem to mind, so what’re you gonna do about it?
Obviously, Clintonites figure, like Zack Mayo in “An Officer and a Gentleman,” Bernie’s supporters “got nowhere else to go.” And they’re probably right. Which brings us to the second part of Democrats being Democrats.
Any notion that the addition of Sen. Tim Kaine would cause their ticket to drift alarmingly starboard was dashed Monday night once the speakers got going. Remember how last summer when, given multiple opportunities, DWS was unable to describe what separates Democrats from socialists? Yeah. There’s a reason for that.
There aren’t any.
Monday night’s primetime speakers and entertainment worked hard to convince Democrats still feeling the Bern that the only thing separating them was style. Everything Sanders campaigned on — free college tuition, higher minimum wage, expanding government health care, equal pay, Washington-directed energy and climate policies, legalizing illegal immigrants, compromising the First Amendment, expanding federal influence over the economy while sticking it, big time, to the top 1 percent — was what the nominee would champion. So cross that bridge Paul Simon gamely, if painfully, sang about.
Summoned to bat cleanup on Opening Night, Sanders, despite coming on late, banged out the full set of his greatest hits, punctuated by wild gestures and the lizard-like flicking of his tongue. But the authoritarian aria that was music to the ears of Democrats in Philadelphia merits panic among Americans who honor individual responsibility, personal charity and constitutional self-determinism.
Yes, despite Donald Trump’s theme, the United States remains a great country. The greatest on the planet, ever, because of its commitment to freedom, the promise — sometimes fractured, no doubt — that people can and should rise on effort, experience, talent, education and reliability.
Alas, to such greatness born from these timeless ideals Democrats pay only lip service. This, from First Lady Michelle Obama’s widely praise speech, is symptomatic:
“[D}on’t let anyone ever tell you that this country isn’t great — that somehow we need to make it great again — because this right now is the greatest country on Earth,” FLOTUS said.
If that’s true — and I vigorously concur with the woman who, famously, is only recently proud of her country — then why knock Trump’s campaign meme in one breath and call for revolution in the next? Sanders, in fact, promoted revolution seven times in his stemwinder but mentioned “freedom,” “liberty” and the Constitution not even once. (Hat tip, The Federalist’s indispensable David Harsanyi.)
Elizabeth Warren, bashing away at Trump (while being heckled by Bernsians for having betrayed their trust) was little better. To hear her shout it, unless we double the minimum wage, have taxpayers foot the bill for abortions, turn banks into utilities, return top income tax rates to pre-Reagan levels and start frogmarching any CEO who earns more than twice a the average employee, then we’re precisely one election away from being delivered to hell in a hand basket.
This isn’t the parade of optimism and hope we were promised last week. Surrounded by delegates who can’t decide whether to weep about an opportunity missed — or stolen — or furious about being expected to queue up for Wall Street’s favorite candidate, the first night speakers tried to be reassuring with a string of promises that would make an old Marxist blush.
Well, as DWS’s unwitting preview made abundantly plain, anymore, it’s just Democrats being Democrats. And they said the Republican National Convention was dark.
