ALL THE DEMOCRATS HAVE TO DO IS NOT BE CRAZY, AND THEY CAN’T EVEN DO THAT: Our Socialist Democratic Party.
Ask yourself: would any Democratic presidential primary contender in 2020 stand a ghost of a chance if he or she took a moderate stance on issues pertaining to race, gender (= abortion), or sexuality (= transgender rights)? Be honest. You can’t just wish these things away.
It’s true that the Republicans have a similar problem. Both parties are beholden to extreme partisans in their bases. But President Trump has his base onside. The conventional wisdom in 2016 was that the Republicans had nominated someone so extreme that he couldn’t possibly win. Yet he did. You watch: the Democrats are going to nominate someone so extreme on economics and culture that they’re going to ensure Trump’s re-election.
It is possible, of course, that the Dems could pull a Trump, and nominate some out-of-left-field candidate who manages to pull off a victory anyway, because enough people in the middle are so sick of Trump that they prefer to take a chance on the devil they don’t know. But I don’t see that as likely. In any case, the New York Times might believe that Trump is manufacturing a fake villain in “socialism,” but it’s pretty clear that he’s not.
As recently as the 2004 election, Ann Coulter quipped that “both parties run for office as conservatives. Once they have fooled the voters and are safely in office, Republicans sometimes double-cross the voters. Democrats always do.”
In January of 2008, the San Francisco Chronicle’s editors were smart enough (in a Machiavellian sense) to protect Obama when, as a candidate, in order to get to Hillary’s left, he openly proposed bankrupting coal plants. They understood their role as Democratic party activists with bylines meant burying Obama’s Kinsley-style gaffe rather than making it the lead headline on the front page.
But in rushing to endorse AOC’s “Green New Deal,” and in rushing to endorse Virginia Democrat Kathy Tran’s abortion absolutism, over the past two weeks, the mask has been ripped off the left. Remember it when the inevitable feint towards the center occurs late in the election cycle.