CIVIL WAR ON THE LEFT, PART 55: DEMOCRAT DILEMMAS:

One of the central problems of liberalism is that its operating dogmas sooner or later collide with each other. Take the way antitrust operated for decades: if you charged the same price as your competitors, you were guilty of collusion and price-fixing. But if you charged less than your competitors, you were guilty of predatory pricing. (Indeed this is exactly how antitrust investigations began decades ago before we came to our senses.) Or take bank lending: if a bank doesn’t lend to the urban poor and minorities, it is guilty of “red-lining.” But if a bank does lend to poor and minority customers who default at high rates (as happened in 2008), then you’re guilty of predatory lending.

And don’t even get me started on Starbucks. They deserve every bit of pain they have invited by their proud virtue signaling of the last few years. Anyone remember Starbucks’s “talk about race campaign” from a few years ago? If they start serving popcorn, I might wander by.

The great thing about being a liberal is the permanent state of cognitive dissonance it allows. Instead of pondering these kind of contradictions and perhaps, in good Marxist fashion, reaching some kind of new synthesis, liberals just dust themselves off and move on as though nothing has happened.

Which helps to explain this headline: Caucus Chairman: Midterms Could be for Dems Like 2010 Rout was for GOP.