Which Hill To Die On?
The obvious emergent dynamic in the race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination involves a stark choice between a once-fringe socialist worldview and the Democrats that people’s parents used to vote for.
The Democrats are dealing with an oversized field just like the Republicans did in 2016. Tuesday’s debate was the largest U.S. presidential primary debate ever.
There are varying degrees of ideological struggle in any presidential primary. The bigger the field, the greater the struggle. While the 2016 Republican battle has often been portrayed as a fight for the soul of conservatism, I can — as a conservative with serious bona fides — assure you that it was not. Conservatism within the GOP has been so watered down that there wasn’t much to fight for in the last election.
As I explained in my book Straight Outta Feelings, Trump’s emergence from that large field happened because he has an outsized personality and a gift for reality television. He was a salesman with a good pitch and it went over well with people who were sick of politics as usual.
The Democrats, on the other hand, are truly seeking to redefine themselves in this race.
There is no personality lurking over there that is going to lay waste to the field by providing a fighting alternative. They pretended they loved Biden because he was the most electable, but now the two raving socialists are raking in all of the money in what could be the Mother of All Ironies.
The standard primary tactic of running to the fringe to appeal to the base only to return to the center for the general election will play out differently no matter what for the Democrats. The center has now been radically redefined and what the eventual nominee will return to for the general will be an ideological place that would have been considered extraordinarily radical just a few years ago.
Their polling tells them that America wants this leftward surge. They will have to live and die with their increasingly panicked “END TIMES!” message, and nothing but a bunch of raving lunatics to sell it.
Good luck with that.
Whaddya Know
I Asked Thousands of Biologists When Life Begins. The Answer Wasn’t Popular:
However, members of the media were mostly interested in my finding that 96% of the 5,577 biologists who responded to me affirmed the view that a human life begins at fertilization.
Margolis and Cox
A Bandwagon That Reeks of Hollywood for Ugly People
I’m sorry, but I just do not have respect for baseball fans who move to DC from other parts of the country and become Nationals fans.
— Alexandra DeSanctis (@xan_desanctis) October 16, 2019
PJM Linktank
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Bee Me
Trump Blamed For Causing Violence In Typically Peaceful Middle Easthttps://t.co/5hOBk76BVg
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) October 16, 2019
The Kruiser Kabana
We Just Called It “Star Wars” Then
The opening day of Star Wars Episode IV A New Hope in 1977 pic.twitter.com/EZJGZ7F4dj
— Life in Moments (@historyinmoment) October 17, 2019
So, Twitter Still Has Bots, And They Don’t Really Get Me
♥ @stephenkruiser https://t.co/pYCYGUOs5c
— hope.fear.love (@hopefearlove) October 16, 2019
This is always one of those “takes me back to Los Angeles whenever I hear it” songs (even though it’s about The Valley). I may hate the politics, but I do still love that city.
Great, now I miss the beach.
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PJ Media Associate Editor Stephen Kruiser is the author of “Don’t Let the Hippies Shower” and “Straight Outta Feelings: Political Zen in the Age of Outrage,” both of which address serious subjects in a humorous way. Monday through Friday he edits PJ Media’s “Morning Briefing.”
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