by Roger Simon
Whether the Democrat Party will soon cease to exist depends, in the grand tradition of their President Bill Clinton, on what your definition of the word “soon” is.
Yes, it’s a deliberately ambiguous term, but most human-created institutions move on eventually or get replaced, political parties not being an exception. Where are the Whigs and the Bull Moose?
Is it the Democrats time to go?
They have had quite a run, having been founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1792, likely against the wishes of George Washington who opposed the formation of political parties. According to the Mount Vernon website, the father of our county “… feared that partisanship would lead to a ‘spirit of revenge’ in which party members would not govern for the good of the people, but for power.”
What’d he know? (Do I need to apply /sarc?)
But why are the Democrats in such terrible shape now?
The estimable Matt Margolis writes the following at my former popsicle stand PJ Media:
“Can you believe it? The Democrats, once the supposed champions of the working class, have exposed themselves as nothing more than elitist snobs who couldn't care less about real Americans. Recent polling has confirmed what conservatives have known all along: the Democratic Party is now the domain of overeducated, snobby, wealthy liberals who look down on anyone who doesn't share their ‘enlightened’ worldview.”
Matt was channeling the views of Democrat strategist (whatever that second word means) Doug Sonic in a conversation with Mark Halperin. I concur with all except for the introductory “Can you believe it?” Of course we can believe it. How could we not? This has been conventional thinking for anyone to the right of Trotsky for months, if not years. Polls, including the presidential election, have been showing it for quite a while too.
What those polls and recent events are now beginning to demonstrate is the Democrats no longer have a party. In our two-party system this is not all that surprising because the tents are so big it is always difficult to unite around one vision. But how extreme the divide is in the Democrats’ case portends a coming breakup and/or bankruptcy—one way or another, “soon.”
One Democrat wing we could call the Woke Left. Despite all the noise in the streets, it seems as if they are contracting even with Bernie and AOC on tour in private jets doing their bests to deride oligarchy. (Maybe it’s an inadvertent comedy tour. Those who get excited about the audience numbers should remember we are a country of 340 million so its pretty easy to fill the house for just about anything… Okay, not Biden, but recall the audiences for various evangelists that dwarf AOC’s wildest dreams. Billy Graham is said to have preached to some 215 million in one of his 400 crusades.).
Whether I’m right about the contraction or not, however, is finally moot. The Wokeys are far from a majority. Let’s give them a generous 30% of the Democratic Party. Their group at least believes in something, as wrong-headed, toxic and anathema to most Americans as it is.
Who then are the other 70% and what do they actually stand for, other than the obvious (Trump hatred). This is the wing of James Carville, Jake Tapper, Bill Maher, and a number of relatively anonymous pols few of whom are as identifiable as these TV stars.
The Carville-Tapper wing has nothing but TDS to offer, which has made Carville in particular behave like a man on the brink of a nervous breakdown. Interestingly, he almost never mentions actual policies he would institute, only that he hates Trump more than Hitler and that the Woke Wing is killing the party, that latter being a reasonable assumption.
Tapper made our eyes roll by publishing a book “exposing” a coverup in which he heavily participated (hiding Biden’s unbelievably obvious senility ). The real purpose of this book is a desperation move to separate himself from policies that have long looked ridiculous and that he probably knew were but was paid an exorbitant salary to lie about. Take about living a life in bad faith. This is true of a significant part of the Democrat punditry and media that engaged in this masquerade for years. Imagine the mental games you have to play on yourself to keep this up.
Recently, Maher reneged a bit on his Trump hatred after having dinner with POTUS who—shock of shocks—turned out to be a relatively normal human being. This perfectly reasonable encounter created consternation in both wings of his party further underscoring that TDS was their entire policy, or what passes for one.
Unfortunately, that is the problem in its essence. No one, not even they themselves, knows what 70% of the Democrat Party stands for anymore. It’s all tired virtue signaling or references to the past, to the glory days of Clinton and Obama. But what exactly is that past? No one has much to say specifically because the specifics are scant.
Further, much of what was happening in the Clinton era—a relatively secure border, some lip-service-only attempts to reduce government spending and so forth— are being executed far more effectively by Donald Trump now.
Democratic Party politicians are sitting ducks for those replay videos from years ago, you see all over X—the ones that show both Clintons and Barack advocating for the very things for which they criticize Trump now.
So what are these mainline Dems actually trying to do?
Let’s call the question and go back to that initial statement from the father of our country—partisanship leads to a “spirit of revenge” in which party members would not govern for the good of the people, but for power.
The “spirit of revenge” is not exactly Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky” (play it if you don’t remember it—it’s an upper).
As for power, those Democrats took the old “Power to the People” of their youths and adapted it into“Power for me.”
Unfortunately, this reprehensible behavior is not unique to the Democrats because it is endemic to our big tent configuration. Inside the tent revenge and power competition often develops and plays out in highly neurotic ways, brother on brother on sister on sister on brother on sister and so forth and back again.
Who are the people who instigate this behavior in the GOP? The envious? The click happy? The overly competitive? The power hungry, as G. Washington might say?
Scoundrel time, in Lilian Hellman’s words, did not and does not exist uniquely on the left.
As evidence of all of the above and since this is Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, I feel constrained once more to condemn the growing shameful group of self-described conservatives and libertarians that seem to suffer from JDS—Jew Derangement Syndrome. It’s rather evident who they are now. Like TDS and MDS, JDS belongs in the garbage can with all bigotries.
It’s also worth noting in our current situation how generous the aforementioned father of our country was to the Jewish people and their contribution to the founding of our country (see Haym Solomon, if you don’t know what he did. You wouldn't be here without him.).
In 1790 Washington wrote a famous letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island. It concluded:
“May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid. May the father of all mercies scatter light and not darkness in our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in his own due time and way everlastingly happy.”
Were we ever lucky to have had George Washington as the father of our country! If ever there were someone to live up to, he is it. As we used to say in the blog era, read the whole thing.
https://americanrefugees.substack.com/p/will-the-democratic-party-soon-cease
