Fellow blogger and e-friend photog of Orion’s Cold Fire has a piece up today about some of the events percolating in the long 2020 presidential election season (as well as a little Brexit shout-out to Boris Johnson, the odds-on favorite for Prime Minister).
According to photog, a recent New York Times piece from popular Leftist economist Thomas Friedman suggests that slightly-less-radical progressives are getting worried by the antics of certifiably-crazy-radical progressives, for fear that those antics will cost Democrats the 2020 election. Much of the op-ed is Leftist boiler plate talk about mortgaging the environment for quick growth now, along with some baseless claims of racism, but there is an acknowledgment that giving free healthcare to illegal immigrants and eliminating our borders is a tad unrealistic.
As photog and Friedman point out, though, the Left is worried. President Trump has successfully cast the so-called “Squad”—Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib—as the socialist faces of the Democratic Party.
Democrats haven’t done anything to help themselves, either. Americans remember well the infamous second night of Democratic presidential debates, during which every candidate on stage raised their hands vowing to support free medical care for anyone crossing the border illegally. Even the most die-hard spendthrifts would balk at that. When the Left was marginally more honest, most dime-store socialists were also ardent nationalists (including Bernie Sanders)—these benefits are for Americans, not illegal interlopers.
It could be, as photog surmises, that Friedman’s op-ed is a way to signal to Democrats to cool it with the Che Guevara talk, lest they lose any support. I would add that it’s possible that most Democrats merely want to win, and don’t seriously believe that some of these kookier policies will ever pass Congress. That’s a generous interpretation, but it did happen on our side with Trump: it was worth rolling the dice on him to a.) avoid a Hillary Clinton presidency and b.) get conservative Supreme Court nominations (and we ended up getting an excellent president in the bargain).
I doubt that the Left has the wherewithal to pull back from the brink. Political pundit Dick Morris said in a video way back in 2017 (as I recall; I can’t locate the link at the moment) that the Left historically gets crazier before it gets sane. Consider Carter’s loss to Reagan in 1980. Rather than serving as a wake-up call for the Left, they squandered a decade pursuing wacky policies (and even some light treason). Clinton only won in a three-way race during a recession, but was shrewd enough to triangulate—Dick Morris’s own strategy—after Republicans regained the House in 1994. It was then and only then that the Democrats became a more moderate, neoliberal party.
Similarly, Democrats are rushing headlong to the glorious socialist future. The demographics are better for them in 2020 than in 1980, and they’ve had another forty years to indoctrinate the public, but here’s hoping the American people don’t sign up for their revolution.