When you start selling socialism as the solution to our "problems" you can count me out.
The Democrats are claiming that this fall, we will see a "blue wave" as they take over Congress. But even Democrats admit that at best, they may have a majority of seats in the House but not the Senate. And they are promising - get this - to bring back Nancy Pelosi as speaker of the House, even though her politics are well past their sell-by date.
The problem the Democrats have is the same one faced by Republicans over the last decade. The extremists take over the party and form a bloc of intransigent legislators who do little more than block any effort to get anything done - unless it is 100% on their terms. So we have a Democratic party embracing ideas like "free college" which would be a nightmare as I discussed before. It would be like Obamacare, only worse - just charge whatever you want and send the government the bill! What could possibly go wrong with that?
Decades after communism and socialism have been proven to be ineffective forms of government, the far-left still posits that not only are these great ideas, but that the majority of Americans will go along with them. And that's where I think we are headed for trouble. You see, when you talk about "redistributing the wealth" and "taking money away from the wealthy and giving it to the poor" I get awfully nervous. Because what ends up happening in these sort of deals is that the very wealthy skip out on the whole thing by setting up tax shelters and hiring accountants and lawyers, leaving the middle-class and upper-middle-class to pay the bill.
When you talk about "redistributing the wealth" you are talking about my bank account.
When you talk about "redistributing the wealth" you are talking about my bank account.
I spent 14 years working my way through college, 40 years working at various jobs, including delivering pizzas and scrubbing toilets. I managed to pull myself up and put money aside and learn to live without and build a good life for myself. And I did this without exploiting anyone or anybody. And you tell me you want me to vote for you so you can take this all away from me and then force me to beg the government to get a pittance back?
Sorry, but no sale. Fly over America some time and look down at all those endless suburbs that surround every city. Every one of those houses on those tiny lots has a family in it - a family scrimping and saving to get by, pay the mortgage, and save for their kids' college. You go ahead and tell them you want to jack their taxes so some crackhead doesn't have to work. Go ahead, see how well that sells in middle America. And bear in mind, these are the folks who are middle America - the liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats who call themselves "independents" because frankly they are sick of the extremes of both parties.
They will vote Democratic out of conscience. But when you promise to take away their money - well, they will hold their nose and vote Republican - yes, even for Donald Trump.
And therein lies the problem. You take away the tweets and his boorish behavior and allegations of "collusion" (which I suspect will never be clearly proven - if there was any collusion, it was by 330 million Americans who listen to stupid conspiracy theories on the Internet or believe in polarizing politics - all of which were aided and abetted by you-know-who in the Kremlin) and all you are left with are actual policies.
Yes, I know, the Post and the Times have gone ballistic with frightening articles about how Melania wants a divorce or how morale in the West Wing is at an all-time low. They are basically fulfilling Trump's promise of "fake news" by falling into his reality show trap. Think about it - this Omorosa lady played what part in his reality series? Yup, the villain. And now she continues to play the part and distract people from what is actually going on in America. So chat it up at the water cooler about "secret tapes" that reveal nothing. Keep your head down and eat your media kibble. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
But people to pay attention to record-low unemployment, even if such things usually precede a major market crash. They will see only the 4% growth rate and a stock market that has risen dramatically (never mind the chronic instability since the beginning of this year - another "tell" of a future recession). So long as the economy doesn't tank just yet, all is going well for the GOP.
And I think the Democrats know this, which is why they are selling snake oil socialism this time around - that and blind Trump-hate. Hey, I despite him as much as the next guy. He comes across to me as stupid, infantile, and just, well, gross. I mean, imaging him naked and you will see what I mean. Eeeeeeew! Middle-aged fat guys with tiny dicks hands hidden under folds of fat. But again, what matters is policy, not whether the President (who is so quick to rate women on a scale of 1 to 10) is only a 1.5 himself, and only if he managed to lose at least 50 pounds.
We have a guy here on the island who put a sign on the back of his truck using mailbox letters, saying "ReSist 45!" It is kind of creepy - the sort of thing you see on vehicles parked in a "compound" out in the desert. The Democrats are pushing this "resist" mentality - but what does it actually mean? How are we suppose to "resist" our own government? And isn't this what we condemned the far-right for doing over the last decade? You know, taking over federal parks at gunpoint and claiming to be "sovereign citizens" and all that crap. You can't fight crazy with more crazy. And yes, I am looking right at you, Maxine Waters.
So what does "resist" really mean? That you shame government officials at their homes or when they eat out at a restaurant? What exactly does that accomplish? Or do we dress up in costumes and pretend to be street hooligans and call ourselves "antifa" and end up making fascists look normal? Ask the Communist "street fighters" from the Wiemar era how that worked out for them.
The problem with dramatic politics is that the majority of us don't see the world as quite coming to an end. I was in the grocery store here in Homer, Alaska, and in the magazine rack was a copy of "Prepper" magazine - a magazine apparently aimed at end-times people who are building cabins in the mountains for the Apocalypse (and yea, there is a lot of that here in Alaska, and apparently in California as well!). The headline on the cover was, Are you prepared? Yea, I am - prepared to preserve Democracy, our society, and our country, which despite what you may have heard is not in any danger of falling apart, unless, of course, we start to believe in this end-times nonsense or the conspiracy theory propaganda fueled by the Russian Internet Research Agency.
What we need in our government and our society in general is less craziness and more normality. Maybe we should revive old Calvin Coolidge's campaign slogan, "A return to normalcy" which sold well after the chaos of World War I. People were tired of upheaval and wanted not radical change, but stability and predictability in our society, our government, and our economy.
I get e-mails from the Democratic party all the time, asking me for money for various campaigns. And since I donated to some Democrats in the past, my name is sold to other candidates who also make pitches for money. But at least in Georgia, throwing money at Democratic campaigns is sort of throwing money away. And no, despite that the Times and the Post say, losing in a close race is not "winning" - it is still losing. The fact that your opponent did not win by as wide a margin as last time around is not indicative of anything. You have to win to win, nothing else matters.
But the Democrats will hear none of that. Rather than organizing and realizing that their message simply isn't selling with a lot of people, they argue the election was "stolen" due to Russian influence or collusion or stolen e-mails or whatever. Hillary won the popular vote! But winning the popular votes doesn't win elections - and the Democrats know that. No one wants to admit that maybe Hillary was a flawed candidate who ran a flawed campaign, and that Putin's little puppet - Bernie Sanders - basically destroyed her campaign before it even started. To appease these leftniks, Hillary had to move further to the Left in her campaign speeches, which was enough to turn off voters, or turn them to the GOP.
Will there be a "blue wave" this November? Well, the Democrats will take the House, that's for sure. But not the Senate - who confirms judicial nominees, including Supreme Court nominees. They may take a few governorships as well. But in order to sell their message to the masses, they need to distance themselves from the radicals in the party - something that they will be loathe to do, as our primary system favors radical interests. When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the poster-child for the Democratic party, you've lost me. Not only do her political posters look like propaganda from Castro's Cuba, her politics sound about the same as well.
Sorry, but no sale!
Sorry, but no sale!
