{"id":1310634,"date":"2019-05-23T22:52:00","date_gmt":"2019-05-24T04:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/george-will-column-for-the-democratic-candidates-winnowing-is-already-at-work\/"},"modified":"2019-05-23T22:52:00","modified_gmt":"2019-05-24T04:52:00","slug":"george-will-column-for-the-democratic-candidates-winnowing-is-already-at-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/george-will-column-for-the-democratic-candidates-winnowing-is-already-at-work\/","title":{"rendered":"George Will column: For the Democratic candidates, winnowing is already at work"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

WASHINGTON \u2014 \u201cWe\u2019re cutting out some of this ear hair that you get when you get older,\u201d said the 46-year-old manchild who is auditioning to be Skateboarder-in-Chief. Live-streaming his visit to an El Paso barbershop, Beto O\u2019Rourke continued: \u201cIt grows out of your ears, and if you don\u2019t get it cut, it can be nasty.\u201d<\/p>\n

You might respond to this, as you perhaps did to O\u2019Rourke\u2019s prior live-streaming of his dental-cleaning appointment, by thinking: TMI. This is, however, not too much information. It is exactly the sort of information we need about the Democrats seeking their party\u2019s presidential nomination. Markets are information-generating mechanisms, and the political market is working.<\/p>\n

Before she is winnowed out, perhaps before Iowa\u2019s first frost, note New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand\u2019s campaign slogan: \u201cBrave Wins.\u201d It pats her on the back for unspecified acts of bravery, but this strange conjunction of words is the most vacuous advertising noise this side of Miller Lite\u2019s current slogan: \u201cHold True.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first substantive sentence \u2014 this counts as substance nowadays \u2014 in New York Mayor Bill de Blasio\u2019s video announcing his candidacy is: \u201cThere\u2019s plenty of money in this world, there\u2019s plenty of money in this country, it\u2019s just in the wrong hands.\u201d He is a socialist who means it: Redistribution and nothing but, because wealth creation is so 20th century, now that there is \u201cplenty\u201d of money sloshing around. His solutions to our national problems include banning Manhattan: \u201cthe glass and steel skyscrapers that have contributed so much to global warming\u201d have \u201cno place in our city or on our Earth anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

A thought experiment: If O\u2019Rourke, de Blasio and some other presidential candidates were Republican moles insinuated into the Democratic scramble in order to make that party look absurd and the current president look thoughtful, how would they behave differently?<\/p>\n

Pete Buttigieg, 37, is supposed to be one of the adults in the room, but he, like de Blasio, envisions national enlargement through subtraction. He has joined the progressive pile-on against the Founders who, say their current despisers, are inferior to our enlightened selves. Radio host Hugh Hewitt asked Buttigieg whether the Democratic Party\u2019s annual Jefferson-Jackson Day dinners should be renamed. Jackson\u2019s seriously disagreeable behaviors have already caused him to be tossed down the memory hole (see George Orwell\u2019s \u201c1984\u201d on erasing the past).<\/p>\n

But Buttigieg said \u201cJefferson is more problematic\u201d because, although there is much to admire in Jefferson\u2019s thinking, \u201che knew slavery was wrong\u201d and did not act accordingly. So, scrubbing Jefferson\u2019s name from things is \u201cthe right thing to do.\u201d Well, then, what does Buttigieg propose for the Jefferson Memorial\u2019s prime real estate on Washington\u2019s Tidal Basin? Perhaps an annex for the expanded Supreme Court that he, the supposed moderate who is less than half as old as The Venerable Moderate, proposes to pack?<\/p>\n

Speaking of Joe Biden, at a campaign rally in Philadelphia last Saturday he said, \u201cI believe Democrats want to unify this nation. That\u2019s what our party\u2019s always been about.\u201d This is an interesting interpretation of the 1850s, but a significant portion of the nation does not turn its lonely eyes to Biden for history tutorials. Rather, it is looking for political insurance that it will have a 2020 choice that does not make them wince. A choice that will shuffle sufficient electoral votes to strike the tent of today\u2019s White House circus.<\/p>\n

In 2004, just three states gave their electoral votes to a different party than in 2000. In 2008, nine states changed from 2004. In 2012, two changed from 2008. In 2016, six changed from 2012. Are Democrats asking the sort of question Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., asked after Ronald Reagan trounced Jimmy Carter in 1980: \u201cEven Herbert Hoover got more electoral votes [in 1932] than President Carter. We have to ask what happened and why.\u201d<\/p>\n

What happened in 2016 was that the Democratic Party\u2019s nominating process produced a candidate whom Donald Trump defeated by 17 points among the 18% of voters who had negative views of both him and her. And he won by 51 points among the 15% of the electorate who thought neither he nor she was qualified to be president.<\/p>\n

By the time Mitt Romney had run the Republicans nominating gantlet in 2012, he had the lowest positive rating and highest negative rating of any recent major-party nominee. Biden\u2019s Democratic rivals should ponder this as they sharpen their knives.<\/p>\n

George Will\u2019s email address is georgewill@washpost.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 \u201cWe\u2019re cutting out some of this ear hair that you get when you get older,\u201d said the 46-year-old manchild who is auditioning to be Skateboarder-in-Chief. Live-streaming his visit to an El Paso barbershop, Beto O\u2019Rourke continued: \u201cIt grows out of your ears, and if you don\u2019t get it cut, it can be nasty.\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1310634","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-17 22:34:53","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1310634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310634\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1310634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1310634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1310634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}