The setup for the 2020 election is becoming clearer by the day, and the choices facing us will be stark. After the amount of truckling to the radical left any eventual Democratic candidate — for president, Senate, House, governor, mayor or dogcatcher — will have done to claw his or her way to a nomination, the hardest tracking rightward will only get them within sight of a very skeptical electorate which will ask the most pointed of questions, including: If you think white supremacy is a major motivation for your opponent’s voters, how will you convince them their thinking is wrong? After all, they don’t think they’re racists and don’t agree with your analysis. Screaming at them won’t work — unless you’ve already written them off and simply plan on grinding them under your boot heel when you win.
You say you’re going to “tax the hell out of the wealthy.” How will you convince those with money that they should hand it to you, instead of making it much harder for the government you control to force them to cough it up? Italy is a good example of what can happen here, and it ain’t pretty: Tax evasion is a way of life, severely limiting government revenue. While we’re at it, what’s to prevent the rich from simply pulling up stakes and moving to a more favorable tax climate? It’s happened before, so it’s easy to imagine it happening again. And seizing their money as they exit only proves that Fidel Castro’s tropical “workers’ paradise” was your goal all along. How’s that working out, by the way? Oh yes, there’s equality, all right: Everyone is equally miserable, save for those privileged with foreign contacts and the top leaders of the Communist party.
You say you’re going to give us way better health care, but we have to surrender our private health plans first and hope for the best. Why should we believe your promises after “keep your doctor, keep your plan?” You say that “common sense gun control” is necessary, but how is it commonsensical for a licensed firearms dealer to be a necessary intermediary in a gun sale between my wife and I, or her and our son? While we’re at it, if we’re going to have “red flag laws” to allow the confiscation of firearms from people with diagnosed mental diseases, what’s to stop the mental health profession from issuing new diagnostic guidelines identifying conservatism — or climate change “denial” — as a mental diseaseand thereby a backdoor to gun grabbing?
Consider the party’s presidential wannabes: Bernie Sanders wants to take your health care away because, well, the government can always do things better and cheaper. You know, like the U.S. Postal Service or the DMV. Bill De Blasio wants 70% of your money, mostly so he can give it to other people. Elizabeth Warren has a plan to do both. Kamala Harris has no apparent plans but thinks everyone doubting her does so out of racism not because her few proposals are witless.
Or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who, although not a candidate for president, has an outsized role in setting the tone for Democrats. She loathes business — witness her utter opposition to Amazon’s new headquarters in Queens, with the 25,000 jobs that went with it. But she demands trillions of dollars, which only productive businesses can produce, to fund her implausible projects. When she has driven them away, what will be her resort? More lunacy of the same flavor.
Or Rashida Tlaib, who, after her scheme collapsed to use her grandmother as cover for an anti-Israel propaganda mission to Palestine, responded with a rage-fueled sack of falsehoods. It was colorful, funny to watch and quite illuminating. Israeli Defense Minister Arye Deri — who had made it clear that Tlaib was welcome to visit her relative provided she did not publicly call for the destruction or isolation of the Jewish state during her visit — said, “Apparently her hate for Israel overcomes her love for her grandmother.”
There’s lots more where those came from in today’s Democratic party, where failure is a badge of honor and responsibility for it is always assigned to anyone else. The party of “What happened?” The party of open borders, other people’s money, racism, duplicity and division.
Stay tuned, and make popcorn. This is gonna get good. Fast.
Morgan Liddick’s column “On Your Right” publishes Tuesdays in the Summit Daily News. Liddick spent 27 years working for the U.S. Foreign Service, primarily living abroad. He also spent 12 years teaching U.S. history and Western civilization at community colleges in Colorado and Texas. He lived in Summit County as recently as 2015 and currently lives in Virginia. Contact him at mcliddick@hotmail.com.