Don’t bet the over on the current crop of Democratic hopefuls, because they are out of their minds. A dysfunctional organization is easily detected by how it responds to external influences; in this case, the DNC has been weakened by Ocasio-Cortez and had its behavior modified by Donald Trump. Even CNN and The New York Times report and regret the party’s foolish leftward lurch. Perhaps Corey Booker et al will sober after the primaries, but the public comments will stand.
As a political matter, these presidential hopefuls are misreading Democratic voters, who value electability (i.e. the ability to beat Trump) over a candidate’s position on any issue. To wit, 56 percent of Democratic voters prefer electability over issue-agreement, including 61 percent of women (source: Monmouth polling). Furthermore, only 33 percent of Democratic voters are primarily issue-driven heading into 2020. This begs the question: are the Democratic candidates even paying attention?
These early entrants are fatally misreading the electorate, because 74% of all voters self-describe themselves as non-liberal: 35% moderate, 35% conservative, 26% liberal, and 4% not sure (source: Gallup polling). Furthermore, Gallup reports 47% of Democratic voters and 78% of independent voters self-describe themselves as non-liberal. I question the sanity of DNC chair Tom Perez. By not accommodating lifelong Democrats, such as union households in Michigan, he is creating a dysfunctional party.
The DNC has a real troublemaker in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the energetic Pied Piper leading the party into an electoral-college black hole. Democrats need electability, right? But AOC threatens moderate Democrats with inclusion on “a list of targets [for] progressive advocates” to primary in 2020. By the way, her threat was aimed at 26 moderate Democrats in vulnerable districts, who voted to require ICE to be notified when an illegal immigrant tried to buy a gun.
Think about that position for one minute. How many Americans do you know who don’t want ICE agents notified of likely armed suspects? Not many, and any Democrat pushing that idea is going to cede Colorado, Minnesota, New Mexico and Virginia to Trump. It should be obvious AOC’s ideas are political nonsense, but Bernie Sanders talks about “completing his revolution” and Elizabeth Warren proposes 70% tax rates. Not to be outdone, Kamala Harris threatens an executive order to confiscate guns and Kirsten Gillibrand wants to eliminate private health insurance.
As if their “big ideas” aren’t bad enough, Trump Derangement Syndrome has embedded NOI (Not Our Issue) symptoms into Democratic vocal cords. A Democrat cannot win without black voters in 2020, but Democrats rest their case for black votes on the “racist” Trump narrative. Meanwhile, President Trump takes credit for (1) record-low black unemployment and (2) reversing the racial bias of the Clinton crime bill. It is sheer madness to not talk about issues that matter to African-Americans (e.g. unjust incarceration) just to avoid the optics of lauding Trump.
Because Democrats over-played the mistakes of a neophyte president (admittedly of his own doing), they have amplified the optics of their own stupid-rookie mistakes. In doing so, they are turning off voters they will need in 2020:
- In a new Hill/Harris poll, 76 percent of Americans said they would not vote for a socialist candidate. How is Bernie Sanders going to overcome that?
- In a new Gallup poll, 48 percent say tax rates are about right and 45 percent still think taxes are too high. And the latest IRS polling data shows only 20 percent of Americans want more taxes to pay for more services. How does Elizabeth Warren’s tax policy for small business owners and corporations overcome that?
- Right after the Parkland shooting, an Economist/YouGuv poll found that only 21 percent of Americans wanted to repeal the Second Amendment (only 39 percent of Democrats), and only 46 percent wanted to modify the amendment. How will Kamala “Get Your Gun” Harris carry the Central and Mountain time zones in 2020?
- 91.2 percent of Americans had health insurance in 2017, including 67.2 percent with private health insurance. Does Kirsten Gillibrand really think voters want to eliminate private health insurance?
The best criticism of this New Left came from one of their own: Patrick Moore, the co-founder of Greenpeace. He recently called Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a “pompous little twit” and the Green New Deal “so completely crazy it is bound to be rejected in the end.” AOC responded by proclaiming she’s just “living in the world as it is” today. Heh-heh-heh!
Moore was not having any of that: “The ‘world as it is’ has the option of taking the subway rather than a taxi, Amtrak rather than a plane, opening windows rather than [using] A/C. You’re just a garden-variety hypocrite, and you have ZERO expertise at any of the things you pretend to know.”
And there you have it: a lifelong Democrat at war with the gonzo pied piper of the New Left. Ocasio-Cortez ensures a ruinous future for America’s economy; and, the more Democrats talk like her, the more I like Trump’s chances at re-election.