Regular readers of my Academic Redneck columns know I was spot-on in my belief that Donald Trump would win the presidency. I was also confident Trump would not be found guilty of any crime related to “collusion” with Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign. I’ve argued that if Democrats and their allies didn’t let go of their obsession with impeachment or ending the Trump presidency by any means necessary, it would not be Trump who would suffer the consequences. I have been consistently correct.
Progressives still unable to accept that Donald Trump is the president now have half the country or more questioning their sanity and intelligence. They’ve whined incessantly–and stupidly. They’ve confused their wishful thinking with reality so many times, the rest of us have lost count. What’s more, the very people who once crowed about their tolerance and acceptance of others have marinated in hatred for so long, they embody the very character flaws they claimed were so evident and “dangerous” in Trump. Led by media pied pipers into the dark cave of confirmation bias, they’ve hung on to the hope that “any day now” Trump and his entire family would be led out of the White House in handcuffs. They’ve ignored evidence that the Obama administration infiltrated and spied on the Trump campaign to push Hillary Clinton–perhaps the most inept presidential campaigner ever–over the finish line. Even with the Obama Justice Department running interference for her, she still face-planted.
Yet rather than accept defeat with dignity, Democrats have blamed everyone except themselves for the loss. How many times have they cried and complained, “But Hillary won the popular vote!!!” as if that means a damned thing? It’s like losing at Monopoly but then saying to your opponents, “Cheaters! I would have won if we’d been playing Trivial Pursuit!” Were they absent the day their high school government teacher explained the electoral college? Did they expect Trump and his supporters to say, “Oh, sorry for being so presumptuous and thinking that if DJT won 270 or more electoral votes, he got to be president, fair and square. We’re totally okay with changing the rules after the fact, so your candidate wins and you’re not chronically unhappy”? The whining over the electoral college demonstrates the progressive “heads I win, tails you lose” worldview. In their minds, the only fair game never requires them to cede power.
Ignorant of and oblivious to history, they have embraced the same McCarthyite tactics they once decried as totalitarian and evil. Their political opponents aren’t simply wrong; they are traitors. The Mueller investigation determined that no one in the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, but this was obvious two years ago to anyone who wasn’t watching Rachel Maddow, Don Lemon, and other leftist media pundits who relied on the analysis of partisan former intelligence officials like John Brennan and James Clapper. Ironically, progressives like to say, disdainfully, “You shouldn’t watch so much Fox News” to anyone who disagrees with them. Actually, Fox’s hard news and opinion journalists behave like sober intellectuals compared to the prime-time lineup of yellow journalists on CNN and MSNBC who set their hair on fire every night for no good reason.
Still, the zealots won’t let it go. Hoping they can find a sentence or two from the Mueller Report to keep the conspiracy theories alive, they accuse Attorney General Barr of a cover-up or of misrepresenting Mueller’s findings (as if Mueller wouldn’t issue a statement to correct the record if this were the case). Barr has indicated he will release as much of the report as he can and as soon as possible, but that is unacceptable for the mob still seeking Trump’s ruin. Barr must be covering for his boss—and the Russians!
It might be apt for someone to pose McCarthy-era attorney Joseph Welch’s question to the anti-Trump media: “Have you no sense of decency?” Alas, we all know the answer to that one.
Conservatives like me are amused by the insanity. The more histrionic the behavior, the likelier it is that Trump will be re-elected as the only moderate on the ballot in 2020. Let that sink in: Trump the moderate. Compared to the Democrats, he’s emerging as the only sane option in 2020.
Losing the House during the midterms may have been the best thing to happen to Trump’s next presidential bid because it achieved two objectives. First, it got rid of RINOS like Paul Ryan who never really supported Trump’s agenda in the first place. Second, it allowed the Democrats to double down on, well, looney tune. Alexandria O’Casio-Cortez and her “Green New Deal” are the perfect political foils for Trump. Right now, the Democratic front runners for president are falling over each other to embrace far-left priorities like Medicare for All and reparations for slavery. “Beto” O’Rourke and Joe Biden have begun apologizing for their “white [male] privilege,” even though they have no intention of giving up that privilege. They see no irony in saying, “I’m sorry I’m a privileged white male, but vote for me to be the most powerful leader in the world.” As the Democrats compete for who is the “wokest” among them, Trump is talking about jobs and the border crisis—a crisis they deny even exists.
The Democrats and their media allies appear to believe that because the larger-than-life, “braggadocios” Trump prevailed in 2016, they should follow his lead and be outlandish. Not so. The Republican Party in the last election cycle was so cautious, so unwilling to mix it up, Trump correctly guessed that Republicans needed a more in-your-face, combative candidate to turn out the conservative base tired of go-along-to-get-along, milquetoast candidates. He stood out in a field of boring, “low-energy” candidates like Jeb!
The Democrats have the exact opposite problem. Ordinary voters already perceive them as wrecking balls, ready to dismantle every single tradition that Americans hold dear, in a self-righteous, “Do it my way, or you’re a racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic jerk” fashion.
The best strategy Democrats could employ in 2020 would be to find a moderate to conservative, sane, low-key Democrat to emerge out of the rabble-rousing, shrieking crazies now running and disavow all the media water carriers who promised scandalous revelations about Trump but failed to deliver. Democrats should try to win back all the working-class voters they’ve insulted and written off as smelly Walmart people, to paraphrase Peter Strzok.
The chances of the Democrats waking up (as opposed just to being “woke”) and learning a lesson from the Trump era is unlikely. And as much as I’ll be happy if Trump wins in 2020, I know the country overall is not benefiting from all the division. The Democrats could rebound politically if they threw down the “Resist!” banners, called for a truce with Trump, and worked on meaningful bipartisan priorities like infrastructure and immigration.
If a candidate of this type does emerge in the Democratic field, the party of cray-cray might transform itself into a serious threat in 2020.
