Friends, you may or may not be paying attention to the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, but I am. Whether or not Trump wins in 2020 is, whether we like it or not, as much as a factor of the strength (or weakness) of the Democratic challenger as it is of the President's record in office. Therefore, the damage that the Democrats do to each other in the course of this campaign is crucial to the outcome, and if they can manage to choose a candidate who's a bonehead, well, things start to look up for Trump and for America! And on that front there's good news: the most recent Iowa poll shows a three-way tie at the top between Biden, Buttigieg, and Sanders. That's marvelous! What I'm rooting for, and what you should be too, is maximum chaos in the Democratic Party. The longer the race for the Democratic nomination goes on, the more damage it will do to the Democratic nominee. So...I'm rooting for ALL OF THE ABOVE! In essence, that means I'm also rooting for NONE OF THE ABOVE. The very best case scenario is a contested, or "brokered," convention, in which the party would have no clear nominee, and the internecine fighting would become intense. You know the old saying, right? "I don't belong to an organized political party. I'm a Democrat." Well, that witticism might just describe 2020 perfectly! Here's hoping...
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YoVEJY6TBhHvfrmNoApfpvOHNtNM6t6O/view
Ah, you must be the proverbial fly on the wall here at the Conley home. We have been having similar conversations in regards to this topic. I do believe there will be a brokered convention. Thanks for the laugh over the ALL THE ABOVE and NONE OF THE ABOVE-totally agree.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: We haven't gone into the primaries yet and they usually determine the nominee. Let's hope they produce maximum dysfunction among the Dems leading to the nomination of a McGovern. This rise of Buttigieg is worrisome. I haven't heard him speak often (just listening to Dems infuriates me) but he strikes me as a relatively temperate and restrained speaker. If he were elected he might well have an ax to grind and he might be very skillfully disingenuous about it during the campaign. The election of ANY Dem would herald the onslaught of a tidal wave of vindictive political correctness. Our job, I'd suggest, is to aid in thoroughly convincing the real America of the certainty of this and of the indispensability of their support for the President.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy and Linda: It would be especially amusing to see them nominate "straight out of 1959" Bernie. Why he predates even the '60's dreamers and ingrates although he was in their midst. Oh no, he's an apparent product of Seeger and Arthur Miller. Seeger sneered at "little boxes, little boxes", suburban postwar developments ,but I know they were a dream come true for many Buffalo war vets who grew up in "da ward" in prewar Buffalo. And Miller, who made haste to trash the American dream and opposition to murderous American Marxism in his plays Death of a Salesman and the Crucible, to the applause of the silly ingrate NYC intellectual faction, was equally detached from the real America (though he thought himself so VERY empathetic).
ReplyDeleteBernie is their avatar and its hilarious that he still holds forth(why its like being back in '65 and grooving to Eve of Destruction). And a canny player like Trump, not so very much his junior, would play him like a fish.
Linda, I can neither confirm nor deny that I have the Conley home under continual surveillance. Rest assured, though, that WaddyIsRight always has your best interests at heart. :)
ReplyDeleteJack, you're right, as you are so often -- these are early days, and Buttigieg is somewhat to be feared. He's intelligent enough to say what he needs to say to win the nomination and then pivot to the center. He's smooth enough to get away with it. He's gay enough that the Left might have no choice but to embrace him, despite his odious moderation.
As for Bernie, I think he can run a credible campaign and amass a lot of votes and delegates, but I don't think he will be or could be the nominee of the Democratic Party. At best he might emerge as a kingmaker or a spoiler. The latter role would suit him splendidly!
Dr. Waddy and Linda:I read a good column today in which the commentator speculated that the Dems may at some point before , uh, "convention", give up on the possibility of winning the general election.. At that point the crazies may go for the crowning of one such as Bernie because, well, just as they did with unelectables like McGovern and Mondale, they WANT to. And those in their party who have yet some connection with reality might conclude"OK, let them do it and lets hope for a defeat so massive that it will purge our party of the AOC wing and we can return to credibility as we did in '76 (for a little while at least).
ReplyDeleteWe may hope though, that with a President as proven to be faithful to restoring the American way as is President Trump, that a second term will, at the very least, permanently restore the Federal judiciary to lawfulness (and thereby earn it the manifest antipathy
of what would be "left" of the lawless left). Should a Bernie lose them the House,their marginalization would be further advanced and if AOC survives politically, the deal may be sealed.
So, of course, we must cheer for good old atavistic Bernie or a reasonable facsimile like frustrated boomer Liz. Too bad frantic AOC is too young.
Interesting speculation, Jack. I agree that the Democratic establishment would attempt to find a silver lining in a candidate like Bernie, even if that led to a spectacular defeat. They would probably assume that, after four more years of Trump, the country would be ready for a change, and they might even be right. I doubt very much that any Democrat is hoping for any of this, however, or that they regard victory in 2020 as an impossibility. I think most establishment moderate types are probably still scoffing at Bernie -- much like the Bushes were at Trump back in early 2016. But Bernie or Liz still could emerge as the nominee -- and a perfect storm could then emerge for a big Trump win. Whether that would cause the Dems to veer back to the center I'm not at all sure. My hope, as you know, is that we can acquaint them with the fine art of hara-kiri in 2020 and beyond!
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: My guess is that Bernie is incapable of veering to the center. In the 1972 general campaign McGovern actually advocated reducing our dominant carrier fleet from 15 to 6. This was madness and I think the present day Dems fully capable of similar recklessness. Bernie IS honest, I have to opine.His nomination would be the harbinger of all manner of Dionysian and unhinged expression. Were it not so critical it could be the source of much detached bemusement. But these people actually aspire to national leadership! Luckily, they are , at their very cores, emotionally propelled and inspired. And a consummate player like President Trump looks for that in an opponent and is BLITHE to confront it.
ReplyDeleteJack, I agree that, on paper, Bernie would be incapable of moderation and would adopt a vast range of positions totally at odds with the views of the American people. On the other hand, the media, or at least parts of it, would try mightily to ignore all that and maintain a laser focus on Trump's reign of terror. Could it work? Never say never. If I had to pick an opponent, though, it would be a coin flip on Liz or Bernie.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: As an aside, because I do not disagree with what you are saying above: take a listen to Barry McGuire's 1965 hit "Eve of Destruction" for a popular expression of Bernieism. I'm sure he grooved to it and probably still does. '65 was a good time in some ways; maybe old Bernie is just nostalgic. Heck, I'd go back there just for a visit. We boomers were being introduced to the edifying joys of profound "intellectualism" on the campuses to which we flocked thanx to the most experienced and practical of generations, the one which gave us life. But boy,did those lefties see us coming! Liz is a product of that time and I agree, the nomination of either of them would presage the serving of a very heavy helping of realism to the presumptuous and haughty left.
ReplyDeleteJack, I wish I could go back in time to the 60s! It would be a fascinating journey into a bygone era, for one thing. It would also be a chance to head off some of the kookiness of later years, for another. Alas, Mad Men is probably as close as I'll get to the 60s. I rely on you to fill in the gaps.
ReplyDeleteDr.Waddy: In my opinion, the very essential and definitive reality of the American '60's was this: there were so danged many of us boomers! And that is attributable only to the joy at being ALIVE felt by so many of our fathers after the Depression, WWII and the, well, resultant offspring they begot upon our not resistant and yes accepting mothers, due to the reintroduction of young males into American society.
ReplyDeleteBecause of that generation's determination to provide us a life far superior to that which they had experienced, they enabled our massive introduction to a college life which had previously been the setting only of "swells". And there we monumentally naive boomers met cynical and thoroughly leftists (made so by the Depression) blithe to turn us against our parents (which we, as silly youth, as always resentful of necessary parental authority and restraint, enacted in our earlier age. far more forcefully, DISDAINED)But again, there were so damned many of us!
Jack, usually there's safety in numbers, but in the Boomers' case, perhaps it was peril instead. You have to give the lefties credit: in modern higher education they invented a way to indoctrinate the youth on an industrial scale. (As of the 60s, I doubt the public schools would have been amenable to left-wing propagandizing, except in a muted form.) They saw their opportunity, and they took it! Shame on us real Americans for not perceiving the danger sooner. In many ways, we still don't. In the academy, we're asleep at the switch.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: I went to a very affluent high school up to '65( we didn't ask "are you going to college?" but "where?" And that "where" included Yale, Penn, Cornell, Colgate, Chicago,Purdue, MIT, Syracuse etc. But nowhere in that high school, including in "Problems of Democracy" class and in a college level economics class, do I and did I perceive any reflexive antiAmericanism.
ReplyDeleteThe real America of the time: the survivors of the Depression and WWII including most of our parents, could hardly have conceived the antiAmericanism to which their sons and daughters were about to be exposed. It was almost inconceivable in 1965. But so many of my generation, having, yes, experienced "Leave it to Beaver", at least in the North, were unready for the shock of it and were unpossessed of the sand necessary to resist the leftists they encountered in the faculties and drinking holes of that time.
Jack, it's a wonder more colleges didn't toss out newly-minted radical profs on their ears... I suppose that would have required the "real" Americans to get up in arms about the indoctrination of their adult children. Why didn't they? It's a mystery.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: I MAY be able to shed some light on that: Some college administrations did show the leftists the door. Plattsburgh State, where I went, did. But by the late '60's and 1970 (and I was in the Navy by then) the radical left had nonetheless captured the loyalty of both those sincerely opposed to the war but also of so many who welcomed an excuse not to serve. We had had it so good in the '50's unlike the Greatest Generation's ordeal in the '30's and so many of us were loathe to do their duty to the country which had afforded them such fantastic childhoods.
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