The Dems Great Miscalculation

The Dems Great Miscalculation
The View from the Middle

It all started on September 10th, 2016 at a fundraiser in New York City. Hillary Clinton stated that you could put half of Donald Trump’s supporters into what she called a “basket of deplorables”. She called his backers racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic and Islamaphobic. Since she knew that there was no way to know which half any Trump voter was in, she was, in effect, insulting every Trump supporter with her elitist, multi-syllabic slurs. She either felt that she didn’t need their votes so she spewed this toxic, filthy, disgusting rhetoric to inflame her base. OR, she actually believed she could spit in people’s faces one day and convince them to vote for her the next. Either way, her official campaign strategy became the disparagement of Donald Trump and half of America. She was accusing over 60 million people of the most despicable behavior on earth and of having a fundamental lack of humanity. Good strategy!

I think I can speak for every person put in that basket of deplorables when I say that I was insulted, saddened and even shocked that a person who was running for President of all of the people of America could have so little regard for so many of us. In fact, wasn’t she modeling the exact behavior that she was accusing Trump of exhibiting? Certainly not. That would be hypocritical, and we know that type of behavior doesn’t exist in Washington.

But what is even sadder is that virtually every Democrat and the mainstream media (but, I repeat myself) has embraced this strategy. Don Lemon, supposedly a news person at CNN, said that “anyone who supports Donald Trump is complicit in racism”. Joe Scarborough, also of CNN, went through a long and torturous explanation of why Donald Trump is a racist and every Trump supporter must also be one. And, as you might guess, MSNBC is replete with hosts, like Chris Hayes, and guests, like Tiffany Cross who demagogue with the same story line. It never ceases to amaze me that these people can denounce hatred and bigotry while exhibiting that exact same behavior.

And it appears the Joe Biden, currently the Democrats’ leading Presidential candidate, is also adopting this same strategy. Back in 2012, Biden told a largely black audience that Republicans wanted to “put y’all back in chains”. That statement is beyond mere exaggeration. It is specious, malicious and inflammatory, and Joe knows it. More recently Joe claimed that Republicans wanted to, “bring back Jim Crow.” It is astonishing that Joe could say this, while at the same time accusing Republicans of fearmongering. Isn’t that the very definition of hypocrisy? Certainly not, right?

And finally, to put the icing on this disgusting, slanderous cake, I give you Joaquin Castro. Joaquin is the twin brother and campaign manager for Julian Castro who is a Democrat candidate for President and past mayor of San Antonio. Joaquin listed the names and work places of forty-four Trump contributors putting them at risk of financial and even physical harm. And Julian wants to be President of all the people of this great country? He, and his party, preach tolerance and condemn hatred in one breath and spew bigotry and hostility in the next.

The Democrat Party miscalculation is twofold. First, they have abandoned all realistic policy positions and embraced delusional, utopian policies like guaranteed incomes, free everything and fantasies like the green new deal. Second, they seem to believe that they can attract voters by insulting them. This is not a winning strategy. Even if you love the Democrat Party, the party of my father and John Kennedy, the only way to save it is to reject its platform of hatred, hypocrisy and a two-tiered system of justice. I believe we are seeing signs of that rejection right now. If Trump is re-elected in 2020, Democrats will have no one to blame but themselves.