Posted on 10/30/2019 8:37:41 AM PDT by Kaslin
PARIS -- What if U.S. President Donald Trump wins a second term? That's the unfathomable thought seeping into the minds of Democratic Party establishment members as they ponder the thoroughly underwhelming slate of candidates they're offering up to American voters.
The current crop of Democratic presidential contenders is so unimpressive that there are now rumblings about 2016 loser Hillary Clinton potentially joining the race. How did America end up here?
Democrats can't understand how Trump could conceivably still win in 2020 despite facing impeachment and continuing to make near-daily public displays of boorish behavior. Their main problem is that all of the viable Democratic candidates have been plucked from the establishment swamp. By varying degrees, they all speak and act like swamp creatures. They play up policy differences that are, in reality, minimal. Standing on the debate stage, they squabble over the color of the wallpaper with eye-glazing talking points while ignoring the larger issue of the bulldozer revving up outside. They conveniently sidestep the fact that they've had years in their current establishment positions to confront that bulldozer directly.
The Democrats respond to Trump with hysteria and the marginalization of anyone even remotely removed from their establishment groupthink, even to the point of smearing one of their own -- who also happens to be a combat veteran and a U.S. Army reservist -- as some sort of foreign agent. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii is running largely on her opposition to America's involvement in foreign regime-change wars -- a platform selling point that played no small role in Trump's election. Fellow Democratic candidate Kamala Harris has called Gabbard an "apologist" for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Hillary Clinton recently suggested during a podcast, minus any evidence, that the Russians are "grooming" one of the female Democratic candidates to be a third-party candidate -- seemingly a reference to Gabbard.
While some of the Democratic hopefuls, to their credit, have voiced opposition to such rhetoric, it's telling that they don't dare adopt the same non-interventionist stance as Gabbard. These days, promoting troop withdrawal from foreign wars is seemingly more controversial than actually getting into a new war. Some of the same Democratic candidates who defended Gabbard have attacked Trump's recent decision to pull U.S. troops out of Syria, proving that they aren't willing to take a bold step toward peace and expose themselves to the same sort of hysterical neo-McCarthyism that Gabbard has faced.
Another advantage Trump has over the Democrats is an unwillingness (or perhaps inability) to fall into line with establishment conventions and limitations. Trump may be thoroughly testing America's democratic institutions, but he's also fulfilling his campaign promise to fight the establishment and the status quo.
Whether voters view Trump's aggression toward establishment modus operandi as a net positive or negative will ultimately depend on whether his accomplishments outweigh any serious breaches revealed during the impeachment process.
Trump is accused of withholding military aid in order to pressure newly elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate Democratic front-runner Joe Biden and his son, and to announce the investigations in an interview on CNN. The idea of Trump using a foreign leader as a puppet to smear a political opponent and insisting that it be broadcast on a network Trump routinely accuses of "fake news" is quite something.
Any possible wrongdoing by Trump might not matter in the way that Democrats hope it would. Trump might be able to get away with just about anything because all of the people involved in this horrible psychodrama have played the game of politics as if it were a football game and scoring touchdowns against the opponents was the only objective.
The cheering of the crowds has drowned out quieter efforts at pragmatic, bipartisan problem-solving. The partisan rhetoric expressed through both traditional and social media has become increasingly obnoxious, radical and shrill -- the only way to rise above the din and attract attention from a particular "team." Democrats have contributed to this polarization as much as Republicans. So if voters choose to ignore Trump's misdeeds in favor of defending their team's leader at any cost, it's partly the Democrats' fault.
Voters aren't going to rationally assess the actions and words of Trump or any Democratic opponent against a neutral backdrop. They're going to view the 2020 election in the context of a domestic war in which the opponent has bombarded "their side" with incessant hostile rhetoric and has made no effort to engage them in a constructive and cooperative way. Ultimately, the big loser is America.
The answer is NOOOOOOO, that ship not only sailed but sank a long time ago!
Nope. That ship sailed a long time ago.
Of course, Katie Hill, Adam Schiff, Al Franken and Bill Clinton are absolute opposites of anyone displaying “boorish” behavior.
That is a good thing.
'Bi-partisan' 'pragmatism' is a huge part of the problem facing America today.
That’s a chicken $#it article. “Can’t we all just get along” so America doesn’t get screwed? Waste of time and ink. Rachel wrote that while taking a morning constitutional to make a deadline.
“The word “bi-partisan” means some larger than usual deception is being carried out.” George Carlin
L
Can American Politics Move Beyond Partisan Hysterics?
No
The severity of mental illness on the other side is insurmountable
Post of the Year!
I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for it to.
Trump is accused of withholding military aid in order to pressure newly elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate Democratic front-runner Joe Biden and his son, and to announce the investigations in an interview on CNN
Forgot 1 thing in the article...”in the 2016 election”. (Biden didn’t run)
Trouble is, the voter doesn't get to vote on anyone's representatives but his own, and often, his own are considered an exception to the rule. He is familiar with his own; he may know of some good his own rep has done locally; his rep is okay. It's those other guys who stink, and he has no say in their fate. So unless Trump brings a tsunami, the bums don't get thrown out.
Fortunately, if anyone can bring a tsunami, it's PDJT. There is hope.
What do you mean, "what if"? Only the most delusional of Democrat theorists and strategists would raise that question. Any pragmatic thinker has to take into account that President Trump stands a very good chance of winning AND completing a second term
There is, of course, always the same freak set of circumstances that denied George H.W. Bush a second term, a very strong third-party candidate (H.Ross Perot), who took far many more votes from Bush than from Slick, who won on a plurality, but garnered a majority of the electoral college votes.
Donald Trump is just going to have to run in the 2020 election as though he were 5 percentage points behind right up the the eve of Election Day.
Just as he did in 2016.
You know, folks, Trump THRIVES on this.
Only if the Democrats suffer catastrophic losses in Congress, a la 1994. But those are unlikely while Trump is president.
With all I see out in the open going on in congress, there is no way TRUMP will come out on top in the numbers game on voting nite 2020...doesn’t mean he won’t get the most voters out voting in his favor, it just means that they will have more ballots in the box that will be counted against him unless something major is done to thwart it before then!
Are you saying the USA would be better off without Trump?
And we know that is a lie.
“Democrats can’t understand how Trump could conceivably still win in 2020 despite facing impeachment and continuing to make near-daily public displays of boorish behavior.”
What boorish behavior? You don’t think this constant lying about our president is boorish?
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