Posted on 10/20/2015 4:33:28 AM PDT by Benny Huang
Former Senator Jim Webb was something of a wallflower during last week’s Democratic debate, though not because he didn’t want to get out on the floor and dance. He said afterward that he believes the debate was rigged to favor Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, leaving the lesser known candidates—himself, Martin O’Malley, and Lincoln Chafee—confined to the sidelines. When the floor was his he seemed perturbed and complained that he wasn’t getting as much time as the leading candidates. “In that kind of environment, it was either going to be Mr. Angry or a potted plant,” said Webb after the debate.
Some might argue that Webb didn’t get as much time as Clinton and Sanders because they’re top tier and he’s not. Certainly that’s true though it begs another question—why isn’t Webb top tier? He is, after all, a one-term senator, former Harvard fellow, author, journalist, and former Secretary of the Navy. The answer, I believe, is because the party has moved so far to the left. Try as he might to fit into the new Democratic Party, he still seems like a puzzle piece borrowed from another puzzle.
Jim Webb seemed more than a little incongruous standing on the stage next to the top contenders. The frontunner is Hillary Clinton, a former friend and acolyte of the Machiavellian political theorist Saul Alinsky. Raised in Chicago, she studied at Wellesley and Yale during the turbulent sixties and seventies. She defended the Black Panthers when they murdered one of their own on a suspicion that he was an FBI informer. After serving as first lady of the United States, she carpetbagged to New York to fill a vacating US Senate seat. Her most serious challenger is New York-born Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist and senator from Vermont, the most left-wing state in the Union. He’s actually tacking to the left of the Alinsky fangirl and it seems to be working.
Clearly this isn’t your father’s Democratic Party. In 2015, the leading Democratic candidates are left and far left. They booed the Boy Scouts at their 2000 convention and God Himself at their 2012 convention. It’s really that bad.
Is it any wonder then that Webb, a gun-owning Marine Corps veteran of Scots-Irish descent hailing from a southern state, doesn’t fit in? There’s something recognizably American about Webb, and that doesn’t sit well with the Democratic base. Many of their recent candidates have had a European air about them, and a few have seemed like extraterrestrials.
Webb is no conservative, mind you, and I wouldn’t vote for him to walk my dog, but he was the most moderate candidate on the stage that night. When Clinton and Sanders were trying to one-up each other with who could articulate the most egregious offense against the second amendment, Webb actually defended Americans’ constitutional right to keep and bear arms. When asked if “all lives matter” or “black lives matter,” Webb dissented from the group and said that “Every life in this country matters.” Whoa! No wonder he’s going nowhere in the jackass party, spewing hate speech like that. When Webb was asked which of his enemies he’s most proud of, he recounted an incident in Vietnam in which he killed an enemy soldier who tossed a grenade at him. He was engaging in a little well-deserved bragging, of course, highlighting his war hero credentials to win a few votes, though I don’t think he’ll win many with today’s Democrats. Most of them perceive that kind of talk as mere machismo.
Part of Webb’s problem is that his party is obsessed with identity politics. When seeking the Democratic nomination it helps to belong to some kind of victim class—to be a woman, a minority, or to sleep with people of your own sex. Being white and male doesn’t get you any points. Working class roots counts for something, though less and less with each passing year.
If you don’t fall into one of the recognized victims categories, the only way to create buzz among Democrats is to veer way, way left. That’s basically the Bernie Sanders approach. Sanders even quit the party and became an independent because he found the Democrats to be too cozy with big business. Which they are, of course. Though he still caucuses with the Democrats and seeks the nomination of their party, his stand against the Democratic Party earned him a lot of respect among the moonbat community.
Jim Webb has no future in this party because the wing he represents—blue collar whites—is shriveled and dying. He’s made a point to stick up for that demographic group, arguing for example that affirmative action should consider economic circumstances rather than race. He contends that Democrats aren’t attuned to poor people’s problems when those poor people are white.
When running for Senate in 2006 Webb leveraged his support among Virginia’s substantial white working class to secure victory in a very close race. Webb is himself of Scots-Irish descent, though not from Appalachian Virginia. As the son of a career Air Force man, Webb grew up all over and thus can’t call anywhere home. He is nonetheless at ease speaking to southerners and the white working class, guys who drink macrobrewed beer in a can and guys who kill their dinner with a bow. He can walk into an American Legion and swap war stories with veterans at the bar. Joe Sixpack can relate to Jim Webb in a way that he cannot relate to a guy from Vermont who wants to take his legally purchased, fully licensed firearm.
But much like the late Rodney Dangerfield, Jim Webb “don’t get no respect!” in today’s Democratic Party. It’s almost as if their famed “big tent” is a sham, as if they apply “purity tests” to their candidates.
The problem with Jim Webb is that he’s outlived his usefulness and no one has the heart to break the bad news to him. The poor schlub made his entrance in 2006 when the Democrats desperately needed real life war heroes. They had had two bad election cycles in 2002 and 2004, due in part to the fact that fresh memories of 9/11 made many Americans unwilling to trust national security to the Democrats. Luckily for them the political winds were starting to shift as Americans’ patience wore thin with the sputtering Iraq War. The Democrats knew that if they were ever to turn an unpopular war to their advantage they would have to field candidates who could never be accused of being wimps and whose admiration for the military was beyond reproach. They needed square-jawed, red-blooded American men with honorable military service and the medals to prove it. In short, they needed Jim Webb.
But that was nearly ten years ago. With the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan both kinda-sorta over, the Democrats are free to be themselves again—angry women, effete men, elitist northeasterners, and gun grabbers.
Sorry Jim Webb, but there’s no room in this party for your kind. There used to be, in an age long since passed, but not anymore. Welcome to the Democratic (Socialist) Party. Like a container of spoiled sour cream that’s been hiding in the back of the fridge since who-knows-when, you’re past your expiration date. Prepare to be discarded.
He’s a democrat in the marxist party.
Got a great deal of respect for Sen. Webb. Fellow Marine and Navy Cross recipient.
However, his choice of “D” after his name corrupts his name and hopefully not his soul. If he is serious about dropping the “D” for an “I”, he will have regained a great deal of that respect.
He’s a liberal. He, like McCain, has squandered any “hero” credibility that he had.
To be now whining about the Democrat (there’s not a danged thing democratic about it) Party by this fool is a sure sign he is delusional at best. Comes more to wondering about his capacity of discernment more than it does about the blatant lie the party has become.
If it weren’t so obvious just how out of touch he is, I’d yell, Welcome to the party, Pal!
Webb and Cruz are in about the same situation, just different parties. Both parties have moved left and abandoned their core principles.
Somebody said, “At least he knew to point his rifle at the enemy.”
Well, the most powerful weapon the man ever wielded, his senate vote, he pointed right at the forehead of his nation and pulled the trigger. He voted for obamacare and he voted for abortion funding.
Repub moderates good.
Dem moderates bad.
We know the score.
He is a 1988 Democrat, back when he was as far left as the mainstream of the Democrats at the time went. Past that, you were either a California of Minnesota aging hippie.
Hard to believe that 40 years ago many conservatives actually had a hard time choosing between parties in many local elections.
Well, repub mods ARE a little better...
NO repub mod EVER ONCE voted for obamacare.
This guy almost punched out George Bush for asking about his son. Do you really want his finger on the nuclear trigger button?
Well, what did you think, you freaking nitwit? It’s like complaining of the poor sanitation conditions in a pigsty.
You have the IQ of a gerbil. The fact that you got it right on guns (all the powerful leftists have body guards) makes it even more moronic for you to be in the pigsty party.
Quit politics and get a real job. If you can’t do anything else, you can always slop hogs. You have to be used to being around them, being a demonrat.
He MUST know that he was only there for show. The Dems have to make it look like the process has a broad base of candidates not just Hillary and Sanders. Is he really that stupid? Oh, wait.....
Democrat always equals Godless liberal. Pro abortion, pro gay marriage, pro transsexual military, anti Israel.
The democrat party has morphed into the CPUSA. The repubs moved left to fill the void. There is no “republican” party.
He’s not even a Democrat from the 80’s. They were tacking farther to the left back then than he is. At that time, he was Reagans Secretary of the Navy. He is more like the Dems of the 60’s and 70’s. He is under the delusion that the Democrats are the party of the working class. That could not be farther from the truth.
I will say one thing, he has written some excellent books. I loved Fields of Fire and A Country Such as This. A number of his other books such as Born Fighting were also very good.
I wouldn’t put Webb in the same class as McShame. Webb never advocated arming terrorists in Syria.
Webb would make a great GOP-establishment kind of guy
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