Posted on 02/04/2020 8:31:33 AM PST by COUNTrecount
Pulling the Plug on Democrats’ Life Support
The Democrats’ walls are not closing in—they are crumbling. And they are about to be overrun by the fierce army of the president’s millions of supporters. Conrad Black - February 3rd, 2020
On Wednesday the Democratic Party is scheduled to be removed from the life support system that has sustained it these past four years: the fraudulently and almost certainly illegally confected condition of Donald Trump being under a legal and ethical cloud.
The wild aspersions about financial chicanery, misogyny, racism, rank ignorance, and incompetence, and the monstrous canard about “treason” with Russia, the Mueller investigation, and the spurious impeachment were all that the Trump-hating media needed to persuade the credulous, within the United States and throughout the world, that this was an aberrant president who was about to be led out of the Oval Office in handcuffs.
Trump’s flamboyant career as a huckster, Trump University, the junk bond casino bankruptcies, as well as the spectacular divorces and constant tabloid and television presence, opened him up for a good deal of ridicule. Not even the most disciplined and fervent Trump supporter would deny that this president’s résumé contains some elements that he would be better off without in his present position, nor would many claim that all of his public comments have been suffused with the dignity and thoughtfulness that would be ideal in the nation’s chief executive and commander-in-chief.
But these facts were part of an innovative, carefully planned, and overwhelmingly successful strategy to achieve celebrity—even among the less exalted socioeconomic regions of the public—and to parlay that celebrity and a perfect sense of timing along with his seizure of social media, to exploit voter discontent, gain control of one of the main political parties, and game the electoral system to victory in a presidential election.
The truth is that even those who supported Trump in 2016, because they were tired of the Bushes and Clintons passing the great offices of the American state back and forth and were dissatisfied with the condition and direction of the country, could not have been serenely confident of what his presidency would be like. Since Trump ran against the entire political class he was portrayed as a nihilist, a quasi-anarchist, and a barbarian—and this was never going to be the usual good-natured and sportsmanlike handing over between the Bushes and Clintons with an indulgent media honeymoon. Since Trump had vehemently attacked all of them, he had to overcome the resistance of all of them.
We now know that a partisan-commissioned smear operation was used by the FBI and the intelligence agencies to defame the candidate and improperly conduct surveillance on his campaign and transition team, and that the FBI director and others lied about it repeatedly to President Trump.
We now know there was no justification for setting up the special counsel to inquire into collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
And we now know that when that collapsed, the Whistleblower Act was abused and impeachment procedures were violated to vote on articles of impeachment for the removal of this president for acts that were not, in fact, constitutionally impeachable, were not illegal, and for the commission of which there was no probative evidence that the president committed them.
For four years, NeverTrump Republicans and the Democrats have fought a rearguard action slowly retreating in the face of, to use a Democratic expression, “an inconvenient truth.”
Because no one had ever been elected president without previously having held some public office or a high military command, and because Trump’s career had been so outrageous in some ways, as well as completely unconventional, there was a vast receptivity to claims that he was temperamentally and morally unfit to be president, that he would be incompetent, and that he had somehow purloined the office in the first place.
Yet as the impeachment controversy demonstrated and as all polls confirm, the Republican Party is now rock-solid behind the president. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who told Republican congressional candidates four years ago that they would “drop (Trump) like a hot rock,” has smoothly conducted his partisans to the quick dismissal of this unfounded impeachment effort.
The Democrats, and the sharply dwindling ranks of their anti-Trump Republican allies, have retreated from the charge of electoral fraud, to treason with Russia, to obstruction of justice, to impeachable abuses of power and contempt of Congress. All of it was piffle; there was no truth to any of it. All there ever was is a candidate and now a president who is so bombastic and garish in some of his stylistic and rhetorical quirks, that there was an over-eager readiness to believe that there might be some merit to these accusations.
There wasn’t. For more than three years we have heard that “The walls are closing in” on Trump, with the “drip, drip, drip” of cumulative damaging revelations. Those predictions apply with perfect accuracy to the Democrats. They have exhausted their ability to maintain some Damoclean legal threat over the president, and now, though they are still addicted to having an opponent bound and encumbered by official harassments and tainting activities, they are going to have to attack his record.
Apart from general economic progress, the country hasn’t really paused to consider how far it has progressed in three years. High unemployment and oil imports have ended; illegal immigration has been reduced by nearly 80 percent. Approximately half of all Americans are now directly or indirectly investors in the stock market and they have had a capital appreciation of nearly $10 trillion. Poverty and food stamp use are down sharply, the workforce has reversed previous declines, and the lowest 20 percent of income earners have enjoyed greater proportionate income increases than the wealthiest. President Trump is thus the world’s first head of an important country to begin to address the problem of income disparity. He has renegotiated trade agreements and when these are fully in place next quarter, and Boeing is back to work, economic growth should return to 3 percent.
Moreover, Trump has faced up to the challenge of China, smashed ISIS, and revived the concept of nuclear non-proliferation where his predecessors were swindled by North Korea and Iran. He has spared the country the Green Terror and kicked the Western Alliance into a revival of collective self-defense so it can no longer be just a gang of slackers hiding behind the Pentagon.
This is Trump’s record and unsubstantiated truisms about Trump’s “corruption” won’t sell anymore.
The Democrats have an inadequate group of implausible candidates, appear to be fixing up their convention to sandbag Bernie Sanders again and perhaps to make an energetic effort to sell themselves to Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg is a capable man but a New York liberal who is far from a spellbinder, starts with no following outside the wealthy parts of New York City, and he spent $170 per vote in his last election municipal election. That translates to $14 billion in a presidential election. He could afford it, but Trump and the Republican Party are rich, too, and no one can simply buy an American general election. For good measure, whatever tatters are left of the ethical gap with Trump will almost certainly be blown away by the conclusions of U.S. Attorney John Durham when he has finished looking at the official harassment of the Trump campaign in 2016.
The Democrats’ astonishment is understandable. So, up to a point, was their belief in Trump’s indifferent ethics, but these became a crutch that they have leaned on more heavily as Trump has racked up successes in almost every policy field. Now the crutch has been kicked out as they face the revelation of their own skullduggery, and face up to the profound mediocrity of their candidate pool.
The Democrats’ walls are not closing in—they are crumbling, and they are about to be overrun by the fierce army of the president’s scores of millions of supporters, those whom the Democrats reviled as focused on “guns and religion,” the “deplorables” who, we learned from House impeachment managers last week, must not be allowed to reelect the country’s leader. That is not how the American system works, and the Democrats will soon finally feel the pain the country sought to inflict on them in 2016. Conrad Black
Nice essay
I’d like to believe it, but it’s a little too optimistic for my tastes. After all, this is a country that elected a worthless America-hating neophyte to the office for two consecutive terms just because he had the right skin tone.
That's their problem. They wore no rear guard. Am I right, Humper Biden? Up high! Oh, wait. No. Forget that up high stuff.
It’s along road to the November election. Many things will happen, including the Dems rallying around their chosen socialist. I’m sure Trump will be fighting to the last day, we should too.
The thing that's killing the Demagogic Party is the Demagogic Party. Thanks COUNTrecount.
May that last bit be true. And it's not from hate--that's the province of arrested development Leftists--but from a need for the USA to survive.
Very good article. The truth is that Trumpers will not let the left drive us away from PRESIDENT DONALD JOHN TRUMP.
When one considers this whole episode you begin to
understand that impeachment and every thing leading up
to it was a decapitation strike aimed at throwing the
Republican party into dissaray late in the election cycle.
This explains the delay in delivering it to the Senate
and the calls for more witnesses to drag out the process.
Vile and desperate are the attempts by the left to
regain power.
Just consider where we would be if Trump was convicted
and not allowed to be a candidate at this point in
time. Chaos!
It’s so funny to hear all these freaking never Trumper’s who finally come into the realization that this guy has the greatest president we’ve ever had kicking and screaming
for any true conservative, of which Freepers are a large majority, we all knew Trump was the guy from the very very very beginning
No of course as we sit here three years later we’re all amazed at just how incredible this guy is. Our great and wonderful president Donald J Trump
Just like Brexit, we’re going to have to painfully ram it down the Establishment’s throats again before some of them FINALLY come to grips with the fact that they lost.....and we will.
Where will those with a liberal viewpoint but not accepting the radical left go for a party? I believe the Democratic Party of FDR and JFK will go the way of the Whigs and some new more centrist party will eventually emerge.
In 06 the socialists had infiltrated the Dem party and the writing was on the wall. The Dems welcomed them in and now the vipers are in control. A bad mistake, likened to the invitation of the Frankfurt School and Post Moderns to collage campuses. We invite our enemies in and nurture them thinking they will be grateful allies. These Marxist snakes even had a president (Obama) who was sympathetic to their charm. Trump is the education and antidote that is needed.
Conrad Black is right the Dems are on life support as one of the vipers is seeking the highest office in the land. Pelosi couldn’t tame the viper Squad and now Bloomberg and his money are called in to save the patient. Can he do it? No. Trump will win and the Dems will lose and perhaps die of snake wounds, toxic delusions and indifference.
I believe the Dems are trying to screw Bernie, because they know he’s a Commie. The Iowa Dems said that Mayor Pete is the winner, for now...it could change...
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