I’ve long been forecasting that the Democratic Party was headed for a replay of its last big crackup, when it nominated George McGovern for president in 1968, and he carried only one state. So far, the Dems’ big field of candidates makes me think something slightly different:
I still think the Dems are headed for a debacle, but it seems to me that the party has already splintered. The candidates attracting the most attention look to me like third-party candidates, the sort who run against “mainstream” politicians only to vanish from sight and memory. The difference is that, this time, one of these characters may well win the nomination.
Most of the traditional policy themes of the Dems—tax the rich, bail out the poor, provide free health care for all, keep America away from our traditional allies in order to embrace “progressive” regimes, and so forth — have long since failed the test of time. History has proven them wrong. So what do these crazy candidates do? Two things: first, they cultivate a remarkable ignorance of history. Second, unable and unwilling to rethink their doctrines, they double and triple down, taking the failed policies of the recent past to their illogical conclusion, ending up with the advocacy of positions so extreme that only a fringe movement or third party could seriously advance them.
We got a foretaste of this third-partyism during the Obama years, from the error-drenched global pronouncement in Cairo to the quest for a strategic alliance with the Islamic Republic of Iran. The new candidates invent history as it suits their mood, and many of them want to defend tyrants like Maduro and Khamenei.
Just look at the new Democrats: we’ve got candidates warning of the end of the world if we don’t quickly adopt radical ecological measures (the Big Green Thing). We’ve got candidates who think circumcision should be a national political issue (if vaccines qualify, why not circumcision?). We’ve got Keynesians. We’ve got calls for undoing the political system, from the Supreme Court to the Electoral College. Even the Senate, maybe. And we’ve got anti-Semites. Lots of them. In all colors and faiths, and faithlessness. This is no accident.
The beauty of anti-Semitism for the new candidates is that Jew-hatred, as it did during the 1930s in Europe, is quite capable of subsuming all the other crazy visions. Just blame the Jews for everything that’s gone wrong and say that the elimination of the Jews from their imagined positions of wealth and power will enable the new leaders to fix everything. Is the society unfair? Blame the Jews for monopolizing the “Benjamins.” Is the environment polluted? Blame the Jews for running the wrong sort of factories. Is our foreign policy not to your liking? Blame the Jews for their excessive closeness to Israel.
It should not surprise anyone, therefore, when Representative Ilhan Omar holds secret fundraisers with radical Muslims, as she is reportedly doing, or that she held a secret meeting with the Turkish dictator, Erdogan.
There is a striking paucity of detail on her various meeting. As (Ret) Commander Dyer puts it
[H]er seat (on the House Foreign Affairs Committee) gives her an outsize influence on the deliberation of U.S. foreign and security policy in the House. It also potentially gives her access to classified information about U.S. policy and intelligence that may not be readily available to all members.
Certainly it means she now comes to issues in the Middle East, including terrorism, terror-sponsoring countries, and the interests of U.S. allies and partners, from a privileged position.
So it continues to be of grave concern that Omar, who has a history of repeated anti-Semitic comments, is appearing at fundraisers for terror-linked groups – including two this weekend hosted by CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic Relations) in Los Angeles – from which the media are frequently excluded.
Democratic Party officials and attendees at such events refuse to answer questions about Omar’s secret speeches, but we know a lot about her anti-Semitic views, and it would be surprising if she said anything dramatically different in the secret meetings.
Can such persons come to represent one of our two major parties in a national election? If that happens, it will definitively, and unfortunately, show that the Democratic Party has fallen prey to third-party dogmas. And I think and hope that would spell doom for them in 2020.
What is it about Minnesota Democrats that makes them so crazy and suicidal?
UPDATE: Now we actually know what Ilhan says in private.
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