Peggy Noonan writing in the WSJ
* * *
Let’s begin with a prophecy: It is not only the
Republican Party that is breaking and perhaps re-forming. The Democratic Party
is also starting to come apart. We’re seeing the first signs of it now.
A significant part of the base is going Left.
Bernie Sanders took off because they want a socialist.
The party is going Left for a host of reasons: the crash
of 2008, economic strain, eight years of President Obama, trends within
American culture and education. Hillary Clinton’s struggles this year are
connected in part to her ideological unreliability, to the sense that she’s a
generation behind ideologically, that she’s got the wrong attitude toward Wall
Street and the use of military power. She’s old school; we’re entering
something new.
Here’s what I suspect is coming whatever happens this
year. Just as a portion of Republicans — nobody knows how big — will break from
the GOP over Donald Trump, some percentage of Democrats, especially among the
affluent will, in the next cycle, start to peel off from their party over its
lurch leftward. They will not be at home in a party of smiley-face socialism
that threatens to become actual socialism. They will not want the American
economy destroyed.
They will not be comfortable in a party that supports the
most extreme political correctness; they do not want their 10-year-old
daughters using transgendered bathrooms with men.
They will find themselves increasingly opposed to the
political correctness that has swept the universities. They will have
increasing qualms about spending $60,000 a year to have their bright, kind
children turned into Leftist robots.
* AND? SO?
So they will start to split off from the Democrats, and
they will find the Republicans who split off in 2016, and together, in 2020 or
so, they will attempt to create their own party. It will be pro-growth,
moderate on social issues, more or less neoconservative in its foreign policy.
It will be smallish but well-heeled. It will try to hold together and grow.
That is my prophecy. Everything is in play.
* HER PROPHECY IS NONSENSE. IF THE LEFT EXTENDS THEIR
CONTROL OF THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH VIA VICTORY IN THIS COMING ELECTION IT'S OVER.
THINK 1933 GERMANY.
* NO. I'M NOT CALLING THE LEFTIST DEMOCRATS "NAZIS."
(I'M CALLING 'EM LEFTIST DEMOCRATS...) BUT GIVEN A CHANCE TO CONSOLIDATE POWER
VIA RETENTION OF OBAMA'S PARTICULAR BRAND OF PRESIDENTIAL
"LEADERSHIP," I HAVE NO DOUBT WHATSOEVER THAT WE'RE HEADING FOR
FULL-BLOW FASCISM... OR IF YOU'D RATHER... "AMERICAN NATIONAL SOCIALISM."
(*SHRUG*)
* AGAIN, FOLKS... I UNDERSTAND THAT... MATH... GIVES MANY
OF YOU A HEADACHE AND THAT IT'S FAR EASIER TO STICK ONE'S FINGERS IN ONE'S
EARS, CLOSE ONE'S EYES, AND MOUTH "NAH-NAH-NAH-NAH-NAH," BUT... GIVE
'EM ANOTHER FOUR YEARS ON TOP OF THE PAST EIGHT YEARS OF OBAMA... AND WE'LL
NEVER SEE "THEM" LOSE POWER UNTIL THE NATION ITSELF RIPS ASUNDER.
* THOSE OF YOU WHO KNOW YOUR HISTORY... WHO UNDERSTAND
DEMOGRAPHICS... WHO HAVE BEEN PAYING ATTENTION AND POSSESS SOME SMALL DEGREE OF
ANALYTICAL/PROGNOSTICATION ABILITY...
(*SIGH*)
* YOU KNOW I'M RIGHT.
I mentioned the strains, shifts and breakage within the
Democratic party that you can see right now. Nothing illustrated it like what
happened last Saturday in Las Vegas, when a state Democratic Party convention
turned violent, with chairs thrown, fists shaken, curses screamed. Sen. Barbara
Boxer, longtime California liberal and Clinton supporter, was heckled and
booed. She later said she’d feared for her safety. The state Democratic
chairwoman reported threats of bodily harm, including a text message that said:
“We know where you live . . . Where your kids go to school/grandkids. We have
everything on you.”
It doesn’t get much uglier than that.
* OH... IT DOES. IT CAN. IT WILL.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
At issue, procedures surrounding the delegate-selection
process and Sanders supporters’ claim that the deck was stacked against them.
This was the local expression of a larger national argument over whether the
Democratic National Committee and its chairman, Hillary friend Debbie Wasserman
Schultz, were, as Donald Trump used to say, rigging the system.
* FOLKS...
(*ROLLING MY EYES*)
* THEY'RE NOT "RIGGING THE SYSTEM;" THE SYSTEM
STARTED OUT RIGGED! IT'S BEEN RIGGED!
After the Vegas melee Mr. Sanders was relatively
unrepentant. He blandly said a few days later that he opposes all forms of
violence. He told a California rally that the Democratic Party “can do the
right thing and open its doors and welcome into the party people who are
prepared to fight for real social and economic change.”
The Democratic divide can be seen in other ways. Dante
Chinni of this newspaper took a dive into the demographics of Kentucky, whose
primary this week “shows how deep divisions are within the Democratic Party.”
(*SARCASTIC CLAP-CLAP-CLAP*)
* WOW... SO I'M NOT THE ONLY PERSON AWARE OF
"DEMOGRAPHIC REALITY."
(*SNORT*)
A racially diverse segment, “located in cities and their
surrounding suburbs, is largely behind Mrs. Clinton, while a less-diverse and
largely rural part of the party backs Sen. Sanders.” Mrs. Clinton won narrowly,
carrying the most populous counties and most of those with the largest
African-American populations, Mr. Sanders the least populous and all the least
diverse counties. His voters in Kentucky were rural and white, which was true
also in Michigan and New York. “The tensions within the party aren’t likely to
lessen,” Mr. Chinni concluded.
* FOLKS... LIKE HIM OR NOT, TRUMP IS THE REPUBLICAN
CANDIDATE WHO CAN PEEL VOTES AWAY FROM BOTH CLINTON AND SANDERS.
California votes June 7. A journalist this week
speculated in conversation that if Mrs. Clinton under-performs or even loses
there, it could be a gift. It will make her desperate. Presuming she goes on to
win the nomination, her desperation might prompt her to make Bernie Sanders her
vice presidential nominee.
(*SHRUG*)
* I HOPE IT DOESN'T. I WANNA GET SOME OF THOSE BERNIE
SUPPORTERS VOTING FOR TRUMP AND EVEN MORE SITTING HOME ON ELECTION DAY AND
REFUSING TO GIVE THEIR VOTES TO HRC.
Why not? It would hold the party together for this cycle.
It would help keep Sanders voters, who often threaten to go elsewhere if Mrs.
Clinton is the nominee, in the tent. It would also unsettle Trumpworld. They
see Bernie supporters as potential Trump supporters in the general election,
and Mr. Sanders as having an appeal that overlaps with their own. They see his
outsider mystique and his appeal to the young.
* PEGGY'S RIGHT.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
Would Mrs. Clinton do it? If it were the only choice, she
would.
Would he? He hasn’t ruled it out.
* OF COURSE HE'D DO IT! (WHAT A STUPID QUESTION...)
In early May, Mr. Sanders told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that he
was “focused” on winning the nomination, and, if he does not succeed, “we are
going to fight as hard as we can” to make the Democratic platform more
“progressive.” “Then, after that,” he said, “certainly Secretary Clinton and I
can sit down and talk and see where we go from there.”
Maybe he’d hold Mrs. Clinton hostage on the platform
before he would agree to be her vice president. Maybe she’d accept a more Left-wing
platform to get the vice president she thinks she needs.
A Clinton-Sanders ticket would be the oldest presidential
ticket in U.S. history, totaling a combined 142 years. You can characterize
that as ancient and out of it, or you can see it as mature, experienced. Up
against Mr. Trump, the latter might not look so bad.
* YEP. THE FACT IS... A CLINTON-SANDERS TICKET COULD WIN.
THAT'S HOW FAR AMERICA HAS TRAVELED DOWN THE PATH OF LUNACY. THAT'S HOW FAR THE
DEMOGRAPHICS HAVE DECLINED IN TERMS OF WHAT THE POPULATION OF THIS ONCE GREAT
NATION LOOKS LIKE TODAY.
* AND FOLKS... DEMOGRAPHICALLY... IT GETS WORSE YEAR BY
YEAR. IF WE CAN'T STOP 'EM IN NOVEMBER... IT'S OVER... WE'LL NEVER BE ABLE TO
STOP 'EM.
Mr. Trump too is looking for a vice president. I don’t
understand those who say he should get an attack dog, since he is an attack
dog. He doesn’t need a dramatic Northeastern governor with a reputation as a
bully, he already has a reputation as a bully. Nor do I understand why they say
Mr. Trump needs someone exciting. He’s quite exciting enough. He doesn’t
require someone who can help him with the ins and outs of Capitol Hill. That
would be nice and come in handy, but it’s also the kind of talent he can hire
as staff.
What he needs is Stable Man or Stable Woman. He needs
someone with real and obvious political accomplishment — a longtime senator or,
less attractively, a representative, or a governor, preferably a current one.
John Kasich says he isn’t interested, but maybe he will
get interested.
* ANOTHER NIGHTMARE SCENARIO.
Newt Gingrich is on the list, which is understandable in
many respects, but he has the same slightly mad quotient as Mr. Trump. Mr.
Trump needs “He’s not crazy.”
* GINGRICH WOULD MAKE THE PERFECT CHIEF OF STAFF.
Big ships need ballast to keep the ship upright, to keep
it from tipping over when a high wave comes. Ballast is by its nature
uninteresting. Mr. Trump needs ballast. He would benefit from a solid,
uninteresting running mate.
* NOTICE HOW PEGGY DOESN'T THROW OUT ANY NAMES OTHER THAN
KASICH AND GINGRICH?
(*SPITTING ON THE GROUND*)
Uninteresting would come as such a relief this year. It
would be like the old days, when people were boring.
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