The Democrats and common sense
Understandable. Despite the delusions of many of his supporters, President Trump is deeply unpopular. In fact, while I may have missed a couple, I don't think I've seen a poll since he was elected in which his favorable ratings were larger than his unfavorable- though, in fairness, there have been a few ties.
So it's clear why the Democratic nomination is worth having. Nevertheless, there is a problem of which Democrats seem unaware. It's not just that so many of their candidates are so obscure. It's that they're so extreme.
The Democrats, just like the Republicans, have been taken over by folks who are far more ideologically committed and far less flexible than the American people as a whole. And that says a great deal. As it stands, we seem as a nation to have abandoned the center to gather around the two extremes. Yet the most vocal and most active in the political arena have always been those on the ideological fringes, and the breakdown in civility and reasoned debate which our nation has experienced has exacerbated the problem. More and more, our national politics are driven not by reason but by rhetoric, and by emotion rather than thought. Actual facts are becoming less and less important; the real issue has become the importance of making sure that it's our side that wins. What makes sense and what objectively would be best for the country has fallen by the wayside.
Although there were rumblings on the zany right long before Donald Trump won first the Republican nomination and then the presidency, election after election even the most conservative Republicans had previously been willing, first, to take electability into account in deciding who the nominee should be, and secondly, to rally behind the most electable Republican when he was finally nominated on the theory that any Republican would be better than any Democrat. There were already signs in the support for Ted Cruz and Rand Paul and others that this might not be the case in 2016. And when a lifelong liberal Democrat changed parties, started appealing to the even crazier right (as well as to assorted conspiracy theorists- of whom he himself was one- haters, and advocates of simplistic solutions to complicated problems, the boil finally broke. The Republicans nominated someone who, in a sane world, would not only never have been elected- in fact, nobody (probably including Mr. Trump himself) really believed that there was any chance that he would be even in this crazy world)- but would have not only not been nominated but would have been knocked out of the primaries in the early stages.
The critical- and painfully relevant- point for 2020 is that his election was probably more of a rejection of Hillary Clinton than anything else. Granted, assorted nativists, Nazis, Klansmen, and other haters and tinfoil-hatters, including large numbers who had never bothered to vote before and thus were not included in the polls, came pouring out from under the rocks to vote for him. But when all is said and done, the election was a referendum on Hillary Clinton.
Even Hillary managed to win the popular vote, and I'm sure that many of her supporters would disagree with me, but Bill Clinton would have won in 2016. So would Barack Obama, or Joe Biden (despite his baggage), or John Kerry, or Al Gore. I believe that Fritz Mondale would have won, or even Mike Dukakis. But not Shrill Hil.
It's a pretty devastating indictment for a presidential candidate as well known as Hillary Clinton to lose to a flamboyant, unstable, manifestly ignorant demagogue of dubious ethics and wholly devoid of qualifications, a man who, as Sec. Clinton herself said in one of the debates, raised questions about his personal fitness for the presidency which were unique in recent American history. But the bottom line was that Hillary was a bad candidate. She was shrill. She, like Trump, was capable of being publicly mean and inconsiderate. Her over-the-top statements weren't nearly as frequent or as outrageous as Mr, Trump's, but The Donald's showman-like personna seemed to take a bit of the sting out of his act. Ironically, the very fact that it was so difficult to see Donald Trump as president probably meant that he frightened people less than he might have, and his inarticulate, falsehood-filled verbal salad in the debates and on the campaign trail only contributed to his image as a buffoon who was not to be taken seriously. On the other hand, it was very easy to see Hillary Clinton in the Oval Office. Americans had been prepared for that eventuality ever since she was First Lady. And the thought appalled them.
Hillary, like the Democratic party generally, was to the left of the American people on abortion (ever since Roe v. Wade, Gallup polls have shown the nation as a whole to oppose not only outlawing abortion but also abortion on demand), LGBTQ issues (remember, Hollywood, the television industry, and the media had not yet fully unleashed its overwhelming campaign to demonize anyone with the slightest ethical reservations about homosexuality and to silence the arguments of anyone opposed to marriage redefinition), and other issues. "Shrill Hil" was not only shrill but extreme. That Donald Trump was even more extreme, far more ignorant and erratic, and infinitely less qualified somehow didn't register because, after all, there was no chance of his winning.
I wish I had the proverbial dime for every Republican both before the election and since who was just as appalled by Donald Trump as I was, but voted for him solely because "at least he isn't Hillary." Trumpsters and partisan Democrats alike may deny it all they want, but any reasonably non-obnoxious and perhaps even semi-moderate Democrat- even one like Barack Obama, whose moderation was pretty much a facade- would have beaten Donald Trump in the Electoral College as well as in the popular vote.
"Crazy Joe" Biden is certainly not the ideal opponent for Donald Trump. His age and his own genius for sticking his foot in his mouth constitute a rather significant downside. But his experience and familiarity, to say nothing of his qualifications, make him look almost like a statesman compared with our current chief executive. I'm not saying that I would vote for him, mind you, especially if a reasonable centrist third-party or independent alternative was available. But given the confirmation of Justice Kavanaugh and the fact that the Supreme Court is now safely, if precariously, in originalist hands, Biden is the one option currently being discussed I would at least consider voting for, before almost certainly discarding the idea.
Oh, for a Joe Manchin or a Bob Casey! The Democrats are crazy enough that I can't see myself ever rejoining their ranks. But I'd consider it if only they'd give me a chance.
But they won't. And even Joe Biden probably won't be the nominee, unless perhaps the specter of four more years of Donald Trump scares some temporary sense into them. The irony is that the advent of Trump could be a godsend for the Democrats. It affords them an opportunity to redefine themselves as a party with a genuinely big tent, in which centrists as well as leftists were not only welcome but listened to and respected enough to cause a general moderation of the party's rhetoric and a willingness to consider the possibility that someone with whom they disagree about an emotional issue might not be the devil incarnate. If fanaticism had not so displaced pragmatism the Democratic party would be sparing no effort to win over us Never Trumpers. That's exactly what the Democratic party of FDR or Harry Truman or Adlai Stevenson or Jack Kennedy or Lyndon Johnson or Hubert Humphrey would have done, and they would have governed America for a generation.
But alas, even in the face of an abdication of credibility as complete as the embracing of Donald Trump by the Republican party and conservative commentators alike, the Democrats are too far gone to seize the moment. Ideology trumps pragmatism, so to speak, and emotions and self-righteousness trump common sense and humility.
I sincerely hope that if Ohio Gov. John Kasich makes his anticipated run for the White House in 2020, it will be as an independent rather than as a Republican. Should he choose to challenge Mr. Trump for the Republican nomination, he would have no chance. He would only embarrass himself.
Yet not only does the extremism of the Democratic party preclude any chance of us Never Trumpers joining them, but it would make any race by a Manchin or a Casey for the 2020 nomination just as futile. I wish it were otherwise, but any way I look at it the only hope I see for the nation's grownups to have a political voice in 2020 is in the founding of a third party of the center. Perhaps it would be a party with a big enough tent to welcome pro-lifers and pro-choicers, a party for people of all sexual orientations reasonable enough to listen rather than condemn and exclude, a party able to respect dissenting viewpoints, allow for them, and dialog with them.
Perhaps it could be a party whose very identity- whose ideology, if you will- would be as the party not of the right or of the left but of reason, of respect, of good-will, of common sense, of dialog, of pragmatism, and of what's good for the country rather than what will help beat the other party.
As unspeakably sad as it makes me, I can't see either of the current national parties become that. But those rare and much-belittled qualities are those which enable democracy to function and to survive, and our democracy will not survive unless we embrace them.
And the first step to doing that is to give them a forum, a voice, an identity as coherent and distinctive as those of both the crazy right and the crazy left.
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