Bob Ehrlich: Why The Democrats' Race to the Left Is Good News for Trump
I have a friend who recently asked whether I believed there exists such a thing as the “deep state.” He further inquired if I truly understood why the powers that be in Washington, D.C. had such disregard for President Trump and his administration. The tone was incredulous given my buddy’s Democratic, D.C.-centric leanings.
My response went something along these lines:
No, I do not believe there is a secret bunker wherein card-carrying anti-Trumpers meet in order to perpetrate mischief and more to the president and his administration. On just the publicly available evidence, however, I believe it is clear that a number of highly placed senior government officials acted inappropriately and in bad faith in an attempt to assist Hillary Clinton and damage Donald Trump.
Alas, despite what I believe is incontrovertible evidence in support of my opinion, my friend was not impressed. He continues to believe that all of us on the right buy into the deep state theory because (some) Fox News anchors pitch it on a nightly basis.
Perhaps I should remind him (as well as my fellow right-wingers) that one fact stands out above all others: try as they did and despite all the proven shenanigans perpetrated by the anti-Trumpers, the establishment failed to stop the celebrity real estate developer and novice politician from becoming president.
The issue of why the president continues to generate such deep-rooted passion on the left is deserving of more thorough analysis.
An interested observer must first understand that this is a fundamentally different Democratic Party from even five years ago. At that time, I (and many other conservatives) thought Barack Obama defined progressivism. We were quite comfortable in our conclusion. Recall his infamous indictment of capitalism — “You didn’t build that”; his indictment of strong border control – “Maybe [the Republicans will] need a moat!”; his uber-left Supreme Court picks — Sotomayor and Kagan; and his “limited horizons” view of the American economy — 2 percent growth is the “new normal.”
But that was then.
The past half-decade has seen an energized progressive intelligentsia take Obama’s “successes” and double down, especially in their mission to make the case that a racist, nativist, misogynistic country requires fundamental transformation. Hence, the more recent, more extreme indulgences by those who aspire to the White House: permissive — often open — immigration, elimination of ICE, reparations, free health care for illegal aliens, and no airplanes, cows, or fossil fuels.
That many of today’s Democratic leaders are willing to advocate for such items out loud speaks to not only how far they have progressed (excuse the pun) in that brief period of time, but also how detached they have become from the real-life concerns of middle America and average Americans. Yes, the problems daily encountered by those often-scorned deplorables.
In this respect, Sen. Bernie Sanders must think he has arrived in a parallel universe. Even liberals who have long kept a safe distance from Bernie’s more quixotic initiatives are now in a race to “out-progressive” him.
And every time we think a new extreme has been achieved, that the policy proposals could not get more outrageous, along comes a Booker or Buttigieg or Gillibrand to again move the progressive goalposts. One wonders if there is an inflection point for this group and their ideas.
It goes without saying that those of us who support the president’s re-election are just fine with this historic leftward journey. We have a strong suspicion middle America still interprets politics as a game (to borrow a football phrase) played between the 20s. It was where both parties used to engage.
But the formerly hidden (or at least quiet) borderless, quasi-socialist types in Washington — those who now appear as regular guests on CNN and MSNBC — are REAL serious about moving their party (and the country) to the outer limits of globalization, government command and control, and secular socialism.
This indeed is the “other” reason they hate POTUS so much. First, he takes down their progressive female candidate, in a decidedly un-PC way, up close and personal — with the cooperation of what president Nixon labeled “the silent majority.”
Then, he makes market capitalism and American nationalism successful touchstones of his administration. Worse, he relentlessly degrades the permanent establishment of both political parties, belittling their long-established values (and assumptions) along the way.
Don’t bother to look for anything other than a full-court press from these folks for as long as Donald J. Trump occupies the Oval Office.
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