A Contract on America

In many ways Donald Trump has been sucking up all the political oxygen. And just because he is Donald Trump. Democrats are obsessed, in an unhealthy way, with trashing Trump, with finding fault with everything he does, by contorting themselves into the most agonizing poses trying to bring him down.

In the meantime, the Democratic Party is in some very serious trouble. It has no leader. It has no program. It rolls out some pathetical politicians ranting about how they are going to: Fight, fight, fight, for no other reason than that Trump made the word his signature in Butler, PA.

The great minds of the American left are hard at working trying to figure out how to breathe some life into the rotting carcass that was the Democratic party.

Of course, it’s always darkest before the dawn, but, truth be told, the Democratic Party needs to get its act together and to present itself as a political party, not just as an an anti-Trump crusade.

They could not do worse than to emulate the fine example shown by Congressional Republicans in 1994. Having lost the presidency and Congress in 1992, the Republicans, led by Newt Gingrich and Richard Armey put together what they called a Contract with America, a series of legislative proposals that would constitute a governing agenda-- if ever they got put back in charge,

It was simple and brilliant. It was also respectful of the minds of voters. The Contract with America was addressed to adults. It did not have any entertainment value. It did not show idiot Congresspeople dancing around like buffoons. It presented the Republican Party as a group of adults, ready to take charge. The Democrats have lately been presenting themselves as children trying to entertain and to manipulate the public mind.

The Contract with America was accompanied by legislation that would put its elements into play. When the new Republican Congress took over in 1995 it enacted many of the elements in the Contract, and saw President Bill Clinton sign some of them. It’s called governing.

But that raises an important question. If the solution to the Democrats’s problems is so obvious, why are they not doing the same. Why have they resorted to juvenile stunts, threats and curses? 

If the purpose of their antics is to show how strongly they feel about this, that and Trump, then they are failing. Even if their therapists told them to express all of their feelings. Otherwise, they are simply making themselves look like they are not ready to govern. They are not even ready for prime time.

Even if we imagine that the Democrats have ideas that they could fashion into legislation, the truth remains, that they do not have the people to do the job. The party has cornered the market in stupidity, and, among the problems this poses-- when they need someone who can write bills and defend them in public debate, they come up short.

Can you imagine Hakeem Jeffries, whose most recent contribution to the national debate, was to suggest that ICE agents should be doxed, outlining a policy agenda?

After all, the most recent Democratic presidential candidate was a subliterate reformed courtesan. The last Democratic president was cerebrally defective. 

Writing in the Financial Times columnist Janan Ganesh rips the veil back on the illusion that was Hillary Clinton.

World his­tory turned on that sin­gu­lar act of pig­headed­ness. Polls were telling the party that voters dis­liked her. She had already fluffed a huge lead over the young Barack Obama in the primar­ies of eight years earlier. True, her low repu­ta­tion has never been fair. She isn’t a crook or much more of a hypo­crite than other politi­cians, just one of life’s plod­ders. But the world is what it is. Demo­crats chose to ignore the object­ive fact of her unpop­ular­ity, and the out­come is a Trump era that was prob­ably avoid­able.

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Not since Barry Gold­wa­ter have the Repub­lic­ans mis­judged the fit of nom­inee and elect­or­ate as badly as the Demo­crats did with George McGov­ern, Wal­ter Mondale and Michael Duka­kis.

Obviously, the Democrats have been hoist on their own petard-- to coin a phrase. The reason for their serial failures is identity politics. Their most recent leaders were anointed, not chosen. The example of Hillary Clinton stands out, for what she did not accomplish.

They got away with it with Barack Obama, but they have just run out the string. Nowadays the party is left with dubious idiots like AOC and Jasmine Crockett.

Of course, you will never imagine AOC and Jasmine Crockett concocting a new Contract with America, unless perhaps, they think that they are putting out a Contract on America.