Posted on 01/12/2018 11:28:48 PM PST by Oshkalaboomboom
Liberal exhaustion from Oprah to DACA
Oh, to have been a fly on the wall in Elizabeth Warren's house as people went crazy over the prospect of Oprah 2020. I can only imagine Warren's reaction. Did she yell at the TV? Mutter under her breath? Immediately call her media consultant in panic?
We know the slight got to her. By midweek she was making the rounds on cable. There she was, with Mark Warner of Virginia, reminding us of her existence, talking about God knows what, and smiling uncomfortably when asked, inevitably, what she thought of the Lady O.
Watching Warren and Warner, I had a vision of the next Democratic ticket. How ironic if Democrats, having lost to President Trump with a liberal woman and a boring Virginia centrist in 2016, respond four years later by nominating … a liberal woman and a boring Virginia centrist.
And how embarrassing for the two-dozen-plus Democratic officeholders mulling presidential runs that media and Hollywood would kick over the punch bowl in a mad rush to embrace as the party savior a billionaire TV star with no government or political experience and no discernable ideology or agenda. What Matthew Walther called Oprahysteria signified nothing less than Democratic leeriness and hesitancy at the coming primary fight. Crowded, aged, liberal, boring, and pale, the emerging 2020 Democratic field is no reason for excitement. Tossing Oprah into the mix livens things up.
But all that's in the future. The midterms come first. Here, the Democrats are enthusiastic. They have many—some say too many—candidates. After Virginia and Alabama, the wind is at their backs. Trump remains unpopular. All that the Democrats are missing is an agenda. They need something to offer the public. Right now they have nothing.
Don't tell me they have the Dreamers. Polls might show that legalizing the status of illegal immigrants brought to the United States as children is popular. But the fact is that the attention Dreamers receive from the media is remarkably out of proportion and intensity with their relevance to the everyday voter. When Pew surveyed public priorities a year ago, the top three items were terrorism (76 percent), the economy (73 percent), and education (69 percent). Immigration ranked fifteenth (43 percent) out of twenty-one options.
In the Virginia exit poll last November, immigration was only the third-most important issue, and much of that probably was from Gillespie voters who want the state to fight MS-13. Health care and gun policy were more important to Virginians. So do we really believe Claire McCaskill will begin her appeals to Missourians this fall by saying, "Reelect me, I legalized the Dreamers"?
The difference between the actual politics of immigration and the way those politics are presented in the major papers and on the television news is more than wide. It's Grand-Canyon-scale enormous. The Dreamers are sympathetic cases the public supports. But the public also supports enforcing immigration law and reducing legal migration. A little more than a decade ago, congressional Democrats authorized the very border walls the party now opposes with such vehemence. Yet there is a not insignificant portion of the Democratic caucus that says it will refuse to support any DACA bill containing money for a barrier on the southern border. And they call Trump extreme.
The idea that Democrats benefit from a government shutdown over the Dreamers is absurd. Not only would Democrats have to explain that thousands upon thousands of federal workers are on leave because of a dispute over noncitizens. Democrats would also jeopardize the bipartisan goodwill the Dreamers enjoy by making them pawns in a cynical game. So unreasonable are the Democratic demands on immigration—more, more, always more, and with no changes to a rickety and leaky system—that one begins to wonder whether they actually want to settle the issue.
Perhaps the Dreamers and other illegal immigrants are more useful to the Democrats as tools of virtue signaling and electoral mobilization than they are as legal permanent residents in a country where the border is protected and laws are enforced. However, if my cynical interpretation is correct, then the Democratic strategy may backfire. I can think of one recent national campaign where immigration was central. It did not end in Democratic victory.
The Dreamers may turn against their supposed protectors, as is already happening. At the same time, independent voters and Trump Democrats may rebuke mealy-mouthed open borders types in favor of candidates who want both to legalize the Dreamers and to reform immigration law in a rational manner. Each scenario is plausible. Yet the political and journalistic analysis of this complex and dynamic situation never seems to go beyond the "isn't Trump crazy and mean" stage.
This obsession with the president's habits and eccentricities has obscured the utter emptiness of the Democratic policy cupboard. There was no alternative Democratic health care bill, no alternative Democratic tax bill. All the Democrats have is obstruction. While annoying to the administration, it hasn't really worked. The judges are seated, the tax bill was passed, and the antiregulatory and foreign policy agenda moves forward. The latest Democratic tactic is to call the wage increases and bonuses announced for American workers as a consequence of tax reform "breadcrumbs." Genius.
And yet: What must worry Republicans is that a lack of accomplishment and message is no barrier to political success. A listless and exhausted and bereft Democratic Party can take solace in the following British cliché: Opposition parties don't win elections. Governments lose them.
They haven’t been the party of the working-class guy for over twenty years....why change now?
The author of this piece is a NeverTrump neocon. Why post garbage from a neocon propaganda site like the WFB? Don’t give legitimacy to neocons. WFB is simply an online rebranding the Weekly Standard.
“Oh, to have been a fly on the wall in Elizabeth Warren’s house as people went crazy over the prospect of Oprah 2020. I can only imagine Warren’s reaction. Did she yell at the TV? Mutter under her breath? Immediately call her media consultant in panic?”
And the media is all wee wee’d up over Trump calling COUNTRIES that actually ARE SH!THOLES, SH!THOLES, when Princess Gray Beaver is probably using The “N” Word profusely with reference to Oprah!
It really doesn’t get much better than this when you sit here watching the “opposition” talking itself out of existence. I just wonder what the MSM will do when we have another successful election in November which not only rids us of more RATs, but more importantly a flock of useless RINOs.
Princess Gray Beaver...good one!
They NEVER were the party of ‘’the working guy’’.
I understand that Conservative writers like to talk about all the weakness, chaos and turmoil on the Dem side of the aisle. Some do it because it’s their job, I guess. Others, like Erickson, do it because they’re arrogant blowhards who want to show that they’re the smartest people around, because they tell you they’re the smartest people around.
But, why? Why point out the failures, incompetence and stupidity of the Dem’s and the Left? It’s on full display, every moment of every day. They think they’re doing stories about how great they are, when most American’s tune them out due to their rank disgust and disdain for all things, American, and their incompetence and stupidity.
There just might be one politician, or a staffer, that reads these articles, does some soul searching and is convinced that a shift to the middle is the right thing to do, because most of America isn’t listening anymore. Let them continue their downward spiral. Let them continue their race to the radical, socialist, extreme Left. They’ve become so blinded with their politics based on: identity, gender, sex, victimhood, ethinicity, and race, that I don’t think they can recover from it. Too many different folks, drinking from the same trough. They’ll band together to fight the evil, Right, but will eat each other alive for control of the narrative.
Their platform is: Vote for us or you’re a racist.
I like that. The Big W. Reminds me of Jonathan Winters, the other Big W. And Mickey Rooney, the really little R.
TRUMP won the Election with a 46% approval & he is at 46% right now or the last Rasmussen poll I saw
& always add another 5% to any TRUMP polling!
Well he walked into my office, shut the door and said, "I just got my 401K statement! The value of my portfolio has jumped 22% in the last year!" Then in a stage whisper he said, "You know I'm not a Republican guy, but what ever Trump and the rest of his team is doing, I hope they keep it up."
That is a critical point; if more than half of the voters can say they are better off than in 2016, Trump will do all right. After the timing of the 2007/08 meltdown that basically handed the White House to Obama, I’m very concerned when people tie their well-being to “paper wealth”.
Years ago the CPA firm Arthur Andersen was destroyed by a conviction regarding Enron; the clients fled, followed by the staff, yet three years later the conviction was overturned. Too little, too late; the firm was ruined. Games like that seem too easy to orchestrate, and the overall health of the economy is conveyed to low-information people by our lying enemedia (Republicans=bad, socialism=good - just ignore that starvation down in Venezuela).
We’ll see what 2018 brings; this immigration debate is making it clear how Dems intend to just run out the clock while replacing Americans with imported sh!thole populations.
Nice to hear it.
Warren and Warner. Final Jeopardy this past Thursday, category was Senators. Answer was, two current Senators whose last names are anagrams. Coincidence?
Re his 401(K):
“You know I’m not a Republican guy, but what ever Trump and the rest of his team is doing, I hope they keep it up.”
Sounds like rank hypocrisy.
“You know I’m not a Republican guy, but what ever Trump and the rest of his team is doing, I hope they keep it up.”
And THIS is why ‘Rats should never be trusted. He’s got his; screw the REST of Americans. ;)
Someone else noticed that, Warner & Werner. Op Mockingbird and counterintel goin on?
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