by Julie Kelly
A healthy political party—just like a healthy individual—has certain traits and habits that nourish overall wellness. A diversity of interests, a sense of humor, a curious mind, a measured temperament, and an occasional endorphin-release from physical activity are just a few things that contribute to the fitness of a human being. The same kind of characteristics should be found on a collective scale in a thriving, muscular, and stable political party.
None of those qualities, however, can be detected in the present-day Democratic Party.
For all the squawking about Donald Trump’s alleged unfitness for office and insistence that the Republican Party is populated with zombie-like Trump cultists, in reality it is the Democratic Party that needs an extended stay at a detox facility to cleanse its sickly mind and body.
The party’s ailments have been on full display this week. Look no further than the freakish music video that closed out the first night of the Democratic National Convention. Billy Porter, a gay black Broadway star, and geriatric Steven Stills of Crosby, Stills, and Nash teamed up to remake Stills’ 1966 classic, “For What It’s Worth.”
The video was a performative display of the party’s schizophrenia: A white ’60s counterculture icon and a Dracula-costumed POC LGBTQ activist offering an inharmonious version of a Vietnam-era tune as the official anthem for the candidacy of a feeble establishment codger and his unaccomplished cackling sidekick quickly shredding their faux moderate façade in fealty to the party’s lunatic fringe of America-hating nihilists.
Days of (More) Rage
Somebody call a doctor.
The Democratic Party is not well. Joe Biden is neither mentally nor physically healthy enough to run the country, yet the party remains in denial. Biden’s conduct should raise all sorts of red flags but party stalwarts are hellbent on dragging him across the finish line in November in an almost cruel act of selfishness.
While Democrats willfully ignore Biden’s fragility, the party is fixated on every move, utterance, and tweet from Donald Trump in a way that any mental health professional would diagnose as obsessive.
Their rage often is expressed in alarming public outbursts. From tearing up a State of the Union address to threatening to “impeach the motherfucker” and calling for “unrest in the streets” against Trump supporters, the Democratic Party is controlled by emotionally unstable people who behave more like mad stalkers than rational adults.
They have one hallucination after another. For three years, Democrats rocked back and forth wrapped in a collusion straightjacket mumbling about the Russians(!) and lighting candles for Special Counsel Robert Mueller. One Democratic leader made up phone conversations between Trump and the Ukrainian president; one presidential candidate pretends to be Native American.
Now, metal mailboxes disappear before their very eyes.
Even the party’s aristocracy is ailing. Why exactly are the Obamas so angry? Barack Obama continues to escape any culpability for the rampant corruption that occurred on his watch, not the least of which was using the sweeping powers of the federal government to target his political foes both before and after the 2016 election. Michelle Obama recorded her dark convention message from their 30-acre, $12 million estate in Martha’s Vineyard. The pair signed a joint book deal for $65 million and a $50 million gig with Netflix.
I suppose Trump’s dismantling of Obama’s legacy might sting a bit, but it hardly justifies the doomsday scenarios both Obamas presented to the American people this week.
Yes, Mrs. Obama, many people believe this election will have serious consequences for America’s future but it has nothing to do with climate change or Trump’s tweets and everything to do with the threat posed by a lawless Democratic Party intent on tearing out the underpinnings of the country.
Normal People Don’t Act This Way
But it’s not just the big party names who need sedation. The rank-and-file are just as disturbed.
On a lovely summer Sunday last weekend, a large group of “protestors” gathered outside the North Carolina home of the U.S. postmaster to harass Louis DeJoy for his purported scheme to make the postal service unmanageable before the election. (Yes, that’s a joke.) Some agitators held signs that read “Protect Our Boys in Blue!” referring not to police officers but to mailmen.
That’s not how normal people spend a Sunday afternoon. Hounding public officials and their families, however, has become political chic in the Trump era. On a Sunday in July, crackpot Democrats congregated in the Virginia neighborhood where Chad Wolf, acting director of the Department of Homeland Security, lives with his family. The agitators were furious over Wolf’s comment to enforce federal law in unruly cities such as Portland.
The rank-and-file Democrats are as much to blame for the toxic political climate as the news media or party leadership. They are the people banging on the doors of the Supreme Court, forcing their kids to attend Black Lives Matters marches, and posting Adam Schiff’s latest absurd conspiracy theory on their Facebook pages. Trump-hating Democrats are like junkies; they need a daily fix from the Washington Post and Rachel Maddow just to get through the day.
Teachers’ unions are a perfect example. Most schools were preparing plans to reopen this fall—until the Bad Orange Man weighed in. “Trump’s aggressive, often bellicose demands for reopening classrooms helped to harden the views of many educators that it would be unsafe—and give their powerful unions fodder to demand stronger safety measures or to resist efforts to physically reopen,” the New York Times reported August 13. “As the president has pushed for schools to reopen, key constituencies—parents and educators—have largely moved in the other direction.”
Now, think about that. The president correctly concluded that tens of millions of children must return to in-person classrooms after five months of isolation and irreversible educational setbacks but grown adults are so consumed with partisan rage that they instead choose to sacrifice the well-being of our kids to score political points against him.
Not healthy, not compassionate, and not sane.
“These People Are Insane”
Healthy people thrive on good habits and routine; unhealthy people sow chaos for themselves and for others. The Democratic Party is the home of monument-destroyers, Magnificent Mile looters, urban center occupiers, cop abusers, and thugs of all ages.
Democratic leaders are enablers of this mob-like behavior; in fact, they want more. Lawmakers pledge to defund local police, dismantle border patrols, and empty the prisons. If those promises are kept, the country as we know it will be gone for good. Democrat-run big cities are already disintegrating in rapid fashion due to failed leadership and policies; expect to see it in a small city or suburb near you if they get control in November.
The whole of the Democratic Party should be in a rubber room not anywhere near the levers of power. The only cure for what ails the Democratic Party is for voters to turn them out of office so they get the nice long rehab they need. As Trump said Thursday about the opposition party, “There was a certain sense of sanity 4 years ago. These people are insane.”
He is correct.
– – –
Julie Kelly is a political commentator and senior contributor to American Greatness. She is the author of Disloyal Opposition: How the NeverTrump Right Tried―And Failed―To Take Down the President.
You’re right. The Democrats are unwell, but for different reasons. Their continued willingness to allow “blue dogs” (de facto Republican-In-All-But-Name -RIABN-) to continue taking the increasingly left wing of Democrat core voters for granted is the Democrat leadership’s sickness and the willingness by some progressive and leftist voters to allow the centrist to continuing to do so. Since 1948, the progressive left wing of the Democrat Party has allowed phonies like Harry Truman to trick them into deserting real Progressives like Henry Wallace by pretending to be for the Fair Deal and Civil Rights when Truman, in fact, was secretly in cahoots with conservatives and later Cold War militarists. This rouse continued with Jimmy Carter by 1980 who had sold out to Pentagon extremists like Sam Nunn, Scoop Jackson, Zbiegniew Brezinski, Barry Goldwater, and Ronald Reagan. Only in 1980, enough Progressives had enough sense to desert Carter in favor of both John Anderson and Ted Kennedy. But Progressives allowed phonies like the Clintons to doublecross them with measures like welfare reform and more prisons. The Progressives need to reassert themselves once and for all against the conservative leadership that continues to masquerade as progressives. As Ralph Nader said, “Not a dime’s worth of difference.”
In short, the Democratic Party leadership is sick because it wants to be Republican-lite.