As we approach the midterm elections, the "leaders" of the Democratic Party sign on to a variety of hard-left proposals, including "Medicare for All."  The fact that many of the proposals are brutally expensive and would lead us into a brave new Venezuela seem completely lost in the woods.  One must also wonder at the ludicrous speed at which previously "rational" Democrats have swung from working across the aisle to become feet-in-stone resisters.  What is the source of the rage that turned mere humans into Green Hulks?

One might look at the occupants of senatorial and congressional seats for the answer.  After all, Maxine Waters, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer are all members of "congressional leadership."  With varying degrees of extremism and volume, they all espouse pretty much the same rhetorical territory staked out by Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and the oblivious (to facts and history) Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

We should have Medicare for All and a "living wage," regardless of work skills or industriousness, and we should relegate the police and prisons to the dustbin of the history of "justice."  Only Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum has gone that far to date, and the Pittsburgh massacre has led to that rhetoric being momentarily shelved.

To say these proposals are scary to Republicans would be an understatement.  As Peggy Noonan notes regarding the Kavanaugh cabaret, Republican senators are "amazed" and "terrified" that “seemingly, and without very much thought, nearly half the United States Senate has abandoned the presumption of innocence in this country, all to achieve a political goal.”

This isn't happening in a vacuum.

To any thoughtful observer, it is painfully clear that there are two distinct parts of the Democrat plantation: the D.C. swamp and the useful idiots in the streets.  The relationship between the two is intuitively obvious but seldom exposed.  The swamp exists because it has enough vocal support, both on the streets and in the press.  The very air it breathes is on the pages of the New York Times and commentary on CNN, fed by cameras in Berkeley and on the steps of the Supreme Court.

That brings us to the key question.  Which came first: the useful idiots, or the swamp?

No politician can survive without votes.  To get those votes, he takes positions he thinks will attract the maximum number of voters.  His problem is to identify just what those voters want and put on political clothes that make him look like a member of their movement, whatever that might be.  Thus, the joke that you can tell when a politician is lying when his lips are moving is usually a close representation of truth.

Today, a loud youth movement rebels against norms.  That's what juveniles do.  They push boundaries.  They haven't developed either an accurate vocabulary or an effective BS-detector.  In a solid family, they'd get called out for misbehaving like "Young Sheldon."  But when kids don't have firm parents (like Ben Carson's mother), they act out, searching for boundaries.  If parents enforce rules, children learn that they are safe inside those rules.  If there are no limits, kids push farther and farther looking for them.

In a mollycoddling society, where success is not rewarded and failure isn't punished, there are no safe spaces.  This creates fear.  No one is safe, because no one knows quite how far you can stray without lions and tigers and bears coming for you.

You can be a boy today, and a girl tomorrow.  No one can call you out on it, because that might somehow harm your psyche.  So now we have large numbers of completely confused young adults pushing boundaries, looking for limits, not realizing that their movement has declared limits to be off limits.  The safety they crave has been completely destroyed by the unfettered license they've been granted.  The result is chaos.

We should not be surprised when this mob of self-absorbed lemmings uses language badly while wielding batons against otherwise inoffensive adults.  These people have been trained to do this by their minimally more mature peer group, who is holding down claw-footed chairs inside the stone walls of academia.  That group has been certified in underwater basket-weaving and social activism as a reward for its own rebellion.  And its checks are signed by barely more mature administrators, whose own rudderless lives create total fear of that uncontained critical mass of effluvium called a student body.

In short, we have a huge mass of people who have, as Pat Paulsen noted, "a right to go to high school and end up with a third grade education."  Their "enthusiasm is exceeded only by their extreme lack of judgment."  And they vote.  Or at least enough of them voted to help elect Barack Obama.  Pat Paulsen was right.

Because of this uncritical mass of low-hanging fruit, the Political Pandas of the Left imagine an easy electoral win if they can convince the great unwashed that the Democrats are their saviors.  So instead of standing on any principle, they listen to the dumb masses and their echo chambers in the press.  Perceiving that the wind is blowing in a particular direction, they declare that they are, and have always been, totally in tune with them.  That's the very definition of Panda-ing.  If the masses don't wake up and Walk Away, those votes are in the bag.

Paul Joseph Watson puts it this way.  "Hello fellow humans.  I am celebrity No. 2932, I believe in everything that is safe and popular with people aged 18-35.  You may now praise me on the social media platform of your choice..."  "I agree.  Our agreement with each other's views means we are right and the other side's evil hatred must be stopped!"  In short, the Democrat "leaders" are in fact NPCs – Non Player Characters in video games, controlled by the program, with no vestige of real humanity.  The masses are equally NPCs.  "Well, I got all of the accounts suspended, but why do I still feel so empty and pathetic?"  You have to ask?

Dianne Feinstein used to support corporate bailouts and restrictions on union organizing.  As mayor of San Francisco, she vetoed domestic partner legislation and refused to march in a gay rights parade.  Now she is firmly in the LGBTQ corner and strongly supports labor unions.  This is typical of the left.  As long as leftists can keep themselves seated in the U.S. Capitol, they will take any stance whatever, as long as it looks as if it aligns with the loudest voices.

We can easily add example after example, but it's clear that the "leaders" of the left are no such thing.  A leader stands up for principles and propositions.  He defends them and works to achieve results consistent with them.  With the possible exception of Bernie Sanders, the left's "leaders" are NPCs.

Those "leaders" are people who, whether by accident of circumstance or political skill, have managed to position themselves to surf the current wave of loud emotion.  With rare exceptions, they have no established positions of their own.  So when all the rage is "against," they become "The Resistance."  When Ocasio-Cortez pushes for "Medicare for All," the other "leaders" follow the sound of the shouting.

The number of actual leaders on the left is small.  Bernie Sanders took a (misguided) position in favor of outright socialism long ago and has stuck with it.  He had little charisma to attract followers nationally, but when his longstanding convictions came in sync with the street, he came within an eyelash of winning the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party.

The Schumers and Pelosis of the Democratic Party are leaders, but not of the party.  Rather, they are organizational leaders of the Democrat caucus in D.C.  To have a voice in that caucus, you must toe the line they establish.  But even they shift their stances when the wind changes.  So they are followers of the mob.  They are the ultimate groupies, willing to surrender all principle in order to keep their positions of power in the halls of Congress.

"Where are they?  What are they doing?  I must find them!  I am their leader!"

Image credit: Amio Cajander.