What does it take to get ahead in today's world?  If I were a young person entering politics, I'd be looking for the best résumé-enhancers, to see what sort of qualifications and accomplishments are shared by those "getting ahead" in today's political arena.

Who are all these people getting ahead, and how are they doing it?

After serving as a Chicago community organizer and Illinois state senator, Barack Obama rose from a pedestrian three years as a U.S. senator to become the 44th president of the United States.  Coming out of a corrupt city and a corrupt state with corrupt politicians (four of the last seven Illinois governors have been jailed), Obama had a few election irregularities of his own that were basically unreported by the media.  Also largely ignored by the media was Obama's choice of mentor-pastor, Jeremiah Wright, who would regularly condemn America and white people from the pulpit on Sunday mornings, using coarse and inflammatory language.

Obama gave great speeches about bringing Hope and Change, which were short on specifics but emotionally appealing to many voters.  The lack of any specific plans to make America better was an appalling shortcoming of Obama's campaign, but the media ignored it.  Instead, the media fell in love with the idea that America had a chance to elect its first black president, so Obama's actual accomplishments, character, and intended policies were given short shrift.  Tom Brokaw and Charlie Rose, two of America's most recognized journalists, admitted in an interview a few days before the 2008 election that they didn't know what books might be important to Obama and didn't know anything about his foreign policy views.  The fact that these highly influential media figures purposely chose to remain clueless about Obama's beliefs and the policies he would promote as leader of the free world is a stunning admission of incompetency and journalistic malpractice.  Instead of being journalists presenting facts, the media hid important facts about Obama from the voters in an obvious attempt to influence the election.

In 2016, the Democratic nominee for president was Hillary Clinton.  Her résumé included conducting top-secret State Department business on her own unsecured home server, as well as raking in hundreds of millions of dollars donated by U.S. citizens and foreigners alike to the Clinton Foundation, money probably given with expectations of a future return on the "investments" from the likely to be elected President Clinton.  To cover her misdeeds, she destroyed electronic records and devices while they were under subpoena, and those aides closest to her were granted immunity by Obama's complicit FBI, resulting in a tainted investigation that concluded without any consequences for Clinton's years of nefarious activities.  Again, the media were enamored of the possibility that we might actually have our first female president and therefore chose to hide Clinton's blatant corruption from the voters..

Donald Trump, in contrast, was subjected to intense media scrutiny and won the 2016 election despite the media's allegation factory running nearly 24-7.  The media breathlessly announced, sometimes with hundreds of references in a single 24-hour news cycle, that Trump was dishonest; crude; hateful; and a racist reality TV personality in danger of ruining the economy, starting WWIII, and so on.  But many voters ignored the media's focus and instead looked at Trump's record of building businesses (Trump owns approximately 500 business entities employing about 22,000 people) as well as his skills in negotiating and compromising with different groups in order to achieve meaningful and long-lasting results.  The Trump résumé was based on real accomplishments in the real world, and when Trump, the rookie politician, spoke of a set of specific policies aimed at Making America Great Again, many voters were convinced he was speaking from his heart and therefore just might pursue fulfilling his campaign promises with the same vigor and tenacity they perceived to be part of his character and track record.  Today, thanks to Trump's policies and fulfilled campaign promises, we have a booming economy with wages rising across the board and unemployment rates the lowest ever for blacks and Hispanics.

It is clear that the right and left prefer radically different résumés for their leaders.  They also prefer different styles of communication.  Politicians use softly spoken magic words to appeal to voters, and it's evident that the Left and right prefer radically different prose.  What's magic for the Left is words that make them feel good, words that say to a leftist that you are important because you are part of a group that is so much smarter and more righteous than the other side, that you are good and classy because the side you have chosen is against hate and racism.

The right has a different set of magic words, oriented toward implementing solutions to specific problems, so its voters tend to be favorably inclined toward leaders who have already accomplished great things.  America faces great problems, and those on the right would like to empower leaders offering solutions that have already been tried and proven to work.

Simply put, the right wants to make life better for its kids and grandkids, while today's Left wants to be the boss of America, which leftists hope to achieve through making the government ever larger so it can intrude into more and more of the average person's life.  The Green New Deal is the Democrat's shiny new toy, which expands government so much that it will surely bankrupt our nation.  Yet over 70 Democrats in Congress are already offering their public support for the GND.  Have they learned nothing from Obama's tremendous expansion of government, which led to a near doubling of our national debt in just eight years?  If the expansion of government and debt is left unchecked, eventually, America will collapse due to insolvency.

No doubt, we live in perilous times with an uncertain future.  Is there anything on the horizon coming our way that may prevent America from becoming a failed, bankrupt state?  I think there is a chance that recent events in Virginia may well be showing us how America can come back from the brink of self-destruction.

Virginia's Democratic leadership team is now being blown up due to past behaviors and transgressions.  While Republicans tend to prevent seriously flawed people from rising far by using a kind of self-policing, the Democrats, always coddled by the media that hide their character flaws and gross malfeasance, have never had to consistently apply a standard of ethics in order to weed out those inclined toward behaving badly.  Rather than great character or great accomplishments, the media and the Democrats years ago started using identity politics to select their leaders.

Recently, identity politics has increasingly been used as a cudgel to force people from office and other positions of power and influence.  And what's new is that now, in Virginia, identity politics as cudgel is being applied with vigor against high-ranking Democrats.  Do the Democrats realize that the runaway freight train of identity politics has left the station and is now bearing down directly at them?  They've created this train, and the engineers running the train are the leftists and journalism majors and politicians who so far seem powerless to stop the coming wave of self-destruction.

The Democratic Party is approaching an all-important fork in the road.  Either the Democrats choose common sense, humility, and patriotism to redirect their choice of policies, tactics, and leaders or, like the Whigs and the Know-Nothings before them, the Democrats and their identity politics will eventually vanish from the American political landscape.