PrintA few last words on those Democratic Party 'debates'
Even the New York Times is admitting that the Democratic Party got off to "a wretched start" with that dumbbell series of debates.
Bret Stephens wrote:
In this week's Democratic debates, it wasn't just individual candidates who presented themselves to the public. It was also the party itself. What conclusions should ordinary people draw about what Democrats stand for, other than a thunderous repudiation of Donald Trump, and how they see America, other than as a land of unscrupulous profiteers and hapless victims?
Here's what: a party that makes too many Americans feel like strangers in their own country. A party that puts more of its faith, and invests most of its efforts, in them instead of us.
They speak Spanish. We don't. They are not U.S. citizens or legal residents. We are. They broke the rules to get into this country. We didn't. They pay few or no taxes. We already pay most of those taxes. They willingly got themselves into debt. We're asked to write it off. They don't pay the premiums for private health insurance. We're supposed to give up ours in exchange for some V.A.-type nightmare. They didn't start enterprises that create employment and drive innovation. We're expected to join the candidates in demonizing the job-creators, breaking up their businesses and taxing them to the hilt.
Americans really should be asking themselves, "Why?"
Why, for example, was there no one on the stage for either event who had a history of actual accomplishment? Or a single fresh idea? Not one candidate who didn't join in the pandering — pandering so obvious that even longtime Democrats were turned off and left embarrassed?
Why were the actual concerns of the American people not under discussion and left totally unaddressed?
In truth, each of those questions answers the others, and thus, in a real sense, those "debates" (if you insist on calling them such) were quite revealing.
Our nation's actual needs are in truth lessening. Our economy is again strong and growing. Opportunities abound. The threats from abroad are lessening day by day. For all the talk of "hate," the American people have never been less hateful and never been more open to allowing one another to steer their own lives without social stricture.
We the people's real fears and concerns — for such are never truly absent among humankind — are being addressed outside government, or else the needed "fixes" are being resisted by government bureaucrats or their "bosses" — our supposedly representative Congress.
There we find the roots of the endless nonsense: everything being put forth on the stage of those "debates" was being put forth to advance or protect a dying status quo. And to snooker the easily snookered.
The N.Y. Times was right on this occasion. It was "wretched," indeed. But it should not be just "a wretched start." It should be the Democrats' wretched finish.
