Our current period of political turmoil can be considered to have begun with the presidential election of 2008.  The meteoric rise of a virtual unknown from the Illinois state Senate to the White House is fairly unprecedented.  Though he lacked any depth of understanding of why things are the way they are, Mr. Obama was gifted with a commanding stage presence.  After all, superficial appeal invariably trumps substance among the political activist community.

Obama was certainly helped when the Republican establishment decided that 2008 was a time to lose.  Thus, the Republicans rewarded one of their own, John McCain, by giving him a place in the sun...much like what they did for Bob Dole in 1996.  They also took the opportunity to put a major babe on the ticket in the form of the governor of Alaska.  See, Republicans really don't hate women.

Then came the midterm elections of 2010.  The vast public resentment for the Affordable Care Act (AKA "Obamacare") led to a "shellacking" of epic proportions, causing Dan Balz of the Washington Post to declare that the Democrats no longer had a "bench" from which new political talent could rise.

When Obama was termed out going into the election of 2016, the Democrat establishment reached down to the bottom of the barrel and pulled out Hillary Clinton.  She, along with the eminently forgettable Tim Kaine, lost to a total political novice who made little, if any, effort to control his public utterances.

Mr. Trump, however, knew very well why things were the way they were.  He also was an experienced problem-solver and resource organizer.  Thus began an extended hair-on-fire period for the minions of the progressive left, whom Obama brought into positions of power within his government.

In order to defeat Trump, the next time around, the progressive establishment had to further scrape out what was left of the barrel to acquire the archetypical empty suit.  In order to protect Joe Biden from the 25th Amendment, they put an accomplished babbling fool on the ticket as well.

Doubts remain as to the authenticity of the election that put Biden and Harris in charge of the federal government.  But rather than directly defend the mechanics of the balloting process or justify the slanted news coverage that suppressed anti-Biden information, Biden's defenders continue with a strenuous effort to impose official censorship of those who publicly challenge Biden's legitimacy.  What cannot be censored is that, in the same election that put Biden and Harris in office, the Republicans picked up fourteen seats in the House of Representatives.  Go figure.

Meanwhile, the wheels are really falling off the modern Democrat establishment.  The baby formula shortage represents a problem that just shouldn't have ever happened.  The ensuing response leaves much to be desired.  It's hard to say if Putin actually timed his invasion of Ukraine to coincide with Biden's presidency, but it's pretty easy to speculate as such, considering the obvious ineptitude at the top of the command structure.  Early on, the debacle of the much-advertised withdrawal from Afghanistan kind of set the stage for a continuous string of epic bungles.  But that's old news.

The greatest damage done to our homeland has resulted from Biden and his handlers going along with the once politically sexy Green New Deal.  Motor vehicles and their carbon-based fuel have long been a target, but no one ever included synthetic fertilizer (the lifeblood of modern farming) in the mix, even though it is mostly made from natural gas.  Also, the misguided push for putting more demand on the electrical grid ignores the inconvenient fact that 60% of domestic electrical generation is done with fossil fuels, plus another 20% is derived from nuclear fission.  The remaining 20% comes from a mix of hydroelectric, geothermal, wind, and solar.

Back to Obama.  It wasn't just he who opened the door for the radical leftists to flood into the government; it was also his milieu.  He wasn't working alone; ask Bernie Sanders and Liz Warren.  But Obama was the obvious choice for the point position.  He's at least partially non-white at a time when it matters more what you are than who.

But there was something larger.  A short while after the collapse of the Soviet Union, socialism was no longer a dirty word.  True, North Korea remains a glaring example of the squalor imposed by a command-and-control economy.  And the devolution of Venezuela from resource-rich prosperity to people having to hunt stray dogs and cats for dinner sends an indelible message.  But the polarity of the Cold War imposed a certain kind of discipline on American politics that no longer exists.

How else could clowns such as Beto O'Rourke and AOC ever be taken seriously?  We are waiting on the threshold of another "shellacking" as happened in 2010.  But wild swings in politics are not really a good thing.  Stability is good.  Businesses like predictability, rather than surprises, as do the rest of us.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.