The latest news is that Kamala is crashing in the polls.  I’m shocked...shocked, I tell you!  Though I’m compelled to chuckle, I still advocate serious competition for the hearts and minds of the electorate — so as to hold the sword of Damocles over the necks of all our “esteemed” leaders.

That the Democrats survived the Civil War is one of the greatest political miracles of all time.  Andrew Johnson, Lincoln’s second vice president, who succeeded him after his murder, was a “Union” Democrat.  New York governor Grover Cleveland was the first Democrat to be actually elected to the White House twenty years later.  Thomas Woodrow Wilson came 24 years after that, when Teddy Roosevelt had a beef with William H. Taft over coal-mining in Alaska and ran against Taft as a Bull Moose.  It’s fairly safe to say that by modern standards, Cleveland would be to the right of Ronald Reagan.  Not so for Wilson.  My, how American politics has drifted to the left.

And speaking of today’s world, the Democrats’ reputation for being a credible governing entity is in serious trouble — way beyond just the Biden-Harris fiasco.  Traditional constituencies are defecting en masse — from ethnic minorities to blue-collar union rank-and-file folks.  This was foretold by the late Clinton war room guru Pat Caddell when he complained about the Democrat party being taken over by an “elite gentry.”  He was referring to wealthy, educated tree-hugging enviros, who seriously believe that we are producing way too much wealth and damaging the planet in the process.  Easy for them to say, since Gramma and Grampa left them sizeable trust funds.

When you add to this the Biden-Harris record of colossal bungling, you can’t help but generate a thunderous consumer groan.  This is also being played out in the various localities of America, where crime and vagrancy are rampant, and nothing serious is being done to put an end to them.  In spite of a fleeing tax base, the local “progressive” drones offer nothing more than higher taxes, more corrupt spending priorities, and a crumbling infrastructure.  Here in Oakland, California, a grassroots outfit calling itself the Pothole Vigilantes sprang up to do what the tax-bloated city continues to neglect.  Yet the city mothers and fathers remain unashamed.  Meanwhile, on next month’s ballot, the mayor and district attorney are both facing recall while still early in their first terms.

Baked into this cake of a party whose ideology shuns individuality is the pervasive negative aura of corrupt incompetence.  It’s hard for any Democrat politician to escape being tarred by this brush.  Kamala’s obvious unworthiness for the candidacy, let alone the actual office of the presidency, amplifies this hardship.  Throw in Tim Walz’s baggage of horrendous ideology and dubious credibility.  The deal is totally in the bag.

Beyond partisanship is the festering distrust the toiling masses have for government in general.  Libertarians use the term “minarchy” to describe the smallest possible government that will still maintain the public sphere.  Since government is at best a necessary evil, the least amount of such evil that still fixes the potholes and arrests and punishes the criminals is the proper result.

Some historians point to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal as the true lurch into the era of the mega-state.  Perhaps he was a man of his times, but the products of his efforts are questionable at best when it comes to results.  I refer here to the recession of 1937, when unemployment surged back up to pre–New Deal levels. 

A fair amount of mythology surrounds the FDR presidency.  First off is why he beat the incumbent, Herbert Hoover, in 1932.  Dogmatic lefties say that Roosevelt offered an obviously superior way out of the Depression.  Paul Johnson in Modern Times points to the repeal of Prohibition as the crucial issue that got FDR into the winner’s circle.  I tested this on my mother — since it was the first election in which she voted.  She slapped her face and said, “You’re right!  Hoover was a Dry, and Roosevelt was a Wet.”

Further mythology continues.  Today’s leftist writers still credit FDR with ending the Depression.  There can be no doubt that Pearl Harbor ended the Depression.  All of the alphabet soup programs such as the WPA and CCC did nothing to create wealth.  They just put more people on the public payroll.  The onset of America’s entry into World War 2 created a national emergency that focused attention onto military objectives rather than traditional patronage.  Since then, the Democrats have been stuck in the ditch of wealth redistribution, regardless of its efficacy.

For the sake of objectivity, other outfits have also managed to damage their brands during these trying times.  Can you say “Boeing”?

Image: Department of Defense via Picryl, public domain.