Behaving like a knave could kill the blue wave. According to one commentator, this may be the message triangulation-master Bill Clinton has for his Democratic Party, which is increasingly descending into irrationality and an ever-intensifying anti-American radicalism.
As American Thinker’s Thomas Lifson writes, “Trump Derangement Syndrome is combining with resentment over the cheating of Bernie Sanders out of the 2016 presidential nomination to lead the Democratic Party toward an embrace of angry radicalism, which will result in rejection by voters on November 8. Bill Clinton, who led his party to victory in the 1990s with moderation (‘triangulation’), apparently sees the danger of the party repulsing mainstream Americans and gaining status as a radical minority, successful only in big cities.”
Clinton appeared on the Tuesday edition of the Daily Show with host Trevor Noah and, among other things, discussed the recent ejection of White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders from a Virginia restaurant and the issue of increasing incivility in general. He remarked that he had a “lot of respect” for how Sanders handled the matter (video below. Relevant portion begins at 8:48), a stance that Lifson interprets as an effort by Clinton to model effective, election-winning behavior.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0hP76E-OP8
Yet if this was Clinton’s intention (which I personally doubt), he completely undermined it by descending into his usual stock-in-trade: telling divisive lies.
The worst form of impoliteness is insincerity in discourse. We owe our fellow man the Truth. When we lie to people, we distort reality for them, and this can lead to their acting as if reality is something it’s not. And when this distortion involves hurtful lies, those imbibing them may hurt others.
Consider the now-common labeling of President Trump, his officials, and even sometimes his supporters as “Nazis.” As pundit Tucker Carlson has pointed out, if you really think Nazis are taking over your country, wouldn’t you consider these desperate times that call for desperate measures? Might even violence be justified?
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Returning to Clinton, he said in the Daily Show interview, “You know, a lot of poison has been poured down America’s throat, uh, since that 2016 campaign started. Calling … it started off calling Mexicans rapists and murderers. So it’s hard to pour poison down other people’s throat[s] and not have some of it come back up and bubble up.”
It’s sad that this still needs to be said, but as even CNN reported during an honest 2016 moment, Trump called “some Mexican immigrants ‘rapists’ and criminals.” (Emphasis added.) Trump’s statement of fact — that miscreants will take advantage of a porous border (remember Pancho Villa?) — is far different from the calumnious claim that he characterized a whole people as thugs. Insofar as Americans believe the latter, they’ll consider Trump a bigot to be opposed.
This demagoguery — of which Clinton is a part — helps explain the last two years’ violence and is nicely encapsulated by the minute-long GOP video below.
Yet the Left may be snatching defeat from the jaws of November victory. The Democrats had been poised for a November “blue wave,” which was expected because the party in power generally fares poorly in midterm elections. Yet two things happened earlier this year: Both the Trump-Russia-collusion narrative and the Democrats’ generic congressional poll numbers collapsed.
This is why leftists began seeking a winning issue. First it was attacking Second Amendment rights after the Parkland mass shooting. The media kept the issue in the news as long as possible, but the unattractiveness of the anti-gun activists (e.g., vulgar David Hogg) and Americans’ general opposition to anti-gun measures made it collapse, too.
So now the Left has moved on to illegal migration and the fiction that the Trump administration abuses alien children (who enjoy boarding-school like housing). Yet the violent rhetoric and actions attending these propaganda efforts may make them a “one step forwards, two steps back” situation for the Democrats.
As the socially liberal Roger Simon puts it at PJ Media, “Self-destructive, nincompoop behavior is rampant with members of the so-called Resistance (what a desecration of the real Resistance that is!) now showing up at restaurants to harass members of the administration while they eat. Do these clowns have any idea how that plays in Middle America? Do these people think they are accomplishing anything but their own defeat?”
Actually, it’s doubtful there is much thinking here. As Ben Franklin noted, “Passion governs, and she never governs wisely.” If the Democrats continue being governed by their passions, they may find themselves governing less than ever come next January.
Photo: AP Images
