Any minimally plausible Democrat, perhaps even one as hapless as Joe Biden, would have easily trounced Donald Trump in 2016. Hillary Clinton had to outdo herself to lose.
It is almost an article of faith in progressive circles that had Bernie Sanders been the nominee, as he might have been had the Clintons and the DNC not put the fix in, he too would have kept the Trumpian menace at bay.
To be sure, for as long as he was in the House and then the Senate, Sanders was a Democrat in practice, but an “independent,” indeed a “socialist,” in theory.
One would have thought that this would be an issue in a campaign to become the Democratic Party’s standard-bearer. As it turned out, though, hardly anyone cared. Why would they? The Democratic Party is too feckless either to elicit or to deserve loyalty.
With an election looming, its flacks on cable news networks and in print and digital media are talking up a storm, as only they can, about how wonderful the Democratic Party — or at least its “democratic wing,” as Paul Wellstone called it – is. They praise it for siding with the people against the special interests, and for standing up, Superman-style, for “truth, justice, and the American way.”
Students of political discourse can debate whether these contentions are best described as “crap,” “bunk,” “balderdash,” “hokum,” “malarkey,” “poppycock,” or plain old fashioned “bullshit.” I’d say that any and all of those…