On Monday, Tucker Carlson reviewed the state of the Democrat party in light of the several 2020 candidates who recently quit the race. He judged Tom Steyer as a poor dancer, Mayor Pete to be rather robotic and identity politics ending up as a big loser for the party as a whole.
After a few minutes he was joined by Victor Davis Hanson who thought this is “the worst field we’ve seen since Walter Mondale lost in a landslide to Ronald Reagan.”
The candidates do seem like the B-team of the D-party, but who else is there? When the leadership of the Democrat party is considered among the serving governors, senators and members of Congress, nobody appealing springs to mind. Over recent years, the whole party seems to have lost track of the major purpose in governing — namely to lead with policies that will help the American people.
Instead the Democrats support bad ideas like open borders, including crazy unaffordable freebies for foreign lawbreakers.
Who can forget the moment in last October’s Democrat debate [1] in which all candidates agreed to support taxpayer-funded healthcare for illegal aliens?
When the debate moderator asked Democrat candidates to [2] “Raise your hand if your government plan would provide [medical] coverage for undocumented immigrants,” all responded affirmatively.
How would that policy benefit Americans, many of whom find their own medical coverage to be inadequate [3]? Healthcare polls consistently as a top concern — particularly its high cost — but citizens show no desire to pay for illegal aliens’ medical coverage.
Democrats are united that they want to beat Donald Trump and gain power, but an affirmative message to voters is lacking. For example, over the last two years, House Democrats managed only to impeach the president, with no legislation to advance the well-being of citizens.
Hanson agrees the Democrats have lost track of the big political picture — to win elections, a party has to offer something to voters beyond wokeness and diversity.
Audio version:
https://www.limitstogrowth.org/ltg-uploads/2020/03/Victor-Davis-Hanson-Tucker-Carlson-On-Presidential-Candidates-Quitting-Dems-Lust-For-Power.mp3 [4]TUCKER CARLSON: So over the next few weeks, all the attention will of course be on Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden and maybe Michael Bloomberg. So we want to pause and remember the candidates we lost over the weekend — not permanently, they’re just not in the race.
For all of them, their failure to win the nomination is reason for all of us to feel a little better about ourselves. We’re not as dumb as we thought we were. Tom Steyer disproved that simply because you’re a billionaire doesn’t mean you’re an oligarch. Steyer spent more than $100 million dollars of his own money. And in the end, did an embarrassing dance on stage and then got nothing.
His sad presidential run ought to be encouraging to every person in America, particularly the slower among us. If that guy can make a billion dollars, you can, too.
Pete Buttigieg’s defeat proves that while Americans may be willing to vote for socialists or plutocrats or adulterers, they are pretty open minded actually. They still want their Presidents to be human. Creepy robots with biographies crafted in a Silicon Valley lab are going to have to wait till the 22nd Century to have their chance. Here’s Buttigieg minutes ago backing Biden.
PETE BUTTIGIEG: It is an honor to be here with Vice President Biden. You know, when I ran for President, we made it clear that the whole idea was about rallying the country together to defeat Donald Trump and to win the era for the values that we share and that was always a goal that was much bigger than me becoming President.
And it is in the name of that very same goal, that I’m delighted to endorse and support Joe Biden for President.
CARLSON: I think Barack Obama gave that exact same speech, but I don’t have Google in front of me, but you can check it.
And of course, Amy Klobuchar dropped out as well. Her defeat is good news for anyone who cares about proper comb hygiene. The Democratic race may be smaller tonight, but it’s not more amicable. Why? Because Elizabeth Warren is still running and now she is openly campaigning for a divisive brokered convention next July, which would be really like Christmas day for the rest of us.
Warren’s only reason for staying in the race right now is to sabotage Bernie Sanders, but many Democrats are happy to play along.
The weird neuroses anxieties and just strangers in the Democratic coalition are coming to the surface. It’s like pulling up a rock and all these things crawl away or try to.
We’re learning a lot about what they really care about. So over the weekend, the Boston Globe ran a piece arguing — and this is for real — that it was “disrespectful” for Bernie Sanders to try and win the Massachusetts primary since it would be a “major humiliation” for Elizabeth Warren.
That’s really identity politics taken to its endpoint. It’s the state of the Democratic race right now. If you’re too extreme for the donor class, then it’s sexist to try and win an election.
Victor Davis Hanson, one of the wisest people we know, is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution out in California. He joins us tonight. Professor, you look on at this and what do you make of it?
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Well, this latest dropout group of Klobuchar and Buttigieg is same thing as the first round of dropouts with Kamala Harris and Cory Booker, Julian Castro and how to sum it all up, Tucker, is after a year of all of this wokeness and diversity and white privilege, what do we end up with?
We ended up with three old white guys that are 77 and 78, with a Marxist — Neo-Marxist — as the presumptive leader, and all of them have a history of insensitive remarks about women or things they’ve written.
So it’s a complete antithesis of the whole premise of the Democratic Party and we don’t have anybody who is a charismatic character other than Bernie Sanders, and his criticisms are sometimes legitimate of American society, but his bromides are frightening.
So they are in a real — and then they’ve got this outside billionaire who is coming into save everybody from Bernie Sanders, on the premise that Biden was fading, but Biden is not quite dead yet — his candidacy, I mean that metaphorically — and now Bloomberg is going to be blamed for you know, dividing the moderate vote and handing the nomination to Sanders.
And then this was supposed to be the transparent new reformist party and they’re going to go back to an old 1950s, 1940s brokered convention with guys and cigars in the back room, horse-trading jobs and employment and entitlements to get delegates. It’s completely — the reality is completely opposite to the rhetoric of the whole progressive movement.
CARLSON: So they clearly don’t care about the things they say they care about. So if you could just sum up crisply what they do care about, what do you think that is?
HANSON: What they do care about is they want to control the House and they want to win back the Senate, and they want Supreme Court picks because they’re interested in power. They’re not interested necessarily in diversity or people of color being the new face of the Democratic Party or any of that.
They’re interested in power, and they think they can’t get it with Bernie Sanders, and they’re absolutely right. He’ll be a disaster. This is the worst field we’ve seen since Walter Mondale lost in a landslide to Ronald Reagan, and if they go the Bernie route, they’re going to lose big and they’re desperate and they’re down to the 11th hour, and the only candidates they have that they think they can save the House and maybe win back to Senate are Bloomberg and Biden and they’re pathetic candidates, and it’s kind of a tragedy to watch this thing unfold.
CARLSON: You’re right.
HANSON: It really is.
CARLSON: Oh, but that there’s been — there’s pleasure in it too, Professor, I would say.
HANSON: But it’s about power, and they are losing that and they know it.
CARLSON: Exactly. It’s about power. Great to see you tonight. Thank you so much for that, as always.