Suffer Enough

The Democratic party has changed—a lot. The party that gave this country FDR, Harry Truman, JFK, LBJ, and even Bill Clinton no longer exists. In its place we have a party that has swung wildly to the Left, using dishonest, hyper-partisan rhetoric in an successful effort to distract the American public from the party's domestic and foreign policy failures over the past six years.

After the crash of 2008, which by the way, was aided and abetted by Democratic policies that lead to the loan crisis*, the Democrats had clear majorities in both Houses of Congress. With those majorities, they created Obamacare, partisan legislation that not only did not fulfill its promise to make healthcare affordable and more efficient, but is a mishmash of bad policy, uncontrolled spending, and nightmarish implementation. At the same time, the party participated happily as it added $1 trillion in national debt every year of the Obama presidency. The party has raised taxes, but increased spending more. It seems unconcerned that the labor rate is the lowest it has been in modern history or that taxes are the highest in the past few decades. It professes to care about the middle class, but enacts legislation and regulations that kill jobs, moving the middle class into a part-time economy.

Their president and his administration has been beset with not one or two but six legitimate scandals. The most egregious is the IRS scandal. The Democrats have circled the wagons and done everything possible to assist the administration in stonewalling any effort to understand the frightening weaponization of a major government agency. One can only wonder if they would have been so sanguine if a republican has been president.

And that's only a few of many domestic policy failures. The foreign policy of this president has been so bad, even some Democrats have begun to take notice.

Given that the Democratic party has little to claim as accomplishments over the past six years, it has no choice but to change the subject. It does this by elevating class and gender warfare to new heights, with little concern about the negative effects of demagoguery on the American people. Hence, we hear much about income inequality (which interestingly, has increased in the high-tax regime of this president), the minimum wage (let the loss of entry level jobs be damned), and the "war on women" (an amorphous accusation that has no substance in fact).

On Wednesday, DNC Chair, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz accused GOP Governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker of leading the charge again women. Her shrill comments included: "Scott Walker has given women the back of his hand. I know that is stark. I know that is direct. But that is reality." And later, "What Republican tea party extremists like Scott Walker are doing is they are grabbing us by the hair and pulling us back."

Really? Is that all Debbie's got? Is that the best that the national leader of the Dems can come up with? I guess when you've got nothing good to tout about your own party, the best strategy is to say something blatantly dishonest about your opponents.

Wasserman-Schultz is an adjunct member of Barack Obama Team of 2s**—a group of mediocre ideologues who are out of their depth, whose advice is demonstrably bad, and who contribute to the general feeling that this president is incompetent in all things (except fund-raising).

November is coming, and there are indications that the Democrats will suffer badly at the ballot-box. With the mess they've made of the economy, healthcare, and foreign policy, along with leaders like Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, its unlikely that they'll suffer enough. The only thing worse than that is if they don't suffer at all.

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* Don't take my word for it. Read Reckless Endangerment by reporters Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner of the Democrat-friendly New York Times.
** For those new to this blog, the phrase "Team of 2s" is derived from an old management consulting aphorism about the quality of senior executives and the people they hire as direct reports: "9s hire 10s and 3s hire 2s."

UPDATE: (9/5/2014):
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Glen Reynolds summarizes nicely when he writes: "Watch for as many race-based and war-on-women headlines as the Dems can manage over the next couple of months. With everything imploding, they’ll have to do whatever they can, however sleazy, to boost turnout."

And don't forget the class warfare meme. Do you think that the timing of recent protests demanding $15.00 per hour wages at McDonald's are a mere coincidence?

BTW, a company just announced a robotic hamburger maker that can make custom burgers at a rate of 360 per hour. When the wage goes to $15.00 for the teenagers who work at Micky D's, I suspect that corporate headquarters will give the robotic system a hard look. Bye, bye entry level jobs.

But no worries—the Dems (in full moral preening mode) will tell us all about their great victory for low wage earners as the low wage earners register for unemployment compensation. Then again, maybe that's what the Dems wanted all along—more people dependent on big government. Heh.