Liz Peek: Michael Moore's right – Bernie would boost Democrats, for this reason
Progressive activist Michael Moore urges Democrats not to nominate another political moderate like Hillary Clinton.
Progressive activist Michael Moore thinks President Trump will win again in 2020. He notes that Trump’s support in the important swing states hasn’t budged and that Republicans are fired up to support the president, especially in the wake of the impeachment vote.
He urges Democrats not to nominate another political moderate, like Hillary Clinton, because such a “Republican-lite” candidate is sure to lose. He calls front-runner Joe Biden “this year’s Hillary,” and has thrown his considerable weight behind Bernie Sanders instead.
Moore is right: nominating Sanders could be the best outcome for Democrats, and for the nation. But not for the reason he cites.
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The grump Socialist senator from Vermont would almost certainly go down in flames, giving Trump a landslide victory. Only then might Democrats reconsider their support of policies (like reparations or full-term abortions) that play well to only a fragment of the population, and begin listening to mainstream America.
Only then will they understand that creating wealth is a good thing, critical to lifting up the entire country.
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Only then will they recognize that nothing is more important than educating those stuck at the bottom of the income ladder, and nothing more valuable than providing jobs for those desperate to climb that ladder.
And next time, Democrats would maybe nominate someone who appeals to most Americans.
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Trump would clobber Sanders, just as Richard Nixon destroyed liberal George McGovern in 1972. In that year, Nixon won 520 Electoral College votes while McGovern picked up only 17. It was painful, like watching those lopsided Little League games ultimately called out of pity for the losers.
The election-year slaughter was a wake-up call to liberal Democrats. After three years in the wilderness, and aided by the worst political scandal in a generation, Democrats passed over left-wing candidates like Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown from California and instead nominated political moderate Jimmy Carter to run in 1976. Carter, the little-known former governor of Georgia, beat Republican President Gerald Ford, who suffered the taint of having served as vice president in the Nixon White House.
Carter turned out to be a dreadful president, wishy-washy and weak; consequently, he was booted from the presidency by Ronald Reagan after only one term. Four years later Democrats, beset with short memories, nominated uber-liberal Walter Mondale from Minnesota, who was squashed. He carried but one state – his own.
There is a pattern here, which progressive zealots like Michael Moore ignore and which longtime pols like Nancy Pelosi recognize. The United States is simply not a far-left country and has never welcomed radical change.
It wasn’t until 1992 that Democrats again found themselves occupying the Oval Office, and once again the victory was notched by a political moderate, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton. Clinton was Gumby-like flexible on policy, veering to the middle on crime and the economy to win his second term.
There is a pattern here, which progressive zealots like Michael Moore ignore and which longtime pols like Nancy Pelosi recognize. The United States is simply not a far-left country and has never welcomed radical change. Though the number of Americans self-identifying as “liberal” has risen gradually over the past two decades, it is still the case that 70 percent consider themselves conservative or moderate.
It is true that the voting population is trending younger, which generally means more liberal. But Boomers and those older will still represent about 37 percent of the electorate; given the reliability of these voters, and that they tend to be more conservative than voters overall, they will still play an important role in the 2020 election. In 2016, according to Pew Research, that cohort represented 43 percent of the electorate but cast 49 percent of the votes.
Over time, attitudes change, and legislation follows. The country has become more tolerant of same-sex marriage, for instance, but the social and political acceptance occurred over decades. The same could be said for abortion, looser immigration rules and a host of other issues.
The liberalizing of the country is a gradual process, and from time to time it faces setbacks, generally in response to overreach by those pressing a far-left agenda. That will happen again if Sanders, or for that matter Elizabeth Warren, is the nominee.
Moore concludes that Hillary Clinton lost because she didn’t push hard enough for change, offering the status quo to voters hungry for a revolution. He is wrong. Clinton’s loss had little to do with her policies and everything to do with her. After the Democrat convention, which should have improved her image, a CNN poll found 68 percent of respondents said Hillary was not honest and trustworthy. Only 31 percent viewed the former first lady positively. One analyst called the polling “brutal.”
Hillary Clinton was, from the start, a terrible candidate – mainly because voters simply didn’t like her.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump appealed to the common-sense core of the country. Like Bill Clinton, Trump is not an ideologue, but rather someone who looks at the issues of our day through a practical lens. For many years he railed about jobs going overseas because of badly struck trade deals with China, among others; he was right. The establishment elites who run both parties looked the other way, afraid to take on corporate America or confront the shortcomings of globalization.
Trump questioned why former U.S. presidents vowed to move our embassy to Jerusalem but none did. He saw the tens of thousands of people crossing our border illegally as U.S. officials stood helplessly by and vowed to fix a broken system. He was offended that U.S. military personnel had been charged with defeating ISIS but were not allowed to release the bombs they carried against terrorist enclaves, and changed the rules of engagement.
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Most of all, he saw the world’s most productive workforce handicapped by smothering regulations and our companies having to compete while burdened by excessive taxes and moved to lighten the load on both.
Campaigning on a robust economy and growing income for middle-class Americans, Trump has an excellent opportunity to win another four years. If the Democrats nominate Sanders, the chances of a Trump victory rise, but so do the odds Dems will pick more wisely in 2024.