Tag: Democratic

ideological culture political challengers

Discriminating Democrats

Democrat, Democratic, candidates, presidential, president, debate, race, quota,

In ten days, the Democratic Party will hold a presidential debate that, according to the rules established by the Democratic National Committee, includes six qualified candidates all of whom are white.

Which is apparently not the right color.

“Of course, there is nothing wrong with Democrats selecting a white presidential candidate to represent the party,” writes David de la Fuente at The Daily Beast. “But that should be up to the voters, and not the DNC by means of their debate inclusion practices.”

Those “practices” or rules seem straightforward enough — at least, they did … until the results were not to the liking of some. To earn a place on the Dec. 19 debate stage, a candidate must have garnered donations from 200,000 individuals, while also reaching 4 percent or higher in four recognized polls, or 6 percent in two polls.

The six qualified pale-faced candidates are: former Vice-President Joe Biden, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D‑Minn.), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I‑Vt.), billionaire activist Tom Steyer, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D‑Mass.).

A seventh candidate, California Sen. Kamala Harris, a woman of color, had also qualified for the debate stage — before she dropped out of the race.

Not yet able to jump all the hurdles? African-American Sen. Corey Booker (D‑N.J.); Asian-American entrepreneur Andrew Yang; and Samoan-American Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D‑Hawaii). They have all reached the donation requirement, but not yet met the polling threshold.

I wish them luck, especially my favorite, Gabbard.

Still, the choice is rightly up to Democratic voters. If enough speak up for Booker, Yang or Gabbard in polls, “diversity” will obtain its place.

If not, should Democrats use a racial quota system?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags candidates, debate, Democrat, Democratic, president, presidential, quota, race

ideological culture national politics & policies Popular

They Aren’t Lying Now?

“You lie!”

When U.S. Representative Joe Wilson (R‑SC) shouted this at President Barack Obama during 2009’s State of the Union — scandal!

How dare he?

At issue was whether federal tax dollars would aid illegal immigrants under Obamacare. Democrats denied that any such thing would happen. Indeed, the very idea constituted a calumny, a mere paranoid Tea Party delusion.

This came to a lot of people’s minds after last week’s televised Democratic Party presidential candidates’ debates.

On Thursday, all ten on-stage candidates assented, with hands held proudly high, to giving undocumented aliens free health care. And several from the previous night’s debate are also on record for the same thing, none of them more insistent than Senator Elizabeth Warren, who proclaims that health care is a right.

Democratic opinion leaders now eagerly assert what they took offense at a mere ten years ago.

There are two very basic things we can learn from this.

First, what politicians say about what they want changes over time.

A decade ago, Democrats took offense when called socialist; now they revel in the term. So what are we to make of Democrats’ current s‑word usage? Now they insist they don’t want to nationalize the means of production — but will they tomorrow?

Second, the debate over immigration is not really between restrictionists and open borders supporters. It is between proponents of restricted immigration, on the one hand, and those who demand subsidized immigration, on the other.

A true open borders policy could look very different from what Democrats now push.

Less socialistic.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags Biden, Congress, debate, Democratic, Obama, Pelosi, president, speech, you lie

media and media people national politics & policies Popular

Birth of a Twitterstorm

Kamala Harris, race, debate, democratic, president, democracy,

“Kamala Harris is *not* an American Black. She is half Indian and half Jamaican,” tweeted Ali Alexander, a self-described black American activist, after the California Senator’s presidential debate performance. “I’m so sick of people robbing American Blacks (like myself) of our history.”*

On Friday, Donald Trump, Jr., retweeted Alexander’s tweet (before later deleting it). His traipsing into the details of Harris’s birth immediately sparked comparison to his father’s “birther attacks” suggesting that President Obama wasn’t born here.**

Seemingly, the entire Democratic presidential field was quick to condemn the tweet and Don Jr.’s retweet as “racist.” So did much of the media. Although months ago, CNN’s Don Lemon argued, “Jamaica is not America.”

The New York Times article identified Ali Alexander only as an “alt-right fringe figure” and “a member of a right-wing constellation of media personalities,” but nowhere informed readers he is African-American.

“This stuff about Harris, about her status, about her blackness,” Jason Johnson, politics editor of TheRoot.com, told Joy Reid on MSNBC, “that’s about black people.”

In fact, on Reid’s program back in February, Johnson was part of a discussion about the senator’s — gasp! — white husband. “She needs to find a strong black man advocate,” advised Tiffany Cross, co-founder and managing editor of The Beat DC. “Let’s just be candid,” Johnson remarked, “it’s not going to be her [white] husband.”

How important is the color of a person’s skin or their ancestry or the skin color of their spouse to that person’s fitness to be president?

It only matters to racists.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* “Kamala Harris,” Alexander also pointed out, “comes from Jamaican Slave Owners.” True enough, but how is she responsible for what her ancestors did? Would it matter if she supported … reparations?

** For the record, Sen. Harris was born in Oakland, California, which was then and is still part of the United States of America.

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Accountability general freedom ideological culture porkbarrel politics responsibility too much government

Ask the Next Question

next question, socialism, Republicans, Democrats, regimentation, Democracy, Democratic, lies, politicians

Republicans are very reliable. When given our system’s “Mandate of Heaven” — majorities in both houses of Congress and the Presidency — they can be relied upon to do one thing: add debt by piling up huge deficits.

It happened under George W. Bush, and it is happening under Donald J. Trump: “The Trump administration expects annual budget deficits to rise nearly $100 billion more than previously forecast in each of the next three years,” the Wall Street Journal tells us, “pushing the federal deficit above $1 trillion starting next year.”

Republicans should ask themselves why. And while they ask themselves that, everyone else should ask the next question: why do politicians who say they want one thing so often deliver its opposite?

This is not a mere “right-wing” phenomenon. Leftists say they want “democratic socialism,” but, as Irving Kristol noted, at some point not far down their road to Utopia, “democratic socialists” must choose between democracy and socialism.* By promising everybody everything, too quickly everybody gets shanghaied into service to produce that “everything,” finding themselves conscripts in socialism’s army.

The equation of socialism with regimentation and general un-freedom has been clear for over a century, explained carefully by sociologists, economists and even politicians.* And yet, increasingly, today’s Democrats are embracing a philosophy with proven anti-democratic features.

Could some deep principle be at play?

Probably. It is built into the very nature of state governance, of politics itself. It may be why republics metamorphose into empires, conservatives go radical and liberals become serviles.

Which is why effective democracy requires limited government. To minimize that boomerang effect.

We might start by limiting spending.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Herbert Spencer’s writings on socialism include The Man versus the State (1884) and Industrial Institutions (1896, Principles of Sociology, Vol. III, Part VIII); German politician Eugene Richter’s satire Pictures of the Socialist Future (1896) is well worth reading; and economist Yves Guyot preceded Ludwig von Mises’ classic Die Gemeinwirtschaft (1922, translated as Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, 1950) with several books, including The Tyranny of Socialism (1893) and Socialistic Fallacies (1910).