My belated condolences. I always enjoyed reading his posts and will miss his insight and wide ranging views. May hew…
The smart but Machiavellian move the Dems won’t make.
In my opinion, the Dems already know they’re going to lose in 2020. It’s just a problem of minimising the damage, but while you can accept there’s no way your party can avoid the loss, even a supposed disaster can be politically useful.
The strategic thinkers amongst them know they’re staring at two big problems. The first and obvious one is they’re up against a president they simply can’t beat in 2020 – he’s running rings around them or to be more precise, their current leadership. Their thinking or hope, is that his successor in 2024 will not be so strong or popular with the down home folks of America. If who I think Trump is lining up to be his successor in 2024 occurs, then they might even have even a worse fight on their hands. Realistically, the 2020 campaign has been lost already. Their only option is to batten down the hatches, hunker down and brace against the hanging gale that is the Trumpie Monster who’ll be raining down Hell on Earth upon their heads for the next four years, especially if he recaptures the House.
There is a very faint hope that the current impeachment fiasco might rid them of the Trumpie Monster, but that relies on a Republican dominated Senate stabbing him in the back, but as they know that’d be personal political suicide, I see it as extremely unlikely even with the Republican deep staters lurking there in sheep’s clothing.
The second problem they’ve got, and the much more immediate and life-threatening one for their party, is its potential takeover by the far-left socialists as represented by AOC and the squad. Granted, the lefty fake news propaganda machine has boosted their profile way out of proportion to their actual influence within the party and the country, but in politics perception is all, and like it or not, they’re rapidly becoming the new face of the Dem party.
The traditional bedrock Dem left of centre voter base will never bring themselves to vote for socialism. They won’t suddenly switch from a lifelong allegiance to the Democrats and vote Republican, but they’ll most probably abstain by not turning up to vote for a party that’s become too extreme for them, which would be a complete disaster for the party. Once you’ve scorched off your heartland perennially reliable voters, any party is in deep trouble.
A far-left takeover of the party will undoubtedly see them get hammered into the ground for the next two or three presidential elections. Conservative with a small c America will never vote for socialism because the faint distinction between it and communism is nonexistent in the American psyche. Absent any disasters or blunders on Trump’s part, he’ll stroll back into the WH this year if all he’s got to run against is Biden, who has I think agreed to take a bullet for the party, since for several reasons he’s already end of political career anyway.
Let’s face it, he’s a bloody useless contender. Patently corrupt, can’t string two words together, looks to be onset Alzheimer’s disease on the memory front and seems to have a creepy interest in children. Would you leave good ole grinning uncle Joe alone in the front parlour with one of your children? Even chronic TDS sufferers would think twice before giving a creature like that their vote, but the effect on the party of Biden losing in a landslide disaster to Trump will be to strengthen the far-left’s grab for power, and be in no doubt, they will certainly make that grab.
If things stay as they currently are, they’ll give Biden the same sort of lukewarm support they gave Hillary but actually they’re waiting with bated breath for him to crash and burn spectacularly in November. In the aftermath, the predictable line of attack will be that the traditional doddery leadership, and that includes Bernie Sanders, have failed us yet again against Trump, time to push them aside and give us young bloods pushing socialism a shot at him.
There would only be three ways out of the ensuing war between the traditional Left and the extreme Left within the party. It slowly goes extinct and is replaced by a brand spanking new party representing the traditional non-extreme viewpoint of the Left, the party schisms with the traditional Dems splitting off from the entrenched socialists, or the ruling socialists come to their senses and start offering the electorate policies that’re more palatable to the majority of left of centre voters.
In a lifetime keeping tabs on politics, I’ve never seen that latter option being taken up by a party infiltrated by the far-left. More usually, the moderate elements of the party slowly regain control of it by gradually pushing out the extremists, move the party back towards the political centre and they become electable once again, but we’re talking years out in the political wilderness and a loss of respect for the party by the electorate. No ordinary voter puts their cross on a ballot paper for any party that’s publically engaged in a daggers drawn civil war.
Mussolini’s son in law, Count Galeazzo Ciano, famously wrote in his diary that success has a hundred fathers, but failure is an orphan. It has that cruel sly feel of an old Italian folk proverb, but it’s still true. The smart move for the Dem party is to move the disaster of 2020 squarely onto the lap of the leftists currently engaged in taking over the party. Shunt Biden off the ticket, give Bernie the nod, take the brakes off, let him espouse all the usual extreme leftist ideology to his heart’s content, but more importantly, let him and his mini me band of merry socialist followers take all the blame for the 2020 disaster that was always going to happen anyway, no matter whose name was on the Dem ticket.
It’d tick a lot of boxes for the Dem establishment. It would keep them firmly in place, crush the ascendancy of the new far-left movement within their party, prevent a possible schism and in the resultant four years of stability, give them time to find and groom a real contender for president. There has to be someone out there. It’ll be a completely new face because if there’s one thing that’s become abundantly clear about the current shower of turnips who tried for the Dem ticket, it’s that nobody particularly likes any of them. Not one of them.
Unfortunately, with Nancy Pelosi running the show, it’s a smart move that’ll never be made because all she knows about political maneuvering is the none too subtle frontal attack trying to plant a tomahawk directly into your forehead. There’s a whiff of Dickens’ Miss Havisham about her at this stage, still wearing years later that faded wedding dress she got jilted in on her wedding day. She simply can’t move on from 2016, won’t relinquish an iota of power and is steadily grinding the Dem party into the ground with the electorate.
©Pointman
Related articles by Pointman:
The early Dem candidates for 2020 – part 2. The turnips in tutus.
The early Dem candidates for 2020 – part 3. Planning the succession.
Pointman's 
Very interesting perspective! I look forward to seeing the outcome.
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I, too, have been wondering about where all this is going. In the UK the Labour Party lurched violently to the left and became unelectable, for which even many life-long Labour voters couldn’t vote. Of course the far left will never, willingly, give up power and I remember the job of work Neil Kinnock had ousting them from the edges of the party some years ago. Unfortunately for him the damage was already done. Now the looney left has full control of the party machine leaving no alternative but to form a new party
for which the moderates (i.e. only do damage that’s fixable) can vote.
This interesting essay is a possible solution but I am not so sure the Dems are that clever. They worship power and money to the exclusion of caring about the peasants. I am not sure they know what to do and Pelosi is getting desperate.
Still, I hope you are right as all democratic countries need a loyal opposition to keep the conservatives (Conservatives) on the rails. I agree that the next year and subsequent few years will be worth watching on both sides of the pond. The climate fraud is an indicator of where the elites are trying to go.
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It seems to me there are only three serious contenders left for the ticket, when you write off the media’s favourate fag. Warren is quite simply a liar and my impression is that the electorate just don’t like her. That leaves Biden and Bernie. Biden and the nepotist corruption that surrounds him may force his exit, though given Pelosi’s almost papal doctrine of infallibility, it my prove impossible to have him knocked off the ticket.
However, given Biden scandal piling up on Biden scandal on an almost daily basis, he may be forced to withdraw, handing Soviet Sanders the shot. They might just do the slick move after all, albeit with their hand being forced.
Pointy
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The problem for the socialists in the Democrats is that by 2024 Bernie will probably be dead and AOC too young to be eligible for office. And with most of the current leadership over 70 there doesn’t seem they have anyone who could stand either.
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I can’t really see the Bernie option being considered by the string pullers in the Democrat party. They seem to have a coordinated effort to throw him under the bus (again) going on…
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Interesting theory. But I do not see a peaceful ending to the democrat party, They have been taken over by the hate end of the spectrum, and it is clear they will not accept loss. They will do anything, including a civil war, to regain power.
Not now, but once Trump is gone, and the hate continues is when they will actually start shooting (not just clobbering with bike locks).
I will probably not be around for the end of it. There is going to be a lot of real blood spilled. There was back in the 70s with Obama’s mentors. There will be again. We can only hope that real reforms come from it this time.
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One of the problems for the Democrats is that they are focussed on what happened (they lost the unlosable election) and are still trying to change that. They think Trump is a stationary target and haven’t thought of what happens after Impeachment fails. There is likely to be a series of charges brought against various people in the run up to the election, leaving the Impeachment as old news and giving Trump the benefit of trying to “drain the swamp” as he promised.
A charge or two for the Clintons might be just the boost to the Republican campaign that they want.
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Of course belonging to the left means “you never have to say your sorry”.
Whenever they find themselves in a losing situation they double down and go harder. And one must not forget they have an army of useful idiots at their command, including the Jurassic Media. Losing is only a momentary set back on the long march.
If there is one thing I have noticed is that after every loss, the left explain it as a matter of not getting the messaging correct. I actually find this approach frightening, as what they are stating is that the electorate is too dumb to understand how much better they, our left overlords, are then the great unwashed. Pol Pot in Cambodia took this world view to its logical extreme, where his policies were right, it was the people who were wrong, so he “adjusted” his own people rather than policies.
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My guess is that the Dems will figure out another way to stab Bernie in the back and run a Biden/Harris ticket. This will be an utter disaster, but that’s the best that they can muster.
In Orange Man Bad’s second term, RBG will throw in the towel and retire as she’ll do the math and figure out that she can’t outlive Trump’s term. Trump will appoint Amy Coney Barret to take over RBG’s seat. The left will go nuts, but that’s OK as the left goes nuts if Trump uses a Sharpie instead of a Mont Blanc.
For an encore, Trump will “accept” climate change. The left will lose their shit again, but won’t be able to see what just happened. Trumps “acceptance” of climate change will follow the lead of Bill Gates and Microsoft having “accepted” it. They’ll all see “accepting” it as the easiest way to get GEN IV nuclear reactors funded.
In a cynical way, it doesn’t matter what you think of the science of climate change, just smile, nod, get the political and financial support that you want and move on to a literally world changing technology. Hey, if I could get a Gen IV reactor the size of a toaster in my car and NEVER have to refuel it, who cares about oil? Brilliant, actually, you use the enviro-whackos craziness against them to make the world a genuinely better and cleaner place.
As usual, Trump is five steps ahead of the Dems.
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Shoshin – I love your optimism, and wit!
I wish what you said were true, but that is just a hope. Not what I really think. Except the stabbing/Biden Harris part. Good call on Harris. That does go well with a Biden nominee.
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Hmm. Observing this as a Brit, I have two constitutional questions, should Trump actually be forced to stand down.
*Would he still be able to run and be re-elected?
*In that case, not having served two full consecutive terms, would he be eligible to run again in 2024?
Just asking…
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#1 yes,
#2 no. It is 2 terms or 10 years, Since he has already served 3 of the first one he can only have one more (that is Amendment 25).
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