Finneran: Wary? Weary? Both!
Friday, March 15, 2019
A New York Times article suggests that moderate Democrats are increasingly “wary” of the pell-mell rush to the hard Left by the party’s leaders and presidential candidates.
Welcome to the new civil war.
Here’s the Times’ lead paragraph: “The sharp left turn in the Democratic Party and the rise of progressive presidential candidates are unnerving moderate Democrats who increasingly fear that the party could fritter away its chances of beating President Trump in 2020 by careening over a liberal cliff”.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTObserve the bidding war underway for media attention, money, and volunteers. Candidate A promises a complete abolition of private healthcare. Huzzah! Candidate B agrees and then raises the ante by promising open borders and the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Huzzah! Huzzah!! Candidate C evaluates the auction underway and decides to raise the ante further by proposing a seventy percent income tax rate…………Candidates D, E, and F consult the handbook of crazy ideas and prepare their own bombshells.
The growing multitude of Democratic candidates for the presidential nomination suggests that this deranged auction will only move in one direction---ever further Leftward. If you thought that the horde of Republican primary candidates in 2016 resembled a free-for-all in an asylum, just wait until the Democrats rush the stage. Is there any Democratic candidate who will refuse the Kool-Aid of the day? Is there any Democratic candidate who will tell the AOC cult that the world is not going to end in twelve years? Or that a seventy percent tax rate is confiscatory? Or that the entire range of ideas appears designed to bully the average American into submission to a hysterical accusatory mob.
Have the candidates and their handlers looked at a map of the United States? Why are they declaring war on the sensibilities of the Mid-West? They appear to sneer at those folks throughout middle America who have not succumbed to AOC cult worship. The Times article gets it. This is no way to run a winning campaign. For moderate Democrats, wariness is in order.
As for good citizens across the land, a weariness sets in. Each day’s headlines seem to bring an ever-increasing fever of “outrage”, much of it contrived. I cannot help but be reminded of professional wrestling which at least has the merit of the flying drop-kick from the top rope. Wrestling’s script of good guys and bad guys is also helpful. Try to find such simplicity in the overlapping schemes of Washington’s hearings and investigations.
Even the most earnest citizen has trouble sorting out who is investigating whom down in D.C. Democrats investigate Republicans. Republicans investigate Democrats. FBI, FISA, DOJ, IRS, Special Counsel, “process crimes”………..all add to the confusion of the average taxpayer and said taxpayer’s suspicion that it’s all a big game, a game to be played out at great expense to the nation’s civic health. The poor moderate Democrat and the poor moderate Republican, willing to listen and open to the art of political compromise, get trampled by the perpetually agitated fringes and their media cohorts. Such are the follies of our times.
Wary? Yes. Weary? Yes. Both? Yes.
Tom Finneran is the former Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, served as the head the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, and was a longstanding radio voice in Boston radio
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