Daily Briefing: The War for the Democratic Party (January 17,2020)

Table of Contents:

 
Bernie Sanders’ Wild Radicalism Has Serious Chance Of Taking Over Dem Party:  Rich Lowry, NY Post, Jan. 13, 2020

Pete Buttigieg’s Essay Contest:  Barton Swaim, WSJ, Jan. 10, 2020

The War For The Democratic Party Will Destroy Lives And Change Our Country: Christopher Bedford, The Federalist, Jan. 16, 2020

In Denigrating Trump, ‘Christianity Today’ Whitewashes the Left’s War on Religion: CIJR Editorial Board, Isranet, Dec. 27, 2019
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Bernie Sanders’ Wild Radicalism Has Serious Chance Of Taking Over Dem Party
Rich Lowry
NY Post, Jan. 13, 2020

The most substantively outrageous presidential campaign in American history has some ­serious chances of success.

Bernie Sanders is leading or near the top of most polls in the first two Democratic nominating states of Iowa and New Hampshire. He could plausibly win both, which would instantly transform the race into an ugly, desperate effort to Stop Bernie.

Sanders doesn’t exactly get good press. A lot of the punditry (understandably) wrote him off when Elizabeth Warren eclipsed him in the polls a couple of months ago and he had his health scare.

Longer profiles have tended to be fond, while expressing skepticism that Sanders can build out his coalition. But the same people who have spent years worrying about norms — by which they usually mean things President Trump says and tweets — express little alarm about Bernie’s jaw-dropping radicalism.

If he had his way, the Vermont ­socialist would fundamentally change the character of the country. He would make the United States an outlier in the Western world, not in terms of its relatively limited government, but its sweeping activism. A Hellfire missile aimed right at the federal fisc, Sanders would make President Barack Obama’s economic agenda look like the work of a moderate Republican.

In foreign affairs, he would bring a sympathy for US enemies not often heard outside academia or Noam Chomsky reading groups. He is the American Jeremy Corbyn, a socialist true-believer whose fantastical agenda reflects the dictates of dogma. The difference is that Corbyn effectively promised a return to socialist-imposed stagnation in Britain, whereas Bernie is ­inviting America to experience it for the first time.

His domestic program, according to Brian Riedl of the Manhattan Institute, would cost nearly $100 trillion over the next decade. It would more than double federal spending and blow past Western European social democracies in government spending as a percentage of GDP. What would ordinarily be considered ambitious spending plans — his proposed increased expenditure expansion on Social Security, infrastructure, housing, education and paid family leave — are dwarfed by his gargantuan commitments to Medicare for All, his federal job guarantee and his climate plan.

He’d fundamentally transform the relationship of the individual to the state, which, among other things, would ban people from owning their own health insurance. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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Pete Buttigieg’s Essay Contest
Barton Swaim
WSJ, Jan. 10, 2020

Twenty years ago, a high school senior from South Bend, Ind., won the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Essay Contest. Peter Buttigieg’s 2000 treatise for the JFK Library was a paean to—ironically as it would turn out—Bernie Sanders. The 18-year-old essayist praised then-Rep. Sanders for two reasons: He was a man of conviction and candor, willing to take tough positions and adopt the unpopular label of “socialist.” He was also “a powerful force for conciliation and bi-partisanship on Capitol Hill.” “Sanders’ positions on many difficult issues are commendable,” Mr. Buttigieg wrote, “but his real impact has been as a reaction to the cynical climate which threatens the effectiveness of the democratic system.”

The prizewinning essay accurately adumbrates the campaign message of one of Mr. Sanders’s 2020 presidential rivals: Pete Buttigieg. Mr. Buttigieg, 37, has just left office after two terms as South Bend’s mayor and polls impressively in the Democratic primaries. He is either at or near the top in both Iowa and New Hampshire, though his numbers are far lower in South Carolina, where black voters favor Joe Biden by a large margin.

Mr. Buttigieg’s message: After four years of division and “fighting over politics,” Americans must come together by embracing an ambitiously progressive agenda. That two-step pitch—national unity plus left-wing policies—may sound contradictory or self-defeating, but it isn’t unprecedented. It mimics the rhetoric of left-wing solidarity Mr. Sanders has long used to great effect. More conspicuously, it recalls Barack Obama’s message of national unity and unapologetic progressivism. As I listened to Mr. Buttigieg deliver campaign talks to audiences across southern New Hampshire last week, I was constantly reminded of Mr. Obama.

Like the 44th president, Mr. Buttigieg often speaks of the presidency as if its constitutional role were to create harmony in the populace and to heal wounds inflicted by hate and division. “The purpose of the presidency is not to glorify the president,” he told an audience in Nashua. “It’s to unify and empower the American people.” In Manchester, he said the U.S. needs a president “who will leave us more unified than before—that will galvanize and not polarize the American majority.”

His delivery often falls into an Obama-like cadence, with long sentences punctuated by a few stressed words, concluding in a resonant line: He wants to make America “a country where your race has no bearing on your health or your wealth or your life expectancy or your relationship to law enforcement—to send a message that this is a country where everybody belongs and hate has no home.” … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]

The War For The Democratic Party Will Destroy Lives And Change Our Country
Christopher Bedford
The Federalist, Jan. 16, 2020

The far-left of the Democratic Party is out of the spotlight. Out of the spotlight, but clearly still within the crosshairs of their colleagues. Its young congressional leaders, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Ilhan Omar, the fresh-faced consciences of the swamp, are all-three the targets of finance investigations. Two are tangled in credible accusations of anti-Semitism, and one is mired in a hard-to-believe incestual infidelity scandal with a married man on her payroll.

Their outside support, which so successfully took media credit for gathering hundreds of thousands of liberals who’d booked non-refundable hotels and plane tickets to Her D.C. inauguration and became the Women’s March, has collapsed amid credible accusations of racism and, you guessed it, anti-Semitism. And the New York/D.C. media that ran glowing profile after fawning profile months ago don’t seem to visit any more.

Somebody is at the door, though. An important story lost below the din of the primaries, impeachment, and rallies is the growing party rancor toward a vocal left flank the politicians have correctly identified as weakened.

Members of “The Squad’s” freshman congressional class, which largely ran against President Donald Trump and not for socialism, have begun to flock to Vice President Joe Biden as Sen. Bernie Sanders gathers party faithful, Politico reported Sunday. “More than a dozen swing-seat freshmen have taken part in at least one private call session with Biden, Amy Klobuchar or Pete Buttigieg in recent weeks,” they reported, adding, “A handful have already gravitated toward the former vice president, and more are expected to follow” before the primary voting begins.

Days before, fellow Queens Democratic Rep. Gregory Meeks openly criticized Ocasio-Cortez to Fox News for her refusal to pay congressional party dues and insistence on instead using her sizable fundraising to pay for far-left candidates and primary challenges to her Democratic colleagues.

It’s no surprise Ocasio-Cortz is not paying dues to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Like leadership operations in any political party, the committee doesn’t like the ideological primaries against members she has made her name on, and seek to blackball those involved in any capacity. What is a surprise is the rising willingness to publicly speak against Ocasio-Cortez and her inside and outside allies, even by a 22-year incumbent in her very neighborhood. It appears the trance is broken. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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In Denigrating Trump, ‘Christianity Today’ Whitewashes the Left’s War on Religion
CIJR Editorial Board
Isranet, Dec. 27, 2019

The American Left was launched into a joyous frenzy when the editor-in-chief of the Evangelical periodical Christianity Today denigrated now-impeached President Donald Trump as unfit for office and called for his removal from. Mark Galli also implied that, by giving the US leader a pass on his inflammatory rhetoric and moral-ethical indiscretions, Evangelicals were abandoning the value system they ostensibly hold dear.

Following the article’s publication, headline after headline across the liberal media hopefully asked: “Is President Trump Losing His Political Base?” It was the latest attempt to further indoctrinate a segment of the public with an already-shared loathing for the President. Indeed, “Never Trumpers” no doubt nodded their heads in Pavlovian-like fashion in the affirmative, without even reading what amounted to yet another in a series of “hit” pieces.

Ironically, however, had it not been for the brouhaha manufactured by the media – which transformed Galli’s opinion into something akin to a national security crisis – the vast majority of America is unlikely to have even heard about the article. While Christianity Today (founded by Billy Graham) was once generally respected, its current circulation (by its own estimate) numbers only 130,000, out of an estimated 90 million Evangelical Christians residing today in the United States.

Meanwhile, Galli, who liberal media talking heads subsequently hailed as a “courageous” crusader, just happens to be retiring in January and therefore does not have to contend with the prospect of losing his job, or with the fully anticipated backlash against his actions.

Spearheading the charge against the editorial was none other than President Trump, who accused the journal of being hijacked by leftists and Tweeted: “I guess the magazine, ‘Christianity Today,’ is looking for [Democratic Presidential candidates] Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, or those of the socialist/communist bent, to guard their religion.” Simultaneously, the president rallied Evangelical leaders behind him, prompting the announcement of the formation in early January of the “Evangelicals for Trump” coalition. The great irony, then, is that Galli’s article has served not to divide President Trump’s largest and most important political base, but to unite it.

As if further evidence was needed, some 100 prominent Evangelicals this week sent a letter to Christianity Today’s hierarchy containing a not-so-veiled warning that the publication would likely lose advertising revenue because of the controversy. For his part, Franklin Graham, the son of renowned Evangelical leader Billy Graham, called Galli’s article a “totally partisan attack” and revealed that his father had voted for Trump in 2016.

While it is not unreasonable to judge the leader of the free world according to high moral standards – a Rorschach Test that President Trump by most measures has not passed – his behavior, without whitewashing it, is not exactly novel when compared to that of past Presidents, including Democrats ranging from Kennedy to Johnson to Clinton. All of them, to say the least, were far from saintly, a well-known fact despite their not having had to endure the microscope of the 24/7 news cycle, with their every move scrutinized and then recounted on social media. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]

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