Chris Matthews comes out and says it.
"I’m wondering whether the Democratic moderates want Bernie Sanders to be president," he said. "That’s maybe too exciting a question to raise. They don’t like Trump at all. Do they want Bernie Sanders to take over the Democratic Party in perpetuity? I mean, he takes it over, he sets the direction of the future of the party — maybe they’d rather wait four years and put in a Democrat that they like."
Could be. Could also be that "moderate" Democrats are starting to become the next "pro-life" Democrats. A fast-diminishing party minority. Of course, Sanders' enthusiastic communism doesn't just affect the top of the ticket.
"I mean, that’s the big question, right?" Adrienne Elrod, a former senior adviser to Hillary Clinton, responded. "And you know, the narrative that you’re starting to see play out, Chris, is that there are people that are concerned, strategists that are concerned that Bernie Sanders being at the top of the ticket will force us to lose the House. I don’t necessarily think that’s the case."
We wouldn't be having this conversation, thinks Matthews, if millennials had any idea of what
happened in the world before the year 2000.
"You know, I have my own views of the word 'socialist,'" Matthews said earlier this month. "They go back to the early 1950s. I have an attitude about them. I remember the Cold War. I have an attitude towards Castro. I believe if Castro and the Reds had won the Cold War, there would have been executions in Central Park, and I might have been one of the ones getting executed, and certain other people would be there cheering, OK? So, I have a problem with people who took the other side."
The world can basically be divided into five groups of people:
(1) People who unconditionally love Donald J. Trump
(2) People who hate Donald J. Trump with the white-hot heat of a thousand suns
(3) People who didn't vote for Donald J. Trump last time and won't vote for him this fall but can and do honestly acknowledge the good he has done
(4) People who weren't going to vote for Donald J. Trump at all but very reluctantly did so anyway when they saw how matters stood with Gam-Gam
(5) People who didn't vote for Donald J. Trump last time but because of the good he has done, the hysterical reaction to him from the media and formerly-influential Never Trump pundits and the continuing efforts by his political opponents, in the government or out of it, to overturn a legal American election, among other things, will crawl over a field of broken glass that has been doused with gasoline and set on fire to vote for him this fall
As far-left as she was, most people considered Gam-Gam to be a "moderate" Democrat yet she narrowly lost. Now the Democrats may put a communist on the top of their ticket, moving the party as far left as it is possible to go. What do they think is going to happen?
Group (2) is in the bag while Groups (1) and (5) are completely lost. Only (3) and (4) may still be in play. Do the Democrats seriously believe that they lost in 2016 because the party wasn't nearly leftist enough? Do they think that the nomination of a radical leftist like Bernie Sanders will attract any votes at all from (3) or attract back voters from (4)? Do Democrats believe that the American people have spent their history yearning for socialist/communist governance?
"I’m wondering whether the Democratic moderates want Bernie Sanders to be president," he said. "That’s maybe too exciting a question to raise. They don’t like Trump at all. Do they want Bernie Sanders to take over the Democratic Party in perpetuity? I mean, he takes it over, he sets the direction of the future of the party — maybe they’d rather wait four years and put in a Democrat that they like."
Could be. Could also be that "moderate" Democrats are starting to become the next "pro-life" Democrats. A fast-diminishing party minority. Of course, Sanders' enthusiastic communism doesn't just affect the top of the ticket.
"I mean, that’s the big question, right?" Adrienne Elrod, a former senior adviser to Hillary Clinton, responded. "And you know, the narrative that you’re starting to see play out, Chris, is that there are people that are concerned, strategists that are concerned that Bernie Sanders being at the top of the ticket will force us to lose the House. I don’t necessarily think that’s the case."
We wouldn't be having this conversation, thinks Matthews, if millennials had any idea of what
happened in the world before the year 2000.
"You know, I have my own views of the word 'socialist,'" Matthews said earlier this month. "They go back to the early 1950s. I have an attitude about them. I remember the Cold War. I have an attitude towards Castro. I believe if Castro and the Reds had won the Cold War, there would have been executions in Central Park, and I might have been one of the ones getting executed, and certain other people would be there cheering, OK? So, I have a problem with people who took the other side."
The world can basically be divided into five groups of people:
(1) People who unconditionally love Donald J. Trump
(2) People who hate Donald J. Trump with the white-hot heat of a thousand suns
(3) People who didn't vote for Donald J. Trump last time and won't vote for him this fall but can and do honestly acknowledge the good he has done
(4) People who weren't going to vote for Donald J. Trump at all but very reluctantly did so anyway when they saw how matters stood with Gam-Gam
(5) People who didn't vote for Donald J. Trump last time but because of the good he has done, the hysterical reaction to him from the media and formerly-influential Never Trump pundits and the continuing efforts by his political opponents, in the government or out of it, to overturn a legal American election, among other things, will crawl over a field of broken glass that has been doused with gasoline and set on fire to vote for him this fall
As far-left as she was, most people considered Gam-Gam to be a "moderate" Democrat yet she narrowly lost. Now the Democrats may put a communist on the top of their ticket, moving the party as far left as it is possible to go. What do they think is going to happen?
Group (2) is in the bag while Groups (1) and (5) are completely lost. Only (3) and (4) may still be in play. Do the Democrats seriously believe that they lost in 2016 because the party wasn't nearly leftist enough? Do they think that the nomination of a radical leftist like Bernie Sanders will attract any votes at all from (3) or attract back voters from (4)? Do Democrats believe that the American people have spent their history yearning for socialist/communist governance?
6 comments:
When you have lost Chris Mathews......
I always remind my liberal friends who complain about Republican Party fringes that they are fundamentally different from the Democratic Party. The Republican mainstream are the rational people. In the Democratic Party, the mainstream are the crazies; the fringe are the rational ones.
Jon Gabriel of Ricochet (@exjon) says, possibly facetiously, that he expects the Draft Hillary movement to begin any day now. And we're seeing a number of supposed "moderate" Democrats endorsing Bloomberg, who seems to them to be the only one who can derail the Bernie train.
Which makes me wonder what will happen if the Dems do somehow derail Bernie.
(1) Bernie goes third party, his idiots go with him and enough votes are siphoned off to cost the Democrats the election.
(2) The Bernie-oids emulate the 2012 evangelicals and sit the election out, thus costing votes that the Democrats desperately need.
(3) A repeat of the 1968 Chicago Democratic convention which will drive away even more potential Democratic votes.
(4) Something else.
It's going to be interesting.
I'd bet on (2) and (3). Some of these people are violent. At least, for a time, it would be aimed at non-Bernie Democrats and not at Trump supporters, but it would soon spill over into mayhem before and possibly after the general election.
And if Bernie is the Dem nominee, and loses to Trump, mayhem is to be expected.
I doubt anything interesting will happen. In 2004, there was an unexpected preference cascade in the Democratic Party which handed the nomination to John Kerry. My wager would be that that will be the dominant current this year, with a modest counter-current which resembles John Kasich's resentful persistence in 2016 (which has continued years later). Bloomberg's got $60 bn, so can hang around as long as he cares to. Kasich placed first in one state.
Addendum: Kasich managed to place 2d in New England and in the New York - Washington corridor, and nowhere else. He's a Rustbelt native, but he competed well only in the state where he was the Governor. He only withdrew after Ted Cruz did. Cruz won a dozen states.
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