The Democrats’ Firing Squad

In December 2019, Boris Johnson and his campaign team managed to consolidate the Tories’ message in the UK general election into three simple words: Get Brexit done. And he scored a very solid victory.

On the face of it, the Democrats in the United States have matched the British Conservatives’ simplicity. They have made “Remove Donald Trump” their rallying call for 2020.

The Democrats’ firing squad is a circle

Trouble is that, as their recent TV debate in Nevada has made clear, the Democratic candidates for the presidential nomination have lost sight of their goal. Instead of going after Trump, basically to a person the professional politicians in the race went after Mike Bloomberg.

Elisabeth Warren, in the near-terminal spin of her flagging campaign, has gotten so desperate that she is copying Donald trump by going after Bloomberg’s height. (Not that Warren is a giant of a woman to begin with.)

And it’s not that Bloomberg is without fail. Far from it. But given that the outcome of the impeachment proceedings did not at all follow the Democratic script, the party leaving a very muddled impression with the electorate.

At a minimum, the Democrats are stepping on their own message and are doing Trump’s bidding. Bloomberg is the only candidate who has his eyes on the real prize — Donald Trump.

It is, of course, still early in the campaign season and primaries follow their own inherent logic. But while voters aren’t yet focused on November 3, 2020, the old adage, according to which the Democrats’ firing squad is a circle, very much comes to mind.

Republicans’ North Korea-like leader worship

What makes the Democrats’ inward turn of their “guns” even worse is that the entire Republican Party is ever more blindly and brainlessly devoted to Donald Trump as their great leader who may not be questioned by anyone.

A year ago, Trump’s constant professions of love toward North Korea’s child leader Kim Jong-un really gave away his preference for, and adoration of, unquestioned dictatorial leadership.

As evidenced by 98% of the Republicans’ Congressional faction in both houses, their representatives are determined to grant Trump his wish. And while Republicans en masse stoop to new lows of self-respect every single day, one wonders what has made them such sissies.

December 18, 2019 will be flagged in the annals of American history as the day that perfectly marked this ceaseless submission. Voting down impeachment that day, the Republican members of the House of Representatives performed the sad, entirely un-American spectacle of delivering mind-numbingly stupid loyalty oaths to their Great Leader on national television. Anybody watching could have concluded that one was watching North Korean TV.

All of which makes one wonder how the Democrats could refocus themselves and regain the initiative. Perhaps they should introduce the following resolution on the House floor:

“A Proclamation to Deliver Impeachment, After All” (by voting Trump out of office)

At a time …

when Republicans in the Congress are making a joke of their constitutional duty to seriously investigate the case for impeachment against Trump in any serious fashion;

when Republicans in the Congress falsely assert that the only point of impeachment is an illegitimate maneuver, namely to nullify the election of Trump in November 2016;

when Republicans all across the United States threaten the equivalent of a civil war, if not armed insurrection in case Trump is removed from the White House;

when Republicans are happily laying the foundations to remove ever more constitutional boundaries in their effort to make their minority rule permanent;

when the current occupant of the White House openly serves Russian interests and acts as a mouthpiece for Putin;

when the current occupant of the White House mistakes for “socialism” the noble words enshrined in the Preamble of the United States Constitution (“form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity”);

when many U.S. voters’ minds are no longer open to constitutional matters, because they, too, only see the world as a matter of sheer and unquestioning loyalty (which is a profoundly un-Western concept);

Be it resolved that

… at such a time, all decent people in the United States must do the obvious – and vote Donald J. Trump out of office.