The
Democratic Party’s Crisis of Legitimacy May Be Just Beginning
Photo: Elijah Nouvelage/Bloomberg via Getty Images
We are living in an era of what political scientists describe as “strong partisanship and weak parties” — or, alternatively, as “negative partisanship.” The electorate is polarized into opposing camps, but their emotional impetus is driven by hostility to the other party rather than trust in their own. The Republican Party’s solution to this predicament has been to fashion itself as a cult of personality devoted to Donald Trump. The Democratic Party’s solution has been a series of technocratic fixes intended to increase its own legitimacy. But the Iowa caucus is the latest indication that the effort is collapsing.
One of the oddities of the 2016 presidential race is that, while the Republican Party was taken over by an outsider initially viewed as dangerous and unacceptable by its party elite, it was the Democratic Party that concluded its nominating process had failed. Supporters of Bernie Sanders repeatedly applied his trademark phrase — “rigged” — to explain a primary they clearly lost. Complaints about “rigging” began with an agonizingly narrow Sanders defeat to Clinton in the Iowa caucus four years before. They continued throughout the contest, with every routine snafu — in Nevada, New York, and the possibility that party superdelegates would provide Hillary Clinton the winning margin — held up as more evidence of the conspiracy.
Sanders himself has toggled between cooperating with the party and stoking the paranoia of his supporters. He never fully abandoned the claim that — despite losing by a double-digit margin — the party robbed him. “Some people say that maybe if the system wasn’t rigged against me, I would’ve won the nomination,” he insisted last year.
The party instituted a number of changes intended to inoculate itself against accusations of rigging. In Iowa, the Democratic caucus instituted new rules, “mandated by the DNC as part of a package of changes sought by Bernie Sanders” and “designed to make the caucus system more transparent.” The new rules required reporting several different sets of numbers from every precinct. This reflected a long-standing proclivity in left-of-center politics to meet every demand for fairness with new layers of complexity. Anybody who has witnessed or participated in a grassroots progressive organization has seen this intricate, rules-based method democracy in action. Monty Python lampooned the tendency in Holy Grail. (“We’re an anarcho-syndicalist commune,” a peasant explains to the impatient King Arthur. “We take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week, but all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special biweekly meeting by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs, but by a two-thirds majority in the case of more major …”)
Still, the caucus failure ultimately boiled down to a banal organizational failure. The party attempted to introduce a new app to report precinct results, which its older precinct captains largely failed to master, and its phone-reporting system buckled under the weight of the elevated confusion. There is no evidence voting results themselves have been compromised (at least not beyond the normal levels of confusion produced by the chaotic process).
What may turn a routine bureaucratic failure into a larger Democratic crisis, though, is the Bernie movement’s preexisting suspicion. Sanders is not alone in this — the Biden campaign shamefully issued a statement calling the results into doubt, in a transparent effort to discredit a vote it clearly lost. But the bulk of the suspicions came from Sanders supporters, who quickly reprised their 2016 rigging claims.
Trump has seized upon the Sanders supporters’ propensity toward grievance. Republicans began spreading the message in mid-January that impeachment was a plot by the party leadership to take Sanders off the campaign trail, a theory also echoed by some of Sanders’s nuttier fans, like Aaron Mate and Krystal Ball. In advance of the Iowa caucus, Republicans switched over to spreading the message that the voting process itself had been rigged. Republicans began circulating baseless claims of vote fraud in Iowa. When the first problems appeared in Iowa Monday night, Republicans like Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale, Senator Lindsey Graham, and independent operators of the Trump-family blind trust, Donald Jr. and Eric Trump, gleefully charged that it was all rigged to stop Bernie.
In the end, the Iowa Democratic caucus will probably report accurate results. But the corrosive damage to the legitimacy of the system will remain. What ought to terrify Democrats is that the process is only beginning. It will be, by design, more elongated than 2016, and party leaders will have even less influence over its outcome. So far, the attempts the party has made to stave off challenges to its legitimacy have only exacerbated them.
CALL LA RAZA NANCY TODAY! PUT THE HEAT ON HER!
CALL NANCY PELOSI Washington , DC - (202) 225-4965 San Francisco , CA - (415) 556-4862
EMAIL NANCY PELOSI sf.nancy@mail.house.gov
They made one thing manifestly clear: They are
anti-American, anti-self-reliance, pro-crime, pro-
illegal immigration, pro-sanctuary cites for illegal
criminals, anti-Second Amendment and anti-
American people.
EMAIL NANCY PELOSI sf.nancy@mail.house.gov
They made one thing manifestly clear: They are
anti-American, anti-self-reliance, pro-crime, pro-
illegal immigration, pro-sanctuary cites for illegal
criminals, anti-Second Amendment and anti-
American people.
SOTU: The unspeakable ungraciousness of the Democrats in Congress
President Trump's SOTU speech Tuesday night was spectacular on every level. It was unabashedly pro-American, pro-law-enforcement, pro-border security, pro-religious freedom, pro-life, pro-school choice and pro-the American job and economic comeback, and then some; there was so much more, all of it positive, optimistic. This president has indeed begun to make America great again.
Despite the Democrats' fervent attempts to see him removed from office, President Trump has succeeded beyond all expectations for the good of the nation. This is what so enrages the left; the man has done in three years what they have promised their voters for sixty-plus years but never accomplished -- on purpose. The left has always promised what they never intended to deliver. Their plan for decades has been to keep us all down, begging them, the federal government, for sustenance. Their plan has always been to convince us we cannot thrive without their intervention in our lives and by intervention, they mean they will tell us how to live, breathe, eat, drive, work, etc. Our left is authoritarian, fascist.
And they are also as ungracious as any group of people who have ever held office in America.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi yet again embarrassed herself. This is a woman without an iota of grace or class. She has been determined to see President Trump unseated since the day he won the election. She is the wicked witch of the House; all-powerful but losing her grip on her caucus and her sanity; she is melting. She sat grim-faced, working her mouth in
odd ways as always, trying to distract from the
content of the speech by shuffling papers to make
the point that she was not listening. She was
purposefully rude. Her behavior should be
mortifying to her colleagues but they all behaved
in like manner.
As the president listed the many successes of his administration so far, the Democrats sat on their hands, refusing to applaud nearly all of the terrific things that have taken place these past three years. They made a point of appearing dismissive of the man and his words. They are very angry that it has been a non-ideological Republican who has achieved so much for so many, doing things Democrats have always promised but never fulfilled, stealing their thunder.
Trump's economic policies have brought all demographic groups more jobs and higher wages. No wonder his approval among African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, women, and youth has grown. They are all better off since he was elected. He has elicited more money for NATO, passed USMCA and begun to even up trade with China, his initial reason for running for the office of president.
The most egregiously infuriating aspect of the night was the persistent despicable behavior of the Democrats who were in the room. They acted like small children, infantilized by their hatred of this president and their belief that Americans must be taken care of according to their specifications. They demeaned themselves with their pathetic behavior at an event like this SOTU speech by refusing to acknowledge any of this president's victories. A few of the usual suspects walked out during the speech, a feeble attempt to demonstrate their contempt. They are obviously both angry and embarrassed that their misguided attempt to impeach the president failed. But they should take their rage out on Reps. Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler and Pelosi who truly failed them, not the president. All those Democrats who sat by and watched the Schiff show systematically destroy their own party are to blame for their own demise.
Trump will be re-elected in a landslide, with black, Hispanic, gay, and former Democrats in support. He actually is making America great again. And for that, the Democrats sat stone-faced, furious, throughout the speech. They made one thing manifestly
clear: They are anti-American, anti-self-reliance,
pro-crime, pro-illegal immigration, pro-sanctuary
cites for illegal criminals, anti-Second
Amendment and anti-American people.
Americans have just endured three years of the Democrats' inability to accept the results of the 2016 election and the torment of the costly and phony Russia hoax as well as the Mueller investigation, which was in fact a cover-up scheme. Then Schiff brought us the long-planned Ukraine nonsense. We have all watched Schiff's descent into madness; he is in need of a rubber room with his final ravings, and yet his colleagues still refrain from stopping him from making an ever bigger fool of himself. They have remained silent as he has made their party a laughingstock. Not a single Democrat has had the courage to shout that this wanna-be emperor has no clothes. Schiff's obsession with removing Trump from office is clearly a sign of his mental instability. Trump is going to sell Alaska to Russia! Bring on the straitjacket and an incapacitating agent.
When the president's speech was over, Pelosi furiously ripped up her copy of it on camera.
Is there a better, more telling act of her anger and disrespect for the office of the presidency? She is a harridan, a blight upon her city, her party and the country. The American Democrat party has become something it was never meant to be: it has morphed into a radically fascist party of autocrats. Certainly not all of them fall into this category but those who do not are cowards. Clearly they are afraid of the tyrants who control the party so they sit quietly by in fear of losing their seats. As we watched them all refuse to applaud the many successes of this administration and the members of the audience Trump celebrated, we should all realize that these people are not on the side of America or Americans. As Pelosi so ungraciously ripped up her copy of the speech on camera, she proved, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the Democrat party is no longer pro-American, pro-freedom nor pro-democracy. This SOTU speech was a transformative moment. Now we know that only one party represents the American people. The Democrat party as currently constituted, should ship out to Venezuela where they would feel right at home.
President Trump's SOTU speech Tuesday night was spectacular on every level. It was unabashedly pro-American, pro-law-enforcement, pro-border security, pro-religious freedom, pro-life, pro-school choice and pro-the American job and economic comeback, and then some; there was so much more, all of it positive, optimistic. This president has indeed begun to make America great again.
Despite the Democrats' fervent attempts to see him removed from office, President Trump has succeeded beyond all expectations for the good of the nation. This is what so enrages the left; the man has done in three years what they have promised their voters for sixty-plus years but never accomplished -- on purpose. The left has always promised what they never intended to deliver. Their plan for decades has been to keep us all down, begging them, the federal government, for sustenance. Their plan has always been to convince us we cannot thrive without their intervention in our lives and by intervention, they mean they will tell us how to live, breathe, eat, drive, work, etc. Our left is authoritarian, fascist.
And they are also as ungracious as any group of people who have ever held office in America.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi yet again embarrassed herself. This is a woman without an iota of grace or class. She has been determined to see President Trump unseated since the day he won the election. She is the wicked witch of the House; all-powerful but losing her grip on her caucus and her sanity; she is melting. She sat grim-faced, working her mouth in
odd ways as always, trying to distract from the
content of the speech by shuffling papers to make
the point that she was not listening. She was
purposefully rude. Her behavior should be
mortifying to her colleagues but they all behaved
in like manner.
As the president listed the many successes of his administration so far, the Democrats sat on their hands, refusing to applaud nearly all of the terrific things that have taken place these past three years. They made a point of appearing dismissive of the man and his words. They are very angry that it has been a non-ideological Republican who has achieved so much for so many, doing things Democrats have always promised but never fulfilled, stealing their thunder.
Trump's economic policies have brought all demographic groups more jobs and higher wages. No wonder his approval among African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, women, and youth has grown. They are all better off since he was elected. He has elicited more money for NATO, passed USMCA and begun to even up trade with China, his initial reason for running for the office of president.
The most egregiously infuriating aspect of the night was the persistent despicable behavior of the Democrats who were in the room. They acted like small children, infantilized by their hatred of this president and their belief that Americans must be taken care of according to their specifications. They demeaned themselves with their pathetic behavior at an event like this SOTU speech by refusing to acknowledge any of this president's victories. A few of the usual suspects walked out during the speech, a feeble attempt to demonstrate their contempt. They are obviously both angry and embarrassed that their misguided attempt to impeach the president failed. But they should take their rage out on Reps. Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler and Pelosi who truly failed them, not the president. All those Democrats who sat by and watched the Schiff show systematically destroy their own party are to blame for their own demise.
Trump will be re-elected in a landslide, with black, Hispanic, gay, and former Democrats in support. He actually is making America great again. And for that, the Democrats sat stone-faced, furious, throughout the speech. They made one thing manifestly
clear: They are anti-American, anti-self-reliance,
pro-crime, pro-illegal immigration, pro-sanctuary
cites for illegal criminals, anti-Second
Amendment and anti-American people.
Americans have just endured three years of the Democrats' inability to accept the results of the 2016 election and the torment of the costly and phony Russia hoax as well as the Mueller investigation, which was in fact a cover-up scheme. Then Schiff brought us the long-planned Ukraine nonsense. We have all watched Schiff's descent into madness; he is in need of a rubber room with his final ravings, and yet his colleagues still refrain from stopping him from making an ever bigger fool of himself. They have remained silent as he has made their party a laughingstock. Not a single Democrat has had the courage to shout that this wanna-be emperor has no clothes. Schiff's obsession with removing Trump from office is clearly a sign of his mental instability. Trump is going to sell Alaska to Russia! Bring on the straitjacket and an incapacitating agent.
When the president's speech was over, Pelosi furiously ripped up her copy of it on camera.
Is there a better, more telling act of her anger and disrespect for the office of the presidency? She is a harridan, a blight upon her city, her party and the country. The American Democrat party has become something it was never meant to be: it has morphed into a radically fascist party of autocrats. Certainly not all of them fall into this category but those who do not are cowards. Clearly they are afraid of the tyrants who control the party so they sit quietly by in fear of losing their seats. As we watched them all refuse to applaud the many successes of this administration and the members of the audience Trump celebrated, we should all realize that these people are not on the side of America or Americans. As Pelosi so ungraciously ripped up her copy of the speech on camera, she proved, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the Democrat party is no longer pro-American, pro-freedom nor pro-democracy. This SOTU speech was a transformative moment. Now we know that only one party represents the American people. The Democrat party as currently constituted, should ship out to Venezuela where they would feel right at home.
Nancy Pelosi throws a public temper tantrum and other Democrat misbehavior
Two different events played out on the floor of the House on Tuesday night. The first was President Trump’s powerful, moving, uplifting, and optimistic State of the Union speech. The second was the immature, arrogant, intemperate, and really disgusting temper tantrum in which Democrats indulged.
The most obvious sign of a complete mental breakdown on the left was Nancy Pelosi’s conduct during the speech. Her petulant behavior could not be missed because she was seated behind the president, to his left. Whenever the camera was on Trump, it was on Pelosi too.
Pelosi's hissy fit first showed itself when Pelosi refused to give Trump the traditional formal introduction. Traditionally, Speakers of the House say that it is their “high privilege and distinct honor of presenting to you the President of the United States.” Pelosi, however, in grudging and rushed tones, simply said, ‘Members of Congress, the President of the United States.”
Things went downhill from there. When Trump handed copies of his speech to Vice President Pence and Pelosi, Pelosi extended her hand for a shake, but Trump did not extend his hand back. There’s much debate about whether it was an oversight on his part or an intentional insult. You can decide for yourself:
As Trump began to speak, Pelosi began to perform a running pantomime behind his back. Rather than listen to Trump's speech, she leafed through the written speech he gave her. She also wriggled around in her chair, sucked her dentures, made disdainful faces, waved to people in the crowd, and generally behaved like an angry 15-year-old girl whose parents have forced her to attend a formal event. It was painful to watch the person who is third in line to the presidency behave in such a childish, rude manner.
Being intentionally disrespectful and disruptive, though, was just a warm-up for Pelosi’s final act. When Trump’s speech ended, she carefully gathered together her copy of the speech into neat little piles, ostentatiously ripped each pile in half, and disdainfully dropped them on the table in front of her:
She couldn’t even rip the speech in one stack. She had to divide it up. She made her weak act look even weaker. @realDonaldTrump lives in her head rent free. #SOTU
Afterward, Nancy was even more insulting:
The White House tweeted:
One of our last surviving Tuskegee Airmen.The survival of a child born at 21 weeks.The mourning families of Rocky Jones and Kayla Mueller.A service member's reunion with his family.That's her legacy.
The Democrats seated in the House were just as bad. As Trump methodically went through all the wonderful things that have come to the American people in the past three years, they sat there, angry and lugubrious. They refused to clap for record low unemployment, especially for minorities; record rising wages for blue-collar jobs; a secure Southern border; shrinking food stamp and welfare rolls; a rising stock market; criminal justice reform; energy independence; beneficial new trade deals; a revitalized American military; vocational studies in high schools; ending free medical care for illegal aliens; and, of course, Rush Limbaugh’s Medal of Freedom.
The Democrats thought that they were protesting Trump. That's not what Americans saw, though. They saw politicians so invested in regaining political power that they deeply resented Americans becoming richer, healthier, and safer. If Democrats were smart, they would applaud what Trump has achieved and promise to do even better. Instead, they keep peddling their dystopian nightmares and promise that, once given unlimited power, all will be well again. It’s an ugly look.
Other Democrat lowlights:
I just walked out of the #StateOfTheUnion. I can’t stand a liar. This man’s presidency is a national tragedy.
Why Democratic lawmakers raised three fingers during this moment of President Trump's #sotu speech cnn.it/2uo8oTh
(The Cummings bill, of course, was anti-free market, making it the equivalent of rent control for medicine.)
This has been a bad week for Democrats: First, their impeachment effort not only failed, it drove up Trump’s popularity. Second, they made a complete hash of the Iowa caucuses, which must have caused more than one person to wonder if they’re capable of managing a country. And third, they humiliated themselves by behaving like boorish, immature brats. This was not a principled protest; it was a tawdry, tin-eared tantrum.
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