Don's Tuesday Column

         THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   3/12/2019

Trump wins in 2020—here’s why

Subtitle: And not just in the Electoral College, but with a solid popular vote margin. The eventual Democratic candidate won’t lose to a Trump landslide like Walter Mondale or Michael Dukakis, though. With bizarre sympathy for socialism, the miseducated Millennial voters have not lived, and have forgotten (if they were ever taught), the hard lessons of 20^th century tyrants: 1) the 100 million slaughtered and starved on the altar of socialism (whether Hitler’s “national socialism” or communism’s “international socialism”), and 2) the miseries following any attempt at central control of people’s lives and national economies.

Young Americans could learn from (their teachers could assist) the current socialist hellholes in our own hemisphere (Venezuela) and 90 miles off Florida’s shore (Cuba). Academics, entertainers and journalists have never really lost their adulation for, and rationalization of, the failed systems of collectivism, communism and socialism; it hasn’t been unanimous. There’s never been complete rejection of those ideologies among the otherwise sensible, center-right worlds of business, the military, suburbs, ex-urbs, and rural America.

And so, the under-35 voters lean heavily toward old, tired progressives and quasi-socialists Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Maxine Waters, and Nancy Pelosi. Likewise, the middle-aged and younger Democrat candidates: our leftist Senator Kamala Harris, Robert (Beto) O’Rourke, Amy Klobuchar, Cory Booker, John Hickenlooper, Jay Inslee, Julian Castro, Tulsi Gabbard, etc (titles omitted for space). None could be called moderate, let alone conservative.

A political cartoon by Ben Garrison captured the theme: Democrats Sanders, Harris, Booker and Warren (with others behind them) are lined up pushing their mascot donkey off a cliff; the jackass is trying to hold onto the last edge of turf, looking frightened. Sanders is firmly, obliviously, sinking his hands into the hind end of the animal.

Signs in the ground are pointing the way to the cliff: “Left of Center,” “Left,” “Far Left,” “Far, Far Left,” while the last sign “G’Bye!” starts to fall into the abyss. They’re smiling wide with exuberance, all filling the word bubble: “Open Borders, Free College, Reparations, Socialism, Carbon Taxes, Take the Guns, Social Justice, Abortion, More Taxes, Globalism, Woo-Woo.”

Elsewhere, President Trump walks onto a stage, gives the American flag an impromptu hug, and keeps a standing-room-only hall of conservatives rapt for two hours with what must have been a roll out of the themes and messages for his reelection campaign. He heaped ridicule and mockery on not only the Democrats seeking to beat him but also their policies and attacks. Independents will likely approve.

Let’s try to list the lunatic (ok, out-of-mainstream) ideas defining progressives (see also, “Democrats Lose Their Minds—And prove Howard Schultz right” by M. Continetti). Schultz, a billionaire builder/ex-CEO of Starbucks, is a liberal Democrat eyeing the presidency. He credits his success to “America’s culture of entrepreneurial risk-taking, minimal government interference in commerce, individual responsibility, and rule of law. He worries that the Democratic Party…is in the process of abandoning support for the very aspects of American life that made his life possible.”

Was Schultz observant, predictive or both (his announcement and “60 Minutes” interview were in late January)? Some business owners, even rich ones, might look favorably on so-called “Medicare For All” (MFA) as a way to relieve their companies of health insurance expenses; they’ll be left with the bill, eventually. The tax increases needed to make health care “free” will follow the pattern of all Democrat “revenue redistribution” programs: the top 20 percent will pay 90 percent of the cost while the bottom 50 percent pay little if anything. As before Obamacare, over 70 percent like their current health plans (AHIP, 2018).

Anyone who thinks efficiency from government-run, socialistic, single-payer health care will pay for itself is on the wacky weed, medicinal or not. Making the state replace private insurance—as Kamala Harris blithely said just before uttering her dismissive “move on” in a town hall—will surely make us all health care serfs. Nice little business or accumulated wealth you have there; it’d be a shame if something happened to it. How long until the government just takes it all, doling it out if you justify your need for it.

Just as all the Dems will say “me too” to Medicare For All, they will rush like lemmings to not be outbid proposing tax hikes. “Warren has endorsed a tax of 2 percent on assets above $50 million and 3 percent on assets above $1 billion. Warren would like to raise taxes on incomes, capital gains, dividends, and corporations, too…A wealth tax (would be) unique in American history, even unconstitutional.” Democrats will fix that little problem; FDR’s failed attempt at “court packing” will not keep the Dems from trying. Six more liberals on the Supreme Court will overwhelm six or even seven conservative Judges.

While not presidential material, Alexandria “O-crazy-o” Cortez doesn’t approve of “a system that allows billionaires to exist” while some poor go without health care. Her pet project, the “New Green Deal,” costing around $65,000 per family per year on average, will “only” need a 70 percent marginal rate on the “wealthy.” As I see it, columns will be needed to further explain the lunacy and unworkable reality of MFA and the NGD, but don’t think those on the left will pay any attention. Admirers of, and apologists for, socialism “don’t need no stinkin’ facts” getting in the way of their visionary, utopian plans for our lives and bodies.

The nuttery continues with congresswoman Ilhan Omar railing against 1) a (nonexistent) American invasion of Venezuela; 2) Jews hypnotizing the world, controlling American politics with their money, and conspiring to force her to apologize for her anti-Semitic words, while 3) Nancy Pelosi insists Omar “has a different experience with words,” so 4) Democrats refuse to condemn Omar’s crass anti-Semitism. Good grief!