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| Murphy |
No one in Connecticut, a deep blue state, will be surprised to learn that U.S. Senator Chris Murphy survived the recent presidential election washout.
President-elect Donald Trump structured his campaign mostly
on policy: patch and restore the suppurating U.S. Southern border; reduce
inflation; cut excessive government spending where possible, the chief
contributor to inflation; concentrate on
small businesses that do not have the political heft to survive a cumulative
inflation rate of 20%; use tariffs as a political tool to redress economic imbalances
that – to choose but one egregious offender, China -- have been deployed by foreign states that
traditionally have been enemies of the United States to undercut pricing on the
home front and thus drive important US businesses
out of business… and so on. Everyone knows the Trump political product song, often
delivered with hyperbolic missiles directed at his political foes.
Democrat presidential contender Kamala Harris’ presentation
was personality based – she was sweet sauce, Trump bitter vinegar -- rather
than policy based. Americans, always intensely practical, preferred Trump’s
presentation. That is why he defeated Harris and won both the popular vote and
the Electoral College.
The magnitude of Trump’s victory shocked many left of center
and neo-progressive Democrats occasioning a good deal of tawdry political soul-searching.
Democrat political warhorse "Ragin' Cajun" James Carville, in his younger days
a lead strategist in Bill Clinton's winning 1992 presidential campaign, “blamed
Democrat Party losses on Woke Era politics.
What ‘killed’ the Democrats in these elections was a ‘sense of dishonor’
among the electorate, part of which, he said, ‘was the unfortunate events of
what I would refer to as the woke era.’"
“Blueprint,
a public opinion research initiative designed to help the Democrat Party with
election strategy,” asserted that “one of the top reasons voters rejected
Harris this cycle was that she was perceived as too ‘focused on liberal
cultural issues’ rather than on issues helping the middle class… Harris
couldn’t outrun her past or her party— it was a vice grip that proved
impossible to escape.”
Much of this is true, and most of it does not figure in
Murphy’s calculations for the future of his party.
There are two political prescriptions offered by Democrats
that might address the current gap between Democrats and their traditional
liberal voting base. One advises a change in policy direction, and the other
advises an intensification of failing neo-progressive doctrine. Both Murphy and
Sanders believe that Democrats have erred only in the intensity of their
messaging; if in their lost campaign they had been louder and more insistent,
Harris might be on her way to the White House, a seriously delusional view of
things.
According to a recent Murphy-affirming story in the Hartford Courant, “He [Murphy] has
said the party needs to do better reaching out to working-class voters and
challenging the consolidation of power by corporations and billionaires,
echoing some of the messaging that U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has wanted
the party to adopt.”
Now then, one way to mitigate the harm “greedy” corporations
inflict on “working class voters” might be to reduce rather than increase taxes
and regulations imposed on such corporations by neo-progressives who stubbornly
refuse to acknowledge that corporations, large and small, are not tax payers;
they are tax collectors that pass on to consumers the costs imposed upon them
by politicians.
The cost of business taxes and regulations are borne by “the
working classes.” When businesses do not wish to overburden their customers,
they reduce expenses by means of consolidations, which reduce competition,
entrepreneurial creativity, and create artificial monopolies – safe spaces for
big business, death traps for small businesses.
In the meantime, while Harris and Biden fade into obscurity,
the entire Middle East deathtrap has been altered almost in the twinkling of an
eye – thanks to Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu.
Former President Barack Obama sent his aides into Israel
during an election to depose Netanyahu –- democratically of course. Biden,
following in Obama’s footsteps, wanted Netanyahu to negotiate with a set of
terrorists allied with Iran and Putin’s Russia working feverishly to destroy
the state of Israel. Netanyahu told the West and Europe that if it denied
Israel the means to defend itself – for the sake of a temporary peace -- Israel
would fight its enemies “with its fingernails.”
Bashir Assad of Syria -- backed by Iran, Russia and China –
has now fled the country. Netanyahu, who has prevailed militarily over the
enemies of Israel, has sent tanks along the Syrian border and on Sunday
afternoon hailed “the end of Syria's Bashar al-Assad's 14-year rule.” He
justifiably claimed that the “blows inflicted on Iran and Hezbollah" had a
direct impact on the Syrian revolution.
President-Elect Trump has sent a letter to Vladimir Putin strongly
suggesting that he accede to a Trump devised resolution of the war started by
crypto-Stalinist Putin. In Trumpville, strong suggestions may easily become
inflexible demands. One can only wonder
what Murphy and Sanders think of this largely favorable turn of events.
The Democrat Party is at a crossroad because it has during
the Biden-Harris administration consistently acted at cross purposes to its own
best interests. Politically, Murphy belongs in a niche alongside such stalwarts
of the neo-progressive movement as Sanders and California Democrat heartthrob
Gavin Newsome, the soon to be ex-Governor of California.
Trump will either succeed or fail within the next four years
in his plans to refashion politics along more conservative lines. A dramatic
failure will improve the prospects of neo-progressive revolutionaries. But Trump’s success will also help them –
because success ultimately will undo Democrat Party strategies that have made a
wreck of the border, the economy and past liberal measures associated with
former presidents Bill Clinton, the last president to have paid off the nation’s
public debt, and John F. Kennedy, whose address before the New
York Economic Club bears close attention.
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