The Bonfire of the Democrats

If the economy stays as good as it is, it should be tough to beat Trump in spite of his ridiculous posturing.  A lot of  people know that he favors policies intended to please them; immigration, taxes, employment, trade, guns, limited overseas engagements, etc., and the people who mass for  his rallies don't give a damn about what the elites and the I-95 corridor crowd think about anything.  So, his chances are good in the electoral college where it counts, even if the Congress is up for grabs.

But, pilgrims, the Democrats seem determined to sweeten his chances even more than they already are. 

Policies favored by Democrats in Congress or running for office:

• "Medicare for All."  The title is a deception.  This proposal has nothing to do with present "Medicare" which is a limited program for old people, a program that pays part of medical expenses and for which participants pay premiums.  Medicare Part B pays about 80% of medical expenses.  The recipient either pays the remainder or has a supplemental secondary payer insurance.  "Medicare for All" is a single payer, government pays all, concept that wipes everything else off the board and which would cost a vast amount of non-existent magic money.   Warren calculates the cost of such a system to be 52 trillion dollars over ten years.  Say what?  What?  180 million Americans would lose their employer funded health insurance in this scheme and Warren admits that around 2 million jobs would be lost in the health insurance business, and other health connected services.  Her response to people rejecting such an outcome is to say that these people can go find work elsewhere, somewhere.
• Immigration.  It is obvious that the Dems do not want to see immigration controlled.  They see unlimited Latino immigration as a source of unlimited new votes that they think will go their way, especially in states where illegal voting can be made easy by state policies involving easy registration.  California is a prime example.  There is a reason why California refused to participate in a national audit of voting after 2016.  Democrat hostility to border and immigration security police is recognized by the Deplorables as intended to create Open Borders.  The Deplorables do not want to become a cultural minority in the country their ancestors built.  This has nothing to do with race, whatever that is.
  
• Guns.  Gemocrats want to take the Deplorables guns away from them.  The Deplorables do not like that.  They understand that the Founders did not want them to be a herd of sheeple completely at the mercy of central government.  You don't think the Founders  wanted that?   Read Federalist Paper #46.
• Permissiveness in state and local government.  The Democrats are letting our great cities become sink holes of filth.  Sinkholes filled with inert masses of often mentally ill homeless people inhabiting city centers and trespassing on both public and private property.  Drug apparatus and human dung litter the streets in places like; LA, San Francisco, Portland, Oregon, New York City.  This list is long and with few exception these cities have state and city Democrat governments.  The Deplorables have TeeVee. They watch Foxnews where the existence of such conditions is made evident.  They blame the Democrats. 
• Anti-business attitudes.  AOC ran Amazon out of her district thereby depriving many of good jobs and is proud of that.  Seattle tried to install confiscatory city taxation against major employers.  Only corporate threats to cancel projects stopped that.  Deplorables see that the Democrats are hostile to employers.
• Prisoner releases.  A general release of prisoners awaiting trial is planned in places like NY State and City where Cuomo and De Blasio are going to release 900 prisoners on their own recognizance asking them to return for trial some day.  Main Street shakes its head over such foolishness.

People in the Democrat Party.

• Biden appears to be both personally corrupt and senile.  He has several times made errors with crowds (small crowds) by not knowing what state he was in.  He is an aggressive, mean old man.  (I know that from personal encounters).  His behavior toward reporters who press him is nasty.  When Peter Doucy questioned him about his son, he poked Doucy in the ribs and said that Doucy was not asking the right questions.  And then there is Hunter who seems to be the ne'er do well family bagman.  Do the Democrats really believe that most people are going to think that his appointments to well paid board positions were connected to anything but his father's positions?  And then there was the 1.5 billion dollar credit for Hunter's "business" from the Bank of China.  Come 0n! Americans are not stupid.
• Sanders.  Someone said recently that "Bernie went to the USSR on his honeymoon and never came back."  Anti-capitalist, hypocritical millionaire member of the rentier  class.  He expresses fully the ambitions of the marxist left in America.  People understand that their well indoctrinated marxist children love Bernie because their marxist professors, spawn of the 60's and 70's, told their children to love Bernie.  Unlike most Americans he detests Israel as an example of the "Western Imperialism" that his ally Ilhan Omar says they are going to fight when they are in office as a team along with Rashida Tlaib and AOC.  BTW AOC has now stated that the 900 prisoner release is a good idea because we should not have prisons.
• Warren.  IMO she is a poor man's version of Sanders, one who cannot do arithmetic.  She has conjured up a vision of a world in which money has no real  value.  For her, money is just something the government prints.  The inflationary effect of that kind of process seems to escape her altogether.  She imagines that her various programmatic plans can be funded by beggaring the rich and large corporations.  She does not seem to understand that doing that will kill the present economy and force the creation of a highly planned Soviet style planning and programming setup.  That worked well for the Nomenklatura and nobody else, but presumably that group would have a lot of Ivy League faculty in it.
• Mayor Pete.  America is not going to elect an open homosexual and his husband as president and First Partner.  Maybe they will someday, but not yet.
• And then there is Hillary lurking and sniping at honorable people like Gabbard.  IMO she is hoping that these crazies (not Gabbard) will cancel each other out and then ...

If the Democrats beat Trump and the GOP with this set of disadvantages, they will deserve the victory.  pl

Comments

[Seamus Padraig]

It's safe for them to that now while it has no chance of passing. The Democrats' real test came in 2009-2011, when they controlled both houses and the White House. That's when we saw their true colors.

[rjj]

for people socialized in this post-truth era the oath has no force. It has been otiossified - emptied of meaning.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/otiose

[Fred]

Norbert,

You deflection to Switzerland is just sophistry. As a retired person you had a lifetime to earn money and save for retirement. You also face biological facts not being faced by those 18 and under, who make up 22% of the population but don't account for anything near $10,000 each in medical spending.

[Seamus Padraig]

I knew from the start it was a scam. Obamacare was really just Romneycare writ large.

[Fred]

PFC,

"The Democrats’... can’t take issue with what Trump is doing as he guts one regulatory regime after another ..."

The regulatory regime in California at the state level is still in place and not impacted by Trump's changes to federal regulations. The inability of California to build housing or civil infrastructure is not due to federal regulations but state and local ones. Michigan is trying real hard to follow thier trendsetting ways.

" aren’t so happy when their employers change providers every year or two in vain attempts to keep a lid on costs, and the affected employees suddenly find their caregivers are now “out of network.” "

Obamacare fixed that! Oh, it didn't? Those doctors and nurses and others are still there, you just get to pay more for thier services.

[JamesT]

The DNC leadership is the "War Party", but the Americans who vote DEM are anti-war - and there is an insurgency trying to take control of the leadership of the party. Bernie could not have won as an independent. Independents never win the presidency.

I am afraid that Bernie is not "in it to win it". He knows he will be attacked as relentlessly as Trump has been. But if he chooses Tulsi as his running mate, she will be able to throw enough punches for both of them ... and the media can only accuse so many people of Russian collusion before it becomes widely viewed as a joke.

I very much hope that Sanders is elected in a way that Gabbard is effectively made president.

[scott s.]

We spend more on health care because we choose to. I see no reason why the amount per capita in the US should be the same as Germany or Australia. You say there is "no quantitative evidence" that the benefit is DOUBLE. What "quantitative evidence" do you need? This sounds like the quintessential central planner. Focus on specific outcomes like life expectancy to eliminate choice. That's why Warren says you will get the health care you NEED when you NEED it. Left unsaid is who determines the need.

[prawnik]

To the extent that the economy appears well, that is the result of increased government deficit spending and increased trade deficits. Anyone, Team D, Team R or none of the above, can look like a financial genius, as long as he is able to continue to borrow and to refinance existing debt.

Moreover, since 2008, most of the economic gains have been going to the top 1%. For the rest of us, the financial crisis never really ended.

[blue peacock]

What you are pointing out is how medical care is paid for.

Jack makes a very important but a different point on what it costs and what the health outcomes are. How much does a quadruple bypass or a knee replacement or a stent placement or a tooth extraction or a CAT scan or a tetanus shot or anti-viral medication cost in the different western countries? There have been several media stories that I have read that show the cost of a procedure in the US is multiples of the cost of the same procedure in other western countries, yet patients in the US don't have any better outcome.

To make an automotive analogy here - the question that needs to be answered is what is the cost of parts & labor for replacing an alternator in your car in the US vs Canada? Not if you pay for it with a credit card or if Mom paid for it with a check. If the US cost is 3 times the Canadian cost, does the car repaired in the US provide 3 times the miles with the same alternator compared to Canada or provide better performance? What are the benefits of the increased cost?

Following up on the automotive analogy, anytime you take your car to the mechanic for a repair, by law they are required to provide you a diagnosis and an estimate and you can now shop around based on both price & quality. In the case of medical care the only way one knows how much it cost is after the fact when the bill is issued. Why doesn't the same law apply for consumption of medical services?

It seems that anytime health care is brought up, the discussion is always about how it is paid and not about what does it cost, which is the core of the issue.

[blue peacock]

Are you saying Canadian hospitals do not offer chemo therapy? How do the Canadians pay for it when they visit the US hospital - out of pocket?

[James Doleman]

:)

[blue peacock]

Both our political parties and our whole political structure & government and business leadership have become utterly corrupt. Look at the personal wealth that the Clintons & Obamas and the Bidens have made on the basis of various quid pro quos. And look at the focus of managements & boards of publicly traded companies where more money has been spent on stock buybacks than on product development & capex. What is the focus of the many flag officers in our military? How many of them are spending significant effort in cozying up to Raytheon & Lockheed executives in the hopes they get a plum position when they rotate out of the military? The revolving door which is rampant across all our agencies and commissions and other top government positions.

It is rich the Democrats hysterical about Trump's quid pro quo. DC is all about quid pro quo. That is exactly why K St exists.

[turcopolier]

James Doleman

Ah, a lefty Scot! Yes, now Virginia can seriously begin to decline into 3rd World status like all the other states under Democratic Party control.

[PRC90]

ex PFC Chuck, I thought I should add a fourth link to round out your description of fundamentalist neoliberalism in your last paragraph:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution

[Jack]

Do you routinely seek the most expensive store when you shop for an item? Of course you can choose to do that and pay 3x for it.

My experience is that most Americans prefer to shop for a deal. You clearly are an exception.

[Fred]

It certainly didn't help that a third of the delegate positions and 25 percent of the senatorial ones had no Republican running at all.

[doug]

Seamus,

And there was 2017-2018 when the Republicans controlled both houses and the Presidency. The result of which is exploding deficits from the tax cut (which didn't cut everyone's taxes - mine went up 5k/y) and only talk about illegal immigration. Too many republicans, aside from Trump, didn't really want to do anything about it. At least they got some decent judicial appointments.

[Quartered Safe Out Here]

Be careful what you wish for. Her views on a variety of subjects were collected by Politico (also all the other candidates) and here's what they were: https://www.politico.com/2020-election/candidates-views-on-the-issues/tulsi-gabbard/
We find Medicare For All (w/ other options), Minimum wage ($15), Shut down nuclear power, Free college, Student debt relief,slash Defense,"study" reparations, eliminate the electoral college, universal background checks, DACA approval,etc. All left of center democrat. Couple of exceptions: bring the troops home, wind down overseas deployments and endless wars and pay for infrastructure with money saved (no other candidate shared this view)
As one who is old enough to have voted for Goldwater, I believe she may be the best of a bad lot. Fred Thompson said that politics is show business for ugly people. This surfer girl is an exception.

[Factotum]

We can start by breaking "health care" down into three main segments when we start allocating funding, access and personnel:
1. Preventive health care
2. Trauma care
3. Chronic disease care

Currently the last 6 months of life and treating the "worried well" is where the bulk of our "health care" dollars are spent. There can be no blank check written in the US for "health care" until there is medical malpractice tort reform built into the same system.

Too much money goes down the drain right now practicing "defensive medicine". Other countries "health care" costs are lower because they are not looking at a lawsuit if they "don't do enough".

Doctors end up treating the surviving lawsui- happy relatives, instead of the afflicted patient, who may well need far less "health care" than is currently inflicted in the US.

[turcopolier]

doug

You paid more tax because you lost a lot of deductions. So did I. That means that you are not anything like poor.

[turcopolier]

James Doleman

One benefit of the Democratic takeover is that Virginia will be the final ratifying vote for the ERA. Good! That means that men will be able to sue for equal rights.

[turcopolier]

fred

That is because so many parts of the state have been so thoroughly "colonized" that it is no longer worthwhile to put up Republican candidates.

[Patrick D]

Patrick,

Obamacare was a product of American "kludgeocracy".

https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/kludgeocracy-in-america

[Fred]

Florida is showing the same trend across the I4 corridor.

[doug]

One thing that weighs in Tulsi's favor is that foreign policy and especially military decisions are the principal responsibility of the President. The grab back of left wing gimme's falls mostly to Congress. I applaud the Colonel's support and actions.