RUSH: I want to get to this piece that I touted at the very beginning of the program. It’s a Politico piece written by Edward-Isaac Dovere. Edward-Isaac is hyphenated there. Edward-Isaac Dovere, “Democrats in the Wilderness — Inside a Decimated Party’s Not-So-Certain Revival Strategy.” Now, the upshot of this is that they’re in deep trouble, but the important thing is when you read this, they know it. The media coverage is of a shocked and surprised and bamboozled party that doesn’t know what hit it. Well, that turns out not to be true.
But the reason I want to share some of this with you is because it’s the only honest assessment of the current position, the status quo in the Democrat Party that I have seen. “Standing with some 30,000 people in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia the night before the election watching Hillary Clinton speak, exhausted aides were already worrying about what would come next. They expected her to win, of course, but they knew President Clinton was going to get thrashed in the 2018 midterms — the races were tilted in Republicans’ favor, and that’s when they thought the backlash would really hit.”
So they’ve known that they’re in disfavor. They know they’ve been governing against the will of the people, is my point. They know it! “Many assumed she’d be a one-term president. They figured she’d get a primary challenge. Some of them had already started gaming out names for who it would be” challenging her nomination. … “What happened the next night shocked even the most pessimistic Democrats. But in another sense, it was the reckoning the party had been expecting for years. They were counting on a Clinton win to paper over a deeper rot they’ve been worrying about — and to buy them some time to start coming up with answers. In other words, it wasn’t just Donald Trump.
“Or the Russians. Or James Comey. Or all the problems with how Clinton and her aides ran the campaign. Win or lose, Democrats were facing an existential crisis in the years ahead — the result of years of complacency, ignoring the withering of the grassroots and the state parties, sitting by as Republicans racked up local win after local win,” and that’s a reference to the 1200 seats the Democrats have lost at the state and local level. They watched it all happen; they knew it was hoping. They were ignoring it.
“As Trump takes over the GOP and starts remaking its new identity as a nationalist, populist party, creating a new political pole in American politics for the first time in generations, all eyes are on the Democrats.” Well, actually that’s not true. They wish it was true. All eyes are on Trump. All eyes are on Trump. “How will they confront a suddenly awakened, and galvanized, white majority?” Stop and let that sink in. That’s right from The Politico piece. The Democrat Party, the Democrat brain trust is asking themselves how they are going to deal with “a suddenly awakened, and galvanized, white majority?”
Now, wait. What all that means is that they have been aware that they cast aside the white working class. They did it in November of 2011. They decided they didn’t want the votes of the white working class, and they went all minority all the time. They went identity politics, they went ethnic, they went minority. They just cast aside the white majority on purpose, and now it’s come back to bite ’em. They believed the demographics that the white majority was soon to be a white minority, they wanted to get ahead of that, and then this next question in Politico:
“What’s to stop Trump from doing whatever he wants? Who’s going to pull a coherent new vision together? Worried liberals are watching with trepidation, fearful that Trump is just the beginning of worse to come, desperate for a comeback strategy that can work. What’s clear from interviews with several dozen top Democratic politicians and operatives at all levels, however, is that there is no comeback strategy — just a collection of half-formed ideas, all of them challenged by reality.
“And for whatever scheme they come up with, Democrats don’t even have a flag-carrier. Barack Obama? He doesn’t want the job. Hillary Clinton? Too damaged. Bernie Sanders? Too socialist. Joe Biden? Too tied to Obama. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer? Too Washington. Elizabeth Warren? Maybe. And all of them old, old, old.” This is the Politico acknowledging that’s the Democrat bench. That’s what they’ve got. That’s the only… That’s it. Schumer, Pelosi, Warren, Biden, Sanders, Hillary. I’m telling you, they are in deep doo-doo, folks, and it’s not being written other than this story today. That’s why I’m focusing on it.
“The Democrats’ desolation is staggering. But part of the problem is that it’s easy to point to signs that maybe things aren’t so bad,” meaning they are getting delusional. For example, Hillary “did beat Trump by 2.8 million votes, Obama’s approval rating is nearly 60 percent, polls show Democrats way ahead of the GOP on many issues and demographics,” but that doesn’t matter. “But they are stuck in the minority in Congress with no end in sight, have only 16 governors left and face 32 state legislatures fully under GOP control.
“Their top leaders in the House are all over 70. Their top leaders in the Senate are all over 60. Under Obama, Democrats have lost 1,034 seats at the state and federal level — there’s no bench, no bench for a bench, virtually no one able to speak for the party as a whole. … If Republicans dominate the 2018 midterms, they will control the Senate (and with it, the Supreme Court) for years, and they will draw district lines in states that will lock in majorities in the House and across state capitals, killing the next generation of Democrats in the crib, setting up the GOP for an even more dominant 2020 and beyond.
“Most doubt Democrats have the stamina or the stomach for the kind of cohesive resistance that Republicans perfected over the years.” Now, I want to spend just a moment on that. It’s just a lead sentence to the next paragraph in the story, but this is profound. Let me read it to you again: “Most doubt Democrats have the stamina or the stomach for the kind of cohesive resistance that Republicans perfected over the years.” Do you know what the Democrats’ biggest problem is? They haven’t the slightest idea how to overcome adversity.
They haven’t the slightest idea how to deal with it. They never have any. They have a slavish, sycophantish media. The media, which is the primary equalizing force in this country, never, ever makes it difficult for them. The media never challenges what they say, what they do. They are constantly sucked up to. They are constantly heralded and treated as rock stars. No matter how dumb they might be, no matter how stupid, no matter how wacko their policies and actions and words might be, they are never called on it.
They are allowed to get away with every bit of hypocrisy they routinely engage in, and they are routinely placed up on an untouchable pedestal. They simply… They cannot wear the Republican Party shoes. There isn’t a Democrat that would last a day doing this show, getting kind of a criticism this show gets. They don’t know how to deal with it. They have never had to. They get idolatry, they get devotion, they get puff pieces. They are built up and heralded as great in every way you can imagine. They never, ever have to overcome adversity.
And this is why in circumstances like this so many of them resign. Look at the number of Democrats that announced their resignation after this election. They don’t even want to deal with being in the minority. They don’t want to deal with the effort it’s going to take to become the majority again. They suffer from this notion that they are entitled, that they shouldn’t have to work for it. While the Republicans have to work for every vote they get, they have to counteract and deal with every lying, stinking lie told about them.
They have to deal with the daily efforts of the media to destroy them. They have built up — in many cases, not all, but in some cases — tough skin. They have developed at least a sensitivity to it. They start the game knowing the deck is stacked against them, and still they play it. The Democrats start the game knowing they are the beneficiary of every bit of cheating and unfairness. The referees are on their side, and that’s the only way they’re willing to play the game. So this sentence here, “Most doubt Democrats have the stamina or the stomach for the kind of cohesive resistance…”
That’s not it. They don’t have the ability. They don’t have the wherewithal. They don’t have the toughness. If they’re not in a position to be able to destroy their opponents using the media and using their mad protesters — if they don’t have the ability to literally destroy their opposition and destroy their careers — they don’t know what to do. Because they cannot compete any arena of ideas. And they can’t compete in the arena of ideas because their ideas are rejected whenever they’re on the table, as they were in 2016.
Last November, Barack Obama put his agenda on the ballot, and he begged people to vote for him, to vote for Hillary — which would be voting for him, voting for his agenda, to continue his great agenda — and what happened? A massive landslide defeat in the Electoral College for the Obama agenda and the current circumstance where they only have 16 governorships. They’ve lost over a thousand, almost 1,100 seats. Next in The Politico piece is this: “Some thinking has started to take shape. Obama is quickly reformatting his post-presidency to have a more political bent than he had planned.”
No, no. He had always planned it. “Vice President Joe Biden is beginning to structure his own thoughts on mentoring and guiding rising Democrats.” There you go. Plugs is going to be their primary teacher. “No one seems to be waiting to hear from Clinton.” Yeah. You know, the Clintons shut down the Clinton Global Initiative this week, and, you know what? The media didn’t write about it. They didn’t do a story on it. Yawn City. If the Republicans had closed down something so prominent and apparently so wonderful and so great as the Clinton Foundation — if they had something like that and shut it down, it’d be the only news you’d be reading about.
“At the law office of former Attorney General Eric Holder, which is serving as the base for the redistricting reform project he is heading for Obama, they’re getting swarmed with interest and checks. At the Democratic Governors Association, all of a sudden looking like the headquarters of the resistance, they’re sorting through a spike in interested candidates. And everyone from Obama on down is talking about going local, focusing on the kinds of small races and party-building activities Republicans have been dominating for cycle after cycle.
“But all that took decades, and Democrats have no time.” And, by the way, the Democrats don’t have talk radio. You know what that means? The Democrats have no way of personally engaging in outreach. The Democrats don’t know how to do talk radio ’cause they don’t know how to talk to people honestly. “What are [the Democrats] going to do next? There hasn’t been an American political party in worse shape in living memory. And there may never have been a party less ready to confront it,” and that’s not even the first half of this piece.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Let me jump back to the end of this Politico piece on the Democrat Party and where they are right now. I want you to listen to this paragraph. The previous paragraph I’m not gonna read to you. This is the paragraph dealing with who are their potential new stars. Who are the people that could run for national office Democrat Party and help regain their power? “And so conversations tip to the likes of Sheryl Sandberg, Mark Zuckerberg, Mark Cuban [of the Dallas Mavericks], Tom Steyer,” who is this literally insane… Well, he appears insane on climate change.
He actually makes a lot of money by perpetrating a hoax. “Tom Hanks. There’s always the George Clooney fantasy. Meryl Streep wasn’t even done with her Trump-bashing speech at the Golden Globes before that idea started going around,” within Democrat Party circles, “at least informally,” that maybe she is the answer. Politico. Future saviors, Democrat Party. Again: Sheryl Sandberg, Mark Zuckerberg, Mark Cuban, Tom Steyer, Tom Hanks, George Clooney, Meryl Streep. “In the meantime, Democrats face a dangerous period in which it’s not clear who is calling the shots.
“Obama and Biden have both rethought their retirement plans to help shape the next generation of Democrats…” They haven’t rethought anything! This wasn’t predicted by me two years ago. Obama’s not going away. Who are they trying to fool here with this? Obama and Biden just decided: You know what? We need to change our plans! We need to focus our retirement on rebuilding the party. (scoffs) “Obama and Biden have both rethought their retirement plans to help shape the next generation of Democrats — Obama focused more on rebuilding party infrastructure, cultivating the grass roots and potentially meeting with presidential candidates as 2020 gets closer.”
He’s a community organizer, for crying out loud! Have you ever seen Obama’s coattails? They don’t exist. Obama’s like Clinton; he did not put people over the finish line. This is one of the greatest realities that was never written about. The Obama endorsement did not do anything for you. “Biden more engaged with nurturing talented up-and-comers. But both are determined to sit out day-to-day politics…” Well, if you’re gonna sit out day-to-day politics while reviving the party, you are not going to be reviving the party.
‘Cause it requires a day-to-day effort. And then Obama actually told this Politico reporter the following: (impression) “‘What I was able to do during my campaigns, I wasn’t able to do during midterms. … I didn’t crack the code on that.'” what he’s saying is, “When I was on the ballot, I won big. When I wasn’t. I lost. And I don’t know why. Couldn’t figure it out!” He’s admitting that he was a disaster for the Democrat Party in the midterm elections.
Anyway, they say here, “There is no time for any of it: no time to debate what the party should focus on, no time to recruit candidates, no time to identify new leaders, no time to rebuild Democrats’ core of operations, no time to unpack everything that went wrong in the 2016 campaign, no time to build a legislative strategy, no time to wrap their heads around how much change is coming to America and American politics. After decades of neglect, there’s nothing else, either.
“‘The Democratic Party now is left literally at zero — zero dollars in the bank, zero infrastructure as the Clinton campaign closes up shop,’ wrote Democratic National Committee consultant Donnie Fowler … ‘and, most importantly, zero majority control in Washington and in 33 of the states.'” It is bad for ’em. Now, it’s never as desolate in products as people think. For example, going into this election, the same stuff was said about the Republicans, that if Trump lost, “Oh, we’re in the wilderness forever,” right?
Republicans were supposed to be dead without Hispanic votes. Republicans were supposed to be dead without signing up on immigration reform. But look what one election did. Just one election! Look at what one election exposed. Anyway, Democrats are in deep doo-doo.