Reflections on the Debate

It seems clear to me, after sleeping on it, that the Democratic Party is going to nominate Hillary Clinton. Everyone on the stage who spoke about her emails did so to come to her defense. They clearly adopted her line on the email server, which is that it's old news and we should move on. Even while discussing Snowden, they let her get away with a line about how he broke the laws regarding classified information that was so brazen that anyone but a Clinton would have trouble getting it out of their mouth. None of her opponents on the left are serious about stopping her.

Sanders' candidacy has nevertheless driven the primary far to the left. The only candidate on stage who sounded at all like an American was Jim Webb. He defended traditional values and gun rights, stood up for the oppressed regardless of color, and advocated for a careful foreign policy that was nevertheless centered on American strength. He's a candidate that blue collar Democrats and Republicans alike could vote to elect. Jim Geraghty said this morning, "Webb has a good chance of winning the Democratic nomination in 1948," meaning that he sounded a lot like Harry S Truman. He is, sadly, what the party has left behind. Harry Truman was a good President. We could do with another like him.

What we're going to get instead is an untrustworthy, unindicted felon as the Democratic candidate. I hope the Republicans manage to field someone who can beat her, or that the G-men at the FBI finally decide in their hearts that they have to do their duty no matter what it costs them in terms of punishment from on high.

UPDATE: Noah Rothman has a happier take.
The first and only time in which the Democratic field will gather to debate in prime time on a weekday before the first votes are cast in Iowa and New Hampshire featured a cavalcade of liberal politicians all (with the notable exception of Jim Webb) pandering to the Democratic Party’s fringe elements. The candidates spent a fair bit of energy attempting to rehabilitate European-style socialism, competed over who would embrace the most restrictive gun rights policy, promised a bevy of “free” services that none of them will ever be able to deliver, rejected the perfectly noncontroversial notion that “all lives matter,” and assured their wide-eyed viewers that the greatest national security threat facing the nation was the weather and that the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs should be essentially mothballed. This is the stuff of GOP ad-makers’ dreams.

The biggest gift that Democrats bestowed upon Republicans on Tuesday night, however, was their unwillingness to challenge a narrative repeatedly indefatigably advanced by Clinton, which holds her scandalous conduct as Barack Obama’s secretary of state is a partisan issue utterly without substance.

UPDATE: Matthew Continetti:
Jim Webb is a great American and has many provocative thoughts on foreign policy and domestic policy. But there’s no way he can win the nomination of a Democratic Party that is debating socialism over capitalism, whether black lives matter or all lives matter, whether climate change is the most pressing strategic threat facing the country, and whether to open Obamacare and in-state tuition to illegal immigrants.

UPDATE: Max Boot has a solid breakdown of the foreign policy aspects of the debate.

5 comments:

raven said...

As far as I can tell, the Democrats would be perfectly happy re-imposing a slave state, just inverting who the slaves and masters are.

raven said...

Edit above to read "certain factions of the Democrats" I would not include Webb among them.

raven said...

So over at Aces place I read Webb's Navy Cross citation- never knew much about him , but what is he doing in a party where every person likely to vote for him, is hated by that party? The Dems have made no secret of their disdain for the white middle class working stiff. I have gone to meetings and heard the smug contempt and condescension crawl out of their mouths like some odious worm.
I want a new party. The old ones are corrupted beyond redemption.

Larry said...

I agree, Raven. I was about to say that Andrew Jackson wouldn't recognize the Democratic Party anymore, but Harry Truman wouldn't, either. And I fail to understand why the Republicans squandered their 2014 election victories, why the Congressional Republicans as a whole have seemed so craven.

Ymar Sakar said...

They're cuckservatives, that's why they are craven. I was talking about the Republican party needing a purge in 2008. This is sort of why.

To defeat Islamic Jihad, domsetic supply lines must be maintained and protected against Leftist sabotage. Which means the Leftist alliance and all 1000 members in it, including the founding membership of the Democrat party, has to be eradicated or trimmed down to size. And to do that, the Republican party must be reformed or replaced. Republicans are too cozy with Democrats in DC. There's not enough hate between them to form a useful counter.

Raven, the Democrats loved slavery 2.0 before 1864.

They still think it is a superior system.