When Trump won in 2016, I wondered if his victory was simply a rejection of a flawed and incompetent candidate or a rejection of the policies and philosophy of the losing party. Otherwise intelligent Democrats still grasp to conspiracy theories of Russian collusion and Fox News mind control, and thus defer the introspection and analysis they desperately need avert a repeat in 2020. I recommend The Great Revolt by Selena Zito and Brad Todd, which examines the counties in the Midwest that flipped from strong Obama supporters to strong Trump supporters.

Bernie’s rise leads me to the second conclusion. He is just the Donald Trump of the left. It is telling that the top two candidates are either an ex Republican or a current self-admitted socialist. Whatever it is that the center Democrats are selling the voters aren’t buying. The same was true of the Republicans when they nominated Trump.

In interviews with Chris Matthews in the 2016 campaign Hillary and Debbie Wasserman Schultz declined the opportunity to distinguish a Democrat from a socialist, choosing to avoid offending the growing radical wing rather than marginalizing them. The diminishing centrist Democrats have refused to address the growing anti-Semitism and radical socialist wing of their party, dismissing them as too small a part of their party to matter. This was ignored on college campuses for decades and the graduates are now in the halls of Congress. Bernie’s rise now makes this impossible to ignore.

For three years the Democrats have stood for nothing but Trump hatred. Trump has made this easy, but when you stand for nothing you will fall for anything.

If Bernie wins the nomination, the Democrats would be better served by a decisive defeat in the general election so they can extricate this radical wing from their party. Bernie can put the House into play; his radical ethos extends throughout his adopted party in Congress.

Bernie is the moral supremacist progressive of the first Progressive Era of 1900-1920 that reacted to the Gilded Age and inequality of that period. Bloomberg is the elite technocrat Progressive of the second Progressive Era of 1932-1980; beginning with the New Deal and ending with the Great Society. The irony of a “progressive” reclaiming old and exhausted positions from fifty to a hundred years ago is lost on most who accept progressivism.

As much as the left may dislike Trump, Bernie would be an unmitigated disaster. I have long learned that no matter how bad a condition is there is always enough incompetence, ignorance and hubris around to make it worse. I hope Bernie goes down like Corbyn in Great Britain; his defeat would be cleansing to the Democratic Party. A close victory for Trump would not be effective.

I have heard more than a few establishment Democrats wish for a recession so Trump would lose. Let that sink in, especially if Bernie is the nominee.

I heard Maxine Waters, chairman of the House Banking Committee, question Fed Chairman Jerome Powell. Her ignorance and overt hostility were just stunning. It is not enough for just Bernie to lose; such morons on important committees should be totally unacceptable. Ilhan Omar in spite of her blatant anti-Semitism remains on the Foreign Affairs Committee. In spite of the preferred illusion that her vile ilk are an insignificant part of the Democratic Party she got enough support to avert a censure that should have been a slam dunk. With Crazy Bernie in the White House these miscreants will become more powerful.

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