Democratic party

Now for some bracing honesty from the Democratic National Committee. In a new, unanimously adopted resolution, Democrats have declared that ‘the religiously unaffiliated demographic represents the largest religious group within the Democratic party, growing from 19 percent in 2007 to one in three today’ (emphasis added). Advocates for truth in political advertising should rejoice. The so-called ‘secular’ left has finally abandoned the canard that its views and policies are purely ‘neutral,’ or the products of inarguable empiricism. According to the resolution, the religiously unaffiliated and the nonreligious (labels used interchangeably) are, instead, members of a new faith community.

The Republicans are the party of racists and religious bigots, and the Democrats are the party of anti-racists and religious tolerance. That’s why 21 Democrats from the almost entirely Democratic Congressional Black Caucus refused to comment when it emerged in 2018 that in 2005 they had met secretly with Louis Farrakhan. He, of course, was at it again on Thursday night, eliciting a vast and telling silence from CBC members with racist incitement against ‘Satanic Jews’.

Presidential politics is all about excitement. So maybe it should worry the Democrats that their most exciting 2020 presidential prospects, according to pretty much all early polls, are two white guys pushing 80. Four years ago, Hillary Clinton genuinely excited a Democratic base that wanted to elect the first woman president. Eight years before that, Barack Obama surpassed even Hillary as a source of enthusiasm among Democratic voters. And now? Kamala Harris has been in the race for nearly two months without polling close to Bernie Sanders, who in turn trails only the yet-to-declare Joe Biden. Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Beto O’Rourke have been well behind Harris, and the rest of the field is negligible.

Most State of the Union responses by the opposition party are painfully awkward. Stacey Abrams managed not to be, so that alone is an achievement. It’s hard not to grimace when reflecting on past responses featuring down-home heartland governors inexplicably sitting in diners, or perhaps Marco Rubio’s infamous water-bottle sipping episode, which earned him a life-long reputation for unquenchable thirst. Abrams seemed natural and amiable, without resorting to any especially tedious gimmicks (other than the silly backdrop of random people standing behind her. Why is this necessary?). She also made some compelling substantive points.

Six years ago, Julián Castro was a rising star in the national Democratic party. But by the end of 2018, his star had fallen. Last week Castro formally began his climb back toward national prominence, via his 2020 presidential campaign. In 2012, Castro: 1. Gave the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte 2. Was in his second-term as San Antonio’s mayor having won re-election in 2011 with 81 percent of the vote, more than 74 percentage points ahead of his closest rival 3. Secured the passage by voters of a sales tax increase to fund high quality Pre-K for a group of lower-income children 4. Received an offer to become President Obama’s Secretary of Transportation (which he declined).

Congress is back in session and it's enough to make one wish the government shutdown – or more accurately, the government slowdown – extended to the legislative branch too. I, for one, will only believe the government shutdown is real when Uncle Sugar stops collecting payroll taxes. Until then, it’s just a particularly degrading form of street theatre.But Democrats, now in control of the House of Representatives, are feeling their oats. In the first, holiday-shortened week of the new session, they wasted no time pursuing their long-stated priorities. Here are some of the highlights: they introduced an impeachment bill on day one sponsored by Brad Sherman (D-CA) and Al Green (D-TX).

By most conventional pundit metrics, Bernie Sanders should be the presumptive 2020 Democratic presidential nominee. To state the obvious, he was last cycle’s runner-up, having won 46 percent of elected delegates, 23 states, and smashed small-dollar fundraising records. His policy platform has taken hold across the party, with most every nationally ambitious figure now calling for universal Medicare, free public college tuition, and a host of other measures that were closely associated with his 2016 run. He has consistently polled as the most popular politician in America, he just won re-election in his home-state by a massive margin, and his social media engagement is off-the-charts. So what’s the problem? Simply put, large sections of the party still view him as a threat.

Socialist know-nothing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the future of the Democrat Party. Nancy Pelosi is its past, but she’s probably its present too despite threats to deny her another Speakership. The Ocasio-Cortez contingent in the party has determined that Nancy Pelosi simply isn’t radical enough. That will be news to many on the American Right for whom she has served as a longtime bête noir and whose strident advocacy of San Francisco values provided fodder for countless Republican campaign ads and fundraising letters. For Republicans she’s a radical who favors amnesty, citizenship, and voting rights for illegal aliens, government funded abortion on demand, and impeaching the president. But in the current Democrat Party she’s a mushy moderate.

Democrats had a good night last Tuesday, flipping dozens of seats to recapture the House of Representatives for the first time in eight years. On the surface, the party looks confident and newly ascendant. It seems to have shaken off the 2016 jitters, which gave liberals around the country a mild form of PTSD. Yet, underneath the veneer, Democrats are still their usual listless selves. They may seem unified and ready to do battle against President Donald Trump, but the party remains divided about which course to take, how to bring the white working class back into their corner, and which candidate would be their best hope in 2020 to make Trump the first one-term president since 1992. The Democrats are desperately searching for their own white whale.

‘Remember, remember the 5th of November/ The gunpowder treason and plot . . .’ Well, it’s not Guy Fawkes who is planning to blow up things this November. It’s our version of the Picts: blue-dyed political marauders swarming over the ramparts in Hollywood, universities, Democratic campaign offices, and woke, acronymic former news channels. If you calibrate the performances just right, it can look like a confident pep rally. ‘We’re really going to show those knuckle-dragging, toxic male Caucasian deplorables this time! Two, four, six, eight, whom do you repudiate? Trump! Trump! Trump!’ The networks and newspapers and internet sites are abuzz with polls and prognostications.

It is a curious fact that while English conservatives identify with the colour blue and English lefties with the colour red, the opposite is the case in America. I have struggled to recollect why the Democrats chose blue in 2000 but rather suspect it had something to do what Dr Christine Blasey Ford would call the ‘prefrontal cortex’. Many human decisions are taken on emotional grounds and emotion, as we are taught, is often governed by childhood memory.

The law of political gravity favours the Democrats in the midterm elections less than two weeks away. They will gain seats in the House of Representatives no matter what they do, barring an upset of a kind that has happened only twice in the last 80 years. Curiously, both exceptions to the rule that the president’s party loses ground in the midterms were either side of the 2000 election. The Democrats under Bill Clinton picked up five House seats in 1998; the Republicans under George W. Bush gained eight in 2002. There were unusual circumstances at play in both instances: Republicans in 1998 were getting ready to impeach Clinton, while in 2002 the Bush administration was preparing for the Iraq War while the memory of 9/11 was still fresh in voters’ minds.

Is there a possibility Hillary Clinton will launch her third presidential campaign in 2020? If you ask former chief political strategist Steve Bannon, there is no doubt in his mind the former First Lady, US Senator, Secretary of State, and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee is itching to run. ‘She’s looking for a rematch’ against Donald Trump, Bannon told Curt Mills in a Spectator USA exclusive. Whether or not Clinton enters the race, Democrats across America will have plenty of choices when candidates officially declare their bids next year.

What does it say about President Trump if Republicans lose control of the House of Representatives after the November 6 midterms? If your answer is that Trump is failure or Trump is a disaster for his party, then you have to say the same thing about President Clinton and President Obama, both of whom also lost the House in their first midterms. Here’s my prediction: the GOP will indeed lose control, but the swing to the Democrats will be smaller than the swing to Republicans was in 1994 (54 seats) or 2010 (63 seats). Trump will have outperformed Clinton and Obama, and on strictly empirical grounds — setting aside anti-Trump bias, including among NeverTrump media conservatives — any honest analyst will have to admit as much.

Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched. That’s an old proverb but one that the 78-year-old Nancy Pelosi never seems to have heard. The House Democratic leader gave an interview yesterday to the Boston Globe in which she was by turns doubtless, defensive, and defiant. “Nancy Pelosi wants you to know she’s not going anywhere,” the Globe’s story began, and that encapsulates the congresswoman’s attitude. She is confident the Democrats will retake the House of Representatives in November’s midterm elections, and she is confident she will remain leader and thus become the speaker of the House when that happens.