OPINION:
Electing a president can be confusing to those who skipped seventh-grade civics classes. Keeping straight the difference between delegates and electors, or primaries and elections, is difficult. The pundits and others paid to know better often confuse the differences between the parties and the public.
Some of the “analysts” in the spin room broke out the champagne to celebrate Hillary Clinton’s performance in the Democratic debate, as if who the next president will be was settled then and there. The wise men at the Republican debates rightly speculated on how each candidate appealed not only to the Republican base, but how that appeal would stand up where it counted, in the election campaign. This important consideration did not seem to occur to the “analysts” and commentators in Las Vegas, the place where odds are ordinarily calculated with cold disinterest.
The candidates pushed each other out of the way, elbows akimbo, to get to a microphone to wax eloquent in praise of the civility, good manners and reluctance of the candidates to go after each other as the Republicans have done in their two “debates,” loosely defined. The palookas recruited to stand in as opponents for Hillary spent the evening hedging their bets. Martin O’Malley, the former governor of Maryland, was particularly polite, decorating his remarks with candy and flowers lest Hillary, to whom he may have to look for his next place at a public trough, take offense at something he might inadvertently say.
Even Bernie Sanders, the hero of the Democratic hyper-left, toned down his socialist ire. Once in the safety of his rallies, he portrays himself as a crusader against crony capitalism, but face to face with Hillary, having her undivided attention, he wasted his opportunity to rebuke the exploitation of the political system in a quest for personal wealth. When he shouted to the partisan base that he is “sick and tired” of hearing about Hillary’s email scandal Hillary gave him a handshake when she should have made it a big wet kiss. Bernie’s accolade was music to front-runner ears, but not to the millions who are telling the pollsters they think Hillary is a liar and a schemer who is up to no good but her own.
Hillary was as smooth as a veteran debater is expected to be; she has been in this movie before. Nobody was impolite enough to bring up her shrill denunciations of Republicans as “enemies.” But the good news out of Las Vegas is that the battle lines are drawn. The Democrats proudly declare, as they did four decades ago, that theirs is the party of nanny government. They declared, with the brave exception of Jim Webb, their stand against job-killing environmentalism, squishy foreign and defense policies, higher taxes and scorn for the Second Amendment. It didn’t work for George McGovern in 1972 or for Al Gore in the year 2000 and the Republicans are betting it won’t work this time.
The outcome next year will depend on whether the Democrats have successfully bet that America, and the values of Americans have fundamentally and irrevocably changed to redeem Barack Obama’s promise to transform America, or whether they want back their country and their country’s pride. Rarely have voters had such a clear choice between competing visions for the future, with none of the obfuscation that led many to vote for one thing and get another.
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