In 1972, the Democratic Party, following its excruciating close loss in 1968, nominated Sen. George McGovern for president, thereby giving Richard Nixon, a president they detested, a 49-state sweep. Today’s Democrats seem set on the same disastrous path for 2020, this time being helped along by a California hedge fund billionaire named Tom Steyer.
Thanks to Steyer and likeminded left wing progressives, you can see a scenario for 2020 whereby President Trump wins re-election in a landslide, because Democrats go too far to the left and alienate the very voters who cost them the presidency in 2016, hard working, moderate, and middle class Americans.
Consider Steyer’s recent crusade to impeach President Trump on which he has spent millions on television ads. We have had two impeachments in American history: 1868 when the House of Representatives impeached President Andrew Johnson over a dispute regarding his cabinet, and 1998 when the House impeached President Bill Clinton following the Kenneth Starr independent counsel report.
History has condemned the Johnson impeachment, it was never justified; and has been critical of the Clinton impeachment; neither reached the level of high crimes and misdemeanors, which is the constitutional standard for impeachment.
Nor have high crimes and misdemeanors been reached in the case of President Trump. The Robert Mueller special counsel report is not yet done; the investigation in the Southern District of New York regarding Michael Cohen is not yet complete. But no such niceties have stopped Steyer and the extreme progressives in demanding Trump’s impeachment now.
To its credit, the national Democratic Party has resisted jumping on the impeachment bandwagon with no proven high crimes and misdemeanors. If the Democrats take control of the House of Representatives, as now seems very likely, there will be plenty of time for them to absorb whatever Mueller says or the New York investigation finds, which is how the impeachment process should work.
Steyer is not the only leading Democrat who has stumbled lately. Two of the party’s most progressive potential 2020 candidates were on view in the recent Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court hearings. Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) had his Spartacus moment when he announced dramatically in the Kavanaugh hearing he was releasing highly classified documents in defiance of Senate rules, only to learn the documents had been cleared for release the night before. Spartacus, the mythical slave played by Kirk Douglas who revolted against Rome, did a better job in the 1960 movie.
Then there is Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), who received four Pinocchios from the Washington Post for insisting that nominee Kavanaugh said he opposed birth control when he clearly did not, and who suggested he was communicating with Donald Trump’s law firm without providing any evidence. Neither Booker or Harris showed they were ready for prime time.
But the best evidence of the Democrats’ potential dalliance with suicide may be the Florida governor’s race. Florida is the single most important state in the presidential contest; it is the only mega-state that is a toss-up (you can ask Al Gore about that). Hillary Clinton lost Florida’s 29 electoral votes by 113,000 out of more than 9.5 million votes cast. Had Clinton won Florida’s 29 electoral votes, she would have needed just one additional small state to have won.
Most amazingly, Florida has voted with the winner in every presidential contest since it went for Herbert Hoover in 1928, with the exception of two elections, Richard Nixon in 1960 and George H. W. Bush in 1992. Democrats can forget winning in 2020 if they cannot carry Florida.
So with Florida’s governorship open this year one would assume that the Democrats would run their strongest candidate and try to win this vital state as a platform for 2020. And the Democrats had a very strong candidate in former Congresswoman Gwen Graham, a moderate in the mold of successful Democrats in the past and the daughter of popular former Senator and Governor Bob Graham (D-FL).
But no, the Democrats instead chose Tallahassee mayor Andrew Gillum, a far left progressive whose political allies are under investigation by the FBI and who has taken every left wing position imaginable. And who spent $800,000 on Gillum’s behalf in an independent expenditure, California’s Tom Steyer, who has now gone national trying to get the farthest leftwing Democrats nominated, even in a state like Florida that likes its politicians mostly in the middle.
Democrats have had a bad run in Florida and have lost most of the statewide offices over the past two decades. This year they had a very good piece of luck when the Republicans nominated for governor a far right wing congressman named Ron DeSantis who ran on nothing but support for Trump. Gwen Graham would have easily defeated him and given Democrats an important step up a crucial state for 2020. Now this important race is no better than a toss-up.
If you look at 1972, you would not have expected the Democrats to nominate their most unelectable candidate in generations, especially after their big wins in 1970 and the fact Richard Nixon was highly disliked, particularly by Democrats. Yet they did and lost 49 states.
Democrats should do very well this year, both in California and the nation, and there is a very distinct danger that they will let their emotions run wild in choosing candidate for 2020, ending up with little more than a calmed down version of Rep, Maxine Waters (D-CA).
Don’t think the Democrats are not capable of blowing perfectly winnable elections. I need only give you Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, and of course Hillary Clinton. If the national Democrats go down the suicide path again, they will be helped every step of the way by their new progressive moneybags, hedge fund manager Tom Steyer.