In November of 2016, two opponents faced each other in a fierce contest for the presidency of the United States; one, a loud, brash and outspoken businessman with little time for the usual trappings of politics, and the other, a former First Lady, U.S. Senator, and Secretary of State, supremely confident and supremely comfortable with the D.C. and international political scenes. It was a race that few would have believed could take place, a pairing of opponents that made the Republican establishment cringe and the Democratic establishment chortle with unholy glee. Yes, the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, secure in her connections both here and abroad, could hardly believe her good fortune. Instead of having to face one of the highly qualified, experienced, and successful Republican governors or senators who had filled the overstuffed Republican primary, she was facing a political neophyte who said what he thought the moment he thought it, sometimes spewing crude comments as a result.
The months leading up to the election were filled with acrimony and allegations from both sides and with both candidates wounding themselves with Trump’s often injudicious verbiage and the revelation that Clinton, as Secretary of State, had used a private server rather than the government server for most of her email. But on October 7, The Washington Post released the leaked tape of Trump’s “locker room style” conversation with Today host, Billy Bush, 11 years previously in which Trump had made lewd comments about women, egged on by Bush. Famous women hurried to decry his comments and voice their inability to ever vote for someone like him. Less than an hour later, Wikileaks dumped over 2,000 emails hacked from Clinton’s Chief of Staff, John Podesta.
The hacked emails contained material that painted the Clinton camp in a seriously negative light, suggesting a pay-for-play deal with Morocco just before Clinton announced for the presidency, denigrating conservative Catholics, accusing President Obama of knowing about the Clinton private server despite his denial that he had known, calling Bernie Sanders a “doofus” and Chelsea Clinton a “brat,” and revealing that Donna Brazile of CNN had given Clinton a question that was going to be asked of her at an upcoming Town Hall style debate with Bernie Sanders. Podesta immediately accused the Russians of providing the emails to Wikileaks and accused the Trump camp of colluding with them to do so. The DNC hired an outside firm to examine the hacked server and that firm agreed that the Russians had been responsible for the hack. The FBI, NSA, and CIA and President Obama’s National Security Advisor soon agreed with that assessment, although none of those agencies physically examined the server themselves! What police department doesn’t collect and examine evidence in a crime? Apparently the FBI doesn’t, or at least it didn’t in this case. Yet, despite that lack of FBI examined evidence, the Russia/Trump Collusion theory was born and has flooded our airways night and day for the last nine months.
President Obama had been told as early as August that the Russians were planting fake news on the Internet in an effort to meddle in our election. He chose to do very little about it, only telling Putin face to face to “cut it out.” His administration considered various sanctions, but despite the Podesta emails and the ever-changing status of the investigation into the Clinton email server, virtually all polls gave Hillary Clinton a considerable lead among voters. Nothing more was done about Russia. And then election night arrived and Democrats and Republicans alike were stunned as Donald Trump took an early lead in electoral college votes and continued to increase their number throughout the night, eventually winning 306 to Clinton’s 236. Donald Trump had just become President of the United States!
The defeat should have sparked soul-searching on the part of the Democratic Party to figure out how on earth they could have failed. Certainly, many people were unhappy with some of President Obama’s policies, but as a person he consistently scored a high approval rating. People liked him. Why then hadn’t they voted in the Democrats? In fact, when the dust settled, the Democratic Party was astounded to discover the extent of the carnage. They had failed to retake the House. They had lost the Senate as well as the presidency. They had lost myriads of governorships around the country and countless state legislatures. In fact, since the inauguration of President Obama in 2009, Democratic Senate seats fell from 55 to 46 and House seats from 256 to 194. Of the 50 governorships, only 16 of them are now held by Democrats, and nearly a thousand state legislative seats have passed from Democrats to Republicans (FoxNews).
So the Democratic Party in its vast wisdom, decided to become The Resistance. From the beginning they attempted to portray President Trump as an “illegitimate” president, since Clinton had actually won more votes that he had (though not a majority). They totally ignored the fact that those votes all came from strong Democratic holds on the east and west coasts and in Illinois, and that the rest of the country was swept by the Republican candidate. They began agitating, even before the inauguration, for the President’s impeachment (for what crimes, no one really knows or cares). They organized marches and demonstrations, many of which have turned violent with property damage and physical injury to innocent bystanders. And, in this role of resistance, they have objected to every move the President has made, every comment he has uttered. They have slow-tracked every appointment and then castigated him for not having his staff in place. And through everything has run the never-ending theme that Russia, in collusion with the Trump team, hacked the 2016 presidential election.
But what the wisdom of the Democrats did not tell them was that this massive move of hatred, vile rhetoric, and violence would backfire on them. In all these months of investigation and illegal leaks, not a smidgen of evidence has appeared to back the claim of President Trump or his team colluding with the Russians to interfere in our election. In fact, despite the outright lies printed in the media, the former FBI director admitted that President Trump himself was never under investigation at all, and the “dossier” paid for by Democrats and created by a former MI5 agent in Great Britain has been discredited as another Russian attempt at “fake news.” But what has come out of this mess, unfortunately for the Democrats, are some alarming issues stemming from President Obama’s administration. And these are now coming under investigation by the Senate and by the Special Counsel.
Bill Clinton, the husband of Hillary Clinton who was then under investigation by the FBI, met privately with Loretta Lynch, then Attorney General and head of the Department of Justice of which the FBI is a part. Lynch later instructed then director James Comey not to refer to the Clinton investigation as an “investigation” but rather as a “matter,” a word of choice used by the Clinton campaign to down play the seriousness of the allegations. Although he claimed to be confused and dismayed at this directive, Comey did as Lynch had directed him. This, it seems may well have been obstruction of justice, not by President Trump, but by Obama’s Attorney General, Loretta Lynch. And if so, was this her own decision, or did the directive to down play the investigation come from higher up? And as for collusion with the Russians, there have been calls to investigate the large speaking fees that former president Bill Clinton received from the Russians around the time that then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton negotiated the deal that gave Russia 20 percent of our Uranium deposits. The Democrats in their push to promote a false narrative about President Trump, have caused attention to fall on their own dirty laundry.
And what of the continuous vile speech and violence that has been perpetrated against President Trump in statements by celebrities such as Madonna and Johnny Depp, and against Republicans in general by those who have been fueled in their unreasoning hatred by the rhetoric of Democratic Party leaders in Congress and by much of the news media? Perhaps the attempted assassination of Republican lawmakers who were practicing for a softball game might have caused Democrats to pause and wonder if perhaps they were letting things go too far. But what happened recently in California should bring that fact home with icy clarity. The monster of mindless violence, once unleashed, knows no master.
The California senate passed a “bill” calling for a single-payer health care system in the state. The cost of the program would be over $400 billion dollars, more than the entire state budget as it currently stands. Many groups, including the nurses’ union, applauded this bill, because after all, who wouldn’t want “free” health coverage. However, when the bill reached the California assembly, it was quickly turned away as not being a bill at all since there was no mechanism in the bill for funding the $400 billion. Even Governor Jerry Brown had indicated that he would veto the bill if it ever reached his desk. But then things erupted. Assembly members, especially Anthony Rendon, the Speaker of the Assembly, were shocked to find themselves the recipients of bullying tactics. On social media, the nurses’ union circulated the California bear with a knife in its back with Rendon’s name on the knife blade. One tweet wondered if anyone had checked Rendon’s schedule for ball practice, an obvious reference to the attempted massacre of Republican lawmakers last month. Rendon and others have been treated to other threats of violence, and yes, even death threats (FoxNews). I doubt they found that experience enjoyable.
Hate speech and violence are never the answer to any problem, certainly not to political disagreements. But many Democrats, stung by their horrendous defeats, not only last November, but also over the eight years of Obama’s administration, have found it easy to look the other way when their encouraged demonstrations against Trump have turned violent. Oh, they will decry violence if pinned down, but for the most part they simply ignore what is happening or mutter something about “free speech.” They want the people who voted for Trump to assume that they are really the minority in the country and that the vast majority of Americans hate him and all that he stands for. They want the rest of the world to see America as a country divided, a country that can not possibly stand together to defend itself against tyranny abroad since it can not stand against the tyranny of the left at home. They want this administration to fail, because only if it fails can they feel vindicated. They do not stand for America. They stand against her.
But they are wrong, as they have been wrong for the last eight years. Americans as a whole do not want what the Democrats have been pushing, because the Democratic Party has swung violently to the far left. America has always been and still is a center-right country. Most Americans don’t care that there is a separate bathroom for transgenders, that tiny slice of Americans. But they do care how much money is in their wallets. They do care if they have good jobs. They do care if they feel safe from terrorists as they go to movies, attend parties, dance at nightclubs, walk the streets of their cities. They do care that this country that they love is respected around the world, yes and feared by its enemies. And these are things that the Democrats can not seem to offer them. Even Dennis Kucinich, the former Democratic congressman and presidential candidate can see the problems that the Democrats are creating for themselves. In and interview on “Fox and Friends,” Kucinich said “People want political parties to be focused on America’s economic needs, jobs, wages, health care, education, retirement security and peace – and they want American politicians to be constructive, not destructive” (FoxNews).
And so, bit by bit, Democrats are seeing their strategy fail, and not just fail, but rebound against themselves. They have forgotten that old adage, “Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones.” The glass has begun to shatter around them.