Ready for a socialist, northeastern, elitist ticket to lead the Democrats into 2020? Vermont’s Bernie Sanders is being positioned as the front runner in Iowa, while Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts appears poised to win New Hampshire.
"The Left" wants you to think that our economy is so bad that there’s no hope, no future, without them. This is, In part, why the mainstream media keeps ignoring good jobs numbers and strong economic reports. They want you to be ashamed of your country, ashamed of your president, and very nervous about your economic future.
It’s such an obvious playbook, but, to be expected; in politics, everyone’s always selling something. President Trump sells a positive message, one of economic hope. The Left’s message is a negative one: fear.
If you believe that the United States is so desperate that you‘ll have no opportunity and no future without a complete overhaul of our economy, maybe you would be willing to fall inline with their socialist playbook, which throws away the principles of capitalism and the values of a market-based economy. Those same values catapulted a once-empty land into the greatest economy on earth in less than 300 years, and yet, the left wants you to trade it in for a system that rewards those in government bureaucracy above all others.
They seek the power to pick the winners and losers, as well as the ability to take your money — with the argument that you didn’t earn or create your money-- rhetoric made famous by the precursor to today’s socialists, President Obama.
You know who else had that line, and believed those with wealth didn’t deserve it? Hugo Chávez-- the man who singlehandedly drove the most prosperous Latin American country into a state of total desperation in less than 20 years.
I do not know that I can call Democratic Socialists “Democrats” today— I’m not sure what has happened to the Democratic Party I grew up knowing.
Today’s so-called Democratic Socialists are playing a very deliberate political move—one that has been played over and over again and tends to happen after a real economic crisis. Their move is, in part, in reaction to the 2007 financial crisis. A similar movement took hold after the crash of 1929, which kicked off the Great Depression of the 1930s. Consider how President Roosevelt was able to manipulate that economic vulnerability into a massive social welfare program, the likes of which this country had never seen.
While some of his programs were beneficial to society, many more only served to saddle generations of Americans with massive, unsustainable debts—as well as a series of price controls and union rules preventing private businesses and farmers from re-engaging in a market economy. Amity Shlaes walks you through it in her brilliant book called "The Forgotten Man."
But, today’s Democratic Socialists want to deploy a playbook that would horrify even President Roosevelt. They want to remake this nation with even more grand, massive, expensive social programs. It’s a dangerous model. Remember: Presidents Kennedy and Reagan, and most recently President Trump, undid the massive taxation Democrats put on the table.
I mention the Democratic President Kennedy as a reminder that cutting taxes and giving the American people the ability to keep what they’ve already earned need not be political. It’s an economic prescription for success and lawmakers should want to embrace it. We are not serfs, nor should we ever become them. We work for ourselves, not the government.
Socialists’ political playbook is so vulnerable right now because our economy is stronger than ever. Democrats didn’t think President Trump would succeed in creating economic growth. Sanders and Warren are trying to convince American voters that things aren't good when they are.
At least in the Great Depression, there were real economic problems in which politicians could campaign. America was struggling with 25 percent unemployment at a time when women were not even in the workforce, there were bread lines, the Dust Bowl crisis, and a whole series of conflicts contributing to the economic strife of the nation. People needed to believe in something new, and FDR dubbed a traitor to his class, gave them hope for change and a new economic order.
But today, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are blaming wealth creators for inequality everywhere. Somehow, it’s a billionaire entrepreneur’s fault that young adults are saddled with school debt. Forget that no one is forcing college kids to take out loans they can’t repay. Why should we think every18-year-old is entitled to a $200 thousand dollar education, rewarding them with a degree in basket weaving culture so they can get a job at Starbucks, then, default on the loans, and get a handout from middle-class Americans, all of whom are just trying to get by themselves? Meanwhile, the government itself is funding student loans like the banks that were offering subprime mortgages!
In today’s economy, we have no bread lines. We have the lowest unemployment rate in decades and the lowest ever for minorities. Wages are going up and the labor participation rate is improving—so left-leaning Democrats are frustrated.
Can you imagine rooting against the U.S. economy? That’s what so-called Democratic Socialists are doing because they want to sell you a whole new system that benefits them, the political elites, at your expense. It’s a system we don’t need.
Remember this: great civilizations don’t fall as a result of military strife-- they fall for economic reasons. There’s a reason why “living off the dole” became an expression. The Roman Empire suffocated itself — it had huge debts and eventually ran out of money thanks to its massive social programs and overly-ambitious territorial expansion.
