The Republican Party is currently embarrassed by the fact that the odious Donald Trump is leading its otherwise distinguished field of presidential candidates in the current polls, but at least it can take some comfort in the travails of the Democratic Party. You’d have to read past the headlines to notice, as it will never attract the media attention that Trump does, but the Democrats’ supposedly inevitable nominee is now further mired in yet another significant scandal and her surging self-described socialist challenger is being run off his stage by a “Black Lives Matter” movement that is once again rioting in the streets and booing down any suggestion that all lives matter.
The Democrats’ previously plausible plan was that the Republicans would fight a debilitating internecine battle, with some unelectable crazy-pants or another winding up on top, while their own faithful would all rally behind the relatively centrist former First Lady and Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, but thus far it isn’t working. The unelectable crazy-pants candidate is currently leading the Republican race, although the lead is likely to change once Republican voters in the early primary and caucus states start state the question of who should lead the country seriously, but the Democrats’ presumed nominee is suddenly being seriously challenged by the energized support of Vermont’s Sen. Bernie Sanders, and even his sizable crowds are being overtaken by overtaken by as few as three “Black Lives Matter” activists whose single issue is the relative handful of black lives lost to the nation’s police forces. Right now the same movement is wreaking havoc on the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, Missouri, where one year ago an unarmed black man was shot down by a police officer in what has indisputably turned out to be a clear-cut case of self-defense by the police officer, and it’s also wreaking havoc on Sanders’ far-left campaign for not being far-left enough.
The latest on Clinton is the federal investigation into the “top secret” information that she sent over on her private e-mail account rather than using the more secure government accounts she was required by law to use, and which she apparently used to prevent the American public’s scrutiny even at the risk of foreign foreknowledge, and it only adds to a reputation for dishonest and unethical behavior dating back to the days of the her rapist-defending law practice and her suspiciously profitable trading transactions and aspersions on her husband’s sexual harassment victims and her undistinguished years in the Senate and her disastrous tenure as Secretary of State. Along with her service on the boards of such vilified corporations as Wal-Mart, and her once-beloved husband’s support of balanced budgets and defense of traditional marriage and stiff sentences for for convicted criminals, it’s no surprise she’s being challenged from the left of her party.
Even the left of the Democrat party is now being challenged by the even further-left of the party, though, and the Sanders insurgency has lately been harassed by those “Black Lives Matter” activists. Sanders essentially surrendered a campaign stop to three — count ’em, three — of of the protestors, and even though he drew thousands more to an impressive rally a few nights later the damage done to the coalition of well-meaning white liberals and more personally pissed-off black liberals, Sanders’ socialistic appeal should be apparent even those reporters more fixated on Donald Trump, and it will be fun to see how the media reconcile this African-American apparent complaint with the rest of America’s concerns.
— Bud Norman
The Central Standard Times 