The Right Voted Wolf

In the wake of the 2016 election there was a great deal of writing from the conservative commentariat about the the blame that the political left bore for the rise and election of Donald Trump. According to this story line, the left had "cried wolf" too many times. Liberal activists and pundits had exaggerated the prevalence of racism, elitism, and sexism in American politics and society. They had gratuitously overestimated the power of corporate money and the hold of the military-industrial complex, and made a caricature of the supposed "anti-democratic" forces in the Republican Party. All of this stridency, smugness, and outright fabrication had produced a reaction, which took the form of Trumpism.

Whatever the merit of such a narrative in the days leading up to and just after January 20, 2017, it swiftly began to lose coherence in the aftermath of Donald Trump's inauguration and has long since deteriorated to farce. However strident the warnings from the left before November 2016 may have been, they did not nearly approximate the utter freak show that has unfolded under the aegis of the Trump White House. I defy anyone to find a pundit as far left as Bernie Sanders who issued a warning during the 2016 campaign that seems irrationally alarmist in light of our current political moment.

The President of the United States spends his time tweeting about Chrissy Teigen and week-old weather maps. He uses the Oval Office as a platform to advertise his country clubs. He cites the hurt feelings of the North Korean dictator as a reason for firing his third National Security Advisor. This is a partial list of absurdities from the last 72 hours or so, and it makes no mention of the outright racism, sexism, and gratuitous cruelty that has been the hallmark of both politics and policy under this president for more than two years. Calling the current situation an "embarrassment" or a "disgrace" is an understatement to make someone crying "wolf" at the sight of a chihuahua look honest. Anyone who looks at the White House and continues to tell pollsters that they approve of the president simply does not understand what the executive branch is or the role it plays in our government.

The latest story line from conservative pundits concerns the state of the Democratic primary race. The nation is endangered, so we are to believe, because Democrats are flirting with policies that are far too left wing. All one can say to such musings is, "Now who is crying wolf?" The idea that any of the current field of Democratic candidates would be more dangerous to the welfare of the nation than Donald Trump is ludicrous.

Moreover, the notion that overly "left wing" candidates will drive people to vote for Donald Trump is likewise absurd. Someone who would vote for Donald Trump after seeing him in action as POTUS all this time cannot possibly be trusted to make any kind of coherent or objective assessment of any candidate, left or right; bed, broomstick or candle.  A voter who can be made to believe that Donald Trump is fit for office can be made to believe anything about anyone. Once the professional spinsters hired by the president and his billionaire cronies have done their work, Trump voters will understand that, but for having less facial hair, Joe Biden is basically indistinguishable from Che Guevara.

If pundits and activists on the left cried wolf before 2016, they can only be chided for minimizing the dangers that lay ahead. We would be considerably better off if the Republican Party had let a wolf loose in the Oval Office rather than Donald Trump. As Democratic voters watch the debates tonight, they may thus forget any and all rhetoric about the relative "electability" of one candidate or another. The simple truth is that any voter for whom Donald Trump is remotely "electable" is irredeemably lost to any and all Democratic candidates. Democrats may therefore ignore those crying wolf from the right as they assess the relative merits of the candidates seeking the nomination of the Party of FDR.