Is America ready to let it Bern?

Is America ready to let it Bern?

By: Rachel Marsden

PARIS -- The best thing about Trump’s impeachment trial is that the Democrats’ complaining about Trump has drowned out their usual whining about problems that exist only in their own minds and in those of their brainwashed supporters. But as the Senate impeachment trial wraps up with a fizzle — because the incompetent Democrats in charge of the impeachment hearings in Congress didn’t bother securing critical witness testimony and evidence for the Senate trial — the focus of Democratic hopefuls will now shift to promoting what their party has to offer voters in November. Watch them blow that, too.

The mere fact of not being Donald Trump should be enough to get any one of the Democratic presidential hopefuls elected. This isn’t rocket science.

Here’s what they should be telling the American people to get elected: I won’t send out 140 tweets a day calling opponents names. I won’t treat the U.S. military like mercenaries by renting them out to rich Arab leaders known for sponsoring terrorism. I won’t hit up foreign officials for dirt on personal political opponents in exchange for American foreign aid. I won’t send buddies to run shadow diplomacy errands that White House allies end up calling “drug deals”. I won’t use Pentagon funds to build a ridiculous metal fence on the border that the wind can knock down when drug cartels are using narco-submarines and burner aircraft. And I won’t rip up successful international agreements achieved by previous U.S. presidents in the interest of stability and peace for the sole purpose of replacing them with similar versions in one’s own name.

Other than that, Democrats should assure Americans that they’ll be pragmatic stewards of the public purse.

There. That’s it. There’s your entire platform, Dems. But that’s not what’s going to happen, of course.

Not even the candidates who have historically shown signs of pragmatic realism in their political careers — like Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden — have been able to restrain themselves from shoveling leftist rhetoric onto the political landscape in an attempt to secure their party’s nomination.

It’s like they’re obligated to tick all the acceptable leftist boxes. Man being able to control the temperature of the entire planet, securing more tax money from voters? Check. Digging back into every facet of American history to identify historically victimized groups to receive boatloads of taxpayer cash? Check. You funding your neighbor’s kid’s degree in underwater basket weaving? Check…

The Democrats are setting voters up with a choice between Trump’s corrupt manner and an as-yet-unnamed Democratic opponent’s leftist tax and spend vision for America. Not a single one of the Democratic frontrunners has shown the courage to denounce the most leftist aspects of Democratic Party groupthink or provide a clear alternative to it. It’s a strategic mistake that reduces their candidacies to a race to the bottom of America’s empty coffers.

Because the Democratic candidates have left little ideological daylight between them, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to any of them that Bernie Sanders is emerging as the winner among the Democrats, pulling away from the pack and showing some momentum in recent polling. Of all the Democrats falling over each other to bribe voters with their own money, Sanders has been at it for as long as he’s been in politics. Some of these other candidates are merely ideological carpetbaggers. They aren’t fooling anyone. The free-money crowd can smell these opportunists.

They also know that Bernie is the real deal. The odds are incredibly low that he’s been playacting at wanting to give money away for decades as a strategy to get elected — only to turn around and adopt the mindset of a fiscally prudent businessman once he gets into office.

If there’s one advantage that Trump’s candidacy also still retains heading into November, it is authenticity. That, and his interest in dismantling the Washington establishment. Clearly Trump has upheld that promise — except not perhaps in the way that Americans wanted. Draining the swamp by filling it up with one’s own swamp creatures probably wasn’t what voters had in mind when they elected him — and the extent to which Trump has completely disregarded even the most basic of functional norms may prove to be more than they’re willing to tolerate.

The big question is whether voters who elected Trump because of his authenticity and establishment-busting approach could bring themselves to be agnostic enough on Sanders’ ideological leanings to take a chance on his own anti-establishment approach.

If it shapes up to be a Trump vs. Sanders race, America’s choice will be reduced to the lesser of two evils: Trumps dodgy self-serving against Sanders’ leftist ideology. That American voters in a country of nearly 330 million people aren’t being offered a better choice means that no one really wins.