Trending
If you ever thought the President Donald Trump-led Republican Party is bad, well the Democrats are worse. The Democrats lack politically astute leaders, as well as vision and discipline. They seem incapable of being on offense and are always on defense where it is difficult to score points and win.
Only 37 percent of Americans approve of the GOP while a mere 30% approve of Democrats. In the mix would be Trump's job approval ratings with Independents resting at just 28%. Geez!
It begs the question: Who should be leading America?
Democrats ruled in the 1990s, holding the White House for eight of the 10 years. Also, it was one of the country's greatest periods in terms of economic success, international stability and domestic harmony.
By contrast, in the 21 st Century we had former presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden in the White House for a total of 12 years and George W. Bush and Trump for almost 14 years -- pretty even between the parties.
During their time in office we have had "forever wars," COVID-19, 9/11, the Great Recession, Hurricane Katrina, huge deficits, Black youth being killed, and we have added more than $33 trillion to our national debt.
Why have we seen such a change? Political polarization and gerrymandering of congressional districts have prevented compromise and good governance.
Now how did the Democrats manage to have such good results in the 1990s? They actually had a moderate president, Bill Clinton. Clinton's brilliance was that he did not see an idea being good or bad based on the political party presenting the idea. Four major changes during the Clinton days received a large number of votes from both Republicans and Democrats -- NAFTA, a crime bill, welfare reform, and a balanced budget that even gave us a surplus.
We as Republicans often said that Clinton took "our" ideas and made them his. No, the true answer is that with earnest debate and compromise, good ideas became law. The majority of the public agreed, while those on the extreme right and left did not. The extremists of the parties did not rule; today they do.
Today's results? Nothing good happens. Our current leaders have failed to do the basics of their job for the entire century. They neglect to do the budgeting and appropriation via regular order.
Democrats must get rid of all the highly unpopular issues that pander to single constituent groups but fail to match the desires of the vast majority of Americans. Let those groups fight on their own to make their issues more mainstream. The entire Democratic party should not be leading the charge for these groups as they have been in past elections. It was and still is a recipe for defeat.
An outside-the-box idea would be to use the state governments to strengthen and develop constitutional amendments that would better protect our democracy from a "wannabe" dictator.
Trump has ignored or sidestepped our democratic norms to the detriment of our nation and world.
From a more practical perspective, the Democrats have a number of aces that could "trump" Trump if used.