Gheorghe Explains the Election: The Democrats

I'm not feeling the Bern, though my 14 year-old daughter is a pretty passionate Bernie-backer. (I take this as a sign that I'm an excellent parent.) And my overwhelming emotion about Hillary Clinton is 'meh'.

More to the point, my objection to the former First Lady's candidacy is that, should she win and serve two terms, when she leaves office in January 2025, two families will have controlled the Presidency for 28 of the preceding 36 years. That's not democracy; it's an oligarchy of the establishment.

I suspect that same elite fatigue is what's propelling Senator Sanders' campaign (and not for nothing, a darker form of the same energy animates Donald Trump's rise). It's a measure of the Democratic Party's lack of imagination and leadership depth that it failed to recognize Secretary Clinton's fundamental vulnerability here, even though the same weakness felled her during her last campaign for the Presidency.

One day after the death of Antonin Scalia sees Republicans openly declaring their intent to subvert the Constitution and more than a few Democrats gleefully celebrating the demise of a human being, it's easy to fear for the future of the Republic. Recency bias is a real thing, to be sure, and every current moment looms larger in our minds than any previous. But it feels like this particular moment cries out for a radical departure from recent norms, a reparation of the body politic.

As an example, Scalia himself, one of the most conservative justices to ever sit on the highest bench in the land, was confirmed by a Democratically-controlled Senate in 1986 by a 97-0 margin. That seems quaint in the context of our current era.

Jimmy Carter was (and is) a good man who got a bad rap.

Unfortunately, no current Presidential candidate save Trump really offers any real break with the recent past. Sanders certainly promises it, but political reality suggests that none of his ambitious, liberal agenda would survive first contact with a House of Representatives controlled by Republicans, even if Democrats might be able to regain control of the Senate. He risks being nothing so much as a Jewish Jimmy Carter, with Brooklyn's accent replacing a Georgian twang, and bagels standing in for peanuts on political cartoonists' palettes.

If I sound despondent, good friends, it's because I'm pretty close to being just that. In the end, regardless of the nominee, I'll vote for the Democrat, because control of the Supreme Court hangs in the balance. But I won't expect much from her and her crony-driven machine.

Oh, and Happy Valentine's Day, Gheorghies, Glad I could bring some cheer to this day.