Democrats are making a mistake that, politically speaking, is worse than any alleged malfeasance by President Trump. For one thing, they are being mortifyingly dull. Far worse, however, is the inescapable fact that behind the nationally televised tedium lurks a party that is becoming the new home for the interventionist brand of foreign policy politics formerly known as neoconservatism during its faux Republican stage.
Dems dominated the recurring tornado that is the 24-hour news cycle this past week with an empty impeachment case against Trump and yet another deeply boring debate in which the candidates largely regurgitated the same talking points they have been uttering for 11 months now. All of this makes them look small in the eyes of the American people – and they don't even realize it.
Not Watching the Paint Dry
As Liberty Nation's Leesa K. Donner pointed out, the congressional impeachment circus has been a massive ratings failure. Nielsen showed that only 13 million Americans tuned in to the highly hyped first day of the hearings. Over a span of five days, the hearings averaged roughly 12 million viewers, The Hollywood Reporter stated on Nov. 22.
By contrast, Christine Blasey Ford's testimony against then-Supreme Court nominee and current Justice Brett Kavanaugh in September 2018 attracted 19.6 million viewers. So we are talking about a loss of almost eight million viewers from the Dems' performance over a Supreme Court nominee and their even more lurid attempts to impeach a president in just over a year.
A similar trajectory is being tracked in the anemic recurring television series known as the Democratic presidential primary debates. The latest and fifth debate was held Nov. 20, and Nielsen reports it garnered just over 6.5 million viewers. This marks a loss of some 11.5 million viewers from the first debate in June. The snorefest in Atlanta has been widely panned as the weakest debate to date, but Dems seem completely oblivious to the diminishing returns presented by these lackluster forums. Actual votes don't start being cast until February but there is another debate scheduled for December and one planned for January as well.
Those who did tune in to the dry slog that was the House impeachment hearings were subjected to a mind-numbing regimen of career civil servants expressing their personal disapproval of the non-belligerent foreign policy of an elected president disguised as personal testimony against murky claims of wrongdoing.
Deep State Blue Superstars
The deep state disapproval of Trump pursuing any sort of mild or even remotely friendly approach to Russia was fully and openly vented by "star" Dem witness Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman in his opening statement dated Oct. 29:
"Since 2008, Russia has manifested an overtly aggressive foreign policy, leveraging military power and employing hybrid warfare to achieve its objectives of regional hegemony and global influence. Absent a deterrent to dissuade Russia from such aggression, there is an increased risk of further confrontations with the West. In this situation, a strong and independent Ukraine is critical to U.S. national security interests because Ukraine is a frontline state and a bulwark against Russian aggression."
Vindman declared that he saw any investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden's son’s sketchy financial dealings in Ukraine as a potential threat to an urgently required hostile U.S. approach to Russia via that nation:
"I realized that if Ukraine pursued an investigation into the Bidens and Burisma, it would likely be interpreted as a partisan play which would undoubtedly result in Ukraine losing the bipartisan support it has thus far maintained."
Vindman is complaining here that a president elected by over 60 million Americans to pursue a more restrained foreign policy was getting in the way of career diplomats who were implementing the correct "U.S. government policy" to "expand cooperation with Ukraine" as a means to contain Russian "regional hegemony and global influence."
Vindman's former National Security Council cohort, Fiona Hill, has been billed as the most effective and "impressive" of all these shadowy foreign policy apparatchiks called to testify. She has promoted the same narrative of Russia posing an expansionist threat that needs to be checked as a matter of vital U.S. national security interest. Acting U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor, another "star" witness, has expressed a long and detailed hostility to Russia and has close ties to the Atlantic Council, a pro-NATO Swamp think tank.
Revoking Her Party Card
This new Democrat foreign policy face dovetails with perhaps the only notable moment of the somnambulant Dem debate in Atlanta, Sen. Kamala Harris's (D-CA) disturbing response to Rep. Tulsi Gabbard's (D-HI) criticisms of her party for gravitating toward an increasingly interventionist foreign policy.
"It is a party that has been and continues to be influenced by the foreign policy establishment in Washington represented by Hillary Clinton and others foreign policy, by the military-industrial complex and other greedy corporate interests," Gabbard said.
Harris chose to take this moment to question the party bona fides of a candidate who would dare make such an assertion. "I think that it's unfortunate that we have someone on this stage that is attempting to be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States, who during the Obama administration spent four years full time on Fox News criticizing President Obama. Who has been full-time criticizing people on this stage as affiliated with the Democratic Party," Harris replied. She then once again ripped Gabbard for meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. South Bend, IN Mayor Pete Buttigieg also joined in this line of attack. Both condemned Assad as a "war criminal" and used him to slam Gabbard and her anti-interventionist beliefs.
The Democrats are astonishingly embracing the deep state and its endless war agenda at a time when nearly the entire nation, left, center, and right, is yearning for a government that puts the American people ahead of powerful vested efforts. This is the one elementary lesson all politicians needed to take from outsider Trump's victory in 2016. Democrats either cannot or will not accept this simple fact. Welding a New Neocon foreign policy to a radical progressive domestic social agenda is a recipe for electoral disaster.
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Read more from Joe Schaeffer.
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