The Democrats gave us Donald Trump in 2016, when they nominated a highly flawed Hillary Clinton as their candidate– causing many voters to roll the dice and vote for Trump, whom they perceived as the lesser of two evils. That hasn’t worked out real well. But now the Democrats seem poised to give us another four years of Trump. The Democrats may do this by nominating a candidate whom many voters could reasonably decide would be even worse than Trump, i.e., a Democratic candidate espousing such crazy proposals as:
• Decriminalization of illegal border crossing. This would institutionalize catch and release. Our country would be inundated with more immigrants than our economy and society could accommodate. In an earlier opinion piece, Our illegal-immigration policy – Villages-News: News, events, classifieds in The Villages, FL , I proposed a comprehensive solution for the illegal/undocumented immigrants already here and for future immigration. That solution does not include throwing our borders open to everybody who wants to come here.
• Free public college. College is not for everyone. Furthermore, we don’t need don’t need more college graduates with impractical majors such as medieval French literature. We need more technically or vocationally trained people for whom jobs exist, and for whom taking on student debt should be a really good investment. What happens to private colleges when public college is free? Tuition varies widely among public colleges; will the federal government pay whatever each college now charges?
• Forgiveness of student debt. The cost would be enormous, and, if available, that tax money should be used for socially beneficial projects like infrastructure rebuilding and vocational training. Do students who have paid off their debts get a refund? Why should families and students who worked hard and didn’t borrow money subsidize those who borrowed money and then chose an unwise major that did not prepare them for a job that generated enough income to repay their debt?
• Reparations. This is probably the craziest proposal of all. First, giving benefits to blacks based on their race would be unconstitutional since it discriminates against non-blacks. Furthermore, who is black? What about reparations-advocate Kamala Harris and ex-President Barrack Obama, who are ½ black and not descended from American slaves? How much does multi-millionaire LeBron James get? Despite the injustice of slavery (brought to the colonies by the British), aren’t virtually all of today’s American blacks far better off in this country than if their ancestors had stayed in Africa? Why reparations only for blacks? A lot of other races and nationalities have been ill treated in the past—e.g. the Indians. Should their descendants receive a reparation payment? Women were discriminated against for centuries. Should women (and, for that matter, descendants of women) get reparations? Would whites whose ancestors fought for the North in the Civil War get a break on the reparations tax? If money is available for reparations, it should be spent on vocational training for people of all races and on infrastructure repair–projects that would create jobs for low-income people and improve our economy at the same time.
• The Green New Deal. This can be best summarized as the “Green-Economic-Disaster Deal.”
THE BIG QUESTION
The big question really is: Where are moderate, younger, common-sense, experienced politicians when we need them?
There may be a few such people on the Democratic candidate list, but one of them, Eric Swalwell, has already dropped out. Another moderate, Joe Biden, while still leading the pack, is old, has a checkered performance record, tends to put his foot in his mouth, and is starting to fall behind the radical candidates. We may be able to survive the incompetence, hate speech, and divisiveness of Trump for another four years, but many voters are going to doubt that we can survive the kinds of proposals that many of the Democratic frontrunners are espousing.
Scott Fenstermaker is a resident of the Village of Winifred.