One of the more tedious aspects of President Donald Trump’s speech before a joint session of Congress was how little enthusiasm the democrats greeted it. The phenomenon is a commons one. Republicans pretty much greeted Obama’s speeches with little joy, in one instance a House member shouting out, :”You lie!” in total exasperation. But Roger Simon, a novelist and former Democrat, suggested that the Democrats outdid themselves in forced ennui when greeting Trump, even when he delivered applauds lines that should have been universal. He suggested that the Democrats have become the party of the Living Dead.
The reaction on social media was even more brutal. One tweeter suggested that the Democrats had become so partisan that they had come out in favor of unemployment, disease, terrorism, and drug addiction solely because Trump was against those things.
The low point of the night came when the president paid tribute to Navy SEAL Ryan Owens and his widow, who was seated in the visitors’ gallery. Most of the Democrats had the wit to join in the standing ovation. Two House members, Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Keith Ellison, remained seated and glowered. The optics were beyond horrible.
The problem with the Democrats is that they are still trying to figure out what they are for. They know what they are against, which is everything that comes out of Donald Trump’s mouth.
The president could call for universal peace and love and a pet unicorn for every child and the Democrats would find a way to oppose those things.
Unfortunately for the Democrats the main discussion is a debate over how absurdly radical they should be. Should they be mainstream radical leftists in the vein of former President Obama and Hillary Clinton?
Or should they go straight over the cliff in the style of Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders? They do know that cooperation with the enemies (not Russia, China, Iran, or North Korea, but Trump) is unacceptable. It looks like that former President Clinton who, though a man of the left, tried to lead the Democrats back to the center, lived in vain.
